Hebrews 11:4 – Righteousness by Faith (Abel)

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 21 July 2019

Intro on Faith

• Remember from verses 1-2 that “faith is the understanding of things being hoped for; it is the making of a case concerning matters which are not being seen, and it was for this that the ancients got a good reference.” (NAW)

• We looked at verse 3 last week “With faith we figure out that the worlds have been fixed up by the word of God such that it was not out of visible things that what is seen came into being.” We saw how revelation from God is the only way to know absolute truth, particularly the important truth of origins – where we came from.

• From this we move on to verse 4 and one of those “good references” given by God concerning some of the patriarchs in Genesis. Today we’ll look at Abel, the first on the list.

• My childhood pastor, when he preached on this text, recounted something he heard about faith from a missionary to Taiwan: “Dr. James Graham, missionary, statesman, president of two colleges in Taiwan... said that one day he was taken to a Buddhist monastery and was asked to witness to an 87-year-old monk. When Dr. Graham first began to talk, the man refused to have dialogue with him but would, instead, simply mutter an occasional humph. This man had been in the monastery for 73 years! Finally, he became a little communicative, and Dr. Graham asked him what he had been doing in the monastery for all those years. ‘Repairing my soul,’ the monk answered. ‘Is it repaired yet?’ Dr. Graham queried. ‘No,’ said the old man, ‘not yet.’ Dr. Graham began to tell him about God having sent His Son into the world to repair our souls; that Christ had paid in full for our sins by dying in our stead; that through simple trust in Jesus Christ as our approach to God we are instantaneously forgiven … that it doesn’t take 73 years! As the monk listened, the truth began to dawn on him and he said, ‘Do you mean to tell me that if I will trust in Jesus Christ I will be forgiven of my sins instantly and that my worship will be acceptable to God? Is that really all I have to do and that it doesn’t take a long period of time?’ Dr. Graham told him that was right. The monk said, ‘I trust in Jesus Christ as my Savior! I now rely on His shed blood to make me accept­able to God! But tell me, Sir, how long have you people from over the seas known this is the way?’ ‘For centuries!’ answered Dr. Graham. ‘And you are just now telling me? Why did you let me sit here for 73 years in an effort to repair my own soul?’ Dr. Graham had no answer [but what he shared is true]. Faith enables a man to be right with God - immediately and fully!”

• The key word which introduces each paragraph in Hebrews 11 is the Greek word πιστει, the word for “faith/trust/belief” – and it’s in the Greek dative case.

  • We don’t have as much of a case structure in English grammar as Greek does, but generally, if a word is spelled in the dative case, some sort of preposition has to be added to it when it is translated into English.

  • Most people translate it, “By faith,” emphasizing that faith is the instrumental means by which these things happened.

  • But that only works logically for the first two instances, “By faith we understand… By faith Abel offered...;” when you get to v.5, it doesn’t work to say that Enoch was “taken up/translated” by means of faith. He didn’t have a teleporter that ran on faith; it was God’s power that teleported him, not his faith. I also question how Noah exercising faith could be a means of condemning the world, in v.7.

  • This has caused me to go back to the drawing board in translating the dative case in this passage, to find what works for all the instances of this word pistei here.

  • Setting aside for the moment the 18 verses in Hebrews 11 that begin with the word pistei, this word occurs 53 other times in the Greek Bible, and only 17% of those times is that word translated “by faith” in any version. The other 83% of the time, it’s translated “in faith,” “to faith”, “for faith,” “with faith,” etc.

  • What I think makes the most sense for Hebrews 11 is to translate the dative case in terms of context or association, using the word “with.” In other words, our faith is not the means or cause of the good things that happen to us (understanding, being righteous, being pleasing to God, condemning the world), but rather, faith is the context in which these things happen – the thing that the human actors were doing when these good things were given to them by God.

  • The translation “with faith” also makes more sense of verse 6. “Without faith” makes the perfect opposite to “with faith.”

  • The distinction between “by faith” and “with faith” is subtle, but I think it’s worth making.

• So let’s look at Abel, the first character and what he teaches us about faith:

v.4 With faith, Abel offered to God a greater sacrifice than Cain, on account of which he was given a good reference of being righteous (God having given a good reference because of his gifts), and on account of this, he still speaks after having died.

Excerpt from Dead-End Desire by Phil Moser¹

“Some Bible scholars have inferred from Eve’s words that she believed she had given birth to the Messiah. Perhaps she thought that Cain was the one who could right her wrongs and strike Satan’s head. ‘Cain’ sounds like the Hebrew word for ‘gotten.’ In stark contrast, Abel’s name comes from the word that means ‘air, breath, meaningless, nothing.’

“Imagine those introductions to future generations. ‘This is my son who is a gift from God, and this is my son who means nothing.’ You would think that the brother who would feel sorry for himself would be Abel, yet the opposite is true. This offers hope to those whose home life has been less than perfect. You are not a product of your environment. God grants you the freedom to consider your past, interpret the details, and make choices about how you will live differently. Abel did this. Perhaps he developed humility from his mother’s bias towards his brother; We can’t be certain. But we do know this: Abel trusted the Lord and offered the best that he had as an act of worship...

“Cain knew he hadn‘t brought his best stuff, but he figured God would be okay with it. He’d felt a twinge of conscience when he kept the better portion for himself. Still, he reasoned, if you have to give to a God you can’t see, maybe he can’t see what you give.

“As he lifted the sheaves onto the altar, he smelled mildew, the first signs of decay in the offering he was giving. Abel came to the field with his firstborn ram in tow. Suddenly Cain felt a bit nervous, like one underdressed for a special occasion. For a moment, he wished he had brought something better. Abel slaughtered the ram and placed it on the altar. He lifted his blood-stained hands and began to pray. Cain watched, acutely aware of the inadequacy of his own sacrifice. A streak of light crossed the evening sky accomp­anied by a crash of thunder. Fire fell from heaven, consuming Abel’s sacrifice. His offering accepted, Abel bowed humbly and retreated from the altar. As Abel's sacrifice burned on the adjacent altar, Cain noticed an incessant buzzing around his. Drawn by the smell of mildew, flies were beginning to gather on the rotting grain; today's eggs would bring tomorrow’s maggots.

“Cain’s face fell. He was embarrassed. The rejection that should have brought humility stirred a different emotion: self-pity. Thoughts began to gather like the flies on his sacrifice: Had he not fulfilled his worship obligation? Had he not given something? Who was God to reject his worship and accept Abel’s? He went home dejected and sulked through the night.

“Returning to the field the next morning, he noticed Abel’s altar. Pure white ash was all that remained of the offering. He glanced at his own. The sheaves of grain were moving unnaturally, as if they had come to life. He drew closer and discovered the cause. The eggs had hatched, and the maggots were feeding on his second best. Holy fire had taken Abel’s offering; Cain‘s was fit only for worms. The feeling of rejection was palpable. Self-pity was fertile soil for his anger; resentment showed on his face.

“It was then that God spoke: ‘Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?’ God made it sound so easy, Cain thought. But it doesn’t feel easy. He didn’t want acceptance on God’s terms; he wanted it on his own. He glanced at Abel’s altar again, the ash gently blowing, a reminder of God’s approval. While God’s tone was instructive, Cain heard it as rejection. His thoughts shifted quickly to his brother. Maybe it was Abel’s fault he felt this way. If only he hadn’t brought the perfect ram. His anger grew quickly into jealousy, and murderous rage followed close behind.

“The desires God had told him to control grew stronger, pressing hard on his will. Cain made up his mind. He called Abel to the field. Naive of his brother’s intentions, Abel came. As the brothers neared the two altars, Cain drew back, stooping down to pick up a rock. Self-pity, anger, and jealousy merged together, energizing his intention. In the open field before him, Cain saw two things: his altar with its worm-infested sacrifice and the back of his brother’s head. When he was done, there was blood on his hands. There was blood on the ground, and God was calling his name again.”

The sacrifice offered with faith

• “This is one of the first instances that is upon record of fallen men going in to worship God; and it was a wonder of mercy that all intercourse between God and man was not cut off by the fall.” ~Mathew Henry

• God provided the skins of dead animals to cover Abel’s parents, Adam and Eve, after their first sin, and we infer from that – and from the sacrifices of Cain and Abel – that long before Moses, people had instructions from God concerning how to worship Him with sacrifices.

• But the Bible never says what exactly it was about Abel’s sacrifice that was “better/more acceptable/more excellent” than Cain’s. Four hypotheses I’ve encountered are that:

  • Cain gave less than the best of his produce. (This was Phil Mosier’s reconstruction above.) We are certainly to give God the best; the “firstfruits.”

  • However, the Greek word πλείονα is actually the comparative form of the word for “many,” so some Bible scholars have interpreted it as Abel offering “more” to God than Cain offered². The plural “gifts” in the next part of the verse would tend to support the idea that Abel offered more than one sacrifice or that he made sacrifices regularly and not just once. Certainly our offerings to God should not be the least we can get away with.

  • Others focus in on the value of blood shed for the forgiveness of sin in Abel’s animal sacrifice versus Cain’s food offering, although both types of offerings were required in the Old Testament sacrificial system.

  • Finally, there is the issue of the heart behind the sacrifices of the two brothers. The later Old Testament prophets made clear that a person could do all the sacrifices exactly right and still be displeasing to God because their heart was in rebellion against God. The tone of Cain’s dialogue with God certainly doesn’t seem to flow from a respectful, submissive attitude.

  • Jesus told a parable Luke 18 about two worshippers, one who was made right with God, and the other who wasn’t: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself,`God, I thank You that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.' And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying,`God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:10-14, NKJV)

  • “[E]xpiatory sacrifice… was acceptable to God, both as the appointed expression of conscious guilt and ill desert, and of the hope of mercy, and as an act of obedience to the divine will.” ~John Brown of Edinborough (The same is true today of Christian worship.)

• Abel worshipped God “with faith,” which, if you remember from verse 1, means he “understood [something of] what he hoped for” from God and acted “decisively” in relationship to the God he could “not see.”

  • Albert Barnes included a good meditation in his commentary on Hebrews on the nature of the faith that Abel must have possessed: “[W]oe had been denounced on the mother of mankind; and the father of the apostate race and all his posterity, doomed to toil and death. The thunder of this curse had scarcely died away; man had been ejected from Paradise and sent out to enter on his career of woes; and the earth was trembling under the malediction, and yet Abel maintained his confidence in God. There was then little truth revealed, and only the slightest intimation of mercy. The promise in Genesis 3:15, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, is so enigmatical and obscure that it is not easy even now to see its exact meaning, and it cannot be supposed that Abel could have had a full understanding of what was denoted by it. Yet this appears to have been all the truth respecting the salvation of man then revealed, and on this Abel maintained his faith steadfast in God... [N]otwithstanding the infidelity of his older brother, Abel adhered to God, and his cause. Whatever influence that infidel brother might have sought to use over him – and there can be no reason to doubt that such an influence would be attempted – yet he never swerved, but maintained with steadfastness his belief in religion, and his faith in God.”

  • This brotherly opposition would have hit close to home for Christian Jews in first century Jerusalem who were being persecuted by their fellow Jews. (Chrysostom)

• This attitude of faith despite the troubles of this world, despite an incomplete understanding of salvation, and despite the opposition of his brother, led Abel to worship for the right reasons, with the right sacrifice in the right amount and quality, and God called him “all-right” or “righteous.”³

The good reference of righteousness

• I searched all around Genesis for some statement that God declared Abel righteous, matching our text in Hebrews 11:4 and came up dry. Genesis 4:4 says that God “looked upon/had regard for/respected” [ישׁע-from שׁעה/επειδεν⁴] Abel’s sacrifice, but it doesn’t say anything about Abel being righteous.

• Turns out I was looking in the wrong place! The testimony that Abel was righteous came from the lips of Jesus in Matthew 23:35 “...all the righteous blood shed upon the earth shall come upon y'all – from the blood of Abel the righteous up through the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah (who was murdered between the temple and the altar)." (NAW)

  • Notice, by the way, that the author of Hebrews attributes this quote to “God,” and since Jesus is the one who said it, here is yet another Biblical statement equating Jesus with God.

• Now, what was the reason for which Abel was commended by God in Christ bearing testimony that Abel was righteous, and what was the means by which Abel carries a message that preaches beyond his lifetime?

  • The Greek grammar of the sentence is such that there are two pronouns which denote the cause of Abel being commended as righteous and the cause for which Abel is able to speak from the grave. (Unfortunately, the NASB, NIV, and ESV did not preserve both of those pronouns but instead substituted a noun that is not there in Greek.) The pronouns which are there in Greek are both feminine and singular, and both pronouns could point to the noun “faith” or to the noun “offering,”

  • but the grammar of this sentence is such that it does not identify either one of these words as the exclusive antecedent of either of these pronouns (although the parenthetical expression in the middle of the verse gives weight to the offerings – the “gifts” – being the reason he was declared righteous). It is my opinion that our author is therefore intentionally referring to both the “faith” and the “offering” of Abel as the cause for this good reference from Jesus and as the cause for a life that speaks beyond the grave.

  • Abel trusted God in faith, but he didn’t leave it at that; he acted upon that faith and actually approached God and brought an offering and sought forgiveness of his sin and got right with God.

  • I think that the grammar of this verse tells us that the “faith” and the “offering” necessar­ily go together; neither is valid without the other. As Michael Card, one of my favorite contemporary Christian singer-songwriters put it in his album on the book of Hebrews, “Faith understands and offers, [‘faith understands and offers – it necessarily goes togeth­er] it assures and calms our fears. It can shut the mouths of lions and make sense of scars and tears. We persevere with hope and with conscience clean and clear. We walk this fallen wilderness with salvation’s Pioneer.” ~“By Faith,” from Soul Anchor

  • Now, we know from the rest of the book of Hebrews, that it wasn’t Abel’s offering of a lamb per se that made him righteous. The lamb merely pointed to the coming Messiah who would be “THE lamb who [actually] takes away the sin of the world.” So it is more-than-poetic that Abel was not declared righteous absolutely until Jesus could make the declaration Himself just before He was put to death on the cross to pay for Abel’s sin and for the sins of you and me and make us right in God’s legal system.

The legacy of Abel

• Now, the story of Abel doesn’t end with his death. God’s work in our lives to give us faith and to declare us righteous is always designed to give us personal stories which we can share with others to encourage them to trust God and offer themselves in service to Him also. This is no less the case with Abel; verse 4 ends: “...on account of this, he still speaks after/al­though⁵ having died.”

  • Abel was the first person in the world to die. And yet he did not deserve to die; he was murdered. This was the first wrongful death in history. We grieve when an innocent per­son gets killed, and we long for justice to be served to the bad guys. Genesis 4:10 says that the blood of Abel cried out to God from the ground where his brother had slaughtered him. Even after Abel was dead he had a voice which God could hear, and God let it be known that He heard that voice. There is a God who notices every sin commited and who will punish every wrong done with justice.

  • It is a comfort to know that even though Abel was murdered thousands of years ago, Jesus, whose job is to judge the earth someday, has not forgotten about that injustice. He told the Jews of the first Century that He intends to make it right (“...all the righteous blood shed upon the earth shall come upon y'all – from the blood of Abel the righteous up through the blood of Zachariah...”). And, indeed, if you follow the prophecy in Matthew 23, much of it came to pass in 70AD in the same event of judgment that the book of Hebrews was warning about.

  • Now, the fact that Jesus considered Abel’s death an injustice tells us something else. If Jesus had said, “Abel deserved to die because of the original sin of his parents and because of all the sins he personally committed against me,” we would know that there is no forgiveness of sin and no way to be right with God. But the fact that Jesus called Abel “righteous” tells us that God honors faith in “the lamb of God” and that Jesus actually “takes away sin” and that we can be right with God.

  • This Biblical story about Abel also comforts us with the knowledge that those who are right with God through faith in Jesus are not immune from death. Physical death is not a punishment for their sins – whether they die young or from cancer or are murdered. We can take comfort that these lovers of Jesus are highly regarded by Him, because we see Jesus’ high regard for Abel.

  • I think these are ways that Abel, after his death, speaks to us about God and His ways.

APPLICATION

• Approach prayer, Bible study, and worship not as rituals but with personal reverence toward God.

• Worship God despite opposition, like Abel, even when it’s hard!

• Trust Jesus to make everything right inside you and in the world!

• “What should we learn from it? That fallen man has leave to go in to worship God, with hope of acceptance. That, if our persons and offerings be accepted, it must be through faith in the Messiah. That acceptance with God is a peculiar and distinguishing favour. That those who obtain this favour from God must expect the envy and malice of the world. That God will not suffer the injuries done to his people to remain unpunished, nor their sufferings unrewarded... That God would not suffer Abel's faith to die with him, but would raise up others, who should obtain like precious faith; and so he did in a little time; for in the next verse we read, of the faith of Enoch...”~Matthew Henry

• (but we’ll have to wait for that… but at least it won’t be for 73 years.)

APPENDIX: Side-by-side Greek Text & English Versions of Heb. 11:3-7^A