Hebrews 11: 1

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.”

Hebrews 11: 1

There is so much much in this very short verse to ponder and to apply. Faith and hope pulled so close together. To really understand what the writer is teaching us about faith we must understand what is meant by hope. At a basic level we probably all understand hope. We hope for something to happen, we have a desire for something good to come. But we may not understand what hope meant to the Jewish people in the Ancient World.

As an example of hope today we may say something like “I hope you have a safe journey”, we are fairly confident that this will happen, and we are expressing an expectation that it will. I know planes and trains are safe and that your journey is very likely to complete on time without fuss. This kind of hope is more akin to optimism. For the people of Israel they lived with the hope that God would rescue them from exile once and for all. This kind of hope is one that believes in the good plans and purposes of God, and chooses to trust Him even when all the world around them seems dark and without God.

“Hope could be, and often was, a dogged and deliberate choice when the world seemed dark. It depended not on a feeling about the way things were or the way they were moving, but on faith, faith in the One God”

(Wright T Paul a Biography, 2020, p45)

As Tom Wright goes on to say, hope is virtue that is practised every day. This is what it means to hope - it is to long for God to act when all the evidence around you points to the contrary, we hope because we know God, we hope because we believe God is good.

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“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.”

Hebrews 11: 1

Having considered hope we can look at what faith is with a little more context. There’s a lot said here in a very short sentence, and I think the heart of it is that faith is not hampered by the situation we are in or the restrictions and limitations of the world around us.

It does not take faith to believe in something we can see, or something that we know is going to happen because we have arranged it that way. For example I do not need faith to be sure that parcels I order will arrive; I know they will because that is how the process works. However, I do need faith in order to be certain of the eternal life that Jesus promises and won with His death and resurrection.

When we consider the rest of Hebrews 11 we see this played out. Each person mentioned lived a life of faith as they pursued a calling God gave them, the results of which they could not see, and did not see in their lifetime.

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“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.”

Hebrews 11: 1

I wonder, am I sure of what I hope for? I think there is a sense in which this is the bigger picture, general Christian hope. That is we hope for the coming of Christ, we hope for the new creation. Then there are the more personal, more immediate hopes. For example, we may hope for friends or family to get to know Jesus, we may hope for Jesus to be with us in our work, we may hope for healing, we may hope for provision.

In all of these things our faith is being sure of these hopes. This surety is, in some ways, being able to articulate these hopes, being able to pray into them. In other ways this surety is being confident in the one we hope in - that is being confident in Jesus and His ability to meet these needs, and fulfil these hopes even when, as we said before, the situation looks impossible. This is being certain of what we do not see - we do not see Jesus, yet we can be certain, like the heroes listed in the rest of this chapter, that He is alive, He is at work, and He is for us.

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“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.”

Hebrews 11: 1

This one verse uses the words sure and certain in quick succession. That seems like a strong emphasis on these states of thought and being. When we look up the Greek words used here it becomes a little more puzzling.

“Sure”, sometimes translated as “assurance” is clear enough; the Greek word being “hupostasis” means confidence and trust. Faith leads us to having confidence in what we hope for, trusting that it will come to pass. What we hope for, and what all the heroes of the faith hope for, is God, specifically the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (verse 10).

“Certain”, sometimes translated as “conviction” can be a little more puzzling. The Greek word here is “elenchos elegmos” which literally means “rebuke” or “reproof”. Exploring the definition more we can see that this carries with it a sense of a belief that can stand up to rebuke and can withstand cross-examination and great testing. Again, the belief here is primarily about the future that God is working out, and that one day we will see it fulfilled.

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“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.”

Hebrews 11: 1

One question this prompts is where does faith come from? Is it something I simply work up? I don’t think so, given what we have said about hope I don’t think that we can simply produce faith.

In Galatians 5 we read that faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit. So there is a sense in which faith comes from the Spirit. But the fruit of faithfulness is also about loyalty and steadfastness, whereas here we are considering more a sense of what we believe in and where we place our hope. This faith is slightly different, perhaps a precursor to the fruit of faithfulness. We read in 1 Corinthians 12: 9 that faith is a spiritual gift, we read that the apostles in Luke 17: 5 ask Jesus to increase their faith. Faith is a gift.

Alongside this, faith is a challenge. Being certain and sure of things we cannot see is a challenge. When we see no way out, like the disciples in the storm (Mark 4: 35-49), trusting that Jesus can and will rescue us is a challenge. Faith is both a gift and a challenge. The good news is we do not have to work up more faith, we do not need to produce it. Jesus says with faith as small as a mustard seed you can move mountains, Luke 17: 6.

It is important to consider what faith is not. Faith is not a magic power by which we can get what we want, if we only have enough of it. Think about Hebrews 11: 39 - all the heroes were commended because of their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. They lived in faith, they trusted and hoped in the face of great uncertainty or even overwhelming evidence running contrary to their hope; this is the challenge, but they lived with the gift of faith.