The Author - Hebrews 12:1-312:1-3

12:1-3 - After recounting many examples of people who had the power of faith work in their lives, Paul makes a simple summary basically saying, “seeing all these example of righteous and faithful people, let’s rid ourselves of sin and be patient in the challenges we have in our lives.” If there is immense power in faith, then Paul says, “Jesus (is) the author and finisher of our faith.” The IM comments that this phrase “can also be rendered as ‘the Leader and Perfecter of our faith.’” The word “author” denotes a sense of creation. I wonder if it makes sense to say that Jesus is the creator of our faith. I mean, he’s the one who gives us something to believe in, he’s the one who created this world and gave us the ability to repent. The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com says, “Jesus is the author of our faith because he ‘wrote the book’ on our individual salvation. He ‘wrote the book’ on salvation so that we may find our names written in his special book of remembrance- the Book of Life. How did he do it? He ‘finished (his) preparations unto the children of men,’ and the finishing of his preparations made possible the finishing of our faith. Hence, he became both the Starter and Finisher of our faith- even the ‘Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.’” Another thought that I had is that Paul just spent a lot of time and energy referencing faith filled accounts from his scriptures, so by calling Christ the “author” of our faith, he might be linking all those displays of faith to Christ both as the provider of those opportunities and the facilitator. The power of faith allowed Jesus to focus on “the joy that was set before him” and this motivated him to “endured the cross, despising the shame.” It’s interestingly that Jesus focused on “joy” while enduring the horror of the atonement. I like to think that if Jesus had to feel all of our sorrows and all of our pains, then I hope that he gets to feel all of our good times as well. I think that that is fair even though I’m sure the joy we feel and give to the Savior is miniscule in comparison to the pain. For all the examples Paul gave in the last chapter, we can look at Jesus