Dear Friends in Christ Jesus,
One of the first things ship captains do before casting off is chart their course. Whether they lay it out with pencil and straight edge, or computer, the new chart leads the way to their port of call. In the future, other captains can follow the way he or she has charted out.
The Bible mentions several times the course others have laid out for us that lead us to heaven. Our Savior, Jesus, said, “I am the Way. No one comes to the Father except by me.” [John 14:6] The writer to the Hebrews penned, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” [Hebrews 12:1] The Apostle Paul set forth the example of our spiritual father, Abraham, in this regard. The Holy Spirit has set down Abraham’s story in inspired history, especially the account of Abraham’s faith in God. Abraham’s Faith Charts the Way for Believers. God made a wonderful promise, and Abraham believed it. By sharing Abraham’s faith, we too are God’s heirs.
Abraham was the “forefather according to the flesh” of Paul and all the Jewish believers in Rome. However, that forefather made a discovery of a different kind of father/child relationship. That relationship comes about through the sharing of a common faith in God’s promise of the Savior from sin, death and hell.
Abraham discovered that God declaring us not guilty of our sins by virtue of the holy life and innocent death of his Son is not by works but by faith. Justification is ours by faith and not by obedience to the law. If it were by the law, then it would not be grace.
God had made several promises to Abraham. We heard God give them in our first lesson. They all centered on this promise of the Savior of the world, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” God made a wonderful promise to Abraham, and Abraham believed it. Paul quoted Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness.”
God credited Abraham’s faith as righteousness because through it, our spiritual ancestor held in his heart the perfect holiness and sacrifice the Son of God would make after he also became the Son of Man. Abraham would not see that day with his eyes, but he saw it already completed in his heart because God said so.
This was the way of salvation God had charted for him. Abraham was a good man. People considered him righteous under the law. But not God. Abraham had nothing to boast about before God because he knew works cannot save us because we are not perfect. Paul compared works and faith. “Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.”
The obligation that comes with works when a man tries to have salvation through them is death. Those who trusted in observing the Mosaic Law, and especially circumcision had no righteousness. Those today who trust in their own works have no righteousness. The gift God gives to those who trust in Christ is his righteousness that saves.
The one who trusts in that promise like Abraham receives the benefits of Christ’s righteousness. Abraham’s faith charts the way for believers. Abraham shows us that God does not give me salvation through the obligation of my own righteousness, which is a miserable failure. God gives me salvation through the gift of Christ’s righteousness that is mine by Spirit worked faith.
How then is Abraham our father and we his heirs? It is by sharing Abraham’s faith.
Both Semitic and Arabic people claim Abraham as their forefather. That is true according to blood. However, with exceptions, those people deny that Jesus is God and the Savior from sin. Paul makes it clear that the true children of Abraham are those who share his faith in God’s promise of Christ. By sharing Abraham’s faith, we too are God’s heirs.
God made Abraham “the father of many nations.” Paul quoted Moses’ words in Genesis 17. The many nations are believers from all the continents of the earth. God has blessed all nations in Christ. God has declared the entire race of humanity not guilty of sin. The Holy Spirit calls sinners out of unbelief into Abraham’s faith in all those nations.
Paul described Abraham’s heirs as believers who are of the law, Jews, and those who are of the faith of Abraham but not his blood, Gentiles. There is no special nationality, no special obedience like circumcision, no correct church membership God requires for righteousness, or inheritance of the blessings God gave Abraham.
Those who believe God’s promise of righteousness in Christ as Abraham did are the children of Abraham and heirs of those blessings. Paul puts it simply, “He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.”
The promise of Christ’s righteousness that is ours through faith gives us who were dead in our trespasses and sins new life. Think of the valley of the dry bones in Ezekiel’s’ prophecy. Think of the new life God gave Abraham and Sarah for childbearing so she could give birth to Isaac. Think of the new life God gave to you and to me so that now we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.”
I always think of adoption when I read these words. Parents call children not born to them, my children. Children call parents who did not conceive them, my parents. Adoption calls things that are not as though they were. God calls us who are not righteousness by nature righteous. God calls Abraham who is not our father by blood “the father of us all” because Abraham’s faith charts the way for us believers.
God has guaranteed to us, Abraham’s offspring, the promise of Christ that comes to us not as an obligation of our works, but as a gift of his grace that is ours through faith,. Our father Abraham charted our course and now waits for us to follow that course into heaven. There he waits with arms opened wide to welcome his children to the port of God’s call. Amen. <SDG>