We are in that great faith chapter, Hebrews 11, where the author of Hebrews is encouraging his readers to endure in their faith, waiting in hope of gaining their ultimate reward. In this chapter he gives example after example of Old Testament saints who did just that, enduring in faith, waiting for a reward that this did not receive in their lifetime, but would ultimately receive. The author has already exhorted the church to be “imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (6:12), and now he provides multiple OT examples of such faith. Many of these OT figures also exhibited obvious failings, yet their more pious actions evidenced a strong belief in God’s ability to deliver on his promises.
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their commendation. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
Having given us faith’s character in verse 1, the writer now calls to mind faith’s activism in verse 2: “For by it the people of old received their commendation.” The “it” that caused them to receive commendation was their faith—because they trusted God’s promises, they receive commendation.
In OT times, he points out, there were many men and women who had nothing but the promises of God to rest upon, without any visible evidence that these promises would ever be fulfilled; yet so much did these promises mean to them that they regulated the whole course of their lives in their light. The promises related to a state of affairs belonging to the future; but these people acted as if that state of affairs were already present, so convinced were they that God could and would fulfill what he had promised. In other words, they were men and women of faith. Their faith consisted simply in taking God at his word and directing their lives accordingly; things yet future as far as their experience went were thus present to faith, and things outwardly unseen were visible to the inward eye. It is in these terms that our author now describes the faith of which he has been speaking. (F. F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the NT: Hebrews, 276)
Our author, however, does not only accumulate a series of examples; he sets them in historical sequence so as to provide an outline of the redemptive purpose of God, advancing through the age of promise until at last in Jesus, faith’s “pioneer and perfecter,” the age of fulfillment is inaugurated. (F. F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the NT: Hebrews, 278)
All the ancients in Israel who received divine commendation received it because of the character of their faith—their faith’s future certitude as they were sure of what they hoped for—and their faith’s visual certitude as they were certain of the invisible. Read down through these verses and you will see that God was pleased with their faith. God was pleased with Noah and saved him and his family. God was pleased with Abram’s faith and credited righteousness to his account. Our faith pleases God (Heb. 11:6).
Why? Because faith looks away from self and to the Savior. Faith is an act of self-renunciation and a declaration that our hope and confidence are in God. Faith puts no trust in man but in God only. It declares that he is enough; he is sufficient; he is able.
The reason it’s important to take note of this statement that “without faith it is impossible to please God” is because in none of the three stories noted here is faith ever mentioned. All that is said in the stories of Abel, Enoch, and Noah is that they “pleased” God. But that is how we know they had great faith, because “without faith it is impossible to please God.”
We need to recognize that faith is not a meritorious work that we do to gain rewards from God. That would conflict with the entire teaching of the New Testament, that faith is simply the channel through which God’s blessings flow. Two seemingly paradoxical things are true of faith: On the one hand, it is our responsibility to believe the gospel, because God commands us to believe (Mark 1:15). On the other hand, sinners are unable to believe because of spiritual blindness (2 Cor. 4:4), deafness (Luke 8:10), being bound by Satan (2 Tim. 2:26) and even spiritual death (Eph. 2:1).
Saving faith comes as God’s gift, not as a human effort (Eph. 2:8-9). Jesus is both the author and perfecter of faith (Heb. 12:2).
The people of old (Gk. presbyteroi, “elders”), especially those listed as examples of faith throughout the chapter, received commendation in the form of a good testimony from God. It refers here to the believers of the Old Testament and more specifically to the forefathers, both physically as well as spiritually, of those to whom this is addressed.
The author does not focus on their failings (e.g., Gen. 9:20–27; 12:10–20; 17:17–21; 18:11–15), since his goal is to positively illustrate what faith looks like and to connect the current people of God with this “cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1). You would think that their sinful failings would disqualify them, but instead their faith secures God’s approval. Faith reaches out to the promise.
The list includes a man who was a murderer, a woman who was a prostitute, people who were afraid, rebellious, and even those who committed adultery. Yet they gained approval with God – not because of their actions, but because of their faith.
Faith is the instrumental cause of God’s approval. Grace is the ultimate cause. Grace is what causes God to offer us good gifts—like forgiveness, adoption and eternal life—freely and without cause (in us).
The verb “received commendation” is actually ἐμαρτυρήθησαν. The idea here is that the actions of the Old Testament saints bore witness of their faith in God. It was an active, productive faith. Real faith is always active and productive. Good works are a (super)natural by-product of faith. They will occur because true faith is present.
Some attribute the statement “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone” to Martin Luther. Actually John Calvin said in his Antidote to the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic denial of the tenets of the Reformation:
I wish the reader to understand that as often as we mention Faith alone in this question, we are not thinking of a dead faith, which worketh not by love, but holding faith to be the only cause of justification. (Galatians 5:6; Romans 3:22.) It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light.
According to Roland Bainton’s biography of Luther, Here I Stand, Luther wrote at one time:
Faith is a living, restless thing. It cannot be inoperative. We are not saved by works; but if there be no works, there must be something amiss with faith.
And thus we see that all of the examples mentioned in Hebrews 11 had a faith that acted.
R. Kent Hughes reminds us…
Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (alluded to in 11:34). They had nothing but God’s word to rest on. They had no visible evidence that they would be delivered in this life. But they knew they would ultimately be delivered—they knew it so well that it was a present reality.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16–18)
There is no evidence that any of them had ever seen the invisible world at work around them, but they did see it by faith and were certain of it. Graciously, God did let them see it with their physical eyes when he delivered them. Remember Nebuchadnezzar’s astonished words as he watched the trio in the flaming furnace:
Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” He answered and said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” (Daniel 3:24, 25)
The faith of the trio consisted simply in taking God at his word and living their lives accordingly. Things yet future, as far as their experience went, were present to their faith. Things unseen were visible to their individual eyes of faith.
And so it goes for every example in the great Hall of Faith of Hebrews 11—from Abel to Samuel to the unnamed heroes of the faith. (R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews, Volume 2, pp. 63-64).
A couple of questions before we get into verse 3.
First, have you gained God’s approval by putting your trust in Christ alone as your only hope of heaven? As we saw in chapter 10, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is the only basis for forgiveness of sins. Don’t put your trust in your own good works. They avail nothing. You get no credit at all. In fact, you are deeply in the hole because of your own misbehaviors. They are counted against you. Only the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ has pleased the Father and only by trusting in Christ can that righteousness be credited to your account.
Second, are you still pleasing God by living by faith today? Some people believe that they are saved by faith and sanctified by their own efforts. That is not so. That is another lie from Satan. We are to continue to live by faith, trusting that the righteousness of Christ credited to my account and my union with Christ will mean that He will live His righteous life through me. Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Now, in verse 3 our author says: “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
This is the first occurrence in a series of twenty-one uses of the phrase by faith. (William Hendriksen & Simon J. Kistemaker, NT Commentary: Hebrews, 312)
So verse 3 is a specific illustration of the definition of faith in verse 1b.
Here’s the question: How do we know that God made the world out of nothing that is seen? Not only were we not there when it happened, but, even if we had been there, we would not have been able to see the act of creation, because you can’t see the word of God. So how can we know or “understand” that the worlds were made by the word of God? How can we know that “what is seen was made out of things invisible” – namely the word of God?
Verse 3 answers, “by faith.” “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God.” This may seem like a circular argument.
John Piper resolves this by saying:
So the crucial question is: How is faith “evidence” of things unseen, namely, that God created the world by his word? I take my clue from the one other place in the New Testament where God’s invisible attributes are said to be “clearly seen” by man, namely, Romans 1:20. “Since the creation of the world [God’s] invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made.” The word “understood” here in Romans 1:20 is the same word as in Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God.”
So there in Romans 1:20 it says, “we understand the invisible attributes of God by what has been made.” And here in Hebrews 11:3 it says, we understand the invisible word of God behind creation by faith. Romans 1:20 seems to say that the evidence that God made the world is the things made – they clearly point to a Maker. Hebrews 11:3 seems to say that the evidence that God made the world is faith.
Now think about this for a moment. What shall we make of it? Here’s what I make of it. Faith – at least in part – is the spiritual seeing or perceiving of the fingerprints of God on the things he has made. Now the fingerprints of God on the things he has made – the order, the beauty, the greatness, the “irreducible complexity” (as Michael Behe says, in Darwin’s Black Box) – are the evidence that God made the world. But so is the seeing of these fingerprints a kind of evidence. It’s just the other side of the coin.
If you ask me, “How do you know Focus on the Family has a headquarters in Colorado Springs,” I will say, “I saw it on Tuesday.” My seeing is evidence that it is there.
I think that is the way faith is the evidence of things unseen. We all look at the same fingerprints, but some see and some don’t. Those who see have the evidence – the testimony – in themselves. (https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/what-faith-knows-and-hopes-for)
Philosophically we are left in the air by creation. Infinite categories await us on either side of the argument. Either matter existed from all time (and that is an infinite idea) or it was made out of nothing (another infinite category). Logically and philosophically we are stymied. Only by faith can we hope to understand. We of faith are not embarrassed to say, “God created the heavens and the earth.” Not to say that is to cast ourselves on some unknown, impersonal force that cares little if at all for what happens to creatures of this world. Our faith tells us that there is a father and Creator Who cares after He has thrown the magnificence of the universe into its balanced structure. (Louis H. Evans, Jr., The Communicator’s Commentary: Hebrews, 198)
God’s creation of the universe was accomplished by his word (Gk. rhēma). So that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible is consistent with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo (Latin, “from nothing”), but is not itself a full statement about this reality. It does, however, seem to correct Greco-Roman notions about eternally existing matter. The idea that God created the visible universe out of some other kind of invisible (“not … visible”) matter is not in the author’s mind; rather, he is saying that God did not make the universe out of any preexisting matter as humans know it, which is close to saying that he made it “out of nothing.” Further support for this idea is found in Gen. 1:1; Ps. 33:6, 9; 90:2; John 1:3; Acts 14:15; Rom. 4:17.
When we read Genesis, we see that it is the word out of the mouth of God that caused this creation to come into existence and then be formed and filled.
Genesis 1:1-3 says…
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Genesis 1 establishes a pattern that everything is created by what God said (vv. 1, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26) so that whatever God says establishes reality, something the Tempter denied to Eve.
Psalm 33:6, 9 emphasize the same.
6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.
9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
If God can therefore bring something out of nothing as He did at creation, can we not trust Him now to reverse any negative circumstance? He certainly is able!
Faith is what looks at that created order and has a firm and resolute confidence in the God to whom it bears witness, who, though unseen, has provided a foundation for such a confidence through his mighty acts. (George H. Guthrie, The NIV Application Commentary: Hebrews, 375)
“Looking at the earth from this vantage point, looking at this kind of creation, and to not believe in God, to me, is impossible… to see [the earth] laid out like that only strengthens my beliefs.” (Astronaut John Glenn after viewing the world from outer space for a second time.) (Quoted in Internet for Christians Newsletter, Nov. 9, 1998; Leadership, Spring 1999, 75)
Grace Still Amazes 