Hebrews 11:10Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Do you see that the expression "not having received" means that they awaited and hoped for the promises? If hope leads to receiving, then we also can receive.

Although they did not possess the promised blessings, they beheld them in their longing for them. Why was this? It was to put us to shame.

Even when earthly blessings were promised to them, they did not cling to them, but desired the city to come. God continually speaks to us about the city above, yet we desire the one here.

God told them that He would give them the blessings of the present age. Yet because He saw, or rather because they showed themselves worthy of higher blessings, He counted them worthy to receive not those, but these higher ones.

"For he was looking for the city which has foundations." For this reason, he says, they dwelt in that land in tents, which have no foundation. They were awaiting the heavenly city with true foundations, always firm and never perishing. Therefore God, seeing that they despised the promises of earthly goods, postponed them, preparing better things for them. They were worthy of such things, not of earthly ones. Then they, having received an earthly promise, disregarded it and hastened toward the heavenly. But you believers, having received a promise concerning heavenly things, desire earthly things. How are you not ashamed? "Whose craftsman and builder is God." What praise belongs to this city, that God is its craftsman!

"For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." That is, Abraham surely awaited for himself a permanent and firm dwelling in the mansions of the heavenly Father (Jn 14:2).

Like the holy Apostle Paul and the first Christians, he regarded himself as a stranger and sojourner. He had no abiding city here, but sought the city to come, that is, the heavenly Jerusalem.

He strove toward it. "Our citizenship is in heaven," from which we await, at the dread judgment, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ (Phil 3:20).

This is why Abraham did not build solid structures for himself. He believed that all this was unnecessary here, and that it was not worth becoming attached to the goods of the world.

From the promised inheritance, which they had not yet received, it was clear that they were awaiting that city which has firm foundations, whose craftsman and builder is God.

Even when Abraham came into the promised land, he did not become its possessor. He himself, his son, and his grandson lived the life of migrants. They dwelt in a land that was theirs by promise as though it were foreign.

Therefore they did not build houses, but spent their life dwelling in tents. Yet they believed that the One who had promised was true, even without seeing events that confirmed their faith.

The Apostle said, "called Abraham," because of the change of name. For he was first called Abram, and then was named Abraham.

Believing the One who called him, he left his father's house and followed, not knowing what land He promised to give him. For the One who called him said, "Go to the land which I shall show you" (Gen 12:1).

He awaited as his inheritance the heavenly city, since it is truly unshaken, firm, and eternally abiding. The foundations of earthly cities are not secure. They may be undermined, and they are subject to movement.

We see that in this world a person, wherever he lives and wherever he is, is called a resident or citizen of the city in which he has his house. For example, a resident of Moscow is a Muscovite, and a resident of Novgorod is a Novgorodian.

So also true Christians, although they are in this world, have a city in the heavenly fatherland, "whose Designer and Builder is God" (Heb 11:10). They are called citizens of this city.

This city is the heavenly Jerusalem, which the holy Apostle John saw in his revelation: "The city was pure gold, like clear glass"; "the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass."

"The city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb" (Rev 21:18, 21, 23).

"He was looking for the city which has foundations." Called into the promised land, Abraham did not settle in it as a permanent inhabitant and did not build cities in it. He wholly transferred himself into the future, and there he lived by faith in God.

"For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose craftsman and maker is God" (Heb. 11:10). That is, he awaited his heavenly fatherland and the city of God (cf. Heb. 11:16). Therefore he was indifferent to the earthly fatherland, and did not console himself even in dreams with possession of many cities.

Further, Abraham's faith was revealed in this: he exchanged his fertile land for a country foreign to him, which God only afterward promised to give him as an hereditary possession. Abraham, and likewise Isaac and Jacob, preserved their faith even when they settled in Canaan. They lived in tents, not in a house, thereby showing that they expected their dwelling not in an earthly city, but in the heavenly one.