16 Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. 17 As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.
I love John Piper's explanation of this passage.
God makes faith the only way to receive the righteousness of God and obtain the promise.
The first reason (that we saw yesterday) He does this is that the alternative to faith is trying to obtain justification through the law and since there is no way to possibly do that, it just brings wrath and nullifies the promise of God.
The second reason (today's passage) that faith is the only way to be justified is that faith is in accordance with grace which is important because that's why it's guaranteed. God's grace is the only thing that guarantees the promise that we will be an heir.
Your faith is essential, but the reason it's essential is that it is the only condition of the heart that accords with grace. And God's grace is the deepest foundation of our guarantee....The only way that our eternal future can be guaranteed is if it rests on God's grace. Grace is the free and undeserved work of God to bring his people to glory. Grace is the mighty, omnipotent purpose of God to make sure we get our inheritance. Grace is the ground of our guarantee. And faith is the only condition of the heart that "accords" with that free and undeserved work....
The opposite of faith is working, and the opposite of grace is due (or debt or desert). If you try to work for righteousness instead of trusting God, he says you will get a wage that you are due, and that is not "in accordance with grace," but is the opposite of grace. But if you don't try to work for your righteous standing with God, but trust him who justifies the ungodly, God's righteousness will be credited to you as a gift. That is grace and the only condition of the heart that corresponds to it is faith.
So grace is the purpose of God to give you the righteousness and the promise that you do not deserve. That is why grace is the guarantee of the promise. It overrides our demerit....
What condition of the heart "accords with" this grace? Faith alone. Faith is the restful experience of the work of grace in our lives. If we think of that first act of justifying faith in Christ, we can say faith is to grace what seeing is to light and what hearing is to sound and what waking up is to the alarm clock. Faith corresponds to grace the way tasting sweetness corresponds to honey on the tongue....God's grace actually awakens the faith - the way light awakens sight and sound awakens hearing and honey awakens the taste of sweetness..The point is this: in order for Abraham to have a guarantee that he would inherit the promise, God must bring life from death and call into being what does not exist. This is sovereign, omnipotent, free grace. He is describing here what he means by the grace that guarantees the promise. Deadness must come to life and non-existence must exist. That is what grace does. Man cannot do this. Man cannot raise the dead. And man cannot create something out of nothing. But God can and God does in order to guarantee the promises for his people. That is the meaning of grace.....
Without the birth of Isaac, the promise to Abraham will have failed. But Isaac does not exist, and humanly cannot exist. His Father is ninety-nine years old. His mother is ninety and barren all her life. Human works and resources have been tried: a concubine named Hagar and a son named Ishmael. But God says, No. The promise will be fulfilled and guaranteed not by my cooperation with your human resources, but by my sovereign grace to do the humanly impossible....
grace is precisely this: it is the work of God to raise spiritually the dead - to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.....
This is faith. This accords with grace that gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. And that sovereign grace guarantees, above all human fickleness and frailty, that you will inherit the world.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Romans 4:18-25
1 comment:
What a powerful promise. God does for us what we can never do for ourselves.
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