Justification by Faith Going Back to Abraham

¹What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has discovered?

²For if Abraham was justified by works, then he has something to boast about, but not before God.

³For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.”[#Genesis 15:6]

⁴Now to the one who works, the payout is not credited as a gracious gift, but as something owed.

⁵But to the one who does not work, but believes in ʜɪᴍ who justifies the ungodly, that person’s faith is credited as righteousness.

⁶David also speaks of the blessing on the human to whom God credits righteousness separately from works:

⁷“Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven,

whose sins are covered.

⁸Blessed is the one whom the Lord [YHWH] will never credit with sin.”[#Psalm 32:1-2]

⁹Is this blessing only for the circumcised, or for the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.

¹⁰How then was it credited? When he was circumcised or uncircumcised? It wasn’t when he was circumcised, but when he was uncircumcised.

¹¹He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness from the faith he had while still uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all those who believe while uncircumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them too.

¹²He is also the father of the circumcised, those who not only are circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of faith of our father Abraham before he was circumcised.

¹³For the promise to Abraham and to his offspring that he would be heir of the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.

¹⁴For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made empty, and the promise is annulled.

¹⁵For the law produces wrath, but where there is no law, there is no disobedience.

¹⁶The reason it is by faith, is so that it may be according to grace, in order that the promise may be guaranteed to all the offspring, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of Abraham’s faith. He is the father of us all.

¹⁷As it is written, “I have made you a father of many ethnic groups.” This is in the presence of the one in whom he believed: God, who gives life to the dead and summons into being things that do not yet exist.[#Genesis 17:5]

¹⁸Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed, so that he might become a father of many ethnic groups, according to that which had been spoken, “So will your offspring be.”[#Genesis 15:5]

¹⁹Without being weakened in faith, he considered his own body as dead (because he was a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.

²⁰Yet, looking to the promise of God, he didn’t waver through unbelief, but was strengthened through faith, giving glory to God,

²¹and being fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to perform.

²²Therefore it was also “credited to him as righteousness.”[#Genesis 15:6]

²³Now “it was credited to him” was not written for his sake alone,

²⁴but also for us, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in ʜɪᴍ who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,

²⁵who was delivered up for our transgressions and was raised for our justification.