The great principle on which Abraham acted was the principle of faith. Obviously, if he has left one world and has not reached the other, he has nothing for natural sight. It is not that he did not see, but, what he saw was by faith. Thus we read, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance” (Heb. 11:8).

Answering to the call of God on the principle of faith, Abraham, and those with him, became “strangers and pilgrims.” As the Holy Spirit, in the New Testament, can say of them, they “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (v. 13). This comes before us very strikingly in his history. In Haran, where Abraham was detained for a time, we read he “dwelt there”; but, arrived in the land, we read he “pitched his tent,” as one that had no certain dwelling place (see Gen. 11:31; 12:8). Moreover, we read that he “passed through the land.” As a stranger he had but a tent in this world; as a pilgrim he was passing through to another world.

We learn what sustained Abraham in this pilgrim path. We are told, “The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land’” (12:7). Mark well these two things: first, the twice repeated statement that the Lord appeared to him; second, the land is set before him as a future possession. He sees the King in His beauty and the land that is very far off. He pursued his journey as a stranger and a pilgrim in the light of the glory of the God who had called him, and the blessedness of the land to which he was going. So we read in the New Testament, “He waited for the city which has foundations” (Heb. 11:10).

Nor is it otherwise with ourselves. It is only as we have Christ Himself before us in His glory, and the blessedness of the heavenly home to which we are going that we shall, in any little measure, bear the stranger and pilgrim character.