This week in the Bible study on Romans, we looked at Romans 4, which talks a lot about Abraham, the ‘father of all who believe’ (Rom 4:11). Here, Paul develops his argument that righteousness is credited to us, as it was to Abraham, through faith rather than through works. Abraham heard and believed God before the law, even before circumcision, and it was that faith in God which is credited to him as righteousness (Rom 4:3). Circumcision, that sign which for the Jews had become the defining mark was, in fact, ‘a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.’ (Rom 4:11) David too knew what it was to be forgiven, to have one’s sins covered, something that happens through the grace of God rather than by observance of the law.
We have so much to learn from Abraham, this man of faith who shows us what it is to obey God in trust even when the outcome is still far from clear. He left his homeland to go to a place he did not know… he heard God’s promise that he would be the father of many nations when it was all but impossible that he would ever even have one child… he learned to wait many years for the promise of God and even then, when Isaac was born, had to face the test of sacrificing the son of promise. The Biblical narrative in Genesis makes it clear that Abraham didn’t always get it right (he lied about Sarah; he succumbed to human reasoning when he slept with Hagar), but here in Romans 4 we read the key to his success:
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” ” (Rom 4:18)
Abraham faced the impossibility of his old age and Sarah’s barrenness, but still held on to the promise of God. “When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do,” we read in the Message version of Romans 4:18.
That is the key to living by faith: deciding to live not on the basis of what we see, but on what God has said He would do. Today (12th February 2011) we remember the fulfilment of one of God’s promise to us as a church, when we finally – after a mere two years, compared to Abraham’s wait that was much longer! – obtained the keys to the building that used to belong to the Methodist Church but which would become Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church. For months and years before that, people had held on to the promise of God for a new building, living not on the basis of what they saw, but living in the hope of God’s faithfulness and power. We have seen God do so much in the past year. Our hearts overflow with thankfulness and gratitude. Yet, as always, we must consciously remember that this is all because of what God has done, rather than because of our own merit or goodness. God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody… That is what He is so good at doing, and we can only receive that favour with thankfulness and awe. It’s all from Him.