Like Abraham’s experience, life is always a journey. It may be haphazard and ultimately lead to nowhere. Or it may, like Abraham’s, have a designated end. Because God created us with free will, which of the two pathways we take is partly up to us. God always places before us a call to realize by his grace the destiny for which he created us. Even if we commit ourselves to pursuing that goal, like Abraham, the journey is seldom in a straight line. Most of us, if we are honest, will admit to experiencing detours and snags along the way. But if our goal is the kind of character God intended for his creation, we will only attain it the same way Abraham did, by the method the Lord used with him. Character is only developed through tests and ultimately by successfully passing those tests. Like Abraham, many of us would admit to not passing every test that comes our way. But if, like Abraham, we keep our eyes on the goal, by God’s grace we may more and more clearly reflect God’s glory. As New Testament children of Abraham, that goal is the glory of God as seen in the person of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:18).
One thing we need to keep in mind as we think about Abraham’s journey, our journey, and the comparison between them is that Abraham was a pioneer. No one had blazed a trail for him to follow; he was the first. Thus while it is easy for us to find flaws in Abraham, recognizing that he took several wrong turns and followed several dead-end paths, we must understand that he was pursuing an uncharted course. We have the privilege of his example and a long history of God’s dealings with his creation to learn what wells are dry, which valleys lead to insurmountable peaks, and which passes lead most directly to the destination. Someone said, a bit sarcastically, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”1 May it not be so with us!
Although Abraham pursued his goal erratically at times, eventually he came to experience a relationship with God that Scripture refers to as a friendship. Does God need a friend? Perhaps in a sense he does, not because he lacks or needs anything on his part but because he has “no hands but [ours], no feet but [ours]”2 to embody his redemptive love to his wayward and lost children.
An interesting question concerns what it means to be a friend of God. The term “friend” itself implies certain qualities, but from the tests of Abraham we can identify at least four characteristics: integrity (Gen. 17:1), intimacy (18:16-18), identity of values (vv. 22-33), and implicit trust (22:1-2). Possibly the answer to why God needs our friendship, a friendship marked by these traits, is found in these words of Scripture: “The Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?’” (18:17-18). God needs our friendship to bring his blessing to the nations; he intends to bestow that blessing through Abraham’s children, those who have Abraham’s faith in their hearts.
The words of Donald J. Wiseman form a fitting conclusion to our trek with Abraham:
God still desires the close personal relationship with His chosen people repeatedly expressed by Him in the covenant with Abraham and his successors. “I will walk among you and will be your God and you shall be my people” (Lev. xxvi. 12). He still desires that we may respond to Him in faith by calling upon the name of the Lord, as did Abraham (xii. 8). For this privileged relation is now extended to countless peoples “who were once separated from Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise.… But now in Christ Jesus you who were once afar off have been brought near in the blood of Christ.… so then you are no longer strangers and sojourners but you are fellow-citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians ii. 12-13, 19).3