NOTES for Heb 10:35-39
Calling for patience as we await the coming of the Lord, the apostle Paul quotes the astonishing words spoken by God to the prophet Habakkuk at the end of the seventh century BC. Like those to whom the apostle Paul wrote, and like us today, the prophet Habakkuk addressed an agonizing question to God: “How long will evil triumph?” It was precisely in response to this that God told him that the wicked would perish in his sin, but the righteous would live by faith. The apostle Paul develops this thought and applies it to the New Testament expectation of God’s final victory.
Yet, compared with the revelation given to Habakkuk, the apostle Paul also says something entirely new about faith: faith is the substance of things hoped for and the assurance of things not seen. According to the apostle’s thought, we are called not simply to endure “with clenched teeth” until the Second Coming. In a dying world, amid evil and lawlessness, God gives the believer an opportunity to taste the future life that we still only await. In our faith, what we await becomes present. It hardly needs saying that, in Christian life, these words apply above all to the sacrament of the Eucharist.