“The Faith of Abraham”

Abraham is considered the father of faith of those who believe in God because he exemplified in his life how to totally trust God no matter what.

Faith makes us right with God.

Without faith, it is impossible to be well pleasing to Him. For he who comes to God must believe that He exists and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).

Of everything that we can think of as something that would please God, it is none other than faith. We must first believe that God is, that He exists, that He works in our lives, and that He is someone whom we should trust and submit to. Because out of a true faith in God will flow many good things, too, like love and other highly-commendable virtues. Faith is first and foremost. This is our first step in establishing a relationship with the one true God.

To some of us, having faith in God is just easy. It just goes naturally with us. To others, it is difficult. Maybe it depends on our level of self-sufficiency. Well, God is not pressuring us to believe in Him. He gave us free will. He also made us different. He gave us different temperaments and personality. At times, He may call our attention to Himself by putting us in certain situations which will make us turn to Him. But generally, He wants us to have faith in Him of our own accord, out of our own initiative. That’s when faith gets to be the sweetest.

He said, “I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end shall be. For they are a very perverse generation, children, in whom, is no faithfulness (Deuteronomy 32:20).

We see here that faith is very important to God. Once we’ve learned how to trust God, everything will just flow smoothly. A relationship without mutual trust is unstable, bitter, and even sinister. It’s not a real relationship. It’s artificial. Do you think God will settle for that kind of relationship that we humans sometimes have with each other? If we, from the bottom of our hearts, won’t prefer such, why do we think God would?

Of course, God is God, and He is way better than all of us; but we’re only using this human reasoning to point out that faith is very important to God. God wants it from us first and foremost. Because out of a true faith in God will also flow many good and amazing things that only the power of God, something definitely outside our persons, can accomplish.

The Faith of Abraham

So, we will focus our discussion now on the fourth chapter of Romans. It talks about the faith of Abraham.

What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather, has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about but not toward God (1–2).

We will now discuss here the importance of faith as exemplified by the faith of Abraham. So if Abraham was made righteous by the good things that he has done, then he’ll be in an attitude of boastfulness and self-righteousness before God and will consider his justification his own accomplishment. Would God allow that? The apostle Paul says no, ah-ah, “not toward God”. We can’t boast about anything before God. He is our Creator; we are His creation. Righteousness is something that only God can give by His own initiative. So, if not by works, by anything that we can do, how, then, do we become righteous in God’s sight?

For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness” (3).

He believed in Yahweh, and He reckoned it to him for righteousness (Genesis 15:6).

So the thing that made Abraham righteous before God is his faith in God and not because of anything good he has done. It’s because there’s nothing that we can do, no matter how good, no matter many, even if we add them up all together, all of us, that will make us righteous before God. If we haven’t yet taken the first step of faith, all our good works mean nothing to God. They’re just like filthy rags.

The faith that we’re talking about here is when God promised Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. But, huh? Hello? God uttered these words at the time when Abraham was childless and his wife, Sarah, barren. Why would God promise Abraham something that is contrary to the fact? Abraham could have said, “Are you kidding me? Are you messing with my mind right now?” But despite the seeming ridiculousness of the promise, Abraham believed God’s word. If Yahweh says so, he thought, then it is as good as done. There’s a tremendous amount of faith in that! God saw it and was very pleased with it.

Now to him who works, the reward is not counted as grace but as debt (4).

There will never be a time when God would owe us anything. Not in a million years. Righteousness is not something we can work on and then, after we think we have done all that is necessary, we can now collect our reward of righteousness from God. God can never incur debt from us; He can never be indebted to us. Instead, He gives the gift of righteousness by grace.

Paul says here, “grace”, not debt or reward. Grace. Because the Lord Yahweh knows that we are incapable of accomplishing even a single feat that would merit his approval for the simple reason that we’ve inherited the curse of sin from our ancestor, Adam, through the latter’s blatant disobedience to the express will of God. So God has to make us righteous by His own doing. It’s called grace.

But to him who doesn’t work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness (5).

This verse doesn’t encourage us to despise work. We will have a lot of opportunity for that after God has made us righteous through our faith in Him. It just means that when it comes to attaining righteousness, our work is unacceptable, .

Even as David also pronounces blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whom the Lord will by no means charge with sin” (6–8).

Okay, so we’re supposed to be talking just about Abraham in this episode. Right? But here’s another man of God talking:

None of us deserved being right with God; but God can look upon us with favor and see us righteous despite our sinful nature. He can do that if He so chooses. He is God. And that’s amazing news. That way, we will turn out to be blessed.

Is this blessing then pronounced on the circumcised or on the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness (9).

So it means that the blessing of being right with God is not only for those of the circumcision but also for every people in the world. There’s a reason why God set apart Abraham’s descendants though Isaac and Jacob to be called His people. God blessed them first so that, through them, God can bless us too. And now we have that blessing because of our faith in the God of Abraham. Look at us: We are from the far-flung corners of the world, and now we have obtained that blessing.

How then was it counted? When he was in circumcision or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision but in uncircumcision! He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they be in uncircumcision, that righteousness might also be accounted to them, the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father, Abraham, which he had in uncircumcision (10–12).

Abraham was made righteous by God when he put his faith in God while yet uncircumcised. As a token of his justification and of the covenant God made with him, God instituted the ritual of circumcision. He commanded Abraham to be circumcised first and then to, from now on, enforce the ritual of circumcision among the males in his household and his would-be male descendants.

The removal of the foreskin or the skin of uncleanliness symbolizes that Abraham’s old self that wasn’t acceptable to God has been put away and that he has been made clean by the faith that he put in God. His would-be descendants, the very thing that God promised him, who will practice the ritual of circumcision are therefore expected to follow the footsteps of their ancestor, Abraham, and set themselves apart for a life of holiness or cleanliness and faith in God.

Abraham’s circumcision, therefore, was just the aftermath, the after effect, of the righteousness that he got when he put his faith in God.

This means that even we who are outside the covenant of circumcision can become righteous before God the way Abraham became righteous before God if we would also put our faith in God the way Abraham put his faith in God while yet uncircumcised. God is making the gift of righteousness available not only to those whom He set apart but also to us from the far-flung corners of the world.

For the promise to Abraham and to his seed that he should be heir of the world wasn’t through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is made of no effect (13–14).

God gave the commandments to His people to inculcate in their minds the importance of obedience to Him and the blessings it will bring because not all of them may be able to have faith in Him.

Again, let me reiterate that God never forces us to have faith in Him. He gave us free will. Some may not have faith enough to just do what God wants them to do and just be what God wants them to be out of their own initiative. Some may not have faith enough to follow God’s will with gladness and a willing heart.

So by laying down rules and regulations, they’ll be forced into doing what’s good, which is also for their good. If they faithfully follow God’s commandments, they’ll be free from punishment. They will live and prosper.

But that’s not what God really wants. He wants obedience out of a true faith in Him. Mere obedience out of compulsion is in every way insufficient. If we can get the approval of God and the gift of righteousness by only obeying the commandments even against our will, then we will have something to call God to account for and it is as if God would owe us something, and we will be in an attitude of boastfulness before Him.

But God will never allow that. Also, faith will be made void. What about the people who live by faith in God, who, in every moment of their lives, trust God to enable them to do what’s only pleasing in His sight? So faith has no use then when it is the very essential thing that makes everything else work?

For the law works wrath; for where there is no law, neither is there disobedience (15).

If there is anything that the law accomplishes, it is to say to our face that we are naturally-sinful creatures and that the despicable things that God tells us not to do are exactly the same despicable things that we are prone to do and that the things that He tells us to do, the standards which He expects us to meet, are exactly the same things that we won’t naturally be inclined to do and would be lazy enough to accomplish.

For this cause, it is of faith, that it may be according to grace to the end that the promise may be sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all. As it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations.” This is in the presence of Him whom he believed — — God — — who gives life to the dead and calls the things that are not as though they were. Who in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, “So will your seed be.” Without being weakened in faith, he didn’t consider his own body, already having been worn out (he being about a hundred years old) and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. Yet, looking to the promise of God, he didn’t waver through unbelief but grew strong through faith, giving glory to God and being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. Therefore, it also was “reckoned to him for righteousness” (16–22).

The promise God made to Abraham sounded too good to be true to even a normal hearer, more so to the astute Abraham, considering the state of affairs around him.

But what pleased God about Abraham is the latter’s attitude in receiving His words. Abraham took God in His word. He didn’t know how God will go about fulfilling His wonderful promise to him, but he will trust God anyway. Where else could he go? It’s all up to God.

That faith, that attitude pleased God exceedingly. It gave God the glory that He deserves. Because of this faith, He made Abraham righteous. Whatever good things Abraham has done didn’t matter to Him. It is that faith that glorified Him; and therefore, He will consider Abraham His friend. Now they have a relationship.

Now it was not written that it was accounted to him for his sake alone but for our sake also, to whom, it will be accounted (22–24a).

We learned that it is the unquestionable faith that Abraham put in God that made him right with God. It is not because of anything good he has done and certainly not because of his circumcision because his circumcision came after he put his faith in God.

It’s because faith in God makes us right with God. Right? And if good works are to flow out of that faith, it’s because, first and foremost, of that faith. It is the foundation. It is the very essential thing that makes everything else work. We get to follow God’s commandments without compulsion but with joy because of our faith in Him, because we love God.

Abraham went down in history as a great man of God, the father of faith of all of us who believe in the one true God. Because of his faith, he became a friend of God, and God blessed and exalted him.

Abraham lived during the time when God was still in the early phases of His plan of redeeming sinful mankind back to Himself. Now this plan has been accomplished and completed. So the question now is, In whom should we now put our faith properly? We will answer this question on our next episode.

Study the Bible with me: Faith series, episode 2

by: Marven T. Baldo