The Faith of Abraham

The Faith of Abraham for paper              Rev. Terry Goerz, Redeemer Lutheran Church

If you have your bible handy read Romans 4:13–25. The word that runs through that section of scripture and connects them is the word “faith.” Trust in the promise of God. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” “It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.”

This is bottom-line Christianity. This is the core of what you and I believe and confess as Christians. This is what makes Christianity “Christian.” This is what sets Christianity apart from the world’s religions and what many people, even those who call themselves Christian, don’t get. God justifies the ungodly. God counts faith in His promise as righteousness. God grants this faith to us as an unearned and undeserved gift, completely apart from any work that we do. And understand that this faith is not a work on our part, something we do, it is a gift from God
Abraham is the pattern and paradigm. He believed God. He took God at His word and trusted Him. Of all the people on earth, God singled out this one man – seventy-five years old, married, and childless. God chose Abraham not because he was pious, religious, decent, upstanding, or anything at all. In fact, the Scriptures never say why God chose Abraham. He simply came to Abraham and told him to pull up his tent pegs, leave his homeland and dwell as a nomad in a land that didn’t belong to him. God promised Abraham that he would be a great nation, even though he and Sarah his wife were childless and he was 75 years old. That his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan as a gift from the Lord. That his name would be great and a blessing to many. And in him and through his Seed all of the families of the earth would be blessed.

These promises came before Abraham did anything at all. Abraham didn’t say a prayer nor did God offer any kind of a deal. He just told Abraham how it would be. And Abraham believed God. He trusted what the Lord had spoken to him. He believed the promises, as crazy and unlikely as it all sounded, that a 75 year-old childless man would be the father of a great nation and through his offspring all people on earth would be blessed. Abraham was faith-full, that is, full of faith. He took God at His word, and God credited that trust of Abraham as righteousness before Him.

This is how an unrighteous sinner (all of us today) stands before a righteous God. Not on the basis of what you do, but on the basis of trust in the promise of God. This is how Israel stood as a nation before God. This is how you and I stand before God. It’s the only way we can stand before God, not on the basis of our works under the Law. Not on the basis of our commandment-keeping, our religious works, our piety, our anything. We stand before God justified solely by God’s grace alone, it’s a gift from Him to us, unearned and undeserved. We stand by faith alone, that is, trust in what God declares by His Word, namely that through the promised Offspring of Abraham, who is Jesus the Christ, the blessing has come to the world and specifically to you. And we stand justified before God on the basis of Jesus Christ alone, His life, His righteousness, His saving death and resurrection.

If you take a survey of people around you and ask them what they think Christianity is all about, they will likely speak in terms of works. Stuff we do, or at least are supposed to do. They’ll speak in terms of going to church, of giving offerings, of obeying the commandments, of living according to the Bible’s teachings, being good, decent, moral. It’s not uncommon to hear people summarize the Christian faith and life this way: Live a good life, do good to others.

And that would be the very opposite of what the Christian faith is. If the promise to Abraham and his offspring had come through the law, then there would be no promise, no Israel, no Savior. In that section of Romans I asked you to read it included “For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.” Romans 4:14

The law brings wrath. There’s no point in our cozying up to the commandments, because they will kill you in the end. The law is death to the sinner, and sinners we all are. That was true of old Father Abraham too. The condition of Sin, the depth of unbelief, the extent of our corruption are so deep and so pervasive that simple religious rehab won’t work. We can’t be fixed – not with 10 commandments, not with forty days of purposing, not with anything we do. The law, as holy and well-intentioned and good as it is, will only work death in us.

This was the whole theme behind Paul’s letter to the Romans: that the bible is not a bible of works to do the righteousness of God but a bible of faith that is credited as righteousness before God. The Promise that faith in what Jesus Christ has done by his life, death and resurrection must be believed, trusted, as Abraham trusted God and it was credited to him as righteousness. That same faith will be credited to you as righteousness resulting in eternal life with God. Faith is not a new concept in the New Testament, but has been there from the beginning, from that faith that Abraham had in the promises of God.

Blessings