Abraham’s Faith Made Him Right With God

¹What should we say that Abraham, the father of our people, discovered about being right with God?

²Did he become right with God because of something he did? If so, he could brag about that (though he couldn’t brag to God).

³But what does Scripture say? It says, “Abraham believed God, and this faith was counted as being right with God.”

⁴When a person works, their pay isn’t considered a gift. It’s something that’s owed to them.

⁵But if, rather than working, people trust in God who makes ungodly people right with himself, their faith makes them right with God.

⁶King David says the same thing when he tells us how blessed people are when God makes them right with himself. They’re blessed because they don’t have to do anything to make that happen. David says,

⁷“Blessed are those

whose lawless acts are forgiven,

whose sins are taken away.

⁸Blessed are those

whose sins the Lord will never count against them.”

⁹Is this blessing only for those who are circumcised, or is it also for those who aren’t circumcised? We’ve been saying Abraham was considered right with God because of his faith.

¹⁰When did that happen? Was it after Abraham was circumcised, or before? It was before.

¹¹He was circumcised as a sign, as an indication that his faith had already made him right with God before he was circumcised. So Abraham is the father of all who are made right with God by believing, even though they haven’t been circumcised.

¹²And Abraham is also the father of those who are circumcised, but who aren’t just circumcised—they also follow in the steps of our father Abraham, who had faith before he was circumcised.

¹³Abraham and his family received a promise that he would inherit the world, but that wasn’t because he obeyed the law. It was because of his faith, which made him right with God.

¹⁴If people who depended on the law received the promise, then faith would mean nothing and the promise would be worthless,

¹⁵because the law brings God’s anger. But where there is no law, the law can’t be broken.

¹⁶That’s why the promise comes by faith, so that it can be based on God’s grace and be guaranteed to all of Abraham’s children. That means not only those who are his children under the law, but also those who are Abraham’s children because have the same faith that he did. He is the father of us all.

¹⁷As it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations.” The God Abraham believed in considers him to be our father. This is the God who gives life to the dead and creates things that didn’t exist before.

¹⁸Even though there was no reason for hope, Abraham still had hope, and he believed. That was how he became the father of many nations, exactly as God had promised. God had told him, “That is how many children you will have.”

¹⁹Abraham’s faith didn’t become any weaker even when he thought about the fact that he was now too old have children (he was about 100 years old) and that Sarah had never been able to have children.

²⁰No, Abraham kept believing in God’s promise and his faith grew stronger as he gave glory to God.

²¹He was absolutely sure that God had the power to do what he had promised.

²²That’s why “this was considered to make him right with God.”

²³The words “this was considered” weren’t written just for Abraham,

²⁴they were also written for us. We believe in the God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, and God will consider that this makes us right with himself.

²⁵Jesus was handed over to die for our sins, and he was raised to life in order to make us right with God.