The Bible teaches that faith provides believers with confidence and assurance. Faith serves as the “substance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1) and motivates Christians to preach boldly, pray regularly, and serve unceasingly.
Hebrews 11 offers an inspiring portrait of religious faith that remains firm and unwavering, even against all obstacles. It has become one of the most famous faith chapters in Scripture.
Assurance
Faith can sometimes be perceived as believing something that cannot be proved, which can be problematic. Imagine someone building a submarine and inviting you to view it – yet never actually dropping it into any body of water for testing purposes! This approach to faith is similar to asking someone to build you an aquarium without ever setting one off!
The author of Hebrews does not provide us with a technical definition of faith, but does explain its benefits: faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, conviction of things not seen.”
At first glance, God seems to demand unreasonable beliefs from us; but upon closer examination it becomes evident that His expectations of faith are in fact quite reasonable – quite the contrary! Hebrews 11 praises those whose trust was placed in God to act according to His promises – not because of gullibility or blindness but due to personal experiences they shared with Him.
Conviction
This verse from Hebrews often serves as an in-depth definition of faith. The author wanted his readers to fully grasp its nature as an essential Christian virtue.
But this interpretation is incorrect; faith does not mean an assurance of things hoped for; rather it refers to believing things not seen with one’s physical eyes.
Faith is an unseen but substantial thing; like the foundation that supports buildings aboveground.
An important characteristic of Christian faith is seeing all experience through the prism of eternal promises made to us by our High Priest, Jesus. Faith means trusting that He has good intentions when orchestrating life’s events, even when we do not fully comprehend all aspects. That was exactly the faith displayed by Old Testament heroes who were recognized for it.
Encouragement
Hebrews gives numerous examples of people who exhibited faith, and defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for,” meaning confidence or conviction in God and trusting him to fulfill his promises – exactly what Jesus has done for us! We should have faith like this too in light of all that Jesus has done.
Faith is also a way of understanding our relationship with God. Being transcendent, He cannot be directly observed or comprehended – yet He created all things and made numerous promises which we cannot see fulfilled here on Earth. Faith connects us to Him so we may tap into his strength and live flourishing lives here on Earth.
Some models of faith see faith only in terms of its cognitive content, while the author of Hebrews appears to present a more holistic picture that includes active and practical components of faith as well.
Motivation
Hebrews presents numerous examples of faith being put through its paces, encouraging his readers to trust that God knows all and does everything. He emphasizes the fact that faith should not be seen as blind optimism or manufactured hope but as an unshakable conviction that what remains unseen will most definitely come into fruition.
Faith can be seen in the lives of Old Testament saints such as Abraham, Sarah, Rahab and others (Daniel 3), including those willing to risk death for their beliefs (Daniel 3) by believing in an unseen power to put out any burning flames they encountered.
Faith is defined in Scripture as the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Faith serves as a link between train cars and locomotives; without it they cannot move an inch. Without faith we could never live the Christian life; with it however we can weather any storm and experience God’s sustaining power through all trials.
