Tuesday, Feb. 26

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Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness - Genesis 15:6

Paul refers to this verse in Romans 4:3. He reminds us that Abraham believed God before he was circumcised (before the covenant), that is before he had any continual guarantee that God would do what He said. Paul infers from this that acceptance before God has nothing to do with circumcision (or external symbols), as the Jews were insisting.  Paul says that when Abraham heard God say, “So shall your descendants be,” that he looked up into the stars and saw their vastness and their multitude and relaxed—resting in faith upon the power of God.

If we focus our view on Abraham's faith, we are going to miss the point of this whole matter.  You know sometimes I think we make far too much of these heroes of old and their faith.  “What mighty men of God,”  and of course, in one sense they were.  We say, “How amazing they were to believe God against all the evidence of the circumstances around.  If we only had faith like that, we could do the things they did!”  Then we compare our feeble faith with theirs and try to work up a feeling of faith within us until we are turned into spiritual hypochondriacs, always going about taking our spiritual temperature and feeling our spiritual pulse. 

It is indeed true that when God saw Abraham's faith, it was credited to him as righteousness; but the point is that when Abraham saw God, he credited Him able to do what He had promised, so he was able to rest his faith on God's ability and not on his own faith!

What was it that made Abraham's faith so strong?  The answer is that he did not look at the difficulty so much as he looked at the One who had promised.  His eye was not resting on the problems, but upon the Promiser.  When he saw the greatness of God, the might and majesty displayed before him on that summer's night, he said to himself, “It makes no difference how I feel or what difficulties may be involved.  The Creator of that multitude of stars is quite capable of giving me an equal number of descendants.”

So we read the great sentence, “He believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”  Keep in mind that the concept of righteousness in the Bible has to do with our relational status, our being “right with” God.  This does not mean that this was the first moment that Abraham was reckoned righteous before God—that is, this is not the moment of his spiritual regeneration.  The book of Hebrews makes clear that when he left Ur of the Chaldeans, in response to God's command, his obedient faith was also credited to him for righteousness.  This incident under the stars is simply one instance out of many that illustrates the way in which God credits righteousness to the person who believes.  Abraham believed God about the promise of a son who would come in the future and was reckoned righteous by faith.

Today we are called to believe God about the Son who has already come, and when we cease our own works and rest in helpless dependence upon that living Son, we too are counted righteous by faith.  

This act of faith that first introduces us to the power of God exercised on our behalf must become an attitude of faith governing each moment of our life.

Father, teach me the folly of self-dependence and the glory of God-dependence. In every moment of fear, lead me to cast myself upon You, reckoning upon Your promise to be my shield and reward  - Amen.

Jeff Frazier