The Father of Faith

Introduction

A great mystery of our faith is that God is glorified most simply by casting our gaze upon him. As sinners in desperate need, we have a mediator who has done everything necessary to deal with our sin, above all dying on a bloody cross for us. What great work do we need to do? What act of righteousness do we need to perform? Nothing. All we need is a heart that believes God. Repentance is truly of this nature, to turn from where we are looking to look at our creator and say: I trust you to save me by your means. I give myself over to you knowing that you have promised mercy to me if I but come in faith and respond with belief.

Father of the Circumcised and the Uncircumcised

Last week Abraham was introduced as one who did not earn their salvation as a wage, but believed God and, as a sinner, was justified as Psalm 32 describes.

The Question: Is this blessing of grace from God applied only to the circumcised (those under the Mosaic covenant)?

The Answer: No.

Abraham himself received the promises while uncircumcised.

The purpose of this was so the he would not merely be the Father of a nation, but the Father of many nations. That is, he would not merely be the father of the Israelite nation who would be the ones under the Mosaic covenant and the covenant of circumcision, but the Father of all who believed God and have it counted to them as righteousness.

Abraham was the father of many nations, including the nations that spawned from Ishmael and the sons of Katurah, Abraham’s third wife.

Paul spiritualizes this. It is not that he would physically father children who would go on to establish their own national identity among their offspring, but that many nations, including those uncircumcised, would be born into the same faith that Abraham had.

The next implied question: what is the purpose of circumcision? If Abraham was going to be a spiritual father of many nations, and those nations did not need circumcision to have the blessings of faith, what is the benefit of circumcision (see 3:1).

The Answer: circumcision was a sign and seal.

A sign. Circumcision itself is just a physical act that has no intrinsic spiritual bearing. However, it was a physical representation of God marking his people visibly. It was a way of saying that they were a nation of priests, which itself points to other nations coming to know God through the practice of these priests. It represented being cut off from the world and not taking it was a sign of being cut off from God. Either you are cut off from the world and made holy for the purposes of God, or you are cut off from God.

A seal. Paul says that the act of circumcision was a seal of the righteousness he had by faith while uncircumcised. In other words, circumcision was an outward expression of an inward reality. Abraham was already in covenant with God, had already received God’s promises and believed them, and was already declared righteous by his faith. This does not mean it wasn’t important: failing to take this sign for Abraham would have been tantamount to not believing God and rebelling against him. Like a married person who refuses to wear their wedding ring in public, the lack of this sign was a lack of submitting to the outward expression of holiness that he was called to in faith.

Why, then, does this not apply to gentile believers in Paul’s time? Because circumcision would mean joining the Jewish nation, and thus making it necessary to come to faith through circumcision rather than being justified by faith as they are, which is what Paul is for. In the New Covenant, the shadow of circumcision has passed and the reality of faith has replaced it. In Christ, justification is not only for those under the sign and seal of the old covenant, but for all. The sign is no longer necessary because the fulfillment has arrived.

Signs continue to be useful. The sign of baptism remains a NT seal for the believer. It is different from circumcision, which bound you to a law that does not justify. Instead, Baptism is a sign of what has already happened in a believers life, which was the original intention, Paul says, of circumcision. Baptism, rather than initiating you into covenant with God, is an expression of what God has done and is doing in the life of a believer. At baptism, the true circumcision has already taken place: a circumcision “made without hands” (Col 2:11) and so we are already sealed, and baptism remains a sign of what is currently but not fully manifest. That is, the death of the flesh with Christ in victory and the resurrection life we will experience at his coming.

So Paul concludes this thought on circumcision by saying that the sign of circumcision outwardly sealed him in the faith he was already justified by. His righteousness apart from circumcision means righteousness apart from the law, making him the father in faith of the uncircumcised as well as the circumcised who “walk in the footsteps of the faith” that Abraham had. It was faith that justified him, and that faith makes him and all who believe God righteous.

It is faith in Christ, not a Jewish identity signified by circumcision, that makes someone part of the Church.

Michael S. Heiser

Promise

Connected to faith and circumcision is the promises God made to Abraham. After all, it was faith in these promises that justified Abraham in God’s sight.

Paul continues to argue that it is faith alone that justifies, and that this applies through the promise that Abraham’s offspring would inherit the world.

What’s interesting is that God never promised Abraham the whole world in the text, but Paul makes this implication through the widening of God’s promises, just as Sarah is told to widen her tents in Isaiah 54.

If it were adherents of the law, merely the circumcised, that receive the promise, Paul tells us that this would make faith void. That is because the righteousness that Abraham received while uncircumcised would then not be true justification. The argument Paul makes is that if we are not justified by faith, neither was Abraham, which is obviously contrary to the text.

Besides this, it was already established that the law only brings wrath (vs 15). If the law has any word in justification, it would cancel it because it remains a witness of sin. But “where there is no law there is no transgression.” It must be the case that, if the promise is at all based on the law (circumcision included) then the promise will never be realized because of the hostility that our sin brings in the equation.

This is why, Paul says in verse 16, it depends on faith. If the promise is based on the law, we fail. But if the promise is based on the free gift of grace received by faith, then it is “guaranteed”.

The implication of this reasoning that Paul unpacks is that if it is the case that the law is left out of the equation, than Abraham’s true children are not the circumcised but those who have the same faith in God’s promises that he had. The promise given to him, that his offspring would inherit a Kingdom and even more, the whole world, are fulfilled in Christ. Abraham, in his place in salvation history, was trusting God to provide the messiah, Christ. His faith is the same as ours and so we can call Abraham our father in faith, as Paul does when he is “Abraham, who is the father of us all.”

Abraham’s Faith

Abraham’s faith was not a nationalistic faith. It was not a faith in the sign of circumcision since that came later. If it was, it would be a nationalistic faith, that is, a faith in a certain nation or people group which you would have to be in or join in order to know God. You don’t need to be a Jew to know God, you just need to believe God and what he has revealed in his Word. That’s it! God gave a promise, he believed God, the promise was received. What Paul is fighting against is the idea that God institutes prerequisites to his salvation work. God does not choose people like Gideon chose fighters, the ones who cupped the water verses the ones who bent down to drink. Rather, God accepts those whom he has sovereignly elected to believe him, and they are counted righteous.

Abraham’s faith did not depend on him becoming something he was not before he could receive the promise. He did not have to become some holy man, some great scholar, some monk in deep meditation, or anything else to be accepted by God. He was a sinner who deserved nothing, but when the promise came he accepted it in faith. This is what pleases God, a simple yet firm belief that God is who is says he is and will do what he says he will do. Abraham was not an adherent to the law, which did not exist yet, but simply a believer in God.

Hebrews 11 says that the most basic faith believes that God exists and he rewards those who fear him. So this faith had a fear, a holy reverence for God that became the basis for his faith. Though his knowledge of God was small when he first heard the promise, he knew that this God would do as he says. Despite the promises being physically impossible, Abraham trusted that God was real and would reward him according to the promise.

Our Faith

Such faith is hard to come by. The world is full of people seeking enlightenment, seeking to better themselves, but this Abrahamic faith is rare, but truly genuine.

Our text ends with Romans 4:23-24

Romans 4:23–24 ESV

But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord,

Paul draws a firm, clear line between the faith of Abraham and the faith of a believer, showing that this faith is indeed the same saving faith that brings someone out of darkness and into the light.

The faith that Abraham had was in the promise of offspring. That offspring was Christ, as it says in Galatians 3:16

Galatians 3:16 ESV

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.

So Abraham’s faith was in the coming of Christ. Today, we do not see Christ as a far off promise, but as a present reality.

Hebrews 1:1–2 ESV

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

Just like Abraham, if our faith in God is genuine it is in his promises, and this promise was realized in Christ, who guarantees us now greater promises concerning the world to come.

What gets in the way of this faith? How is it that so many who are seeking God in their own way miss this simple and only way to know God?

Works and circumcision. Although circumcision is not specifically mentioned often, there are prerequisites people set to knowing God. Either you first have to join their particular church to cult, you must come to enlightenment, you must change your ways and become a good person before God will accept you. All these things put salvation out of reach of the sinner, and all are sinners. This is all a result of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, people wanting to find their own way to God rather than trust that God rewards those who truly seek him.

Sin. Whether it is pride, lust, greed, selfishness, violence, or any other sin, it keeps people from trusting God. Someone who truly trusts God doesn’t sin, because they believe that he is holy and rewards those who seek him, that is, they seek his holiness. These would trust in their own god, which gives birth to idolatry.

Unbelief. Ultimately, people just don’t believe that God is who he says he is. They may claim to believe God, but they won’t give up their sin, they won’t leave all behind to follow, they won’t let go of their idols. This all points to a heart that believes, deep down, that God will not make good on his promises.

Conclusion

How should you believe God?

Acknowledge that he exists and that he is who he says he is.

Seek God. Jesus says seek first the Kingdom of God. Abandon all you seek in life for the one pearl of great price. If you believe God, you will believe that he rewards those who truly seek him. So draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Make the quest to find God your ultimate goal in life, and you will find him.

Abandon sin. Why will you let yourself die? God says the wages of sin is death, and will you believe him?

Rely on his promises.

Look to Christ. He is the ultimate end of all God’s promises and the one who speaks words of peace to us on the Father’s behalf. To look to Christ is to have the faith which justifies. You are declared righteous simply by looking to all that the Gospel says: Christ died according to the Scriptures, was resurrected by God according to the Scriptures and is ascended as Lord of all according to the Scriptures. Bet all your chips on that, hold nothing back. Leave all behind if necessary to embrace this one truth. That is the faith that God counts as righteousness, that is the faith of Abraham, that is the faith that saves.