11 Now
faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
2 This is what the ancients were commended for.
3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at
God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain
did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his
offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.
5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he
did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him
away.”[a] For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to
him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek
him.
Dig Deeper
Before I took up running as a bit of an amateur pastime,
I was quite intimidated by the idea of ever running a marathon. It seemed rather undoable and something that
was nothing more than a bit of craziness that would cause me a great deal of
pain. After taking up running as a hobby
and doing it for several years, my thoughts hadn’t changed that much on the
topic of marathons. But then I started
to talk to people who had run them and learn from them and realize not only
that it was possible for regular people to do but that there is a great deal of
challenge, and yes, even fun involved in running a marathon. So, I decided to try one and I haven’t quit
running them since. That little bit of
motivation spurred me on to believe that I could achieve running a marathon and
I have. In the last few years, though,
I’ve begun to look at some of the ultra-marathons that are out there, whether
it be the 56-mile Comrades in Durban, South Africa or one of the 100-mile races
closer to home; I’m intrigued. But I was
also a bit intimidated again. The idea
seemed daunting and somewhat impossible.
That is until I started to meet people who have completed one of those
endurance races. Their example and the
tips that they have provided me along the way are just what I need to be able
to complete one of them. I haven’t run
one yet, but I’m pretty sure I will one day, thanks in large part to their example
and encouragement.
Chapter 11 of Hebrews is, of course, one of the most
famous chapters in all of the New Testament.
It is often referred to as the “Hall of Fame of Faith,” and rightly
so. It is a chronological summary of
many of the great examples from the Old Testament of people who lived
incredible lives of faith based solely on the promises of God rather than on
anything that they could tangibly see, or anything that they received in their
lifetime. And although there is much
more in this chapter than just a bunch of good examples, it is chock full of
encouraging examples of those who lived by faith. It serves as a motivator and little slices of
encouragement from those that have gone on ahead and completed the race and now
stand in the stadium waiting for us to pick up and start the race and finish it
ourselves.
First things must go first, however. Before we can look at great and inspiring
lives of faith it is necessary that we take a moment to consider what faith
is. If the righteous ones will live by
faith, as our author has reminded us in the previous chapter, then we need to
know what faith is. It is, he says, “the
confidence in what we hope for.” But it
is more than that. It is also “the
assurance about what we do not see.” The
definition leaves no room for some squishy self-defined concept of faith. The word “rendered “confidence” can be
translated in two directions: it either means “evidence” and “guarantee” or it
means something like “title deed.”
Either way, the point is clear that faith is the thing that brings
confidence to our hope and gives assurance despite the fact that we have not
seen that for which we hope.
This is where we must be on guard against the modern
tendency towards post-modernism (where my truth is truth) and defining concepts
in a way that pleases us. The “hope”
here is not anything that we wish for and this is, quite frankly, missed by
most commentators of this passage.
“Hope” in the book of Hebrews, and in fact, the New Testament as a
whole, and the early Christian community virtually always referred to the
coming resurrection age. God had
promised resurrection and those that believed those promises would have to live
by faith in them.
It is this faith in God’s promises that turns hope from
a vague wish into a reality to be lived out.
And a reality to be lived out is exactly what faith is. In Romans 4:18-21, Paul defines Abraham’s
faith as the action of him living as though God’s promises were true. Faith, then, is not the act of deciding
whatever we wish to hope for and then believing that God will come through for
us. Faith is holding to what God has
promised and then living as though that promise were absolutely true, primarily
in the case of the resurrection that he has promised for those in Christ. This means that I can’t have biblical faith
in getting a specific job, finding a spouse, or having a specific person come
to conversion to Christ (although Philippians 4 certainly confirms that we can
pray for those things) because God has not promised any of of those things
specifically. Faith, simply put, is
living according to God’s promises, even though we have not seen them
materialize yet.
Thus, when Hebrews says that hope is the confidence of
what we hope for and the assurance about what we don’t see, it refers
specifically to the great hope of resurrection that God has promised to those
who would die to themselves and entrust themselves to the life of Christ. Believing that in Christ God has given us access
right now to the life of the age to come that will appear fully at the time of
the resurrection is what brings animation to our life and is the basis of how
we live. Faith is living as though we
are already in God’s future and ordering our lives by the values of the
resurrection age rather than the present age.
The ancients lived for the promise of God’s age to come and were
commended for it, even though they did not have the advantage of ever seeing
the partial fulfillment of those promises that came through the life of Christ;
promises that we have seen and that guarantee that the rest of God’s promises
will surely be realized.
Hebrews thus, begins to take us through a brief history
of the need for faith in God’s promises.
It starts in verse 3 with the creation and will go through to chapter 12
with the new creation. It starts by
going through the Old Covenant and will culminate in the coming of the New
Covenant. It is by believing God’s word
that we know that the universe was formed.
Certainly none of us were there to witness it and so we must take by
faith (in God’s word) the fact that the physical universe has not always
existed. Behind what can be seen, the
created universe, stands the eternal God who made it. We must believe God’s word that this is the
case, although the sheer logic of the existence of creation further bolsters
God’s word. How so? Simply put, if the universe had a beginning
(and even most atheists will agree with that) then something outside of the
physical universe of time and space must have caused it to exist. So if the cause was outside of physical
matter then it must be something non-physical, or what we would call spiritual:
which would seem to be the God who has given his word that he is the creator of
the universe.
From the very beginning of the creation, then, faith was
the language of having a relationship with God.
Abel was commended to a relationship with God while Cain was rejected
because Abel had faith and Cain did not.
The writer of Hebrews doesn’t detail how or in what way Abel had faith
and Cain did not, and neither does Genesis make it overt either. The point of our author may have simply been
that God’s word declares that his righteous people will live by faith, and
because Abel was considered righteous, that was the identification card that he
had faith. Abel’s life and actions
continue to carry on to this day because he lived by faith in the promises of
God to live in eternity with his people.
That is why a life of faith and labors of faith will carry on forever
and cause Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:58 to declare that “your labors in the Lord
are not in vain.”
Enoch, a biblical figure that was highly respected by
first century Jews, was no exception to the faith factor. He was one of two men in history that was
taken directly by God; and why? Because he lived by faith and that faith
pleased God. Enoch pleased God by his
faith, says the writer of Hebrews, and that’s important because it is
impossible to please God without faith.
Again, we must stress that this is not a vague post-modern type of faith
that is a theoretical agreement with certain biblical truths. The kind of faith that pleases God is a life
that is lived unswervingly according to the word and will of God.
That is why the author lays out two aspects of faith in
God. The fist aspect is the most common,
that we must believe that God exists.
Many people today stop right there as though as long as they believe
that God exists, even if they pay a little lip service on occasion to him and
his Son, then they consider themselves in relationship with God. But they far too often forget the second
part. Faith not only demands that we
believe that God exists but that “he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” In other words we must believe both that God
exists and is God, and we must live our lives as though his promises of the
reward of resurrection are true. If we
believe God’s word, that faith will be reflected in lives that reject the empty
promises of the present age and strive constantly to embody God’s will and the
life of the age to come in the real world in which we live and struggle.
Devotional Thought
In what things do you really have faith? How does that faith have an impact on how you
live each day? Are you truly living by
the values of the age to come because you believe that God’s promises are true?
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