30 - Heb_11:1

CHAPTER X X X.

FAITH AND THINGS HOPED FOR AND UNSEEN.

Hebrews 11:1 THE pre-eminence of faith is kept in view throughout this whole epistle, which the writer himself describes as a word of exhortation. For this purpose the apostle unfolds the glory of the Lord Jesus as the great Mediator in the heavenly sanctuary, that the Hebrews may continue in the faith, considering the great Apostle and High Priest of our profession, drawing near in full confidence to the throne of grace, realizing the true, substantial blessings of the new covenant, and waiting for the promised return of their Lord. Unbelief was the reason why the Jews, with whom God was grieved, could not enter into rest: if we believe not, as Isaiah had testified, we cannot be established. The apostle warned the Hebrews by the most solemn and awful arguments from their own Scriptures against unbelief. But as he exhorts them most earnestly, so he hopes also in the exercise of deep affection that they belong not to them who draw back unto perdition, but that they are of the true disciples who believe to the saving of the soul.

Live then by faith; for only by faith is it possible for the just to live. The things hoped for and the things not seen, which are now made manifest in full perfection by the gospel of Christ, can only be realized by faith, even as it was by faith that all the godly, since the beginning of the world, lived and suffered, obeyed and conquered. In order to encourage, stimulate, and comfort them in the midst of trial and temptation, he brings before them in rapid but most vivid and comprehensive sketches the history of the fathers, whom they regarded with the profoundest reverence and affection, showing them that theirs also was the life of faith. What was their greatness, but that they were men of God? and what made them men of God, but that they believed God, and waited for the fulfillment of His promise? Faith was the characteristic feature of all the saints. It is the attitude of heart, without which there is no communion with God, and without which we cannot please Him. The apostle gives therefore the most comprehensive definition of faith, de scribing the radical and essential disposition of heart Godwards, in whatever dispensation men lived, both before the first advent and in the Church period. It consists at all times in a firm confidence of unseen and future realities.

There are things hoped for in the future, in eternity; there are things not seen, both past and present. The latter expression is more comprehensive than the former. The second advent, our resurrection and glory, are future things hoped for; God, as the creator and upholder of all things, and all spiritual truths and heavenly realities, belong to the unseen, of which faith alone can have assurance. The heart of man, although since the fall gravitating towards the things which are seen and which are present, is never satisfied with the visible and temporary, but cannot rest except in the spiritual and eternal. God of His great mercy hath revealed unto us the things of God; eternal and spiritual realities have been manifested by God’s Spirit. There is a divine revelation; the things which man’s reason cannot discern or his imagination and intuition discover, have been unveiled. God revealed Himself, He spoke unto the fathers, and His revelation contained always a promise of future and never-ending blessings, as well as a manifestation of present spiritual and heavenly realities. The victory of the seed of the woman over the serpent was a future thing, the object of hope; the manifestation of Jehovah’s holy love, combining mercy with judgment, was the manifestation of a present, though unseen, spiritual reality. The promise of the seed, in whom all nations are to be blessed, was a future thing; the assurance, "I am thy God, walk before Me," revealed a present unseen but much real blessedness. Now all communion with God was based upon the divine revelation of things hoped for, and things not seen.

How is this revelation received? What is the eye that sees, the organ that beholds and appropriates this gift? Faith is the eye that beholds the King in His beauty, and that sees the land that is afar off. Not man’s intellect, not man’s imagination, not man’s conscience; all these become indeed most deeply, radically, and thoroughly the servants of faith; but that which discerns and beholds spiritual realities and appropriates them, that which beholds future blessings, and so grasps and cherishes them as to prefer them to things visible, and to make them the object and joy of life, is what Scripture calls faith.

Now faith appears at first sight a very simple thing; it is nothing else but receiving the Word of God. We know what it is to receive the word of a man, to believe statements, though strange and surpassing our experience, because we regard the character of him who makes them with respect and confidence. Faith in God’s Word is receiving God’s testimony. But then, remember, as God is greater than man, as God’s Word is heaven-high above any human word, so the reception of this Word, the believing of this Word, is necessarily something quite different from the reception of any human word or testimony. As is the voice, so is the echo; as is the seal, so is the impression; as is the word, or revelation, so is the faith. The divine Word produces in the heart of man faith, which is divine in its nature and power. When God speaks, when God discloses to the soul the world of spiritual realities and of future blessings, this very word of His creates within the soul a new world of fear, shame, contrition, desire, reverence, longing, hope, trust, which no other word could call forth, perfectly unique in its character, as God’s word is unique in its character. To assent to the Word of God is therefore to enter into a perfectly new life, a perfectly new mode and power of existence. Nothing but God’s word could ever have called forth that which we call faith, and God’s word, Spirit-given as it is, only when vitalized by the same Holy Ghost. Where then is the seat of faith? Not in the intellect, which sees the logical connection or the historic evidence; not in the imagination, which recognizes the beauty and organic symmetry, and reproduces the picture; not in the conscience, which testifies to the righteousness and truth of the revelation; but in a something which lies deeper than these, in which all these centre, and to which all these return. With the heart, as the Scripture teacheth, man believeth. There, whence are the issues of life, emotional, intellectual, moral, spiritual, in that secret place, to which God alone has access, God’s word, as a seed, begets faith; God’s word, as a light, kindles light, and the man becomes a believer. Believer describes the whole man. This is the characteristic and the power of the new life - we believe in God.

See then how mistaken those are who fancy faith to consist in the mere assent of the understanding to doctrines and facts, seen to be true on sufficiently evidenced authority. See how no man can give faith to another; how the mere reception by reason, or sentiment, or fancy, of clear and pathetic statements of gospel truth is not faith. Without desiring the things future, without turning in sorrow and self-condemnation to the unseen God - revealed without the heart clinging in trust fullness to God the Saviour - there is no faith. God speaks to the heart of Jerusalem, and faith is the heart hearing and responding. In this faith, called forth by the Word of God, and brought forth by the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is from its very birth and commencement an element of certainty, conviction, light, which transcends the certainty of the senses or of the intellect. Human argumentations deal gene rally with words, abstractions, vessels of mere formal conceptions. God’s Spirit reveals to us the things of God, and the things of God which are given to us; so that from the river which flows into our heart and lives, according to the promise of Jesus, we know with perfect certainty the eternal fountain of divine love, and the infinite ocean of endless blessedness, towards which we hasten. Where in the whole realm of thought and feeling is there anything to compare with the Christian’s "I am persuaded that nothing can separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus"? Hence he who believes says, I know; or he says, I believe, and am sure, that thou art the Christ. When God speaks to the soul, and the soul, giving up its own judgment and thoughts, receives in humility the testimony of God, faith stands in the power of God. The Spirit demonstrates, that is, shows as realities the things of God. Faith is the evidence, the clear and all-sufficient demonstration,¹ of things not seen; and it is an assured confidence in the fulfillment of things hoped for; so much so that the power and comfort of the future is even now realized, though it doth not yet appear what we shall be: faith stedfastly anticipates the fulfillment and possesses the substance.² Do not look upon assurance of faith, as it is called, as a subsequent addition to the original faith which first grasps the promise; all faith, and be it but as a grain of mustard seed, possesses the God-given certainty, trust, conviction, light. "O God, Thou art my God; I will put my trust in Thee." (¹The apostle uses here a term which occurred in his day often in philosophy; the more so as the thing itself is wanting in all human metaphysics, proof, evidence, or demonstration which meets all objections and admits no doubt. Philosophy has no such demonstration of things invisible and unknown; it cannot give such certainty; the divine testimony brings with it such inward conviction; faith resting on divine testimony possesses such certainty. MENKEN,Homilien überHeb. 11.

Human reasoning loves to give itself the appearance of perfect originality, and every new metaphysical system appears with some degree of assumption of having arisen out of the depths of a human mind and of being built up by necessary laws of thought. Perhaps nothing so fascinates and entangles young minds as this promise, "Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." Hamann refers to this when he asks: Is your whole human reasoning anything else but tradition? and does it require much to trace the succession of your bare and twice-dead opinions to the root of your genealogical tree?)

(²The expressionὑπόστασιϛ, substance, is used (1) in the sense of essence (Hebrews 1:3), and (2) in the sense of confidence. (Hebrews 3:14; also2 Corinthians 9:4; 2 Corinthians 11:17.) Taken in the latter sense, the meaning of the passage would be, that faith is a standing, confiding expectation of future things, which as future are objects of hope. But the expression seems also to suggest the other aspect of faith, as realizing and possessing, even in the present, the blessings and powers of the future. The expressionἔλϵγχοϛteaches that faith itself is to the believer a sure argument of the reality of those things which cannot be seen, or which cannot otherwise be discerned. An interesting passage is quoted by Delitzsch from Dante,Paradise, 24: on faith, a paraphrase ofHebrews 11:1. His words, in reply to the question how he obtained faith, are also memorable: "The flood, I answered, from the Spirit of God rained down upon the ancient bond and new. Here is the reasoning that convinceth me so feelingly; each argument beside seems blunt and forceless in comparison.")

Thus all the children of God lived by faith. They knew God’s character; they believed His mighty works in creation; they rejoiced in His presence; they realized the future blessings He promised. Israel beheld God, the invisible, and they waited for the Messiah. This was their whole life. This is the explanation of their self-denial, courage, patience. Though the present and actual condition was full of reproach and suffering, yet they knew God was theirs, and the future glory and inheritance remained secure. What shall we say of our father Abraham, and of his children? What else but that they were believers, receiving the promises by faith, even as by faith they realized the ever-present Jehovah? And just as the first mention of priesthood in Scripture is not in connection with the Levitical successional priesthood, but with Melchisedec, type of the Son of God, the true, real, personal Priest, so the word "righteousness," it occurs for the first time in the book of Genesis, as the apostle Paul notices exultingly, not in connection with law and works, but with grace and faith. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness, and this golden sentence shines forth again in the pregnant declaration of the prophet Habakkuk, "The just shall live by faith;" and again in the fullness of the Pentecostal light Habakkuk’s word is illumined in the epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians, and in our chapter, where the whole Old Testament history is described as the history of men who lived by faith, confidently expecting things hoped for, and fully assured of the reality of things unseen. But if the glory of the old covenant was great, much greater is the glory of the new dispensation. Greater and better things were reserved for us. Israel’s future was the advent of Messiah, the descent of Jehovah - the coming of their king David, to give glory to Israel and light to the Gentiles; and Israel’s unseen things were the salvation truths manifested in type and prophecy, in God’s words and dealings. But contrast with this our position. Our future, though comprehending Israel’s, contains new and peculiar elements. Messiah’s first advent is past. Accomplished is His exodus at Jerusalem,^* finished His work in Golgotha; as Son of man He is now enthroned at the Father’s right hand; and we expect Him now to return to receive His bride, that we may be glorified together with Him. To us it is said, "Go ye forth to meet the Bride groom;" to us it is announced, "This same Jesus shall so come again in the clouds of heaven." Now that the incarnation and the death and ascension of the Son of God have been accomplished, how much brighter is our hope! how much clearer and more blessed are the things hoped for, and the things not seen! For if, like Stephen, dead to the world and filled with the love of Christ, we look stedfastly towards heaven, we see the glory of God, and Jesus at the right hand of the Father. This was the great object of our epistle, to reveal the things not seen, the glory and grace of the heavenly sanctuary. The throne of grace, the blood of Christ, the intercession of the Saviour, the spiritual blessings in heavenly places, are the things unseen; Christ’s coming again, and we manifest with Him in glory, things hoped for. (^*Luke 9:31.)

It is clear why in this epistle the apostle gives such a general and comprehensive view of faith. The question of justification and sanctification is not before him. Christ the Priest, heaven the holy of holies, believers for ever perfected in Jesus, this is the all-important point towards which all his arguments tend; hence faith, and faith in its most general or root-sense, as beholding unseen and future things, is the great and constant theme of his exhortation.

We also need the faith explained in the epistles to the Romans and Galatians, to be deepened and quickened as well as tested by the faith explained in this epistle. The sinner, first brought to a knowledge of his guilt and misery, beholds the Lamb of God; through faith in His blood he is justified and filled with joy and peace, and this by the power of the Holy Ghost. This is indeed the very centre of faith, and that to our very last breath. But if we are really to continue in communion with God, to obey and to suffer, to work and to conquer, we must learn also the circumference of faith, beholding the things which are unseen and eternal: through Jesus we believe in God, we have our citizenship in heaven.

Faith is what Jesus sought in Israel; and when the Son of man cometh again He asks, Shall He find faith on the earth? How often did Jesus says, "Go in peace, thy faith hath saved thee!" Only believe! is His word of consolation as well as rebuke. And how harmonious is the testimony of the apostles. Peter cannot leave Jesus, because he believes and is sure that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God; faith in the name of Jesus was what he preached in Jerusalem. "Whosoever believeth in Him shall receive re mission of sins," is his message when he opens the door to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. Faith was also the result of his preaching, as he writes, "Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." In like manner John, the beloved disciple. Not even the apostle Paul gave a fuller and deeper testimony to the pre-eminence of faith. True, he was called to point out the relation between faith and works, law and gospel, the dispensation of Moses, and the dispensation of the Spirit, and hence for teaching and convincing men, the Jews, the self-righteous, the natural man in general, we must always go to the Pauline epistles. But the nature, essence, power, and victory of faith are nowhere described with such clearness and energy as in the writings of John. Let me remind you of a few of his golden words: "To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Faith is here represented as the gift of God, inseparably connected with the new birth and divine Sonship. Think again of the many declarations in his gospel in which the Lord connects faith with the (present and immediate) possession of eternal life.¹ Then again the indwelling of God in us and our indwelling in God, and the witness of the Spirit, are connected with faith,² Again, if we believe in Jesus, the Lord says, rivers of living water shall flow out of us, or the Spirit of God shall be given to us abundantly, so that, filled with the Holy Ghost, our words, influence, and works will be like fertilizing streams. And in like manner, if we believe, we shall do the same works which Christ did, and greater works, because the glorified Son of man is now with the Father.³ Again, faith is described as the victory which overcometh the world. (¹John 3:16; John 5:24; John 11:25.²1 John 4:15; 1 John 5:10.³John 7:38; John 14:12.)

We see that Scripture speaks thus of faith in a very deep and comprehensive manner, and that it is indeed a wonderful, mysterious, powerful grace given of God. Inseparably connected with eternal life, the indwelling of God, the witness of the Spirit, the victory over the world, and the imitation of Christ. Such a view may at first discourage anxious and seeking souls. Let them remember that it is their need and guilt, and nothing else, to which the words of the Lord Jesus and His call are addressed. Have we faith? We say, we need a stronger degree of faith. Yet Jesus says, when the disciples ask Him to increase their faith, "If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye should say to this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and it should be done."¹ We say that we have weak faith, because we are yet babes in knowledge, and have discovered yet little of the treasures of divine revelation; but Jesus says, "Have faith in God."² The most elementary truth is sufficient. Realize God’s power and love. We need not so much deeper knowledge, as faith in the simplest truths. We say that we have not the faith of some of God’s eminent servants, yet Jesus says, "Whosoever" (not merely an apostle or prophet) "shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.³ But let us remember for our comfort the great distinction between a dead or vain faith, and weak or little faith. The Lord rebukes the fearfulness and doubting of sincere disciples, yet He rebukes also the storm, and delivers His people from all their fears.⁴ True faith takes hold of the divine Word; it is weak or strong, great or small, as it receives, keeps, and uses the Word of God. Abraham staggered not at the word of promise through unbelief, though it was a word most difficult, nay, impossible, for reason to receive, and thus Abraham was strong in faith. The source of weak faith is in the ignorance and slowness of the heart in reference to the divine testimony. The strength of faith is the humility of a helpless and broken heart cleaving to the promise. Worm Jacob becomes Israel; and a poor Syrophenician woman is transplanted "from the utmost corner of the land" to the foremost place by the Master’s word, "O woman, great is thy faith!" (¹ Luke 17:6.² Mark 11:22.³ Mark 11:23.⁴Matthew 8:24; Matthew 14:31.)

There was one who, next to the apostles, was perhaps the greatest gift of God to the Church, whom we all admire for his faith. And yet Martin Luther was wont to say, "Oh, if I had faith! If I could only believe that God is the Creator! If I could only say in faith, Our Father! "And often he confessed, that unless every day he read the Scriptures, and meditated on Christ, and repeated the Creed, and prayed the Psalms, his heart became dead and cold, full of dark and hard thoughts of God, and of dreary and tormenting doubts and fears. Let us dwell then on Christ; let us consider Him in stedfast, diligent, frequent meditation; let the Word of Christ dwell richly in our hearts, minds, and homes. Let us connect the world of unseen and future realities with our walk and conduct, with our daily duties and trials. Let the life which we now live in the flesh - our present earthly life, with its work and trouble - be a life of faith. Things hoped for, Jerusalem the golden, and the constant presence of the Prince; things not seen, the throne of God and the great High Priest, the spiritual blessings in heavenly places - think of these things in your hearts, and with full purpose of will, all ye who sit by Babel’s streams, with your harps on the willows; and though strangers and pilgrims, you will be able to sing the song of faith, you will go on from strength to strength.