GEN. 15:1-6
As we have observed, every test Abram faced was a test of faith, but the events recorded in Gen. 15 are especially centered on that aspect of his life with God. Because of the significance of this issue, Gen. 15 deserves special attention. It is one of the most important chapters in the Bible for understanding our relationship with God. As Walter Brueggemann said about verse 6, “No other Old Testament text has exercised such a compelling influence on the New Testament.”1 Genesis 15 is divided into two parts, and in both Abram is seeking some assurance that God is going to keep his word. God has made promises to Abram, but so far in the narrative, there has been no evidence of their fulfillment.
Many believers have a faulty idea of faith, and Abram’s faith provides a clear model for a proper understanding. Faith is not, as many suppose, a self-generated desire for certain things to happen. Rather, faith is a believing response to a divine promise (see Rom. 10:17), and Abram had received certain promises on which his faith was based. It was not wishful thinking. What is significant for our purposes is the implication of the story that these promises were so conditioned at the outset that they would, in the course of time, put Abram’s faith to the test. On the very threshold of the promise of a son, the writer declared, “Now Sarai was barren; she had no child” (Gen. 11:30).
The theme of barrenness runs like a dark thread throughout the Abraham-Sarah narratives, from beginning to near end, when Isaac is finally born. Walter Brueggemann describes the theme as “an effective metaphor for hopelessness. There is no foreseeable future. There is no human power to invent a future.”2 Its mention at the very threshold of redemptive history (12:1-3) is a comment about the condition of the human race after the unsuccessful attempt at self-salvation in the Tower of Babel incident. All such efforts likewise lead to dead ends; they fail miserably at addressing the deepest need of humankind.
That God speaks a word of promise in the midst of hopelessness and eventually brings about a solution is evidence of what God can do. Only he can speak an answer that leads out of barrenness and into a meaningful and viable future. The divine initiative is emphasized at the outset as God repeatedly declares, “I will…” Here God declares his intention to bring about a future that Abram and Sarai cannot produce on their own. Here is the call for faith.
It is no coincidence that the theme of barrenness appears again and again throughout the history of Abram’s family. Rebekah (25:21) and Rachel (29:31), both playing major roles in continuing Abram’s redemptive lineage, are barren until God intervenes. At an unusually low point in the history of the people of Israel, as described in the book of Judges, the theme recurs with Hannah (1 Sam. 1—2). In this case, Hannah’s barrenness is no doubt symbolic of the inability of mere human resources to bring about God’s promise of a land. Once again, God intervenes, removes the barrenness, and sends Samuel, whose integrity and wisdom bring about a temporary solution.
The theme continues in the midst of the Babylonian captivity of 587 BC. When the future seems lost for the nation of Judah, Isaiah appropriates the theme and announces God’s intervention: “Sing, O barren one who did not bear; burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate woman will be more than the children of her that is married, says the Lord” (Isa. 54:1). But by the time Augustus is emperor of Rome and Herod the Great is king of Judea the barrenness persists. The exile has not ended, the people of God are still subject to foreign powers, and the deliverance repeatedly promised has not materialized. In the midst of this seeming hopelessness God once again opens the womb of a barren woman (Elizabeth) and brings about the pregnancy of a young virgin (Mary). Then the death and resurrection of the virgin’s Son, the “seed of Abraham,” brings an end to the barrenness and opens the door to hope for the human race. In Jesus of Nazareth the emptiness finally can be filled, the slavery broken, and the future transformed into hope, for those who have faith in him.
So in keeping with this theme, as soon as Abram and his extended family entered the Promised Land, the narrator declares, “At that time the Canaanites were in the land” (Gen. 12:6b). He had found the land, camped in various places throughout it, but it was clearly not in his possession. Others occupied it and owned it; how was he to acquire it? What kind of miracle was the Lord going to perform to bring his word to pass? The stage was set with challenges to God’s promises and thus the testing of Abram’s faith. In this chapter we find Abram questioning the promises.
It is significant that Abram questions God at this point. Genesis 15 opens with the words, “After these things…” (v. 1). What “things”? Abram had just experienced a great victory in battle. He had vanquished a superior force and consummated the victory with an act of generosity. Drawing on the study of Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna, Helyer observes that “by his bold intervention and rescue of Lot, Abram exposes himself to the endemic plague of that region—wars of retaliation.”3 It is altogether likely that, like Elijah after the contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Abram was undergoing a bout of depression, what someone has called “the valley of the afterward.” The human spirit is not a machine, and high emotional moments can sometimes produce emotional lows. Many things can have this effect, and a failure to recognize this fact can destabilize a person’s faith. This is a natural human response. Many a preacher has delivered a rousing sermon, sprinkling stardust on the congregation, and then experienced a sharp sense of despondency afterward. Even God seemed to recognize the letdown in Abram’s spirit and sought to shore it up with the comforting words, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield” (v. 1).
But Abram’s words here do indeed reflect a deep sense of despondency, disappointment, or discouragement: “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” (v. 3). What we are seeing in Abram confirms he was a normal human being experiencing a natural human response. As Oswald Chambers observed, “A saint is not an angel and never will be; a saint is the flesh and blood theatre in which the decrees of God are carried to successful issue.”4
To God’s attempt to bolster Abram’s faith by declaring himself to be Abram’s shield, Abram in effect responded, “O Lord God, what’s the purpose of your gifts, when I’m still childless?” Abram is not rebellious, but he is not feeling particularly blessed either. His words are not a challenge to God but an expression of resignation; perhaps he is even blaming himself for misinterpreting God. At this time he is about ninety-five years old; twenty years have passed since he “thought” he received the promise. Abram’s wagon is stuck in the mud, but God is pointing him to the stars and is suggesting he hitch his wagon to them.
As numerous interpreters have commented on this encounter, “God’s delays are not denials.” We may infer that the delay was intended to bring Abram nearer to God and to lead him to depend more on the Giver than on his gifts. So in the face of unexplained delay Abram’s faith shook off its doubts “and he believed the Lord” (v. 6).
What did Abram believe? He heard nothing new; he saw no marvelous manifestation of power. Brueggemann addresses this question in an insightful way: “Surely it is not because he feels new generative power in his loins. Nor because he has new expectations for Sarah. The new promise for his life is not any expectation of flesh and blood. Rather, he has come to rely on the promise speaker. He has now permitted God to be not a hypothesis about the future, but the voice around which his life is organized.”5
Abram’s believing on this occasion became the basis for Paul identifying New Testament believers (both Jew and Gentile) as children of Abraham. As a result of Abram’s faith, God “reckoned it to him as righteousness” (v. 6; see Rom. 4:22). In fact, this part of the passage lays the foundation for one of the major theological teachings of the Bible.
The Hebrew term translated “righteousness” is tsedaqah, which is the same word translated as “justification,” the term used by both Jesus and Paul to refer to God’s declaration that one has been “put right.” The history of Christian thought reflects the struggle of God’s people to understand the meaning of this concept. That struggle is between two ideas of what righteousness means, or how it is acquired, and thus how to be acceptable to God. One way is to become righteous by keeping the law, while the other, the way God intended, is to be declared righteous by faith.
This is the struggle the apostle Paul had in his own experience and in attempting to identify the uniqueness of the Christian faith in relation to Judaism. Oddly enough, by failing to recognize the meaning of righteousness in this context, influential teachers throughout most of Christian history have taught that we are justified by the righteousness acquired through the Law. Following the teaching of Augustine that justification means to “make righteous,” the church came to believe that the ethical righteousness by which God accepts us is acquired by good works. Certain activities, such as pilgrimages and other religious rites, acquired merit. Surplus merit acquired by others, including Jesus, could be appropriated—or bought—to assure one’s own salvation or to hasten the passage of a loved one through purgatory.
This way of earning God’s favor was the setting in which Martin Luther experienced the frustration of failure that led him eventually to discover another meaning of righteousness. From his biblical studies he found that instead of referring to righteousness as God’s requirement, Paul was speaking in Romans about righteousness being God’s mercy for the helpless. The righteousness referred to is thus God’s own. This set Luther free from the bondage of trying to qualify on his own for divine favor. Unfortunately, he never abandoned the belief that ethical righteousness was required for final salvation, but he reinterpreted it to refer to the righteousness of Christ that was credited to the account of the sinner. Thus a person was saved on the basis of an “alien righteousness.” This continues to be the theological perspective of far too many evangelical Christians who fail to understand the covenantal significance of righteousness by faith as taught by Paul.
Paul’s whole theology of salvation is based on the biblical understanding of righteousness by faith, simple trust in the promises of God implicit in the covenant made with Abram and consummated in the Messiah Jesus. God’s acceptance is offered freely to all who will receive that acceptance. The covenant established between Yahweh and Abram was based on mutual commitment. Each party was considered righteous, since in the covenantal understanding, righteousness is the status of one who is faithful to his or her part of a relationship.6
In the light of this seminal understanding of crucial theological terms, we can make simple sense of Paul’s argument in Rom. 3:21-26, a passage that has been at the heart of many theological debates about the atoning work of Christ. If we fail to recognize the meaning of “righteousness” in this context, and particularly if we take the term “justice” (KJV translation of the same Greek word) as referring to “retributive justice,” we end up with all kinds of theological confusion.
As we have seen, God entered into a covenant with Abram and his descendants, promising that through them the world would be “put to rights.” Since “righteousness” in this context means faithfulness to the covenant promises, we may render it in Rom. 3:21-26 as “covenant faithfulness.” But the problem, as Paul had demonstrated in Rom. 2, was that those who were supposed to be faithful had also gone wrong, so the whole world was in trouble (3:23). God’s answer was to send his Son, the Messiah, as the one faithful Israelite (hence the “faithfulness of Jesus” is the proper translation of v. 22, not “faith in Jesus”). In sending his Son, God is righteous by being faithful to his covenant word, and in turn, whoever has faith in Jesus is righteous in a covenantal sense because (just as in the case of Abram, the model of this theology) that is the covenant partner’s commitment to the relationship. Hence God is “righteous” (not just in the sense of a modern law court) and the “righteousfier” of those who have faith. Von Rad summarizes this relational understanding of “righteousness”: “God is righteous so long as he turns towards man. Man is righteous so long as he affirms the regulations of this communal relationship established by God,”7 that is, by faith saying “Amen” to God’s commitment. This is the essence of justification by faith.
Our faith, like Abram’s, must affirm the promise, not because circumstances have changed, but simply because God has spoken. We have difficulty accepting this in relation to justification. We want some basis in good works, inherent worth, or potentiality. But its basis is totally in God’s grace.