Scripture Daily

Context No. 1844 of 4322 · Hebrews

Context · Reflection

Hebrews 11:29-40: in context

29By faith they passed through the Red Sea as on dry land. When the Egyptians tried to do so, they were swallowed up. 30By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. 31By faith Rahab the prostitute didn’t perish with those who were disobedient, having received the spies in peace. 32What more shall I say? For the time would fail me if I told of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets— 33who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked out righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, grew mighty in war, and caused foreign armies to flee. 35Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. 36Others were tried by mocking and scourging, yes, moreover by bonds and imprisonment. 37They were stoned. They were sawn apart. They were tempted. They were slain with the sword. They went around in sheep skins and in goat skins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated— 38of whom the world was not worthy—wandering in deserts, mountains, caves, and the holes of the earth. 39These all, having been commended for their faith, didn’t receive the promise, 40God having provided some better thing concerning us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect.

The great roll call of faith gathers examples of what faith has done: passing through the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho falling, Rahab spared, and the many who through faith conquered kingdoms, shut the mouths of lions, escaped the sword, and were made strong. But then the passage turns: others, by the same faith, were tortured, refusing release; mocked, imprisoned, stoned, sawn in two, killed by the sword; destitute, afflicted, wandering in deserts and caves, of whom the world was not worthy. And all these, commended for their faith, did not receive the promise in their lifetime.

This passage does something important and honest: it holds together two very different outcomes of the same faith. On one side are those who by faith were delivered, who conquered, escaped, were rescued, saw the walls fall and the lions' mouths shut. On the other side, in the same list, by the same faith, are those who were tortured and killed, who suffered and died without deliverance, who did not escape the sword but fell by it. And crucially, the second group is not presented as having less faith than the first; they are named in the same roll of the faithful, commended equally, indeed described as those of whom the world was not worthy. Their faith did not deliver them from suffering and death; and it was faith all the same, honored all the same. This corrects a mistaken idea we are prone to: that faith, if it is real, will always bring rescue, victory, deliverance in this life, so that suffering without rescue must mean a failure of faith. Hebrews says otherwise. The same faith that parted seas for some sustained others through torture and death without deliverance. Faith is not a guarantee of rescue; sometimes it means being delivered, and sometimes it means enduring faithfully to the end without being delivered, trusting God through suffering that is not taken away. And the passage names what such faith rests on: a better resurrection, a promise not yet received, a better thing God has provided. Those who suffered without deliverance were not trusting for a rescue in this life that never came; they had set their hope beyond it, on the better thing to come, and endured in that hope. This is a needed word for those whose faith has not brought the deliverance they prayed for. The absence of rescue is not the absence of faith; the roll of the faithful includes both those who escaped and those who did not. Faith that endures without deliverance, trusting God through unrelieved suffering for the sake of the better thing to come, is faith of the highest kind, commended by God, of a people the world was not worthy of.

Do I assume that real faith must always bring rescue and victory in this life, so that suffering without deliverance means my faith has failed, or can I take hold of what Hebrews shows, that the same faith delivered some and sustained others through suffering unto death without rescue, and that faith which endures without deliverance, hoping in the better thing to come, is commended by God?

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