But first, this needs to be clearly understood – In our relationship with the Lord, faith may be the most important thing that we could ever discuss. Paul’s theme in this chapter is that both David and Abraham were justified by faith. Neither of those good men, were able to approach the Lord because of their own righteousness. They may have done some pretty important, and even godly things during their lives, but those were not sufficient to wash away their sins or improve their approach to God. The gracious God “declared them righteous,” not because of their works, but based on their faith. They believed God, and it was accounted unto them for righteousness. I make no apology for making “faith” a matter of a great many messages. I make no apology for preaching a message just a month ago, entitled “Abraham’s Faith.” You may disagree, but I think it is impossible to preach too often or too intensely on the subject of faith. “For whatsoever is not FAITH is sin.” “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our FAITH.” Some more intelligent Jews once came to the Lord Jesus, asking what they might do to please God, and He responded: “This is the work of God that ye BELIEVE on him whom he hath sent.” “Without FAITH it is impossible to please God.” It is impossible to over-emphasize, over-expound, over-elaborate or over-embrace faith. The Saviour has said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that BELIEVETH in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
Before we move on to thinking more directly about OUR faith in Romans 5, we need to review the lessons that Paul gives to us about Abraham’s faith.
Abram wasn’t floundering in self-pity or wallowing the religious morass of the Chaldees, looking for an escape or excuse to make a change. I would guess, judging myself before the Lord called me, that Abraham already felt complete. He wasn’t looking through the yellow-pages until he found Jehovah under a list of a dozen other “gods.” Like Saul of Tarsus, and like the testimony of most honest people, Abram wasn’t looking for God at all. The Lord chose Abram, called Abram, commissioned Abram and said, “Come with me.” Eventually Abram believed in the Lord, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness.
Secondly, his wasn’t a FLESHLY faith. We will come back to this later, but as verse 19 says, “And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.” I have no idea how many people have told me that they couldn’t trust God to save them, because they were too weak. The logic is Biblically preposterous. Some have told me that first they had to give up some specific sin before they would believe on Christ. Others have told me that they once had faith in the Lord, but they couldn’t maintain it, so they had given up trying. These people, of whom I’m thinking, did not really have faith in the Lord. Their faith, if there was any at all, was in themselves. To Abraham, God promised seed – a son, and many sons – a nation, and many nations. But both that man and his wife were getting older – 75, 80, 90 and still no children. Then even 9 years after that, when Abraham was 99 and his wife 90, God again promised them a baby. And Abraham believed God – because his faith was in the Lord, not the strength, or in this case, the weakness, of his own flesh.
Furthermore Abraham’s faith wasn’t of the WRATHFUL variety. The subject of wrathful faith, would evoke peels of laughter in a great many so-called Christian churches. Mis-defined and mis-understood faith is so venerated by some areas of Christendom today that many people don’t realize that it is not only weak and worthless, it calls forth the wrath of Almighty God. Specifically, any faith which has to be augmented by the works of the sinner is worse than no faith at all. Paul says that the blessings which the Lord gave to Abraham were his by faith. And if they had been given to him by his obedience to some sort of law – even God’s laws, then those promises would have been rendered null and void – or even worse. “For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect, because the law worketh wrath.” The law worketh wrath, as we have said many, many times. The law contains a warrant for our arrest, and with it comes charges of capital crimes against the Lord. If any man tries to argue the law, or his periodic obedience to the law, augmenting his faith in Christ by his own weak self-righteousness, he is signing his own name to that warrant and execution. Coupling law and faith together is like mixing the ingredients to a spiritual explosion – it means death.
Abraham’s was not wanna-be faith, or a weakened faith through the flesh, or a wrathful faith through the law. Abraham is lifted up before us as an example of the greatest variety of faith. Let’s just go chronologically through these verses establishing the kind of faith that he had.
The history of the English word “righteousness” begins back nearly 1500 years with “rightwiseness.” Righteousness is the condition of being right. And since Paul often uses that word in the context of God, it is easy to find the definition of true rightness. Chapter 3 – “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.” Romans 10:3 – “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”
Abraham’s faith was righteous because it was rooted and grounded, not in any law, or in the flesh, but in the One who is permanently and perfectly righteous – Jehovah God. It was righteous faith because there was no admixture of sin. It was righteous because it was based upon what the righteous God had told the man. It was righteous because there was no selfish plan or design in that faith. Despite the fact that Abraham was greatly blessed because of and through that faith, it was not in Abraham’s head to believe God in order to be blessed.
But the fact remains that the greatest of all blessings was directly linked to that man’s faith. He believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness. What prodigious blessedness there is to those unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works.
The grace of God is a blessing of unfathomable value. But that grace is not really the end; rather it is the means to the greater end. That grace is like the staircase which takes us over the mountain of our sins into the pleasant valley of Lord’s bounty. And it has been cut by the hand of the Lord Himself; certainly not by any one of us. The first time that I saw that pathway over the mountain on that corner, I could see that it was solid ice. I suppose that some people might have shied away from using it, for fear of slipping. But the alternatives were much less appealing and far more dangerous. You might say that I trusted myself to the gracious work that my neighbor had provided.
And that is what Abraham did in a much more important way. He surrendered to the directions of the Lord – he believed the word of the Lord – he trusted God. There was no need in God for this man’s worship or service. Abraham was no less a sinner than his father, brothers or neighbors. The Lord didn’t owe him anything, and He didn’t even need him to bring the Messiah into the world. All the need was on Abraham’s part.
But the Lord was gracious and merciful to this man. God showed to him, His unmerited favour, kindness and blessing. He was “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Abraham came to learn “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” Abraham learned to “praise … the glory of his grace, wherein he hath accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” Ephesians 2 applied to that great man as much as it does to any of us – “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Abraham’s faith was a surrender to grace.
I can’t say with authority that Abraham believed that his spirit was dead in sin. I’m not sure exactly how much New Testament doctrine he had been given – it could have been much. Did he remember that God had said to Adam, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely DIE.” Did he understand that the spirit of Adam died that day, and that everyone of Adam’s children have been spiritually still-born ever since. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he did know these things and much more – but then, maybe not.
We do know that the faith of Abraham enabled him to see at least a couple of other kinds of resurrections. Even though we have no proof that anyone had ever been physically raised from the dead, Abraham believed that God could quicken the dead body of his son Isaac. No son had been born as yet, but later, we see that Abraham had this kind of resurrection faith. And perhaps he could trust God to raise the dead, because he had already seen God bring to life his ability, and that of his wife, to have a son in the first place. That couple knew enough to realize that they were long past the age and physical condition to bring a child into the world. Nevertheless, Abraham believed that God was not limited by such mundane things as age and human weakness. He that can give us children, can give us those children again after their physical deaths. And He that can raise the dead can quicken and save our sin-dead spirits. Ephesians 2 once again – “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
That Abraham believed, without any physical evidence or testimony to help him – that he believed that God could quicken lifeless bodies or lifeless body parts, surely demonstrates great faith.
Paul loved to talk about Abraham – he really was the great spiritual hero of Israel. Abraham is a key illustration in Romans and then again in Galatians. And he is a major ingredient in the great chapter of faith in the Book of Hebrews. And speaking of Hebrews, chapter 11 begins with the words: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of THINGS NOT SEEN.” From there Paul talks about Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah and a host of others. In each case, those people could see past their limitations and circumstances – into the face and promises of God. “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.”
Both Abraham and his wife, by the grace of God, were enabled to look into the unknown future and to see themselves as the grandparents of Jacob and Esau, and the great-grandparents of Judah, Joseph and a host of others. By faith, perhaps they could even see themselves as the spiritual ancestors of believers like you and me. When they had no reason for hope, by grace they were given Biblical hope – reason to expect the unreasonable – and they grasped this expectation and hope with their exceptional faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
It may be difficult to picture ourselves as residents of Heaven. We know how sinful we are, and what terrible sins we have committed in the past. We know our sinful potential, and we feel the tug of temptations almost constantly. But to the children of God have been given great and precious promises which include glorified bodies (not unlike what happened to Abraham and Sarah). To us have been promised mansions, and peace, and eternal privilege. Lay aside what you know that you deserve and look at the promise of God in the way that Abraham did. If the promise is yours, then take it by faith; store it in your heart and walk with it for the rest of your earthly life; and serve God in the light of that promise.
Like Abraham, you and I were born in an ungodly place to sinners as evil as ourselves. But then like Abraham, we have been given the privilege of looking into the face of the Lord. By your very presence here, you are being invited to a Promised Land beyond your wildest imaginations. But you aren’t worthy; you don’t have a passport; in fact there is a warrant out for your arrest. For just a moment forget about those things and remember Him who has invited you. Believe on the One who has called you. Fall on your knees admitting your worthless and admire the Lord Jesus Christ – trust Him. Be like Abraham, believe the Lord, and to you that faith will be counted as righteousness.