Old/New Testament

What faith really means

11 What then is faith? It is what gives assurance to our hopes; it is what gives us conviction about things we can’t see. ² It is what the men and women of old were famous for. ³ It is by faith that we understand that the worlds were formed by God’s word; in other words, that the visible world was made from the invisible.

⁴ It was by faith that Abel offered a better sacrifice to God than Cain. That earned him the testimony that he was in the right, since God himself bore witness in relation to his gifts. Through faith, he still speaks, even though he’s dead. ⁵ It was by faith that Enoch was taken up so that he wouldn’t see death; nobody could find him, because God took him up. Before he was taken up, you see, it had been said of him that “he had pleased God.” ⁶ And without faith it’s impossible to please God; for those who come to worship God must believe that he really does exist, and that he rewards those who seek him.

Faith and the future: Noah, Abraham, Sarah

⁷ It was by faith that Noah, who had been warned by God about things that were not yet seen, took the warning seriously and built an ark to save his household. He thus put the rest of the world in the wrong, and became heir to the righteous standing which accords with faith.

⁸ It was by faith that Abraham, when God called him, obeyed and went out to a place where he was to receive an inheritance. Off he went, not knowing where he was going. ⁹ It was by faith that he stayed in the promised land as a stranger, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, who were joint heirs of the same promise. ¹⁰ He was looking ahead, you see, to the city which has foundations, the city of which God is the designer and builder.

¹¹ It was by faith that Sarah herself, who was barren, received the ability to conceive a child even when long past the right age, since she considered that God, who had promised, was trustworthy. ¹² Thus it came about that from one man, and him more or less dead, there was born a family as many as the stars of heaven in number, as uncountable as the sand on the seashore.

Faith that looks beyond death

¹³ All these people died in faith. They hadn’t received the promise, but they had seen it from far off, and had greeted it, and had recognized that they were strangers and wanderers in the land. ¹⁴ People who say that sort of thing, you see, make it clear that they are looking for a homeland. ¹⁵ Had they been thinking of the place from which they had set out, they would have had plenty of opportunity to go back to it. ¹⁶ But as it was they were longing for a better place, a heavenly one. That’s why God is not ashamed to be called “their God,” since he has prepared a city for them.

¹⁷ It was by faith that Abraham, when he was put to the test, offered up Isaac; yes, Abraham, who had received the promise, was in the very act of offering up his only son, ¹⁸ the one about whom it had been said that “In Isaac shall your family be named.” ¹⁹ He reckoned that God was capable of raising him even from the dead; and, in one sense, he did indeed receive him back from there.