The apostle Paul, who became a Christian after the resurrected, glorified Jesus Christ miraculously appeared to him (Acts 9:1-19), gave this divinely inspired definition of faith: “Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.”

Heb. 11:1, 2.

4. What caused Abel to have an “assured expectation” that God’s words about the ‘seed of the woman’ would come true?

⁴ Scriptural faith is a well-based expectation, not an unfounded hope. Abel, the second son of the first human pair, Adam and Eve, displayed faith. Abel realized that what God had said about death’s resulting from the disobedient eating of fruit from the “tree of the knowledge of good and bad” was proving true. (Gen. 2:16, 17) He could discern the inherited death-dealing effects of sin in himself. (Rom. 5:12) He also observed the fulfillment of God’s decree that brought laborious toil to his disobedient father, Adam. Then, too, in keeping with Jehovah’s sentence upon Eve, she was experiencing increased pain during pregnancy. (Gen. 3:16-19) These facts proved God’s truthfulness and gave Abel conviction, the “assured expectation,” that other things God had said would come true, such as the prophetic words that Jehovah directed to the Devil, when God was speaking to the serpent used by that wicked one to bring about human sin: “I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him in the heel.”​—Gen. 3:15.

5. (a) How did Abel display his faith in the coming of the Seed of God’s “woman”? (b) In what way did God bear witness respecting Abel’s gifts?

⁵ Abel displayed his faith in the coming of that Seed of God’s “woman” by offering to Jehovah an animal sacrifice that could substitute pictorially for his own life. His elder brother, faithless Cain, offered only bloodless vegetables. Cain thereafter spilled his brother’s blood as a murderer, but Abel died knowing he had pleased Jehovah, “God bearing witness respecting his gifts” by accepting the sacrifice Abel had offered in faith. (Heb. 11:4; Gen. 4:1-8) Is your faith in the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ comparable to the faith that found expression in Abel’s sacrifice?

6. Explain how faith is “the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.”

⁶ Faith is also “the evident demonstration of realities though [these realities are] not beheld.” For instance, the existence of created things​—the sun, moon, stars and the earth itself—​makes it apparent to Christians that there is a Creator, that such One is real, even though he cannot be seen with human eyes because he is an invisible Spirit. (John 4:24; Rom. 1:20-23) Hence, Christians have evidence that God exists, and by faith they “perceive that the systems of things were put in order by God’s word, so that what is beheld came to be out of things that do not appear.”​—Heb. 11:3.