Walking in the footsteps of Abraham’s faith (Rom. 4:17-21)
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The apostle Paul has now given us the gospel in perhaps the most comprehensive and systematic form that we have in all the NT. He has argued, as we have seen, that the gospel is this: that even though every man and woman and boy and girl on this planet is a sinner and justly under the wrath of God and deserving of eternal and irreversible judgment, yet there is a way of escape. He has told us that this way of escape is not arrived at by trying to shape and create our own righteousness by good works, which is impossible, but that it is received as a gift, by faith, the gift of the righteousness of God, which he provides for us through the redeeming work of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, in his life, death, burial, and resurrection.
Now it is impossible to read Paul’s letter to the Romans, or really any of Paul’s letters, and to fail to see the fundamental importance and necessity of the role of faith in justification. It is frankly hard to understand why there is this belief out there which denies that faith has any role, even instrumental, in receiving the gift of justification. It’s like denying the earth is round. It’s so obvious in the text. When one encounters this position, you want to cry out, like the 17th century Baptist pastor Benjamin Keach, “Brethren, where is it said in the Scripture that any person was justified that believed not, or whilst an unbeliever, or before he believed?” Indeed, where? Well, there are still flat-earthers around and people who refuse to believe we landed on the moon, and so I suppose there will always be people around who for some reason or another are convinced the Bible really doesn’t say what it actually says. Paul clearly says that we are justified by faith, that we are actually put in the category of the righteous before God, not before we believe in Christ, not despite the fact that we believe in Christ, but when we believe in Christ, and that it is through faith in the Lord Jesus that we are accepted into the fellowship and friendship of God.
Yes, it is true that God gives us this faith, and so there is nothing here that threatens the monergistic nature of salvation. We are not pitting faith against unconditional election or efficacious grace in salvation. But neither must we hollow out the Biblical insistence that it is only through faith in the Son of God, Jesus, as Lord and Savior that we are made legally righteous before God.
But if this indeed true, it leads to a very urgent and pressing question, doesn’t it? If faith plays this large sort of role in our salvation, it follows that we must know what then is faith? This is a question we must ask. This is not something that needs to be left up in the air. We need a definition, an example, and a pattern of true Biblical faith.
This is especially important since there are many misperceptions about faith. For example, the common secularist objection to religious faith is a straw man because it redefines religious faith as belief when there is no evidence for it and even in the face of a lot of evidence against it. This of course doesn’t comport with the way Abraham’s faith is described here, but there is at least this one false definition percolating out there. Others say that it doesn’t matter what your faith is in, as long as you have faith. I want to argue that this is not true. Others argue that faith in Christ is saving even if it has no lasting change on the life. Again, not true. But these are all false positions that people take even today about faith in God and Christ, and take them with all seriousness. They may even try to defend them by the Bible. We need to understand why they are wrong. And, more importantly, we need to understand what the Biblical position is.
Thank God that he inspired Paul to write Romans! And you have to love the method of the apostle. Having shown us how important faith in Christ is in chapters 3-4, he now in this last part of Romans 4 goes on to show us what faith looks like, and this is what he does now in 4:17-25. Now Paul doesn’t sit down and write us a long definition of saving faith. I’m not saying that’s not a good thing. Many good pastors and teachers have done this throughout the centuries. But I love what Paul does instead. He illustrates it for us. He doesn’t try to teach us what faith is in a sort of abstract, intangible, philosophical way, but in the flesh and blood and life of the patriarch Abraham. He shows us what true faith looks like and holds it up for us to see and appreciate, so that we too we follow in the footsteps of his faith (4:12). We are the sons and daughters of Abraham, not only if we believe, but if we believe like he believed.
Well then, what does this passage tell us about justifying faith, about saving faith? We will look at two things today, and then two more things next week (Lord-willing).
It tells us about the object of Abraham’s faith.
It should go without saying that Abraham’s faith was in God. But there is something to notice here about the robustness of the theology behind Abraham’s faith. He has thought deeply and long about who God is. So many people have shallow views of God. Their thoughts about God are trivial. This will not sustain faith. Faith, Biblical faith, justifying faith, is faith in a God who is worthy of it! Now that doesn’t mean you have to be a professional theologian to have it. Thank God, when the wise and understanding are cast out of the kingdom, God reveals himself to little children (Mt. 11:25). But even little children can have deep thoughts of God. As the Lord’s prayer teaches us, we are all called to hallow, to sanctify his name. Does your understanding of God allow you to do that?
Well, what about Abraham’s God? I love the description here in verse 17, where we are told that when Abraham received the promise, “I have made thee a father of many nations,” he stood “before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” We could perhaps spend a whole sermon, or series of sermons, on this one verse alone. Think about what it says about God.
Fundamentally, it tells us that God does not share our limitations. To think that God is limited as we are is the essence of idolatry, and it stands back behind all our sins: “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself” (Ps. 50:21). As Paul put it back in chapter 1: sinful men have “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen” (1:25). But God is one who “quickeneth the dead” – who gives life to the dead! Who can do that? I know we hear of doctors who bring people “back from the dead,” in a medical sense, but there is a line across which you cannot pull anyone back from. When Lazarus begins to stink, only Jesus Christ can call him from the dead.
Or think of this description, which is even perhaps more breathtaking: “and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” Here God is seen as one who is not limited by that which is. God can create things, and create things ex nihilo, out of nothing. This is power and intelligence that we cannot even fathom. And by the way, don’t try to compare this with the quantum vacuum! God didn’t even have that when he began to create. Some scientists, like the physicist Lawrence Krauss, like to say that the universe could have come from nothing, and they have this way of trying to imagine how that could have happened in a purely materialistic way. But when they say nothing, they don’t quite mean nothing. Even an atheist has to start with something to imagine a universe coming into being. But God started with nothing – except himself, that is!
Such a God must be self-existent. He must depend upon no one and nothing to exist, to thrive, for his happiness, or for his will to be done. He is independent. He is eternal, having no beginning and no end. He is not defined by time. He is not limited by space, which is his creation. He is omnipresent. He is unchangeable, for he cannot become better than he is, nor can he become worse. He is unchangeable in his essence, in his character, and in his purposes. He is omniscient. He knows the past, present, and the future perfectly. He is omnipotent, in the sense that he can always do everything that he is pleased to do. He is never frustrated in his will. “For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places” (Ps. 135:5-6).
The problem with so much of our unbelief is that it imagines that God is like us. He is not.
But this verse also tells us not only this more general truth that God is not limited like we are, but that in particular he is the God of creation and salvation. He is the God of creation, and surely, as we’ve already pointed out, that is behind this expression that God calls those things which be not as though they were. He calls non-existent things into being, and that is what happened at creation. All that exists is God’s. He created it all. We are his, and we belong to him. We cannot turn anywhere without meeting God’s handiwork, and even the very eyeballs that see it and the ears that hear it and the hands that touch it belong to God. This world may not be our home, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong to God. The devil is only a usurper. We are living in God’s creation, in God’s world, breathing God’s air and living on God’s time. Everything belongs to him.
And then he is the God of salvation. God not only created all things, but he is going to bring about the undoing of sin and death through Jesus Christ. Of course salvation is what the promise is all about. And while bringing into existence that which did not exist points to creation, giving life to the dead, as Paul puts it here in verse 17, is a definite pointer to resurrection and salvation.
Abraham experienced it in various ways himself. Look down in verse 19, where we are told that “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 Sarah's womb.” “His own body now dead . . . the deadness of Sarah’s womb”! Abraham looked at that and realized that God was going to have to give life to the dead in order for God’s promise to come true, and he believed that. And then when he was told to sacrifice the promised one, Isaac, Abraham realized that if this were to take place, God was going to have to raise Isaac from the dead. Here is how the author of Hebrews puts it: “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure” (Heb. 11:17-19). Resurrection!
But surely this points us to Christ ultimately, which is what Paul gets at here at the very end of the chapter: “Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead: Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:23-25). God will raise the dead; he will undo all that sin has undone. And the way we know this is because Jesus Christ is already risen from the dead, the first fruits of all the redeemed. Resurrection is the culmination of salvation. But the point is this: God is not only the God of creation; he is also the God of salvation.
And we must be certain that he entered into the work of salvation with as much eagerness as he did upon the work of creation. We must not imagine that God goes about either work with drudgery. Or that he despises those whom he saves. He delights in those he saves. He delights in those who find rest and resurrection in Jesus Christ. This is not God’s strange work; it is his willing work!
Notice also that there is a completeness to the God of Abraham that is lacking in so many modern formulations. Now I know that Abraham didn’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity, because it hadn’t yet been revealed, but neither is the God of Abraham the unitarian God. Abraham rejoiced to see Christ who existed before Abraham was. The God of Abraham is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And when we come to him, we must come to him as such. There actually is another kind of unitarianism, a unitarianism that only sees Jesus as God and forgets about the Father and the Spirit. But look again how faith is described here: “if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Who is the “him” that raised Jesus from the dead? The Father through the Spirit! Jesus does what he does to bring us to God the Father (1 Pet. 3:18). Beware of this one-dimensional theology that forgets that God is our Father, and that we come to him through priesthood of God the Son in the power of God the Holy Spirit.
Finally, note how powerfully this verse reminds us of the immanence (nearness) of the transcendent (distant) God: Abraham stood “before him whom he believed, even God,” as we are reminded in verse 17. In Genesis 17:1, God tells Abraham, “Walk before me and be thou perfect.” So even though God is holy and incomparably great, and even though he has to humble himself to enter into our world, yet he willingly does so. That is the amazing thing. There was Jacob asleep on his rock in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly God appears to him in a vision at the top of a ladder (there is the transcendence) but a ladder which reaches to earth (there is in the immanence). Of course we know that the God-Man, the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ is that ladder that bridges the gap between heaven and earth (see Jn. 1:51). Here in verse 17 you have what has puzzled so many theologians and philosophers through the centuries: both the transcendence of God and the immanence of God. So many people have no idea how to have both. Some think that the transcendence of God cancels out any hope for his immanence, for union and communion with God. Others so focus on the immanence of God, that his transcendence collapses completely into man’s own religious experience. But the God of the Bible is the God who is both beyond us and with us. He is both. This is the God upon whom Abraham put his faith, and this is the God in whom we are called to believe.
My friend, the point of this is to remind us that faith is meant to rest in God. We can rest in God because of who he is. This is the secret to Abraham’s faith. We are going to see the trial and triumph of his faith, but what sustained him in the trial and brought him to the triumph was not a series of panicky, frantic, exhausting, and Barney Fife-like bursts of effort to help bring God’s promise to pass, but simple reliance upon the God who is not like us and who is not limited by us, and who can bring about every promise of his word for us. We need to learn to live in the confidence that though the seas around us rage, Jesus Christ will not let our ship sink. He will care for us. We too need to learn to stand before this God, to walk before this God, to put our trust in this God, the God who raises the dead and calls those things which be not as though they were.
Second, it tells us about the basis of Abraham’s faith.
It is impossible to read these verses and not see again and again that Abraham’s faith was not based on his own musings, or on his own feelings. It was based on the word of God, and in particular on the basis of the promise of God to him. You see it in verse 17, “As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations.” You see it in verse 18: “according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.” You see it in verse 20: “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief.” You see it in verse 21: “And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.” And this is the way it is throughout all the Bible. What is saving faith? What is justifying faith? It is fundamentally a response to God’s word of promise. This is why I think John Calvin’s definition of faith is on the right track: “Now we shall possess a right definition of faith,” he says, “if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”
Now God still speaks promises to us through the pages of Scripture. For example, Paul writes to the Corinthians, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Cor. 1:20, ESV). All the promises of God, including the ones to Abraham, were ultimately pointing to Christ (cf. Gal. 3:16). Which means, if we belong to Christ, we are partakers of the promise. The promise is not just to Abraham, but to all who like Abraham put their faith in Christ: “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all” (Rom. 4:16). The promise is to us and to our children, even to as many as the Lord our God shall call (Acts 2:39).
How does faith rest upon the truths of the Bible? First of all, it does so by recognizing its divine authority. Abraham believed God as he believed his word. You cannot separate the two. The Bible is from the mouth of God. As Paul put it to Timothy, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God [i.e. God-breathed], and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). We will never take the Scriptures seriously until we take them as the word of God. We will never believe them, tremble before them, obey them until we are convicted that these are more than the words of men, but rather that these words are true words, the very words of God to us. We need to receive them as words without error, without contradiction, and completely authoritative.
Second, we rest upon the divine word by recognizing the reality and relevance of its teaching to our lives. It is possible to read the Bible as if it were always talking to someone else or about someone else. But we must not read it that way. We must learn to read it as addressing us, ourselves. Of course that doesn’t mean we take passages out of context. But it means we learn the meaning of the Scriptures in order to apply it to our own lives. It means that we forsake the sins that the Bible condemns. It means that we repent and believe when the Bible tells us to repent and believe. It means that we embrace the worldview taught by the prophets and the apostles. It means that we embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It means that we embrace the invitation in Scripture to communion with God.
Abraham did this. All throughout this passage, he applies the truths of God’s promise to himself. You see it summed up in verse 20, “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.” The Bible is to be believed; it is to be studied. But at the end of the day, we have to apply it to our lives. To have the Bible and never apply its truths to our lives is like having medicine in the cabinet or food in the pantry and never taking it for ourselves. Brothers and sisters, faith applies the word of God and makes it practical. Let us do so.
By the way, I think one of the most obvious ways we can do this is in prayer. Take the promises of God and pray them back to him. We mentioned Jacob earlier; he is a tremendous example of this. When he was confronted with the news that Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men, and Jacob knew it wasn’t a welcoming party but a war party, he prayed. How did his pray? He prayed God’s promises back to him. “And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude” (Gen. 32:9-12). Did you notice how he bookends his prayer by reminding God what he said? This is what we need to learn to do. Pray the promises of God to him. If you are struggling with a lack of assurance of God’s love, go to him and tell him, “Father, your Son, the eternal Word, told us, ‘All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out’ (Jn. 6:37). Lord, I am coming to Christ to trust in him, and I pray that you would keep your word and never cast me out. Fill my heart with your love for me through the Spirit according to Rom. 5:5.” If you are faced with physical want and necessity, go to the Lord and remind him of his promise that “your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things” (Mt. 6:32). And so on.
Remember, if you are a child of God, his word is not a rod to beat you, but medicine to make you well and happy again. Think about what Scripture says its purpose is for us.
These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. (Jn. 15:11)
These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended [to keep you from falling away]. (Jn. 16:1)
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (Jn. 16:33)
But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (Jn. 20:31)
Do you see the heart of God for you in his word? Could a parent speak more comfortingly, more wisely, more lovingly to their children? He speaks so that we might have joy, peace, faith, and so that we might be kept from falling away. Should we not want to hear him speak? As the hymn puts it:
So what is faith? Faith is believing the promise of salvation in Jesus Christ. It is a firm reliance upon the God of that promise. It believes all that God has to say to us in his word. It is not faith in oneself. It is not confidence in one’s feelings. It is not a leap in the dark. It has as its firm foundation the character of God and the word of God. Abraham was the man of faith. We are called to walk in the footsteps of his faith. We are called to mimic his faith. And like Abraham, God calls us to walk in this world as strangers and pilgrims looking for the city which hath foundations who builder and maker is God. May the Lord make all of us men and women of faith, and make the prayer of the disciples our own: “Lord, increase our faith!”
I want to end this morning with a word especially to the young men among us. Young men have always been looking for causes to fight for, but I think that is especially true in our day. That is a good thing when you are fighting for a good and noble cause. This morning, we have been talking about faith and following in the footsteps of our father Abraham in a life of faith. And young men, here is what I want to say to you. God is calling you to a life of faith in Christ. Not to faith in a political party. Not to faith in your own ability to fix the world. But faith in the God who reveals himself to you in the pages of Scripture, and by that faith to follow him. He may not be calling you to literally leave your homeland and go to a foreign country (though he does call some men and women to do this!), yet he is calling you to take up your cross and follow him. There is no calling, no task, no vocation, no pursuit that is more noble, more right, more just, more good than this. To wear the uniform of Jesus Christ is the very best thing. To own his name and carry his cause into the world is the very best thing. But it is a life of faith. There is a cost to it. It isn’t easy. There is a cross to bear, a hard road to walk, and all who will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But the reward is worth it. One thinks of Peter’s question to the Lord: “Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?” To which our Lord answered: “Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first” (Mt. 19:27-30). Young men, follow Jesus, put your faith in the God who quickens the dead and calls those things which be not as though they were. Don’t follow the foolish imaginations of men, but believe everything that is written in the law and prophets and apostles and bank your life on that. It begins with faith in Christ. You follow that up with commitment to his church and seek to serve the body of Christ in any way that you can. Let us walk in the footsteps of that faith of our father Abraham! Indeed, may God help us all to do so.
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