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Title: Got Faith?
I. Faith: Important, Different, Distinctive
v16 “Therefore…”
Age old Bible rule: Whenever you see a “Therefore” look back to the previous verse to see what it’s there for.
Last week we looked at verses 13-15 and came to the conclusion that Paul was saying that salvation had to be by faith and not the law because the promise of faith was made to Abraham by God some 430 years before God established the Law through Moses.
V16 “that is might be according to grace.”
I know this is rather elementary, but it is still worth repeating. If salvation is by the Law, if it is by works, then there is no need for grace because you and I, all of us could “earn” our salvation by following the necessary steps to make ourselves right before God.
Yet this is where Christianity differs from every other religion in the world. In other religions all of the beliefs boil down to this basic idea: You reap in the next life what you’ve sown in this one. If you are a “good” person, “good” things await you on the other side of death. If you are “bad” person, “bad” things await you on the other side of death.
Christianity is the only religion that says, no one is good, everyone is bad, and those that receive good things after death did nothing to earn it, it was given to them as a gift of grace from an all powerful, sovereign, God.
Application: You must believe, and act like when you are sharing the gospel with them, you are offering them knowledge in something that they simply cannot get anywhere else. If you really believe that Christ is the only way to God, then act like that. Not in arrogance or superiority over those who haven’t found Truth yet, but in humility, reverence and patience, knowing that whatever the lost person is seeking peace is, whether it’s another religion, psychology, or philosophy, it will leave them as lost as it found them.
The only thing that delivers us is Truth. And Truth begins, resides in, and ends in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen?
II. A new perspective that has radical consequences
V16 “…not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham…”
There is something very important going on here that I don’t want us to miss. Paul has been hammering the idea that salivation with God is through the faith and not works, and that argument has opened up a new possibility, and has begun to answer yet another of the Jews objections.
Follow the line of thinking here. If the promise Abraham received to be the father of many nations was based on Abraham’s observance to the Law, then what hope do the Gentiles have in being saved, unless they would become a Jew like Abraham, be grafted into the family line, and be eligible to be part of the promise?
However, if Paul can prove that the promise God gave to Abraham was based on faith, and not based upon the Law, then couldn’t Paul then take the next step and say, “Abraham is the father of the Jewish and Gentile believers because all it takes to be part of the promise is to have the faith of Abraham.”
In other words, Paul is killing two birds with one stone. Two of the biggest objections Jews had to Christianity were directly linked. Both involved the Law. The Jew said, “The only way for a Gentile to be a Christian is for a Gentile to be a child of the promise of Abraham, and they can’t do that without the Law!”
And Paul replied, “The promise given to Abraham was not based on the Law, it was based on faith. And if the Gentiles have faith of Abraham in God then they are also part of that promise!”
III. A difficult reference
V17 “…who gives life tot he dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did…”
This verse has baffled and challenged many Bible Scholars throughout the years and many people much more intelligent and gifted than myself have had some very interesting observations on possible meanings and references that Paul is making. I’d like us to consider the two most commonly accepted possibilities.
1. A reference to creation.
Christians hold God and the Biblical account of creation to such a high standard that we say, before God said, “Be” there was nothing. John Piper takes this idea a step further when he is pointing to the fact that all of creation is made to glorify Christ. He says that every day Christ looks upon the oceans and say, “Exist! You are allowed to come this far today, and no further. One day we will change this.”
Another way to marvel at this concept. It is one thing for something to give life back to something that is dead. We think of a surgeon who revives a patient who dies on the operating table by electroshock, or an EMT who arrives at the scene of a horrible car accident and uses CPR to literally breath life back into another person.
Biblically, we look at the accounts of Lazarus and Jesus himself and we marvel. But try this one on for size. Making life from nothing. Not something that was once alive, but rather, from nothing, comes something. Friends, that is the work of a sovereign creature, one worthy of our praise.
2. A reference to Isaac
Perhaps Paul is drawing a reference to Abraham’s “dead” state since he was 100 when Isaac was born. And Sarah herself was 90 when Isaac was born. There was nothingness. There was a barren womb, embittered by years of trying for children in vain, and then suddenly there is life.
Friend, on some small level I can tell you of this joy. My cousin and her husband have been married for 10 years and they have been trying to have children for 9 years and 364 days. They have had countless misarranges, gone through unspeakable heartache, considered adoption, spend thousands of dollars on doctor’s visits trying to figure our why they are unable to conceive. And then last week, hearing the tears of joy on the other end of the phone as my cousin tells me she is pregnant, with twins, having just experienced the birth of my daughter, I can’t tell you what an answered pray that was.
My cousin’s situation was growing hopeless, and I can’t fathom how Abraham and Sarah were felling before Isaac came. Sarah herself laughed upon hearing the prophecy that she would give birth.
I wonder how many miracles of God we are unwilling to receive because we are too busy laughing at what we believe to be impossible. Oh we say that with God all things are possible. But far too often what we really mean is that with God all things are possible that He’s cleared with me first. I know why Christ looked upon those he loved the most and said, “Ye of little faith.”