Faith – in Other Words - Part 6

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar.  Their faith was real, what they saw was real, but they died before it was realised. “They,” Abraham and Sarah, saw the innumerable stars of heaven and grains of sand as pictures of their offspring and all the promises that this would entail.  They saw the beginning, not the fulfilment. 

The beginning they saw was a foretaste and seed of the prophetic future in Isaac and Jacob that would be fulfilled far beyond the few years they lived.  Their faith saw beyond this life, this world – in other words.  That is what faith does. 

The writer of Hebrews acknowledges this made them “strangers and exiles on the earth.” In other words, seeing promises that only the future would see, made them pilgrims on this earth, citizens of another world, “a better country.”

We are the heirs of their faith, and like them, our faith takes us beyond the years we live into the realm of the resurrection and the new heavens and earth – the city of God. 

Faith may be in something that is tangible/visceral in fulfilment but the nature of faith is that it also transports us.  We, like them, won’t see all God has promised and that we believe for, in our lifetime.  But we will see it.  This is faith – in other words.