Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:1-3 ESV)We have seen that this is an act of God's grace and we have explored the idea of how it parallels the way that God calls individuals out of spiritual darkness and into His light. We saw how Abram's response was an act of faith which resulted in obedience. "He went out not knowing where he was going."
Now let us take a closer look at that faith. What is faith anyway?
If I were to ask my question--"What is faith?"--in just about any room of evangelical Christians this is the response I would get most often. People who know the Bible some, know that Hebrews 11 is the "Hall of Faith" and that the first verse gives a definition of faith.
But what does that mean? What does "the substance of things hoped for" mean? How is faith a substance? How is it an evidence? The problem with Hebrews 11:1 is that for many of us it is an answer that really doesn't answer anything. I think that what is missing is context. Let me explain.
The Letter to the Hebrews was written by a concerned Jewish follower of Jesus Christ who was earnestly seeking to encourage his fellow Jewish believers to persevere in their faith. These believers were facing persecution, and in the face of that persecution they were tempted to turn back and no longer follow Jesus. So the theme of Hebrews is how Jesus is better. He is better than the angels. He is greater than Moses. He is a greater High Priest than the Levitical line. He offered a better sacrifice (himself). Now let's peak in at what he is saying in chapter 10, right before we get to our famous, but hard to understand, verse in chapter 11.
But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. (Hebrews 10:32-35 ESV)These believers were suffering persecution. Following Jesus was costing them dearly. He reminds them of how they had responded in faith by "enduring" their own reproach and affliction, "being partners" with others who went through the same, having compassion on those who were thrown in prison for their faith and joyfully accepting the plundering of their property. What a testimony! "Therefore," he says, "do not throw away your confidence which has a great reward."
For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. (Hebrews 10:36 ESV)Those "things hoped for" in Hebrews 11:1 refer to what God has promised to the faithful, the great reward of verse 35 above. The "things hoped for" are the promised blessings of God to all those who trust him--eternal rest, joy, peace, blessing, all the goodness of God for all eternity. We cannot see those things now, but we hope and wait for them in time. How do we know that they are real? What is the evidence? The evidence is the very fact that we believe. Faith is a gift of God to those whom Christ has promised to save--fully and finally. "The natural man does not receive the things of God." "They that are in the flesh cannot please God." "Without faith it is impossible to please Him."
If you have faith it is because God has given you that faith, and if God has given you faith then God intends to bless you fully and finally. Therefore, the faith that you have now is the very substance of what you hope for in Christ, and the very evidence of that future blessing which you cannot, as yet, see.
The faith that God gives is an enduring faith. So what is the evidence that their faith is of this "enduring" kind that God gives? How do they (or how do we) know that their (our) faith is genuine? Well, all they have to do is look to the past and all the things that they have endured so far, the reproaches, the afflictions, the imprisonments, the loss of property. Their endurance in the past is the proof of their faith. Imagine he is saying it this way . . .
"Your endurance through trials in the past is the proof of a genuine faith and that enduring faith is the substance and evidence that you will finish the course before you and receive your reward. The fact that you had faith through those trials demonstrates that God is working in you--your faith is genuine. And if it was genuine before, then you can have confidence that it will get you through to the end. 'He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.' The Christian life is a journey, a pilgrimmage, which we walk by faith. The evidence of that faith is that we do what God says, we endure, we persevere, we trust, we obey. And that very faith in us is the substance and the evidence that we will finish our course. It was by this same faith that the elders, those who have gone before us, received their good report."
And now follows a listing of those faithful people of God who went on before us and how they won the victory over the obstacles set before them through faith--and endured to the end.
Faith, then, is a trust in God's word that leads to a faithful obedience to the same. Obedience is the indispensible evidence of faith. God-given faith has an enduring quality. This faith is the evidence that we belong to God and will win the victory over all obstacles, eventually even death.
Coming up we will make an interesting comparison of Abram's response to God's word to that of someone else we encountered earlier in Genesis, take a look at what sin really is, and then start looking into the nature of the promise that God made to Abram--the most wonderful promise in the history of the world.
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