The Book of Hebrews

Greek Study

Explanation

The famous opening is really a definition in two halves: faith gives "substance" to "things hoped for" (it makes the future certain) and "evidence" of "things not seen" (it makes the invisible sure). It is the faculty by which what God has promised becomes as solid to the soul as what the eye can see. Then the writer previews his argument: "by it the elders obtained a good report" — the great gallery about to file past — and "through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." Faith's very first act is at creation's edge: no human watched God speak the universe from nothing, so we grasp it only by trusting His word. Faith is thus the way we know the beginning of all things, and the way we hold the end.

Gospel Focus

Faith is not wishful thinking; it is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It gives solid reality to God's promises and firm conviction about what our eyes cannot yet behold, because it rests on the word of the God who cannot lie. And its very first exercise is at the doorway of all reality: "through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." No one witnessed creation; we know it by faith, taking God at His word. And note how it happened, "the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." God spoke the universe into being out of nothing. The same Word by whom God made the worlds (1:2; John 1:3) is the Christ in whom we believe; the God who created by His word is the God who has spoken finally in His Son. Faith takes God at His word, whether about creation past or salvation to come.

Greek Study

Explanation

Three men before Abraham show what faith does. Abel offered "a more excellent sacrifice" and was declared righteous; though long dead, "he being dead yet speaketh," his faith still testifies. Enoch "pleased God" and "was translated," taken up without dying. And between them the writer states the great principle: "without faith it is impossible to please him," for whoever comes to God "must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Faith holds two things: that God exists, and that He responds to those who seek Him. Then Noah, "warned of God of things not seen as yet," built an ark for a flood no one had ever witnessed, and by his obedient faith "became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." Faith takes God's word about the unseen future and acts on it now.

Gospel Focus

Planted in the middle of these three is the great principle: "without faith it is impossible to please him." Not difficult — impossible. The only approach that pleases God is trust, "for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." That is faith's minimal creed: God exists, and He responds to seekers. And Abel's "more excellent sacrifice" hints how a sinner draws near — not with the bloodless fruit of his own effort, but with blood, pointing to the Lamb whose sacrifice truly pleases God. Even now, "he being dead yet speaketh": Abel's faith still preaches that God is found by those who come His way.

Greek Study

Explanation

Abraham is the great example of faith. Called to leave home, "he went out, not knowing whither he went," trusting God for a destination he could not see. He lived in the promised land "as in a strange country," dwelling in tents, because "he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." His eye was on a heavenly, eternal city, not merely an earthly plot. And Sarah, past childbearing age, "received strength to conceive... because she judged him faithful who had promised." Faith rests on God's faithfulness, not on natural possibility. So from Abraham, "as good as dead," came descendants "as the stars of the sky." When we trust the God who keeps His word, He brings life out of impossibility.

Gospel Focus

Abraham's true inheritance was never the strip of Canaan under his feet but "a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." That is the secret of pilgrim faith: it holds the visible loosely because it has seen the eternal. Sarah's part teaches the same trust from another angle — she "judged him faithful who had promised," resting not on her own worn-out body but on God's character. And so from one man "as good as dead" came a multitude like the stars. Faith's God is the God who brings life out of deadness — the very power that would one day raise His Son, and will raise us.

Greek Study

Explanation

The writer pauses the parade to read its meaning. "These all died in faith, not having received the promises" — they died without seeing the fulfillment, and still they trusted, "having seen them afar off." Their very language gave them away: to call oneself a stranger and pilgrim is to "declare plainly that they seek a country." And here is the proof their hearts were fixed on heaven and not on the home they had left — they never went back, though they "might have had opportunity to have returned." A faith that could have retreated and did not shows where its treasure truly lay: not in the country behind them, but in the "better country, that is, an heavenly," ahead.

Gospel Focus

Here the writer pauses to draw out the heart of faith. "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off." They did not get everything in this life; they died still trusting, having glimpsed the promise from a distance and "embraced" it. And so they lived as "strangers and pilgrims on the earth," people passing through, whose true home lay elsewhere. They "desire a better country, that is, an heavenly." This is the mark of real faith: it holds this world loosely because it seeks the world to come. And notice the tender reward: "God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city." The eternal God gladly binds His name to those who trust Him and long for His city. The believer is a pilgrim here, not because he despises this life, but because he has seen, by faith, a better and enduring home that God Himself has prepared.

Greek Study

Explanation

The thread binding these four scenes is faith that looks straight through death. Abraham lifted the knife "accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead" — the first clear resurrection-faith in Scripture, trusting God to keep a promise the grave seemed about to cancel. Then Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph each, "by faith," spent their dying breath investing in a future they would never see: Isaac blessing sons "concerning things to come," Jacob blessing Joseph's boys, Joseph giving "commandment concerning his bones" so certain was he that God would bring Israel home. Real faith keeps sowing at the very edge of the grave, because it trusts a God whose promises outlast death.

Gospel Focus

Abraham's supreme test was to offer "his only begotten son," through whom all the promises were to come. His faith reasoned that "God was able to raise him up, even from the dead," and so "he received him in a figure", a picture of resurrection. This scene foreshadows the gospel itself: a father giving his only son, and receiving him back as from death. It points to another Father and another Son, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and raised Him in truth. The dying patriarchs, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, all "by faith" blessed the future and looked beyond their graves; Joseph even gave orders about his bones, so sure was he that God would bring Israel to the promised land. Faith looks past death to God's certain promises.

Greek Study

Explanation

Moses' faith unfolds as a chain of deliberate choices — and it begins before he can choose anything, in his parents, who "were not afraid of the king's commandment" and hid him. Then Moses himself, "come to years," makes decision after decision against the grain of the world: he "refused" to be called Pharaoh's daughter's son, laying down a throne; he chose "rather to suffer affliction" than to enjoy "the pleasures of sin for a season"; he "forsook Egypt," turning his back on its treasures and its wrath; and he "kept the passover." Faith here is not a feeling but a series of costly renunciations — repeatedly preferring God's despised people and unseen reward over the surest wealth and safety on earth.

Gospel Focus

Moses' faith made him choose the harder, better path: "choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." Faith weighs eternity against the moment and chooses eternity. And remarkably, the writer says Moses valued "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." Long before Bethlehem, Moses was, in a sense, bearing reproach for Christ, for the promise and the people he suffered with were bound up with the coming Messiah; the eternal Christ was the hope of the Old Testament saints as truly as of us. Moses "endured, as seeing him who is invisible", faith sees the unseen God and holds on. And "through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood," trusting that the blood of the lamb would shield from the destroyer, the very picture of Christ our Passover, whose blood shelters us.

Greek Study

Explanation

Faith opened the sea and toppled walls. Israel "passed through the Red sea as by dry land," while the same waters drowned the pursuing Egyptians, faith and unbelief walking into the same sea to opposite ends. Jericho's walls fell not by siege engines but "after they were compassed about seven days," an act of pure, obedient trust in God's strange command. And "the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not," because she believed and received the spies. Rahab, a Gentile and a sinner, is placed among the heroes of faith, and later among the ancestors of Christ (Matthew 1:5), a shining proof that faith, not pedigree or past, is what saves. God honors faith wherever He finds it.

Gospel Focus

Notice that faith and presumption can look identical in the doing and end in opposite worlds. Israel and Egypt both stepped between the same walls of water; faith walked through to life, and unbelieving imitation sank. Jericho fell not to weapons but to six silent days of obedient marching when nothing seemed to happen — the faith that keeps stepping out before the wall ever cracks. And Rahab, a Gentile and a harlot, is plucked from a condemned city by faith alone and woven into the very line of the Messiah. Here is the gospel in miniature: grace saves the least likely, on no ground but faith in the God who keeps His word.

Greek Study

Explanation

The roll of faith closes with two very different columns. In one, faith triumphs: it "subdued kingdoms," "stopped the mouths of lions," "quenched the violence of fire," turned "weakness" into strength, routed armies. In the other, faith suffers: they "were tortured," "stoned," "sawn asunder," "slain with the sword," wandering "in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves." The world wrote them off as refuse — and heaven's verdict overturns the world's: "of whom the world was not worthy." Then the great not-yet: "these all... received not the promise," because the promise itself — Christ and His finished work — awaited a later day. So the whole family of faith, ancient and present, is "made perfect" together in the one Saviour to whom every one of them was looking.

Gospel Focus

The writer sweeps through the rest of Israel's history, and shows faith doing two very different things. In some, faith conquered: it "subdued kingdoms," "stopped the mouths of lions," "quenched the violence of fire," turned weakness into strength. In others, faith endured: they "were tortured," "stoned," "sawn asunder," "slain with the sword," wandering destitute, "of whom the world was not worthy." Faith is not only the power that delivers from the fire but the grace that holds fast in the fire. Both the delivered and the martyred "obtained a good report through faith." And then the moving conclusion: "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." The Old Testament saints looked forward to the promise, but the promise, the coming of Christ and His finished work, awaited our age. So they and we are made perfect together, in the one Saviour to whom their faith and ours both point. Their faith reached forward to Christ; ours looks back to Him; and together, the whole family of God across the ages is perfected in Him.