How did Abraham, the “father of our faith,” get such faith?
Therefore it [righteousness] is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all (as it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations”) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” (Romans 4:16-18, brackets mine)1
God called things forth in Abraham’s life which didn’t exist in the natural because he believed.
Abraham and Sarah were one hundred years old and ninety years old, respectively, before they saw God’s promise of having descendants come to fruition. They had no children and the Bible says that their bodies were as good as dead! God had to literally go into their bodies and jump start their reproductive systems! And the next step was that Abraham and Sarah had to believe it and act on it. No stork came and dropped Isaac at the front door of their tent.
When the Lord appeared as an angel to Abraham and told Him that Sarah would have a son, notice Sarah’s response:
And He said, “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.” (Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.) Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” (Genesis 18:10-12)
She didn’t say, “After I have grown old, shall I have a SON?” She said, “Shall I have PLEASURE?” We tend to think that the life of faith is one where we have to give up on everything that means anything to us. “Lay it all down for God! Suffer for Him and He’ll move on your behalf.” But that’s not the message I see from Abraham and Sarah’s story. I see the Lord saying to them, “You two are going to see your dream come true, but it’s going to require that you go back to your honeymoon days and enjoy yourself!”
We don’t need faith when everything is going well. We don’t need grace when we’ve done everything right. Sometimes all the facts oppose the truth. With Abraham and Sarah it was hope against hope, but the Bible says, CONTRARY to hope Abraham did not give up! What is hope? It’s the Greek word “elpis,”2 and it means a joyful, confident expectation of good. Faith is the substance of things hoped for.3 We must have hope, or we have no foundation for our faith.
(from pages 229-231 of Unveiling Jesus)
Want more from Tricia Gunn? Check out excerpts from the Unveiling Jesus 20-part series!
Unveiling Jesus, by Tricia Gunn, is a verse by verse study of the pure gospel of grace. It’s an amazing journey of love, identity, and freedom in Christ.
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1All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version. Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission.
2G1680 (elpis), Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, website: http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/Lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?strongs=G1680&t=KJV, accessed on 6-4-14
3Hebrews 11:1″
