John Owen on "Let us fix our eyes upon Jesus.."

In his commentary on Hebrews, John Owen writes about "looking away" at Jesus in Hebrews 12:2:

Literally, “looking away.” We are to look to Jesus in a special way, a way that is different from the way we looked at the cloud of witnesses. The verb is in the present tense, so a continual act is intended. In all that we do, in our profession and obedience, we are constantly to look to Christ.“Looking,” in Scripture, when it refers to God or Christ, denotes an act of faith or trust, with hope and expectation. It is not just an act of understanding or considering what we are looking at; it is an act of the whole soul in faith and trust (see Psalm 34:4-6; Isaiah 45:22). Such is the look of believers on the pierced Christ (Zechariah 12:10), (See Hebrews 9:28; 11:10; also Micah 7:7, “I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.”)
 So the Lord Jesus is not set before us here merely as an example for us but as him in whom we place our faith, trust and confidence, with all our expectation of success in our Christian course. Without this faith and trust in him, we will derive no benefit from his example. (Owen, p. 243)