Hebrews 11:29-12:2 Commentary

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson continues Hebrews 11’s exploration of faith. It offers more examples of God’s people who were so sure of what they hoped for and certain of what they could not yet see that they lived lives of faithful obedience. However, Hebrews 11:29ff. offers examples not just of the blessings God extends to those who live by such faith, but also the what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “the cost of discipleship.”

Faith is not just able to see beyond what the naked eye can see and hope for beyond what seems possible. It also sees both tangible blessings from God and profound suffering inflicted on God’s people by other people. So even as faith sees that better place toward which God is graciously moving us, it also sees the sometimes fierce opposition that faith engenders along our way.

That helps make this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson as contemporary as today’s headlines in The Christian Century and Christianity Today. It, after all, implicitly argues against two trends within Jesus Christ’s 21^st century Church. Some Christians advance what we sometimes call “the Prosperity Gospel” that, at its worst, suggests that those who receive God’s grace with our faith receive with it only material and spiritual blessings. A few other friends of Jesus, however, see suffering as a mark of discipleship that true Christians ought to almost deliberately seek out.

Preachers might follow the Spirit’s leading to prayerfully explore some of the commonalities among Hebrews 11’s lengthy lists. We may choose to note how the faithful whom Hebrews describes are startlingly diverse. They include both groups of people and individuals. Those whose faith this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson cites include both gentiles and Jews. They at least seem to fall on both sides of what we sometimes refer to as the dividing line between the Old and New Testaments. In fact, two of the only things that seem to link people of faith together are their faith and the God in whom they trust.

However preachers might add that those who live by faith also shared a periodic but sometimes serial unfaithfulness. So, for example, by faith the Israelites marched through the Red Sea and around Jericho’s walls. But God eventually let them die in the wilderness because of their persistent unfaithfulness. Rahab’s faithfulness was preceded by what was likely her persistent unfaithfulness. The people whose names this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson cites were capable of both great faith and shocking disobedience.

This serves to remind God’s dearly beloved people to be vigilant in our faithful obedience. Acts of faithfulness do not guarantee ongoing faithfulness. So those who live by faith let the Spirit keep our eyes fixed on God and God’s promises that we hope for but cannot yet see. What’s more, Jesus’ friends don’t let our unfaithfulness discourage us from continuing to rely on the Spirit to both restore us to faithfulness and keep us faithful.

Verses 33ff. describes how God’s people’s confidence in what they hoped for and assurance of what they could not see paved the way for God to graciously use them to do mighty things. “Through faith [dia pisteos],” Hebrews’ author writes, they “conquered [kategonisanto] kingdoms [basileias], administered [eirgasanto] justice [dikaiosynen], and gained [epetychon] what was promised [epangelion].”

By faith, these people saw what we imagine few others could envision. That vision, in turn, shaped their faithful response to adversity. After all, sometimes against almost overwhelming odds, the faithful received victory over their enemies, justice for the oppressed and what God promised them.

While Hebrews doesn’t explicitly identify the source of those successes, there’s no doubt it’s alluding to God’s empowering work behind the scenes. Preachers might note how the extensive use of the passive tense of the Greek verbs throughout this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson underlines that work.

However, it’s almost as if Hebrews hurries to add that while faith equips God’s adopted children to do mighty things, it offers no insurance against sometimes mortal danger. The Israelites faced at least a return to slavery if not death on the banks of the Red Sea (11:29). Rahab narrowly escaped the death that befell her neighbors (11:31). Saul relentlessly tried to kill David. Gideon was one of God’s Israelites warriors who endangered themselves in combat.

In verse 33bff. Hebrews reports how some of God’s unidentified faithful children also faced threats to their wellbeing, if not lives. They “shut [ephraxan] the mouths [stomata] of lions [leonton], quenched [esbesan] the power [dynamin] of the flames [pyros], and escaped [ephygon] the edge [stomata] of the sword [machaires].”

What’s more, the faithful’s “weakness [astheneias] was turned to strength [edynamothesan] and … became [egenethesan] powerful [ischyroi] in battle [polemo] and routed [eklinan] foreign [allotrion] armies [parembolas].” In verse 35 Hebrews goes on to add how after their loved ones died, “Women received back [elabon] from their dead [nekrous], raised to life [anastaseos] again.”

Two threads seem to run through that diverse list of the blessings the faithful receive from God: life in the face of death and strength in the face of weakness. In the face of death God sometimes graces us with physical life. And in the face of human weakness, God is more than able to equip God’s dearly beloved people to display startling feats of strength. It’s as if this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson seeks to remind its readers that some of Jesus’ threatened friends experience happy – if temporary – endings. No danger is, after all, greater than the God whom we believe keeps all of God’s promises.

But, of course, the life of faith is not yet the life of unending blessing. We have not yet reached that “city” and “country” that God has lovingly prepared for us. In fact, the way “home” is often shadowed by great danger. Being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see gains Jesus’ followers an enormous family of brothers and sisters in Christ. It may even gain us some admirers (39). But it won’t gain God’s adopted children many friends, especially among powerful people. Hebrews reminds us that faith may earn us exclusion if not punishment.

Hebrews 11’s roster of sufferers is not for the faint of heart. So its proclaimers want to be sensitive to the maturity level of our hearers. Verse 35bff. recounts how some faithful people “were tortured [entympanisthesan], refusing [ou prosdexamenoi] to be released [apolytrosin] so they might gain [tychosin] an even better [kreittonos] resurrection [anasteos]. Some faced jeers [empaigmon] and flogging [mastigon], and even chains [desmon] and imprisonment [phylakes].” That at least suggests that faith ought to come with some sort of warning label: “Faith may be hazardous to your health.”

In fact, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson also reminds God’s adopted children some of the faithful’s faithfulness proved to be deadly. Samson’s faithfulness resulted in his pulling Dagon’s temple down on himself and other idolators. Jephthah’s faithfulness to his vow cost the life of his daughter.

Verse 37 is more explicit about the cost of faithfulness. It reports how God’s people who were sure of what they hoped for and certain of what they did not see “were put to death [epeirasthesan] by stoning [elithasthesan]; they were sawed in two [epristhesan], they were killed [phono] by the sword [machaires].”

This too could be clipped from today’s headlines. Preachers should consider consulting websites such as International Christian Concern for the latest examples of the potentially unspeakable cost of being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. God’s African faithful seem to be suffering particularly acutely for their faith right now.

Yet our admiration of such faithfulness might prompt preachers, toward their message’s close, to note the temptation to call these faithful people “heroes of the faith.” Some preaching and teaching has even fostered a kind of “be more like Abraham, Sarah, David and the women who received their children back from the dead” lesson from Hebrews 11. And, while you’re at it, be like people in parts of Africa, the Middle East, as well as South and East Asia who are staying faithful in the face of terrible persecution.”

God’s adopted children constantly remind ourselves that this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson doesn’t summon us to be more like Noah, Jacob, Moses or Samuel. Instead it invites us, in Hebrews 12:2 to keep “fixing our eyes on [aphorontes] Jesus, the pioneer [archegon] and perfecter [teleioten] of faith. For the joy [charas] set before him he endured [hypemeinen] the cross, scorning [kataphronesas] its shame [aischynes], and sat down [kekathiken] at the right hand [dexia] of the throne of God.” While a great cloud of witnesses has faithfully gone before us and now, in one sense, surrounds us (12:1), we don’t focus on them. Jesus’ faith-filled followers instead, relentlessly focus on Jesus.

After all, he, according to The Message’s paraphrase of 12:2, “both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed – the exhilarating finish in and with God – he could put up with anything alone the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God.”

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

It’s not just that faith offers no insurance policy against suffering. It’s also that suffering offers no ironclad guarantee that people won’t experience further suffering. Potanin Vlaimirovich narrowly escaped the mass murder of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. But after escaping a death pit where he’d been forced to cremate Holocaust victims, his freedom was short-lived. After all, only three months after describing to a Lithuanian newspaper how much the prisoners, seeing all those dead bodies around them wanted to live, Potanin was struck and killed by a car.

In his sobering book No Roads Leading Back, Chris Heath observes, Potanin “had endured so much — as a Soviet soldier, as a prisoner in multiple camps, and at Ponar — but these were dangerous and unstable times, and Konstantin Potanin was to discover that no matter how extreme the hardships and perils one had already faced, past suffering offered no inoculation against even the most mundane of deaths” (italics added).