In chapter 3 believers are addressed as partakers of the heavenly calling: we are called from earth to heaven. In chapter 9 we learn that heaven has been secured to the believer: Christ has entered into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us. In chapter 10 we learn that believers have been fitted by the work of Christ for heaven, so that even now while on earth they can enter in spirit into heavenly joys within the veil.
In chapter 11 we have set before us the path which the heavenly man is to tread as he passes through this world on his way to heaven. The teaching clearly shows that from the beginning to the end it is a path of faith. The whole chapter is a beautiful unfolding of the quotation from the prophet Habakkuk, at the end of the preceding chapter, “The just shall live by faith.”
Remembering to whom the epistle is written, we can understand that a whole chapter should be devoted to the insistence of “faith” as the great principle by which the believer lives. These Hebrew believers might have special difficulty in accepting the path of faith, as they had been brought up in a religious system that very definitely appealed to sight. The Jewish system centered round a magnificent temple with its altars and material sacrifices offered by an official priesthood clad in beautiful robes, conducting ornate ceremonies according to a prescribed ritual.
All this, however, had been set aside by Christianity into which they had been brought. These believers had to learn that in Christianity there is nothing for sight, but everything for faith. Moreover, the seen things of the Jewish religion were only the shadows of good things to come, whereas the unseen things of Christianity are the substance. They were called to go without the Jewish camp to reach Christ, who was in the outside place of reproach. Having come outside, they are warned by the apostle not to “draw back.”
The apostle’s exhortations and warnings have a solemn voice for us today, as Christendom has to such a large extent drawn back, not perhaps in the full sense of the words used in chapter 10: 38-39, for that is actual apostasy. Christendom has drawn back in the way of imitation. It has copied the Jewish system in again rearing magnificent temples with visible altars, and appointing official priests to conduct elaborate ceremonies which appeal to sight and the natural man, while raising no question of conversion or the new birth. Thus Christendom, though not giving up the profession of Christianity to go back to Judaism, has attempted to link Judaism on to Christianity, the result being that Christendom is losing the vital truths of Christianity, into which only the true believer can enter, while retaining the outward things of Judaism which the natural man can appreciate.
In this great chapter we leave the shadows behind to enter the path of faith in which alone the real and vital things of God can be known and enjoyed. We learn, moreover, that in all dispensations faith has been the vital link with God.
First, verses 4-7, presenting faith as the great principle by which we draw nigh to God and escape the judgment to come;
Second, verses 8-22, giving examples of men of faith who laid hold of the purpose of God for the world to come, enabling them to walk as strangers and pilgrims on the earth;
Third, verses 23-38, in which faith is seen overcoming the power of the devil and the present world with all its attractions and difficulties.