EighthDayTheology

Hebrews 11 is a carefully crafted portrait gallery of the Bible’s faith heroes, sketching their stories of faith, which overcome the impossible.

Faith has its beginning, middle and end with God. All the way through the book, Hebrews has been exhorting disciples to persevere in their faith, despite persecution, to gain their place in the coming kingdom when Jesus returns.

It’s easy to skim through, but Hebrews 11 rewards a slower read-through. This list of faith heroes has much to teach us about what powerful faith is really like.

19 attributes of faith

So here are nineteen mini-lessons on faith from Hebrews 11…

• Faith is held with conviction (Heb 11:1). As elsewhere in the Bible, faith doesn’t waver, but demonstrates assurance and conviction that what we don’t yet see will surely come to pass (c.f. Jas 1:6).
• Faith is how we receive a ‘well done’ from God (Heb 11:2). The cornerstone truth that we receive salvation and adoption through faith in God is testified to by a wealth of scriptures (John 3:16; Rom 3:21-22; Rom 5:1; Eph 2:8; Gal 2:16; 1 Peter 1:5-9…). And it’s here in Hebrews 11 too. Just as the heroes of old received their commendation before God by faith, we too will be commended because we believe that God will do all he has promised in Jesus.
• Faith trusts God’s word (Heb 11:3). Some things we can’t find out for ourselves. We just need to trust what God has said. Creation is a great example of this trusting faith. None of us were there to witness it, and no experiment can repeat God’s work of creating matter out of nothing, through his powerful word. We believe these things because we trust the one who said them.
• Faith continues speaking after death (Heb 11:4). Even murder can’t silence the witness of genuine faith. Faith gains us access to life beyond death, and the very way we die can live on in the memory of those who witness it, continuing to demonstrate what we believe.
• Faith pleases God (Heb 11:5). Faith itself is a gift from God (Eph 2:8), but it still pleases God when we exercise it.
• Faith allows us to draw near to God (Heb 11:6). Without faith, our natural response is to squash down the truth of God’s existence (Rom 1:18). Without faith, we shrink away from the One we innately know to be the holy judge of sinners like us. Why is faith needed for us to draw close to God? Because faith in God’s word encourages us to believe he’s there and that he rewards those who seek him.
• Faith condemns the world (Heb 11:7). Faith knows that our salvation comes through God’s righteous judgment of sin. For us, this judgment happened once and for all on the cross (Heb 7:27; 8:12). As we run to take refuge in Jesus, our faith that we will be safe in him testifies that God’s judgment is coming on all who aren’t sheltering in him. Our faith ought to be uncomfortable for others who don’t believe, looking on.
• Faith obeys God (Heb 11:8-10). It begins with hearing from God, understanding and believing (Rom 10:17), but faith can’t end there (Jas 2:17). Faith obeys. This obedience might be costly. It might seem crazy. But faith obeys because it trusts that following God will surely lead to a far better outcome than ignoring him. Abraham is a great example. He didn’t live to see the fulfilment of all God promised. His obedience made his life less stable, more risky, less comfortable. But he obeyed because he knew that what is coming makes it worthwhile.
• Faith opens the pipeline for God’s empowering (Heb 11:11). Sarah seems like a strange example for Hebrews to use to make this point, given how she struggled to believe at first. In resignation, Sarah had persuaded Abraham to sleep with her servant instead, thinking the promised son couldn’t come through her (Gen 16:2). When she heard the promise restated, she laughed in disbelief (Gen 18:12). But in the end, she must have trusted God’s promise. Hebrews 11:11 tells us that Sarah’s faith unblocked her womb. By faith in God’s promise that she would conceive, she received divine power to do the impossible, and gave birth at the age of at least 90. Faith makes the impossible happen, because it trusts in a God who is able. That trust, in specific promises from God, is how we receive God’s power to do the impossible.
• Faith makes us exiles on earth (Heb 11:13-16). Faith always looks forward, into the future. One of the things we believe is that God is going to make a new creation, where we will have true rest. A Day is coming, when the future kingdom of God will be established in our ‘now’. This is a major theme of the book of Hebrews (Heb 4:1, 4:9; 10:25; 12:28; 13:14). Our citizenship of this future kingdom makes us exiles in the here and now. Faith says that’s okay, because the homeland and city that’s coming is worth it.
• Faith survives testing (Heb 11:17). One of the characteristics of faith is that it hasn’t yet received the reward it hopes for. When that hope looks increasingly impossible, genuine faith holds on to what has been promised. In fact, the pain of testing proves faith to be the real deal, and results in praise, glory and honour (1 Peter 1:7).
• Faith reproduces itself (Heb 11:20-22). Faith doesn’t die with the original believer, but gets passed on to new generations.
• Faith chooses love over fear (Heb 11:23). It risks punishment from earthly powers, because love that comes from faith is stronger than fear (1 John 4:18).
• Faith chooses reproach over sinful pleasure (Heb 11:24-26). Just as Moses chose to be identified with God’s people, even when it meant giving up all the luxuary and wealth of Pharoah’s palace, we don’t shirk away from the mistreatment which comes from being names as Christ’s people. We believe that the reward that’s coming is way more valuable than the pleasures of this world’s superpowers.
• Faith sees the invisible (Heb 11:27). When the terror and strength of very real powers threaten against us, faith endures, because it sees the greater power of the invisible God, who is ruler of all.
• Faith protects (Heb 11:28). Because it obeys God’s instructions for how to take refuge, faith shelters us from God’s judgment. Faith trusts that Jesus’s blood absorbs the destruction that our wickedness deserves.
• Faith leads us into victory (Heb 11:29-30). When God is for us, who can be against us?
• Faith rescues. Even God’s enemies can be rescued through faith (Heb 11:31). On the very brink of the approaching judgment, faith can change our allegience, and protect us. Rahab took a real risk to save the Israelite spies (Josh 2:3-6), and her faith left her house standing, with all her household inside it, even as the rest of the very walls it was built into collapsed (Josh 2:15; 7:20, 23). Now one of God’s people by faith, Rahab married Salmon, possibly one of the spies she rescued, and became the mother of Boaz, the great-great grandmother of David, and one of the ancestors of Jesus (Matt 1:5). Faith turns prostitutes into princesses.
• Faith does so much more (Heb 11:35-38). At this point, the author of Hebrews gives up on a methodical trawl through Israel’s history, and just throws out more fruits of faith, including: conquering kingdoms, enforcing justice, obtaining promises, protection from the teeth of lions, the fury of the furnace and the sword, turning weakness to strength, and the reversal of death (Heb 11:32-35). As well as the more triumphalistic fruits of faith, Hebrews lists the horrors which faith is able to endure, including torture, imprisonment, exile, and all kinds of gruesome deaths. No terror can quench faith in God’s promises. Faith, like love (Song 8:6), is stronger than death.

Unlocking extraordinary power by believing specific promises

What can we take away from all this?

The thing that stands out most to me is that faith unlocks extraordinary power for God’s people, when they take their stand on very specific promises which God has made to them.

Notice what Hebrews 11 doesn’t say.

• It doesn’t say we can choose what we’re believing for. The ground of faith is nearly always a specific word from God. Otherwise, faith is grounded in a specific aspect of God’s character, revealed in his words or works (e.g. Rahab, whose faith is based on God’s deliverance of Israel, and reinforced by the promises of the spies).
• It doesn’t say we put our trust in the quality or strength of our own faith. The object of faith is always God’s character and power, not me. Christian faith looks outwards and upwards, not inwards.
• It doesn’t say we’ll always live to see the answer we’ve been promised. Sometimes God’s promises have a longer ‘use by’ date than we do. Sometimes they need stewarding and passing on to the next generation. This breeds humility – the promise is bigger than me.
• It doesn’t say faith is a way to manipulate God to get what we want. The most precious reward of faith is always intimacy with God. Faith often leads to a great and precious assurance which knows for sure now what will be declared to the whole universe in the future – God loves me as his own child.
• It doesn’t say a life of faith will always feel supernatural. Faith might mean persevering with the ordinary and unremarkable for a long time, in hope.

So it’s no good working up great faith in a promise which God hasn’t made. It’s also no good limply brushing past a genuine promise without firmly taking hold of it.

But Hebrews 11 does say something wonderful.

We were made to believe in the God of the impossible. He has promises for us to take hold of, and he wants to demonstrate again in our lives his extraordinary power to keep his promises.

Most generally, most importantly, and most wonderfully, is the promise made to every believer, that whoever declares with their mouth that ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believes in their heart that God raised him from the dead will be saved (Rom 10:9). And to be saved is to be infinitely and eternally happy with God.

You make known to me the path of life; 

in your presence there is fullness of joy; 

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. 

Psalm 16:11 (ESV)

But that’s not the only promise in the Bible. And God is still in the business of calling his children to believe him for the impossible.

Let’s seek out those promises of God, and pray for the faith to take hold of them, and keep hold of them, till he comes.