What can we say that Abraham found,
our ancestor according to the flesh?
God decided, chose, and freely elected to make Abraham a blessing to all nations. This was not a blessing that Abraham could achieve through his natural ability or by his work. He and Sarah were too old to even begin to make plans that might resemble the promise of God. Nor was he chosen because he such a good person up to that point that God felt obligated to reward him. It was rather that God decided to offer to bless Abraham and Abraham chose to believe him.
For what does the Scripture say?
Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
Abraham believed God and God gave him righteousness. That is, God empowered him to be able to follow the difficult path he had prepared for him. Abraham was justified by his faith, but not merely by a legal fiction. It was by his belief that he took the steps necessary to receive the blessings promised by God. His was a faith that worked in love (see Galatians 5:6), accompanied and directed by hope. It was not the case that his free will was overridden and that upon his initial faith God took over and did everything for him. Rather, after he had righteousness credited to him, it was then, as it were, in his spiritual bank account. He had to continue to believe it in order to put it to work in love. This is exactly what he did.
A worker’s wage is credited not as a gift, but as something due.
The righteousness that gave Abraham the power to walk as a friend of God (see James 2:23) was not something Abraham earned. It was given before any of his great accomplishments. Even his faith itself did not earn that gift but merely was his acceptance of it. Abraham's faith would continue to be necessary throughout his lifetime walk with God in order to put that righteousness to work in his own life. He did occasionally stray from that path and try to make things work on his own according to his human mode of understanding. See for reference Hagar and Ishmael (see Genesis 16). When his attempts that were based in the flesh left him frustrated he returned to faith. Faith opened him to the blessings of God and it was faith that kept him on the path toward those blessings. As Paul wrote, "the righteousness of God from faith to faith" (see Romans 1:17).
But when one does not work,
yet believes in the one who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is credited as righteousness.
It is the same for us as it was for Abraham. The life to which we are called is something beyond what is naturally possible for man, especially in his fallen condition. We are called to love with God's own love as Jesus first loved us. We can never exercise enough effort to make this happen on our own. We have to trust in the one who, by his gift, makes sanctity possible in us.
do not be afraid of those who kill the body
but after that can do no more.
I shall show you whom to fear.
Be afraid of the one who after killing
has the power to cast into Gehenna;
yes, I tell you, be afraid of that one.
When we learn to live by faith we conquer the fear with which the ruler of this present darkness was able to keep us in bondage (see Hebrews 2:15). We need no longer fear those who can merely kill the body and therefore become free to proclaim the Gospel in the light and from the housetops. In place of servile fear to the things of this world we receive instead the gift of holy fear of God himself. But precisely because this fear of God, by faith, becomes primary in ours hearts, we need fear nothing else. The more we learn to live in his love the more discover that we are "worth more than many sparrows." This fear is not, then, a servile fear, not trembling or terror, but an absolute concern to keep this relationship with God, who loves us beyond all telling, as the most important thing in our lives.
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