Hebrews 11

Wesley: after Samuel, the prophets are properly mentioned. David also was a prophet; but he was a king too. The prophets—Elijah, Elisha, etc.—including likewise the believers who lived with them.

The accent falls on an open-ended catalog: time fails because faith’s examples overflow. Named judges and prophets invite imitation, not mere applause.

Calvin: he anticipates the fear that praises of faith are confined to a few; what he said of a few extended to the whole Church of God. Under David’s name he includes pious kings; with Samuel and the prophets he teaches that Judah’s kingdom was founded and stood by faith.

The Church in every age is preserved by God’s hand through faith—no other way to know His kindness.

Wesley: David in particular subdued kingdoms; Samuel wrought righteousness; the prophets obtained promises, stopped mouths of lions as Daniel.

What comes through is faith’s public fruits: conquest, justice, promises obtained, lions stopped. God answers those who trust Him in history’s crises.

Calvin: all that was praiseworthy in them is ascribed to faith. That clause ought especially to be noticed—they obtained the promises by faith; though God continues faithful were we all unbelieving, yet our unbelief makes the promises void to us—ineffectual to us.

Promises are obtained by faith; unbelief empties them for the unbeliever without making God false.

Wesley: quenched the violence of fire as Shadrach’s companions; Jephthah escaped the sword; Samson out of weakness was made strong; Barak valiant; Gideon put aliens to flight. Faith overcomes impediments and inverts the course of nature.

The emphasis is on strength out of weakness as hope for frail believers who trust God in war and fire. Faith animates heroic enterprises without denying human frailty.

Calvin: the Lord by His hand raised His saints when cast down and brought help to their weakness so as to endue them with full strength. By faith David returned conqueror; Daniel came safe from lions; friends walked in the furnace.

Made strong out of weakness is God’s work through faith, not native heroism. Goodness and bounty are communicated by faith.

Wesley: women—naturally weak—received their dead children. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance on sinful terms, that they might obtain a better resurrection—an higher reward, the greater their sufferings the greater their glory.

Arminian readers hear both gift-resurrections now and refusal of shameful release for a better rising. Faith suffers rather than deny God. Pastoral courage for the persecuted.

Calvin: saints reduced to extreme miseries struggled by faith to persevere invincible even to death. Victory of faith appears more splendid in contempt of death than if life were extended to the fifth generation. They must have purchased a short lease of life by denying God—a shameful price; that they might live forever in heaven, they rejected life on earth. Except minds sustained by hope of blessed resurrection, they must have immediately failed.

Better life/resurrection hope keeps faith from accepting release by apostasy. Patience under the cross is faith’s power.

Wesley: the apostle seems here to pass on to recent examples—mockings, scourgings, bonds, imprisonment.

Wesley’s heirs hear ordinary brutalities inside faith’s catalog. Not only miracles; also chains. Hearers under scorn are not outside the story.

Calvin: reproaches, want, and extreme troubles borne with resignation are a more glorious evidence of faith than miraculous recovery. Fortitude of the saints in all ages was the work of faith; we are not capable of overcoming evils except faith sustains us.

Mocking and chains are faith’s arena. Fainting under persecution proves unbelief; faith’s nature is the same now as then.

Wesley: sawn asunder—as, according to Jewish tradition, Isaiah was by Manasseh. Torments and death mentioned alternately; tempted every way by threatenings, tortures, promises, and allurements.

Arminian interpreters hear the cost catalog without romance: stones, saws, swords, goatskins, destitution. Faith does not always win publicly in this age.

Calvin: points to persecutions such as Antiochus carried on and those that followed. Mean and rough clothing of saints wandering in deserts. We ought not to refuse the Lord’s favor of being connected with so many holy men exercised by many sufferings—common persecutions of the Church, not of a few only.

Mistreatment is not God’s absence; it is the shared lot of the faithful whom God cared for before us.

Wesley: of whom the world was not worthy—it did not deserve so great a blessing. They wandered, being driven out from men.

Classical Arminians hear inverted verdict: the world is unworthy of the saints it drives out. Exile is not proof God forgot them.

Calvin: the Apostle inverts the sentiment—the world was not worthy of them. Wherever God’s servants come, they bring His blessing. Whenever the righteous are taken away, such events are presages of evil; we are unworthy of having them with us. Let us boldly despise the world; were it to cast us out, God provides for our safety.

Caves and dens may be safer than hostile temples. God’s servants are the world’s unrecognized blessing.

Wesley: all these, though they obtained a good testimony, yet did not receive the great promise, the heavenly inheritance.

The note struck is commendation without full possession yet—faith’s “not yet” that still finishes well. The promise remains ahead for them and for us who believe.

Calvin: argument from the less to the greater—if they on whom grace’s light had not so brightly shone displayed such constancy, what ought the Gospel’s full brightness to produce in us? A small spark led them to heaven; when the sun of righteousness shines, how can we excuse cleaving to earth? “Received not the promise” means its ultimate fulfillment in Christ.

Commendation through faith without yet receiving the ultimate promise presses us who have clearer light to endure.

Wesley: that they might not be perfected without us—that is, that we might all be perfected together in heaven.

Here the reader meets corporate hope: something better for us, and perfection together—not a lonely finish. The fathers wait with the church; hearers are summoned into that one perfected company by persevering faith.

Calvin: God intended to unite us all into one body, and distributed a small portion of grace to them that He might defer full perfection to our time, even to the coming of Christ. Singular evidence of benevolence: in all He bestowed on Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets, He had regard for us, that we might be united with them in Christ’s body. Doubly ungrateful if less faith appears in us under Christ’s kingdom than the fathers showed under the Law.

Something better is gospel fullness in Christ; they are not perfected apart from us because God ordered one body and one perfection in His time.