What kind of faith saves?
It’s an important question.
It’s a critical question because we all know many people who say they believe in Jesus. But there’s virtually nothing in their lives that sets them out as any different from the non-Christian who lives next door. They neither attend church, nor pay any attention to the Bible or make any effort to follow what Jesus said. If faith in Jesus saves, is theirs the kind of faith that saves, or makes a man righteous?
This is the question that Paul now addresses as we continue in the faith chapter of the book of Romans. Paul’s major teaching in Book of Romans is this: Righteousness, a right-standing with God, comes only by faith in Jesus, not by works of any kind. But precisely by what kind of faith does God declare a man righteous?
He will explain that people are made right with God through the same kind of faith Abraham had. It’s the kind of faith that trusts in God’s promises and lives accordingly. If you want to be made right with God, have the kind of faith that Abraham had—trust explicitly in God’s promises and then live your life according to that faith.
Now Paul has told his readers that Abraham was the forefather of all who believe in that He believed God and God reckoned it as righteousness. He has quoted this principle from Genesis 15:6. So since Abraham is the prototype of all who will be declared as righteous through faith, he now explains exactly what kind of faith Abraham had.
First. Abraham explicitly trusted in God’s promises. So the first principle of the kind of faith that saves is this: Trust explicitly in God’s promises. Trust explicitly in in the promises of God’s Word, that they apply to you. Take those promises as your own. That’s what Abraham, the forefather of the Jews did in both Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 and later. And that’s what His spiritual descendants did as well. They trusted in God’s promises as good for them, and it was reckoned to the as righteousness.
Romans 4:13: “For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.” Now, Paul has actually already demonstrated this, but he’s being explicit here. The promises that Abraham would be the father of many nations and that through his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed were actually made in Genesis 12. At that time, Abraham had no descendants whatsoever. Abraham and his wife Sarai were childless. Years later in Genesis 15 God would renew that promise by reassuring Abraham that he would yet have a son, and his descendants would ultimately number as the stars of the heavens. And it was at this point that we see the parenthetical and explanatory statement about Abraham’s relationship with God in Genesis 15:6: “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to Him as righteousness.” Thus the promise that Abraham received that He and his descendants would be heir of the world came on the basis of Abraham’s faith, not on anything else Abraham adherence to the Law. In fact, the Law had not yet been given. It would not be given to the Jews until 430 some years later when it came through Moses. So it was actually impossible that the promise was made to Abraham on the basis of his adherence to the Law since the Law had not even been given to him. And besides, the Scripture explicitly claims that the right relationship that existed between God and Abraham so that He could receive the promises came because of Abraham’s faith, not based on Abraham’s law-keeping.
Paul then continues in verse 14 to make his argument that keeping the Law did not secure the promises that Abraham received. Verse 14: “for if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified.” Paul has already made the point the faith and law-keeping are mutually exclusive. Either you are made righteous by faith or made righteous by the Law. You can’t have it both ways. He makes that same point here but goes a bit further. He demonstrates that if the promise came to those who kept the Law, it would no longer be an unconditional promise. As it is, it is an unconditional promise. A promise that was based on law would be conditional. The condition that would then be necessary for the promise to be fulfilled would be keeping the Law. Then the promise wouldn’t be a promise because it could be nullified or abrogated the first time someone didn’t keep the Law. The Promise then would be nullified by someone’s inability to keep the Law. So as things stand, the promise could only be a promise if it were not conditional if it did not depend on our keeping the Law. And that kind of promise then is only possible if it comes on the basis of a person’s faith, rather than his ability to keep the Law.
There are several other reasons why Law-keeping was not the basis for the promise. The second reason is that the Law does not produce righteousness. It only reveals sin. And therefore the Law brings wrath from God as a result of our inability to keep it. Verse 15: For the Law brings wrath.” It brings a just punishment from God. Why, because we will always fail to keep it. Thus, instead of the Law bringing a promise of something good, it promises something really bad—wrath if you fail to keep it.
Thirdly, the Law could not possible be the reason Abraham and the Jews would receive the promise of God. That’s because the Law was not given for the purpose of Israel securing the Promise of God. It had another purpose altogether. Rest of Verse 15, “but where there is no law, there is no violation.” This is another way of saying something Paul has already said; The Law revealed our sinfulness, made us aware of our sin and brought about a clear standard for judgement. It was never intended to make us righteous, but to dhow us our unrighteousness, and provide a basis for judgment. So making Law-keeping the basis for both a right-standing with God is impossible; it was never given for that reason, and due to our sinfulness, could never help us in achieving the goal of being right with God, or being the recipient of His promises.
So for all these reasons that disqualify law-keeping or good works from making us right with God, it is therefore only possible for men to be right with God through faith, in accord with God’s grace rather than his justice.
Verse 15; “For this reason it (being declared right with God) is by faith, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, 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.”
The promise could not have been guaranteed to those who keep the Law, because no one could keep the Law. If it were based on Law, the promise would have been nullified. The purpose of the Law was to reveal sin. Because we are all sinful and break the Law, the Law could only produce wrath. Thus, as verse 16 states, for these reasons being declared with God could only come through faith, not the works of the Law. Abraham believed the promises of God, and on that basis, not keeping the Law, He was declared righteous. And so will we be declared righteous by faith in God’s promises.
Verse 16 now tells us that because it’s by faith through grace that the promise is guaranteed to all the descendants of Abraham. He goes on to say those promises are not only guaranteed to those who are of the Law, namely the Jews, but the promise is also made available to those who are of the faith of Abraham, in other words the Gentiles, who in this vital sense, is the father of us all—all of us who believe with the faith of Abraham.
Now as an aside here, it’s interesting to notice that not all Abraham’s descendants, not all the Jews themselves, were of the Law. That’s because there were generations of Abraham’s descendants or Jews who lived before the giving of the Law. Everyone who lived from Abraham’s time on, about the 19th Century B.C. who were descendants of Abraham, to the time of Moses were also recipients of the promise. So we’re talking about the patriarchs of the Jews, Isaac, Jacob and His 12 sons and everyone who believed who lived in Egypt up to the time of Moses. None of them had received the Law. Yet all who believed were recipients of the Promise. They obviously were made right with God and became recipients of the Promise entirely apart from the Law, by the Faith of Abraham, because the Law had not yet been given in the 400 plus years of the Jews before Moses came. So the righteousness of God, or right-standing with God, also came through faith in God both for Jews who came before the Law came, as well as Gentiles. And it actually has always been true that no Jew was made right with God through keeping the Law, but all Jews, as well as all Gentiles, were made right with God through faith in God and especially faith in His promises.
However, it’s clear that Paul’s primary reference here to those who were not under the Law is to the Gentiles. In verse 17, Paul quotes Genesis 17:4 and 5 which promises Abraham that he would become the Father of many nations. Again, this promise is made while Abraham is still childless. And it obviously refers to the fact that Abraham would not only physically father of the nation of Israel through Isaac, but he physically fathered many nations through a second wife after Sarah’s death. However, there’s yet another sense, a spiritual sense in which Abraham was the Father of many nations. He would become the father of many nations who would come to be right with God through His kind of faith. So Paul now writes in verse 17: “(as it is written, ‘A Father of many nations have I made you”)—a Scripture written quoting the God in whom Abraham believed: “In the presence of Him whom He believed”—Paul is giving extra authority to God’s Word here—it was stated in God’s presence to Abraham by God—the God in whom Abraham believed. And what did Abraham believe about God. Abraham clearly believed God could do the impossible with regard to both life and existence. Thus God is referred to as the one who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist--God’s promise here to give life to that which was dead—Abraham’s ability to reproduce, Sarah’s dead womb, and He then did call into being that which did not exist—first Isaac, and then many nations from Abraham, and many nations, Gentiles, whom he would be the Father of because they had the Faith of Abraham and were made right before God.
These are the promises that Abraham believed. He would become heir of the world and a father of many nations, when all of that was impossible from a human and natural perspective. Thus Abraham was not made right through the works of the law. Abraham was made right through faith—a faith that trusted or relied on God’s promises to him as his own.
What promises do we have today? John 3:16 serves as a well-known example. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
When we claim God’s promise as our own, we have the faith of Abraham. Abraham believed God for the impossible, and likewise, when we claim or trust in John 3:16 we are believing God for the physically impossible-eternal life.
Thus, the faith that saves doesn’t just believe in the existence of Jesus Christ, or give assent to the facts about Jesus Christ, it trusts in the promises of Jesus Christ as being good for itself. You claim those promises for yourself, and it will change your life, if you have the faith of Abraham, as Paul will now demonstrate.
The second characteristic of saving faith is this: you live your life in accord with what you believe. Live your life in accord with what you believe. You begin to live your life in accord with the promises of God you have claimed for yourself.
This is what Abraham did, and it entirely changed the course of his life. It began when God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees with many of these promises in Genesis 12. Because Abraham believed God’s promises, he left the idolatry of Ur of the Chaldees and went to a place he had never seen, as God prompted him. He acted in accord with His faith. He began to live in accord with his faith in God’s promises.
And that continued to be the case once he was in the Promised Land, even though many years passed before he and Sarah would bear their first child.
That’s what verse 18 refers to—all those years of continuing to believe in God’s promises despite the fact that He and Sarah were old beyond child-bearing years and still hadn’t had a child.
Verse 18: “In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, “So shall your descendants be.”
“In hope against hope he believed” refers to Abraham’s persevering faith despite the fact he and Sarah were growing older without having borne a single child. The promise that God would make him into a great nation came when Abraham was 75 years old and still living among idolaters in Ur of the Chaldees. He and Sarah would wait another 25 years before that promise would be fulfilled. It took monumental faith in Abraham’s faith to depart from everything and everyone he had ever known to go camp out in a foreign land for all that time. If he had ever stopped believing, he had ample opportunity to return to Ur and its idolatry. But because he kept believing, he kept obeying. He continued as a stranger and a sojourner in this foreign land because he believed that God would ultimately do the impossible, produce many nations from a man and wife who reproductively as good as dead. Wow, what faith there was, a faith that produced action in accord with that faith.
Verse 19 emphasizes the great faith of Abraham through all these years: “Without become weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise o God, he did not wave in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.”
In other words, it is that kind of faith that gains approval from God, and the reckoning of righteousness. A faith that claims God’s promises and continues to live in accordance with those promise—a life governed by that faith, rather than unbelief in which faith is translated into action. It is an obedient faith, not perfection, but a clear direction in obedience to God.
Therefore on the basis of that kind of faith, a faith which was lived out, that faith, as verse 22 says, “was reckoned to Him as righteousness.”
Was it a “do-nothing” faith? Absolutely not? Was it merely a profession of faith that did not produce action in accord with that faith? Absolutely not! Was it merely a repetition of a prayer that did not result in following God’s direction? Absolutely not! Ultimately it was a repentant and generally obedient faith. It was a faith that was lived out by how its possessor lived.
No, the faith that saves is not a mere agreement with the facts about Jesus Christ. It is not merely saying I believe in Jesus Christ. The faith that saves is the faith of Abraham—a faith that trusts in God’s promises as its own, and then lives life in accord with those promises.
The faith that saves first explicitly trusts in, relies on, depends on or believes in God’s promises, claiming them for yourself. And then it lives in light of those promises. And lives in accord with the confidence expressed in those promises. And that faith in then life-changing because what you really believe always determines what you do and how you live, just as it did for Abraham.
Now Paul applies these lessons to our present day—what is the faith that saves today.
What kind of faith makes man right in God’s sight now that Jesus has come? The same kind of faith that Abraham had. Only now the object of that faith is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now to be made right with God, trust in Jesus’ promises and follow Him. Trust in Jesus’ promises and live your life accordingly.
Verse 23; Still with reference to Abraham: “Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”
Paul’s saying that Genesis 15:6 was not written or stated merely for Abraham’s sake. The statement that Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to Him as righteousness was written as much for our sake today, so that we might all know that God has reckoned all men righteous who believe God as Abraham did.
And now that the Messiah and the New Covenant have come—it’s that kind of faith in Jesus that saves. It’s that same kind of faith that believes in a great God who can do the impossible, and in fact, has done what is impossible for man, in that He raised Jesus from the dead.
And then He sums up His argument with this amazing summary of the Christian faith—a reference to what we believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What did the God whom we believe in do for us through Jesus? “It was “He who was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification.” Jesus was delivered over to crucifixion in order to pay for our sins on the cross, and He was raised from the dead in order to demonstrate that His death had taken away our sins, our sins had been paid for, and therefore we would someday be raised from the dead even as Jesus was. Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins and was raised from the dead to prove it and demonstrate to all who believe that we would also someday be raised from the dead as well.
To be saved today, believe in Jesus’ promises and live your life according to them. Believe in Jesu and follow Him as a result.
So what can we say about those we know who claim to have faith in Jesus but have no works? Well, are they right before God? I imagine only God absolutely knows, but all this is completely consonant with what the book of James says. Faith without works is dead being by itself. Yes, it’s the faith that saves and produces a right-standing with God. But that faith will also produce a change in direction, not perfection. That faith will result in a changed life in which its possessors will generally follow Jesus.
This morning, do you have that kind of faith, the faith of Abraham. For it is a faith that trusts in Jesus’ promises and results in following Him.
Let’s pray.
