Faith receives, embraces, and bows to Christ. Faith unites us to Christ. Faith believes Christ, trusting him alone for acceptance with God. But faith in Christ is not just a dream of “pie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye.” Faith in Christ is the believer’s way of life in this world. It is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
That does not mean that we are made alive by our faith in Christ. It is not our faith that gives us spiritual life, but God’s gift of life that gives us faith. So, when the Scriptures declare, that, “The just shall live by faith,” the meaning is that we live in this world by faith in Christ. That is what is set before us in Hebrews 11. What does this faith, by which all justified sinners live, do?
Trusts God
We trust a God who is without limitation, the
Infinite Lord God with whom nothing is impossible. That enables faith (faith in
this great God) to look at impossibilities and smile in
light of God’s wisdom, power, and goodness (vv. 33-38).
Faith still subdues kingdoms. Christ has
made us kings. Faith works righteousness (Rom. 5:19), obtains God’s promises (2
Cor. 1:20), stops the mouths of lions (Rom. 8:33-34), escapes the edge of the
sword (Rom. 8:35-39), out of weakness is made strong (2 Cor. 12:9-10), waxes
valiant in conflict (1 Cor. 15:58), turns to flight the enemies (Rom. 16:20),
quenches the violence of fire (Isa. 43:1-5) receives life from death (John
11:40), endures great trials (Rom. 5:1-5), and obtains a better resurrection
(Rev. 20:6).
Turns
Loss To Gain
Faith turns great loss into great gain and great
failure in to great triumph. We sing, “Faith is the victory;” but we
tend to think of mere temporal, earthly, creature comfort as victories achieved
by faith. We aim too low! That’s why the rest of the chapter is needful. Read
verses 35-40 carefully.
The Holy Spirit does not identify the men
and women he refers to in these verses, but they have been numbered in Heaven.
Read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs or Men of the Covenant or The Reformation in England or The Scots Worthies or By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs of the
Twentieth Century or biographies of William Tyndale, Hugh Latimer, Jim
Elliot, and Bill Wallace, and you will discover that throughout history
countless brethren have faced great suffering and inhumane, barbaric
executions. There were no thoughts of “health, wealth, and prosperity” among
them, they pressed on through their trials by faith. Faith did not deliver them
from the experience of suffering and death, but faith carried them through
triumphantly. And if need be, faith will do so for you.
“They went about in sheepskins, in
goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (of whom the world was not
worthy), wandering in deserts and mountain,
and in dens and in caves of the earth.” The
allurements of this world had nothing for these faithful and often penniless
brethren. They lacked all the creature comforts of life but what people of
faith they were! What knowledge of God they experienced in their temporal
deprivations! The world was not worthy of them, though the world considered
them unworthy. God judges by different standards than the world; loss,
deprivation, and poverty are no failures in God’s sight. The only real failure
is a failure to believe God!
What do all of these believers through
the centuries tell us? – “When you can have it all, faith says Christ is
better; and when you lose it all, faith says Christ is better”
Unites
It is this common faith that unites all God’s elect
in Christ. We have different cultures, come from different
races, face different experiences, but faith in the Lord Jesus Christ sustains
us throughout our days. Faith carries us through good times and bad, through
abundant times and lean ones, through prosperity and poverty, through health and
sickness, through births and bereavements, through peace and war. Faith unites
us in hope, in life, in heart, and in eternity, for faith unites us in Christ
(vv. 39-40).
“And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.”
Here the Spirit of God links believers
from Old and New Testaments together, showing that there is a continuity and
unity in our faith. There are not “two faiths,” one old and the other new, but
one common faith among all God’s people in all places and in every age.
Believers in the Old Testament looked to Christ in the shadows of the law,
through a Levitical priesthood and animal sacrifices. We see Christ in all the
fullness and sufficiency of his substitutionary death on the cross and
resurrection glory on the throne. They lived under the old covenant, while
looking for the fulfillment of the new covenant in Christ. Their faith looked
forward. Our faith looks back. Both those of old and believers today look in
faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting him alone as Savior and Lord.
Trusting him, faith obtains a good
report, a good report before God and a good report from God. Faith waits for
the promise (1 John 3:1-2; Tit. 2:11-14). Faith brings all God’s elect into one
inheritance of perfection, called “the glorious liberty of the children of
God.” All God’s elect are one in Christ now. Soon, we shall be made perfect
in one.