And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.” — Hebrews 11:39-40 (NKJV)
Every person in this chapter was waiting for you.
That is one of the most staggering statements in the entire New Testament, and it is sitting quietly at the end of Hebrews 11. All of these heroes, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Rahab, David, and the unnamed thousands, all of them obtained a good testimony through faith. But they did not receive the fullness of the promise. Not because their faith was insufficient, but because God had designed the story so that it could not be completed without us.
The word perfect here means complete, made whole, brought to full realisation. God’s redemptive plan is so grand, so intergenerational, so breathtakingly unified across centuries, that the heroes of the Old Testament era could not reach its fullness without the New Testament church. And the New Testament church, which includes every believer alive today, cannot reach its fullness without the generation that follows. We are all participants in a relay race that spans human history.
You are not a spectator in this story. You are a runner. The baton that Abel picked up when he offered his sacrifice, that Abraham picked up when he left Ur, that Moses picked up when he stepped toward the Red Sea, that baton has been passed through generation after generation of faithful men and women and it has arrived in your hand. What you do with it matters, not just for your lifetime, but for the race.
This is the weight and the privilege of living by faith. You are the generation that gets to receive what they only saw from a distance. You live on the fulfilled side of the cross. You carry what prophets longed to see. And one day, you will pass the baton to someone who is not yet running.
Today, ask God: what is the specific contribution He is asking you to make to the race? What has He placed in your hand that needs to be carried faithfully so the next runner is not left without it?
Prayer
Father, I am humbled to realise that the great men and women of faith were waiting for me, that the story was incomplete without my generation and my faithfulness. I do not take that lightly. Show me what baton I am carrying and where I am supposed to run with it. Let me not drop what has been entrusted to me. I want to run my leg of this race with everything I have, so that the ones who come after me receive something worth inheriting. In Jesus’ name, amen.
