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You may know Dr. Dan Black as the highly respected writer and editor of Pathway’s Adult Sunday School materials.

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The Faith of Abraham

In Genesis 15:5-6 we find that Abraham had been in the land of Canaan for about 10 years. All the promises God had made to him were based on a child being born to Abraham and Sarah. Now, he was about 85 years of age, and she was about 75 years of age, and they still did not have a son, so Abraham wondered how the promises of God made to him could be fulfilled. We read in Genesis 15:5 and 6 that, “The Lord brought Abraham outside [it was at night, and He brought him outside of his tent], 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.’” Verse 6 is a key passage for the whole New Testament—it says, “And he [that is, Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He [that is, the Lord] accounted it to him for righteousness.”

Paul cites this passage of Scripture in Romans 4:3, saying that Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And then, in a longer passage in Galatians chapter 3: 6-9, Paul had this to say about what we read in Genesis: “… just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Therefore, know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.”

Abraham was saved in the same way we are saved—he was saved by grace through faith. In his instance, it was faith in God. In our instance, it is faith in God through Christ. But the whole idea, as Paul said in Ephesians 2:8, is “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” We can never make ourselves right with God by doing enough good deeds. We ought to do good deeds—that is God’s will for us, and it should be our desire—but that is not what makes us right with God. What makes us right with God is believing God—believing His Word, believing His promises, believing that, for Christ’s sake, He will save us. This is what justifies us and makes us right with God. And this is what justified Abraham and made him right with God.

The Bible tells that when we come to God, we must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him, and without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). We are made right with God in only one way – God imputes His righteousness to us. He gives us credit for His own righteousness when, as Abraham did, we believe God.