Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen

Hebrews 11:1

For my last blog in this series on Hebrews 11, I am going back to the first verse. What is faith? It is assurance and conviction. Assurance is the Greek word hypostasis. It literally means to stand on and has the idea of a foundation, that which is firm and can be built upon. It has the quality of being substantial. In other Bible versions, it is translated as confidence, substance, or certainty. The Christian Standard Bible stands out to me with “faith is the reality of what is hoped for.”

This is the opposite of how I looked at faith before I became a believer, and how I think most of our world looks at faith. In that perspective, religious faith is about things hoped for, but those things are not real or substantial. They are in the realm of wishful thinking and not something that is sound enough to be foundational for your life. That is why people compartmentalize and live out their faith in their world of church and religious gatherings, but not in the real world of work. That is an understandable and acceptable form of religion. And people who do not compartmentalize, who make their religious faith foundational, are involved in something more like a cult, an unhealthy religious expression that is disturbingly out of touch with reality. Religious faith is not sound or substantial enough to build you life upon.

Yet to live by faith is to live every part of your life as if the gospel is the ultimate reality. This is the opposite of compartmentalizing.

Conviction is the Greek word elegchos, which means “that by which a thing is proved or tested”. In other versions it is translated as evidence, proof, or assurance. The Amplified Bible has “the evidence of things not seen (the conviction of their reality).” Here again is the idea of reality. We generally associate conviction with sin. The other place we see elegchos is 1 Tim 3:16 about the role of Scripture in reproof, which is viewed as talking about sin. But it might be translated that Scripture convicts or convinces us of the reality of Biblical truth. In any case, being convicted of sin is being made aware of a reality that has been there but we have not been aware of or acknowledged.

In faith, we view Biblical, revealed truth as the reality we operate from. The essential mark of a Christian is someone who believes, or puts their faith in, the truth of Heb 1:3, He [Jesus Christ] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. This is the truth that the first readers of Hebrews were in danger of abandoning in the face of persecution and hardship they were experiencing precisely due to their faith in this reality (see previous blog Hebrews 11 “By Faith”).

In our work world, to live by faith is to live as if God is with us in our work, sees us in our work and cares about our work. Are we in danger of abandoning our faith in that reality or have we already abandoned it? To the extent that we have compartmentalized our work world from our life of faith, (which most people have done) we have already abandoned this faith. So it is not so much a matter of holding onto our confidence (Heb 3:14 confidence is hypostasis), but recovering the confidence that we have thrown away. This is a more difficult task.

Why did we abandon it? There can be a lot of answers to this question. Some are general and some may be very personal. If you see yourself as someone who has compartmentalized your work, what would be your answers?

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.