The Faith of Abraham

Paul has laid out the Gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and has shown some startling implications of it. Now, as we move into chapter 4 of Romans, he begins to prove it from the Scriptures—that is, the Scriptures of his time, the Old Testament. His aim is to show that the Gospel, far from being a new thing, truly was made known previously, as he argued in 1:2 and 3:21.

“What about Abraham?” Paul asks. “How was he saved?” The change of direction is rather abrupt, but the question is certainly compelling. Abraham was, as Dr. James M. Boice puts it, “the father of the Jewish people and, with the exception of Jesus Himself, the most important person in the Bible.” Moreover, there is no dispute that Abraham was right with God. But Paul’s question has to do with how Abraham came into that right relationship: Was it by works or by faith? Paul is swinging for the fences with this argument. As Boice writes: “If Paul can show that Abraham, the father of all the faithful, came into a right relationship with God by faith and not by any amount of human good works, his case [for the Gospel] is proved.… If he cannot prove this, the case is lost and so is Christianity.”

To answer his question, Paul quotes Genesis 15:6: “ ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ ” The antecedent of the word it in this verse must be the righteousness of Christ, the only alien righteousness that God imputes to a believer. And, just as the Gospel dictates, it came to Abraham by belief, or faith. Does that mean he somehow understood God’s not-yet-unfolded plan of redemption fully? Probably not. He was trusting God’s promise to give him many descendants even though he was old and childless. But he also knew that God had promised to bless all nations through his descendants (Gen. 12:3), and Paul clearly states that this promise constituted an announcement of the Gospel to Abraham (Gal. 3:8). Thus, Abraham understood the Gospel in at least a rudimentary way and believed it. And so God declared him righteous.

Abraham was a fallen man, exactly like those described by Paul in Romans 1:18–3:20. He could not earn God’s favor. Therefore, he was saved by faith. The Gospel proved to be “the power of God to salvation” (Rom. 1:16) even for Abraham.