Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Been doing my ‘homework reading’ from Chris for ‘The Barbarian Way’ by Erwin Raphael McManus. Reading the second chapter and the author’s view on the famous Hebrews 11 passage really caught my attention. The first half of this chapter lists out all the Biblical heroes and their faith and their courage. However from v35 onwards, Chapter 11 lists out the nameless people who all paid the ultimate sacrifice for their faith.
It sort of reminds me of why Christianity still stands, why it still remains when every person left, right and centre say that God is obsolete. Because the Bible is more than just about the heroes that every Christian knows: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob et al. It’s about those who laid down their lives in the hope that God’s promise will come to pass. It’s those who were willing to suffer and sacrifice literally everything.
But here’s the ironic thing. If you asked these people whether they had any regrets about following God, all of them would say that they wouldn’t have it any other way. Not because their situations were crash hot: fleeing froma mob in a cave wasn’t fashionable, even back then. It was because they discovered the message of Christ and let it transform them from the inside out. The fact that other Christians may have an easier path in life probably didn’t even register with them: the truth of God’s Word and Jesus’s crucifixion was more than enough. As McManus says, God would choose safety over significance for our lives. He created us so that our lives would count, not so that we could count the days of our lives.
And for that, the author of Hebrews states that the world was not worthy of them.
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