Enjoy Life, Enjoy God

ABRAHAM

September 19, 2011

Abraham lived several thousand years before Jesus. How could faith in Christ, someone he never knew, put Abraham right with God?

Now to anyone who works, their wages are not credited to them as a gift, but as an obligation. However to anyone who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.
                                               --Romans 4:4,5 TNIV

As Paul's argument unfolds in Romans, he now turns to Abraham. He asks, "So was Abraham put right with God by his works?" No, he answers, because even Genesis 15:6 says, Abraham's faith put him right with God. True, he may not have known the name of the savior, but he looked to God to cover it all. That's justifying faith.

A godly professor of mine said, "It's as if we look back across two thousand years to a cross that saves us, and Abraham looked forward two thousand years to a cross that saved him." It's still all about the faith in God's providence and mercy, never a payment for our services rendered, all a gift.

Joyfully,

Dale Patterson