Memorize: God counts Abraham righteous
Key Verses: 3, 11, 16, 19, 23-24, 25
Abraham becomes the case study in this matter of faith and righteousness. Paul is saying that whatever happened to Abraham in his faith journey is valid for the rest of us. There is a common way that both Jews and non-Jews come to God. It has always been the same way: by faith.
Abraham was told he was righteous before he received any physical sign on his body. The outward sign was not necessary in order for Abraham to be declared righteous. To put it another way, Abraham didn’t have to ‘do’ anything in order for him to be brought into right relationship with God. He simply had to believe and then he obeyed what God had said. Remember, Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac on an altar. This required Abraham to believe that what God had promised would happen through this son would still happen even if he was sacrificed. He believed and made the trip to the altar with his son. With the knife raised in faith, God provided a substitute. Abraham’s faith was intact.
So what powers faith? If we can be brought into proper relationship by faith, how does this work. Doesn’t God demand perfection from us? Grace! God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Jesus is God and came and lived the perfect life as a human. He was killed although He didn’t deserve it. He was buried and rose from death’s grip three days later. God offers us credit for what Jesus did. That is grace. We get what we don’t deserve and then get treated as if we had always obeyed, just like Jesus.
Faith does not ignore facts. Abraham looked his infertility square in the face and still believed what God had promised: a son. It is this act, facing the impossibility of what God had promised and still acting on what He had said, this is faith and it brought Abraham into closer relationship with God.
We enter into this same kind of faith based relationship with God when we trust in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. When we believe these facts, even though they seem impossible, even though we can’t watch them on Youtube, then we are trusting like Abraham trusted. And when that happens we receive grace from God. And when grace enters our life, we want to act differently. Grace changes us from the inside out. When we have faith we make choices based on our new relationship with the Creator of the Universe. We choose to obey rather than disobey, to listen to His still small voice rather than ignore His small whispers. We choose to abandon our sins rather than continuing in them.
The Arnold Journey 