Abraham's Tests of
Faith; Cause or Result of Justification. Romans 4:13-25, Genesis 15:6, Psalm 32:1-2
Romans 4 is the
chapter where Paul gives two examples from the Old Testament that support what
he has been saying since the middle of chapter two. Man cannot justify himself; it is impossible. He cannot do it by being moral or by being
obedient to the Law. Within Judaism at
this time, the focus was on circumcision as the indicator of one’s
spirituality. If you are Jewish and
circumcised, you were in. Yet Paul
argues against that in chapter three, showing that that is not enough. He explains it in terms of the doctrine in
chapter three, and then in chapter four, he gives two illustrations. We have looked at both the illustration of
Abraham and of David.
Paul quotes from Genesis
15:4-6 and says in Romans 4:2-3 “If Abraham was justified by works,
he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham
believed God, and it was accounted [reckoned] to him for righteousness.’ ” In
Genesis 15:4, the blessing that God has promised to Abraham (promise of
descendants more numerable than the stars in the sky) would not come through Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, but through Abraham
himself. “This one shall not be your
heir, but one will come from your own body shall be your heir. Then He brought him outside and said, ‘Look now
toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your
descendants be.’ ”
This is a promise
but not the promise that Abraham exercises faith on in verse six. “And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted
it to him for righteousness.” It should
actually be translated “And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it,
righteousness, to him.” The key word is
the word for believe, amen, which
means to trust in God, complete reliance on God, bringing in nuances of stability
and certainty. Almost every time this
word is used, someone is responding to something that someone else, usually
God, is saying, as opposed to the other primary word for faith, batach, which is
usually used to describe when someone is trusting God. Amen is used when someone is responding to a promise or statement
by God and believing Him at that point.
Genesis 15:7 is a
paragraph break. “Then He said to him, ‘I
am the Lord, who brought you out of
What I want to
look at tonight is another question. Are
Abraham’s tests of faith the cause or the result of justification? The doctrine of justification by faith alone
is a doctrine that was lost or obscured for much of the history of
Christianity. By the end of the 3rd
or 4th century at the latest, the doctrine of justification by faith
alone began to be obscured by the introduction of sacramentalism
within what later became known as Roman Catholic theology. The idea that by doing
things, by participating in these various sacraments, Christians gained grace
from God. That did not become
really established in a doctrinal sense until well into the Middle
Ages. The idea of the doctrine that we
are justified by simply believing God and nothing else – do not have to reform
our life, become moral, become spiritual in order to be justified by God – has always
been under attack.
Grace is never
understood. Human beings just do not
want to believe that God is going to give them something for free. Throughout most of the Middle
Ages, the Roman Catholic Church taught that justification was not something that
happened once in a moment of time when a person trusted in Jesus as Savior, but
it was something that happened over a long period of the individual’s
life. You never knew really knew if you
were justified because you did not know if you had received enough grace. You receive grace by participating in the
Mass and various other sacraments. Each
time you did, you got a little more grace.
It is doled out to you a little bit at a time and was a process. You only knew if somebody was justified and
on the right path by looking at their works, at how moral or good or religious
they were. We often hear how that even
gets into the vocabulary of people who are grace oriented because you often
catch yourself looking at someone and
saying, “I just do not how they could be saved.” Why?
Because they do not live like they are saved, we think how could that person be saved.
But we do not know. That person
could have trusted Christ by hearing the gospel as a child in a Good News Club
or
I have personal
acquaintances and friends who clearly understood the gospel and were saved when
they were teenagers, but when they went to college, they got confused and gave
up on Christianity altogether. Today you
would not know by what they say, believe, teach or how they live, that they
ever had a clue what Christianity was all about.
This idea that we are
justified totally apart from works was recovered during the Protestant
Reformation. The first person to recover
that was a theologian by the name of Martin Luther. In his Commentary on Galatians, Luther wrote,
“It is necessary that we should have imputation of righteousness which we
obtain through Christ….by faith.” That
is the benchmark of the Protestant Reformation.
Luther clearly came to understand that.
He did not really have it totally focused on
Luther went on to
say that “[the] doctrine of justification is this, that
we are pronounced righteous and are saved solely by faith in Christ, and
without works.” Remember this is exactly
what I have been teaching – justification is that we are declared righteous by
the Supreme Court of heaven. It has
nothing to do with anything that we do; it has nothing to do with our character
or sincerity. It has only to do with the
fact that we possess the righteousness of Christ. At the instant of faith alone in Christ
alone, God the Father imputes or credits to each of us the righteousness of
Christ, so that when God the Father looks at us, He sees not our sin because
that is covered, as it were, by the cloak of Christ’s righteousness. Underneath it we are still the dirty rotten
lousy sinner that we always were. We are
declared righteous – it is a judicial declaration.
Luther understood
it and so did John Calvin. Calvin later
on was pressured, as others were, during the Reformation by the response of the
Roman Catholic Church and the Counter-Reformation: “If you are saved by grace, there is no
reason for you to be moral. What is to
restrain all the peasants from being immoral and rebellious? You have to have some emphasis on works.” They brought in this idea that while you are
saved by faith alone, the faith that saves is never alone. By that they meant if you have true, genuine
saving faith, then it will not be alone – it will necessarily produce good
works. They would distort the statement
by Jesus in Matthew
I have gone over
the details where the Bible never qualifies the word faith. It never says you have to have genuine faith,
true faith, real faith, sincere faith, or any other kind of faith. It is only faith in Christ, only believe in
Jesus. It does not say sincerely
believe, truly believe, strongly believe, consistently believe. It is just believe, and that is all that is
necessary.
It was not long
before even among the reformers the doctrine of justification by faith got
muddled. I am going to give you three
examples from different confessions of faith.
That is what they called doctrinal statements back then. The first comes from the next century, the
middle of the 17th century, from the Westminster Confession of
Faith, which is the standard doctrinal statement for Presbyterian
churches. If you are Presbyterian - not
modern, neo-orthodox, quasi-liberal - and trying to be biblical, your standard
is the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) which states, “Those whom God
effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth….by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of
Christ.” This is a test. Is that right or wrong? It is Christ’s righteousness that is imputed,
not His obedience, not His satisfaction – that is propitiation, which is Godward. Christ
satisfied the righteousness of God on the cross. It is not His righteousness that is imputed
to us. Why? 1 John 2:2 “And He Himself is the
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world
[unbelievers].” Westminster Confession
of Faith was written by Presbyterians in
Then we have the
Heidelberg Catechism (1563) from the German reform, Calvinistic area in the
western part of
Then there is The
Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord.
This is the ultimate Lutheran confession of faith. It had two parts, and the longest part was
the Solid Declaration (1577). “The word justify here means to declare righteous and free from
sins, and to absolve one from eternal punishment for the sake of Christ’s
righteousness which is imputed by God to faith.” Still a little fuzzy. Justify does not mean that we are free from
sin; we are still a sinner. The language
has changed since then. They might have
meant something a little different, but they get the idea right – to declare
righteous. That is the key. Not free from sin – that is forgiveness. Forgiveness has to do with the removal of
sin, and justification is based on imputation which is the addition of positive
righteousness. Forgiveness is not part
of justification. It is important, but
justification has to do with receiving the positive righteousness that is the
basis for the declaration of our justification.
Now the doctrine
of justification is still under attack.
The recent twist on this attack has come from a well-known, well-educated,
erudite, articulate Anglican bishop by the name of N.T. Wright. There are people in this congregation who
have friends and relatives who go to some doctrinal churches where the pastors
have been seduced by the error and heresy of N.T. Wright. We have to be prepared to understand what it
is that he is teaching. He is a preterist, which means that he believes that all the
prophecy in the New Testament, except for Revelation 20-22, was fulfilled in AD
70 when Jesus returned in the clouds of judgment. So we are in the millennium. I’m in the ghetto of the millennium, I
guess. It obliterates the distinction
between
He also has an
obscure view of justification which obliterates the legal, forensic doctrine
from Luther and substitutes works in its place.
In one of his articles he wrote in a symposium called Justification in
Perspective, he said, “[Justification is] on the basis of the entire life a
person has led in the power of the Spirit – that is, it occurs on the basis of
‘works,’ in Paul’s redefined sense.” He
plays this fast and loose game – the old shell game of “where is the pea?” The guy has it in his back pocket. He redefines a lot of terms. When Paul says we are not justified by the
works of the Law, he is talking about the entirety of the Mosaic Law and trying
to gain God’s approval by being obedient to the Law. Whereas N.T. Wright and those influenced by
him (called the New Perspectives on Paul) believe when Paul said “works of the
Law,” he really meant the ritual of the Law, not the whole Law, not the
morality of the Law. So Jews can be
saved by being moral.
He continues,
“And….it occurs in the present, as an anticipation of that future verdict.” The
verdict of justification does not come until after our life is long gone. “Justification is not ‘how someone becomes a
Christian.’ It is God’s declaration
about the person who has just become a Christian.” You become a Christian by works. Sounds awfully Roman
Catholic. He has taken lordship
salvation to the next step. Guess who is
doing the most work to refute this guy? The lordship salvation people. But he has turned the gospel upside down, and
so people are dreadfully confused about the gospel.
In Romans 4:10,
Paul said, in reference to the imputation of Abraham’s righteousness, “How then
was it accounted [imputed]? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised?” When did this occur in Abraham’s life? The Jewish contention is that if you are
circumcised according to the Law, then you are in. That is the key. But what about Abraham - was he circumcised
or uncircumcised when he was justified?
He makes it clear that it was not while he was circumcised but while he
was uncircumcised. Paul then goes on to
say in verse 11, he received the sign of circumcision which was not the sign of
the Mosaic Law but was the sign of the Abrahamic
Covenant. Every covenant has a sign. The Noahic Covenant
has the sign of the rainbow; the Abrahamic Covenant
has the sign of circumcision; the Mosaic Covenant has the sign of the
Sabbath. Paul says, “And he received the
sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had
while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe
[Jews and Gentiles; not believe and are circumcised, not believe and follow the
Law], though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to
them also.”
Everyone has the
opportunity to receive this gift of imputation of righteousness. In verse 12, “And the father of circumcision
to those who not only are of the circumcision [Jews], but who also walk in the
steps of the faith which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised.”
I want to review
this for you because this is important.
Here Paul talks about the steps of faith which Abraham had while still
uncircumcised. The steps
of faith indicates a process, but there is a point where those steps begin. The action of Genesis 15:6 references the
first action when Abraham believed God, and at that time, it was accounted or
imputed to him as righteousness. As a
result of that, Abraham is regenerated and then begins to grow through various
tests of faith. This is what James is
referring to in James 1:2-4 that we are to count it all joy when we encounter
various tests because we know that the testing of our faith produces endurance,
and endurance will have its maturing result.
We need to
understand what this concept of steps of faith refers to with Abraham. Genesis 12 is the very beginning of the story
of Abraham. This is so important to
understand and to think our way through Abraham’s life. When I taught through Genesis several years
ago, I identified 14 tests that Abraham went through. Not long ago, I was reading a Jewish
commentary (an anthology of various Jewish rabbinical writings and studies on
Genesis), and rabbis came up with 10 tests.
I think there were 14 because they are all related to specific
commandments related to promises that God had for Abraham. The issue for him was whether he was going to
trust and obey God or not.
Genesis 15:6
establishes the fact that at that event in the past (that perfect tense verb
that refers to an event that has been completed in the past with ongoing
results) sometime before he left his native Ur of the Chaldees,
he believed God, and God in a moment in time imputed to him righteousness and
declared him justified. Because he is
already justified and is a growing, maturing believer, God then began to test
Abraham in some special ways.
The first test we
know of occurs in Genesis 12:1. God says
to Abraham, “Get out of your country.
Leave everything behind.” Is
Abraham going to be able to trust God and leave everything behind – all his
family, his relatives, everything that is familiar – and get out of his comfort
zone and take off to where God is going to lead him, not knowing where that is
going to be? God gives with this command
a promise. He will take him to a land
that He will show him (1st part of the promise), will make him a
great nation and bless him (2nd part is descendants). The key word that Moses uses all the way
through Genesis is “seed.” The seed of
the woman will crush the seed of the serpent.
All the genealogies trace the seed line, and it ends with Jesus, as we
will see.
The 1st
test is “get out, leave, go, depart.” Then he gives him the promise of the Abrahamic Covenant – the promise of the land, the promise
of the descendants or seed, and the promise of blessing. They all become developed later on in
additional covenants – the Land Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, and the New
Covenant. What is important here is to
focus on these first two – the land and the seed promise. The blessing promise plays a big part of this
too, but the primary foundation is God says, “I am giving you this land, and I
am giving you seed from your own loins.
Are you really going to believe me?”
Abraham is already saved, already justified. This has to do with his spiritual growth.
So the question I
asked initially is, is justification the cause or the result of these tests of
faith? It is the cause. First we are justified, and then God begins
to work in our life to mature us and to test us.
So the first test for
Abraham was to get out. And then there
is a reiteration of the promise in Gen. 12:7.
The Lord appeared to Abram again.
This time Abram has left home, gone up to
But with the
promise comes a test, and the test is the famine test which comes in Genesis
On this famine
test he fails miserably. Instead of
trusting God to sustain him in the land, he goes down to
In Genesis 13 we
have a 3rd test. The 3rd
test is a test of personal conflict – a people test. There is a test of grace orientation. Now Abram is back in the land and is with
We have the 4th
test which is a test of trusting God for protection and to fulfill his
responsibilities as the kings of the East come in and attack. We have the kings of Shiner, Ellasar, and
Then comes the 5th test. It has to do with how is he going to handle
this prosperity? Now that he has won, is
he just going to sit back with all the great booty that he has? He had become much wealthier and had all
these people and could have a lot of slaves.
But instead of focusing on himself, he focuses
on God and shows grace and gratitude – gracious towards those he has rescued
and does not keep all the booty for himself but gives 10% to the Lord as an
offering of gratitude through Melchizedek, who is the king-priest of
He has passed 3 ½
and blown 1 ½ tests. In Genesis 15 we
get the 6th test, which comes as a result of command in verse 1 “Do
not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield,
your exceedingly great reward.” Reward,
remember, has to do with inheritance, so he is talking not about salvation
which is a free gift but a reward for service.
There is a difference between those two.
Genesis 15:1 is the context of the promise in Genesis 15:6. Abraham says, “Are you going to do this
through Eliezer, my servant?” And God says, “No, I am going to do it
through your own loins. He will be a
descendant from your own body.” The 6th
test is “do not be afraid,” and Abraham is going to trust God. He has already trusted God in the past, the
basis for justification, and he will continue to trust God. God is going to grant him a covenant.
In Genesis 15:8,
Abraham says, “Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?” Notice I said at the beginning, God says, “I
am your great reward.” The terminology
shifts in verse 7 where the Lord says, “…to give you this land to inherit
it.” Once again we are back to the land
promise. The other promises had to do
with protecting the seed, and now it is the land. They go back and forth between these two
major parts of the Abrahamic Covenant. Abraham says, “….how shall I know that I will
inherit it?” And God does not say, “You
stupid idiot, you asked a question. Sit
down and shut up and listen to Bible class.”
It does not say that. He gives
him an answer.
God makes a
covenant with him – a one-sided contract, a unilateral covenant. So the animals are laid out, which is a
standard procedure for this kind of serious covenant. They are sacrificed, split in half. God tells Abram that He is going to bless
him, but his descendants are going to be out of the land for awhile, the land
God promised them. He will bring them
back eventually, and when they come back, God will bless them. While He goes through the covenant ceremony,
He has Abraham fall asleep. Normally the
two covenant partners walk through together.
If you have ever bought a house, you go to the mortgage company, and
they give you a stack of contracts where you have to sign your name 347 times.
In that day, the
two covenant partners walk between the halves of the sacrifices. That is equal to a signature. But God caused Abraham to fall asleep, and
God walked through it because it is unilateral.
God is going to guarantee the covenant.
It is not conditioned upon Abraham; it is conditioned solely on God.
In Genesis
Genesis 16 gives
us the next test which is the 7th test, and it is the power of God
test. Can God really bring life where
there is death.
Abraham is an old man, and it is still not time to have the son. He is about 86 years old at this time, and he
is infertile. So is Sarah; she is too
old. The issue is not just are they
going to be able to procreate but are they going to be fertile and have
children. Is God more powerful? The point I am making is when we have a
problem, do we really believe that God is more powerful than our human
solutions. No matter what the human
solution may be. We have great
technology, we have great wealth, and we have great material gain. We have many different skills today that we
have honed with great sophistication.
But do we really believe that God, and God alone, is enough?
That is the issue
with Abraham. Is God going to be able to
do all that He needs to do to change and renew Abraham and Sarah’s sexual organs. I heard an
ob-gyn talk about everything that God needed to do so that Sarah would be able
to have a baby again. He had to change
the uterus and do all kinds of things.
It is amazing all the different things that had to be renovated in both
of them just so they could have a child again.
So God has made this promise, but they get impatient with God. (I know none of you get impatient with
God.) So Sarah comes up with Plan B
which is Hagar. We are still suffering
from the consequences of Plan B because she did get pregnant and had a son
named Ishmael. Abraham obviously failed
that test.
The 8th
test comes in Genesis 17. “God, you want
me to cut off what!?” It is the test of
circumcision. For somebody who is 99
years of age, this would be a test.
“Lord, I am sort of attached to all my body parts. I do not care how useful they are or
not.” God said, “This is the sign of the
covenant.” And so God reiterates all of
the promises again and reminds Abraham of the covenant. He gives Abraham and Sarah new names. He restates the promises of numerous
descendants and the land. Then comes this test. Are
you really going to trust me and have a little self surgery here? Ladies, talk to your husbands about
that. It is a test.
Some people think
trusting God is folding your hands and just waiting on God passively. This is a great example that trusting God not
only means to believe what God says is true, but it entails doing
something. What it entails doing may not
be what we want to do. It may not be
something that is going to make us feel better.
It may not be something that will make us happier. It may be something that is painful,
difficult, and goes against our whole nature.
But we are going to trust God and do what God says to do. There is a passive side to faith which is trusting God alone and an active side which is we are going
to do what God says to do because God is faithful. That is what is happening in all these
tests. Abraham is learning that God made
a promise, and the more impossible it seems that that promise can be fulfilled,
the more Abraham has to learn about trusting God. He realizes that God really can do what He
says He will do, and he can trust him no matter what his experience tells
him. When you are 99 years old, I would
assume your experience tells you, you are not going to have any babies.
In Genesis
Then we have the
10th test. Is Abraham just
going to fold his hands and trust God when he finds out what God is getting
ready to do (as we say in Texas, fixin’ to do)? Is Abraham just going to say, “Well, it is
God’s will.” Or
is he going to be gracious and show love and concern for
As he is doing
this, he makes a very important point at the end of verse 25 “…Shall not the Judge of all the earth
be right?” He recognizes God is just,
and what God is going to do is going to be the right thing. He may not understand all the data that goes
into God’s decision or what God is doing.
We look at a situation like this from human viewpoint. God goes in and completely annihilates all the
inhabitants of
Abraham
understands that this is justice.
Because God is just and righteous, He will do the right thing at the
right time. We may not always understand
all the things that go into that, but we can always rely on the fact that God
is just and is faithful. That is what
Abraham is learning.
The 10th
test is to test Abraham’s concern for his enemies, which would be
In Genesis 21,
Sarah conceives and gives birth to Isaac.
Then there is another test.
Abraham, like a good daddy, wants to keep all the children in the house,
but Sarah and God both understand that Hagar and Ishmael have to go. God tells Abraham in verse 12 that he needs
to let them go because the seed promise goes through Isaac, not Ishmael. Abraham obeys God and out go Hagar and
Ishmael. This is the 12th test.
The 13th
test is another people test that is a conflict between Abraham’s servants and Abimelech over water rights and wells. He deals with Abimelech
in grace. Remember part of what he was
supposed to do was to be a blessing to all.
So he is going to be a blessing to Abimelech. He passes this test.
His final test
comes in Genesis 22 when God tells him to take his only son – the seed, the one
he waited for for so long – to
Genesis 22:12 “And
He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I
know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son,
from Me.’ ” In this passage, fearing God
often comes very close to being a synonym for trusting God. It adds an element of respect and awe that is
part of it, but also a major part of the meaning of fearing God is trusting Him.
Verse 13 “Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him
was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns.
So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering
instead of his son.” It is a substitutionary sacrifice.
This is the
picture of what happens with Jesus Christ at the cross. He dies like that ram
on our behalf so that His righteousness can be given to us. He takes upon Himself our sin and pays the
penalty for Adam’s original sin and for all personal sins,
so that with the penalty paid, His righteousness is free to be imputed to
anyone who believes in Jesus Christ.
Romans
I want to close by
looking at a parallel passage in Galatians.
Galatians was written before Romans and was the “Romans” in Paul’s early
thought. In Galatians 3:13, Paul starts
off talking about the redemption, the objective payment of the price at the
cross. “Christ redeemed us from the
curse of the law, having become a curse for us [substitutionary
aspect] (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’) that [for the purpose; He died on the cross on or near
Galatians
Verse 16-17 “Now to Abraham
and his Seed were the promises made; He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of
many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ. And this I say, that the law, which was four
hundred and thirty years later, …” [Inspiration extends down to singulars and
plurals.] The Law is 430 years after
Abraham is justified. His justification
did not have anything to do with his circumcision, which was at least 15 years
later after the statement was made in Genesis. 15:6 and at least 30 years later
in terms in the actual difference between the time he was initially justified
and the time he was circumcised. Here
Paul says it was 430 years from Abraham to the giving of the Law. So Abraham is not justified by either
circumcision or by the Law; therefore, it has to be on some other basis. It is faith.
He says in verse
17-18 “…the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul
the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make
the promise of no effect. For if the
inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to
Abraham by promise.”
This sets us up
for what Paul says in Romans 4:13 “For the promise that he would be the heir of
the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the
righteousness of faith.”