This seems as good a time as any to pause in our progress through the Book of Genesis and reflect on the story so far – if not from the dawn of creation, then perhaps from the mission of the man we've been tailing this year. We first met Abram, son of Terah, living on the outskirts of the south Sumerian city of Ur with his wife and his father and his two brothers, one of whom died early. There, in a pagan family surrounded by temples stretching high to the sky, this lowly Abram heard a call. How he heard it, when he heard it, what it meant to him at first, we don't quite know. It was from a god it seems his neighbors didn't know, a god memories of whom had perhaps been handed down in his family despite the heavy admixture of pagan lore.
However he introduced himself to Abram, somehow this god spoke to him and laid upon him a drastic demand: “Go, go away from your land and your kin and the house of your father!” (Genesis 12:1). It was a call to give up everything Abram had ever known – to leave the people who were like him, to break all his traditions, to say goodbye to his family, to forget his legacy. That surrender is what the voice suggested, insisted. It is, in effect, that which was imposed as punishment in the prior story of Babel: scattering, exile, homelessness without a homecoming. Such dreadful penalty is what the divine voice urged Abram to inflict upon himself voluntarily. In exchange, the voice offered him improbable promises in an undefined destination. In some land, a land whose nature was shrouded in mystery, this god would turn Abram into a national founder, an exalted figure like Gilgamesh, a man whose life laboring under a curse would finally be converted to blessing (Genesis 12:2-3).
The journey was a daring one. And it was a faithful one. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out..., and he went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). This is the first moment in his life that, even in retrospect, is linked to faith. In response to the voice whose demands were outstripped only by its promises, Abram believed it was the voice of a God worth hearing. He believed this was a God who had power to do for him those things which were promised, however far they exceeded all a nomad could reasonably hope for. He believed this was a God who took an interest in him, who guided him wisely, who wouldn't and couldn't be stymied by confrontations with other gods. Abram believed this God wouldn't steer him wrong and wasn't out for his ruin, but truly meant to do him good. Abram bet on this God – even though Abram kept his name, kept his movable property, kept his servants, kept a few members of his family. All the same, Abram stepped out in faith, and he kept walking by faith until he reached the spot of which God said, “This land” (Genesis 12:7). Defying the presence of a few Canaanite competitors, he believed the promise of inheritance once made, and he built an altar, and he worshipped in gratitude (Genesis 12:6-8). Such was Abram's dawning faith at 75.
The tale of the next quarter century is living and active. Perhaps within his first year there in the land shown as marked out for his future heirs, Abram came into hard times with an exceptionally heavy famine. It was, it's fair to say, Abram's first crisis of faith, his faith being probed more sharply than seems sporting. Faithfulness wasn't feeding him or those who relied on him. Pressed, worried, dissatisfied, disgruntled, Abram held on as long as he felt he could – but he gave way (Genesis 12:10). He didn't ask his newfound God where to turn, what to do; he pushed further to the southwest, through the desert toward Egypt, whose rich Nile could supply what the land of promise seemed unable and unwilling to give. Abram seemingly “fell from the firmness of his faith.”1
Gripped by fear as the Egyptian border wall came in view, Abram persuaded his wife to conceal their marriage for his security (Genesis 12:11-13), a ploy we only later learn became his standard MO wherever they went (Genesis 20:13). He persisted in it, we'll find, even after it proved such a double-edged sword in Egypt, gaining a multitude of earthly goods while placing his wife beyond recovery (Genesis 12:14-20). Drowning in grief and jealousy, Abram could only pray an anxious prayer to the God in whose good will his faith had flagged. But in the aftermath of divine deliverance, reunited, they ascended from Egypt chagrined but supplied (Genesis 13:1-2), and Abram found “a new faith in God's promises,” enriched more in faith than in sheep (Genesis 13:3-4).2
With his faith restored, it could be tested again, baked to see if it'll rise. Abram and Lot, now living as separate households, held jointly such post-Egyptian prosperity as to be too heavy for the land constrained by rising local populations (Genesis 13:5-7). The strife between their herdsmen over grazing land and water access threatened to spiral out of control a la Cain and Abel. What would Abram's freshened faith in his God lead him to do with it? Abram deescalated with politeness and humility. Abram had been assigned this land they're on by the word of God, but Abram proves willing to forgo some of the promised land in exchange for brotherly peace – even though Abram knows that, in doing so, he might jeopardize his future and that of his house. He even lays down his rights of seniority and forbears tolerantly when Lot exploits his humble generosity (Genesis 13:8-12).
What had this to do with Abram's faith? Simply that his loyalty to God has been shaping him into a lover of peace between brothers. And for all that, Abram knows that God's promises are stronger than man's sacrifices. If Abram does well for the sake of what God loves, then God will find a way to bring good out of it, whether or not Abram can anticipate how. And so he does. Answering Abram's surrender in like tone, God expands the prior promise, rewarding him with a broader land where Abram himself belongs and which will be an extended gift (Genesis 13:14-16). Abram just needs to walk the land to lay claim to it (Genesis 13:17), but instead he perhaps delays obedience, settling where he can keep an eye on Lot, and gives thanks (Genesis 13:18).
Some time later, Abram couldn't help but notice an invading force sweeping down the far side of the river valley into the deserts to the south, then curving up to the sea, fighting all the way – issues beyond Abram's pay grade, so it seemed (Genesis 14:1-11). Until word reached him that Lot with his grand wealth had been seized from Sodom by the eastern invaders, to be stolen away and likely enslaved (Genesis 14:12-13). Though in his prior crisis Abram for fear hadn't dared to rescue his wife from a captivating king, now his faith was alive. Abram believed that, if the hopes of the world were to rest on his shoulders, then God wouldn't let them be nullified by Abram's act of love. So the man of peace rode to war, trusting his God to be his protector and guide (Genesis 14:14). Nor was he disappointed; triumphing by the power of God, Abram achieved Lot's salvation (Genesis 14:15-16), cleansing the land all while unwittingly being led on the journey that secured his claim to the land.
On his return journey, faithful Abram met the priest-king Melchizedek of Salem, who blessed him and fed him and foreshadowed a sacrament (Genesis 14:18-20), but also Melchizedek's opposite in the cowardly and vile king Bera of Sodom, who sought to manipulate and tempt Abram into his service (Genesis 14:17, 21). What's Abram to do but to rely on his faith to be his guide? By faith Abram responded to Melchizedek's blessing and ministry with grateful surrender of a tithe of plunder as a memorial of God's mighty work (Genesis 14:20). By faith Abram had wisdom to preempt Bera's overtures by an oath to eschew all gain, leaving no foothold for the devil and giving Abram the opportunity to testify of God (Genesis 14:22-24). Abram could only do it because his faith was further bolstered by Melchizedek's preaching that God Most High has providence without limit.
Newly provoked by mortality and loss, though, Abram found his stronger faith beset by a new crisis. This was the moment when Abram came undone, his heart's long-oozing wounds gushing forth his fears (Genesis 15:2-3). Intervening, God gave him a twofold promise: first, he'd indeed have a biological son of his own (Genesis 15:4); second, Abram's seed would exceed his numbers as the stars do (Genesis 15:5).
This pledge was clearer, more direct, more expansive, and more demanding than any before it. It's one thing to say he'll yet have a biological son – it's rare but technically not impossible. (There's a rabbi in Israel who had a son born last year when the rabbi was older than Abram is here.) But to believe that in Abram's circumstances, and that his seed will have such a future assured it? The only way Abram can believe it is to believe that the God who populated a vast family of stars can and will give a star-studded family to a man. And so Abram clung to that. He assented to the promise, receiving it in his mind as truth; he took it as the word of God, acclaiming God as trustworthy; he leaned on God, placing his hopes and dreams in God's hands, trusting in God to be good; he decided to invest in God by acting in ways consistent with this reliance and refusing inconsistent behaviors. Anchoring his heart on God, Abram canceled his servant's adoption proceedings and welcomed Sarai to his tent.
Abram “believed with a faith that deserves praise,”3 and that's the faith God counted as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). God received it as a pure interior sacrifice on the altar of Abram's heart, one which glorified God. As such, God reckoned it as a virtuous act and habit of Abram's will. God linked this faith to its unseen object, the future Seed of Abraham who is Christ the Lord. And so God recognized this faith, not so much as a substitute for righteousness as an example of it.4 God decided that, on this account, he'd therefore lavish much on Abram, “a commensurate reward for his very act of faith.”5
But no sooner had he done so than, hearing God promise him the whole land, Abram questioned: “How can I know?” (Genesis 15:8). The question raises questions: is Abram asking how to recognize fulfillment when it comes to pass, or is he indeed asking how he can be sure whether God's promise is reliable? The human heart is a fickle thing, so perhaps he is suddenly subjected to a temptation to doubt – and, while he wrestles with it, he cries out to God for assurance. He gets it in ritual form (Genesis 15:9), bade to set up the accoutrements for cutting a covenant. But when it happens, God signs on both lines, banning Abram's John Hancock (Genesis 15:17), and the covenant is cut only after an exhausting day battling raptors and a nightmare lecture that the fulfillment of the promise can only come through centuries of woe, with Abram knowing neither the dark nor the dawn (Genesis 15:10-16). The promise and nightmare together conspired to banish Abram's mortal fears, and with the covenant now in place, Abram's faith had a sturdier basis than ever before.
But the promise is slow to come, and his wife Sarai struggles with patience. Long burdened by infertility and now decisively past menopause, she reasons that the promises of God require her orchestration. Turning to her Egyptian handmaiden, she lays out a plan to bear God's fruit from the works of the flesh. Mirroring Abram's former wheedling at the Egyptian border, Sarai tempts him back to a manipulation mindset, “and Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai,” as Adam to Eve, surrendering to her scheme of surrogacy (Genesis 16:1-4). He “listened to a voice other than God's” and “took matters into his own hands.”6 The troubling results popped an ugly zit in their marriage, though in the end Abram found God at work in the situation, thinking he's now gained by it exactly what God had pledged: a biological son, Ishmael, to be his heir (Genesis 16:16).
Years passed until God once more appeared to Abram, deepening and expanding the promises. Abram would be fruitful beyond measure, becoming not one nation but many nations with kings and queens; the covenant would be augmented, made firmer and more permanent; God pledged perpetual fidelity to Abram's seed who'll inherit the land of promise. To commemorate it, Abram will be stripped of his name of ninety-nine years, the last thing he has from his pagan father Terah, and be renamed Abraham as a public declaration of what God is now doing (Genesis 17:4-8). To all this, Abram falls reverently on his face, believing in awe that unbelievable blessings will be his if God says so (Genesis 17:3). “The covenant was the consequence of his faith.”7
But God adds that all these blessings for Abraham are for Sarai too, now Sarah – that he won't receive a one of them apart from her. God means for this husband and wife to be partners: sharers alike in covenant, producers alike of nations and royal houses, bearers alike of new names and new hopes. God so insists Sarah be included that it's to be her future son, a miracle child yet to be conceived, who will be the heir – not the son whom Abram had believed for thirteen years would inherit from him (Genesis 17:15-16). Abraham falls once more on his face and laughs before God, disoriented and dismayed, “partly out of disbelief.”8 As one commentator remarks, “to put it mildly, he is skeptical.”9 Speaking from his desires, Abraham interrupts, objects, pleads with God to change his mind (Genesis 17:17-18) – and while God blesses, he does not budge (Genesis 17:19-22).
By this point, Abraham is certainly a man of faith. Even his pushback against God's plan was a confident negotiation with the God he's come to see as a true friend. Abraham believes God's word is true and mighty and good; he's just working on balancing God's seeming zigzags with the path Abraham has settled into. Withdrawn from the encounter, God yields Abraham space to decide how to respond to these modifications of the covenant. For the first time, the covenant has terms on Abraham's side. Circumcision is a paradox of fertile infertility, a sacrifice of blood, an enlistment in God's war on fleshly principles in the world, and a prophecy of a future Seed of Abraham who will fully cut off flesh at the cross and begin a new creation in resurrection. Circumcision is a seal of faith: trust in God to give fertility, devotion to God as worthy of our life and death, loyalty to God in his war on flesh, and reliance on God to bring this True Circumciser into the world. By it, Abraham accepts the covenant as modified, including all the terms to which he'd objected, and yet he applies the seal of the covenant to the very son with whom the covenant can't continue (Genesis 17:25). Yet he doesn't hesitate, but, despite the pain, he carries out the command entirely on the very day when it was given (Genesis 17:23-27).
Days or months later, as we would've heard last Sunday but as I hope you've read, Abraham espied three men traveling on a hot summer afternoon. It was a test of his faith and his character, a test to see whether his faith could rise above boasting in his election and xenophobic exclusion of outsiders to the covenant. And he passed the test. With no prior knowledge of these strangers, he humbly implored them to accept his hospitality, he included Sarah fully in his efforts to provide it, together they pulled out all the stops, and then Abraham himself served the strangers this costly meal as their waiter (Genesis 18:1-8). Only after the fact did it become apparent that the men were travelers from heaven, the Lord and his angels; and they relayed in Sarah's hearing the pledge of a coming son she'd now bear. After a hiccup of bewilderment like his own, she soon joined Abraham's faith in the promise; and thereby “he manifested the victory of his faith.”10
And now here we are. There's much Abraham's taught us about faith, and one such lesson is that faith can grow. The faith Abram showed in his opening lines was sweeping and impressive and real. But it was a vague faith, latching on to a few promises and rising to a fairly simple demand. It had few details, and Abram carried plenty of baggage as he went. But the faith he's got now, as he escorts his visitors onward, is a bigger, richer, fuller faith than the faith that led him to Canaan. It latches on to more promises. It rises to more detailed demands. It's been refined and purified of much of the baggage with which Abraham began. All though this journey, Abraham has been “growing in his faith.”11 And we know that can and is meant to happen. The apostles prayed for an increase of faith (Luke 17:5), the churches got stronger in the faith (Acts 16:5), and St. Paul gave thanks when believers' “faith was growing abundantly” (2 Thessalonians 1:3).
But Abraham shows us that such growth often isn't linear. If you were to quantify Abraham's faith at each point in these twenty-four years and map it all out on a graph, the line wouldn't be a straight upward climb. In fact, the inflection wouldn't always be positive. It's not as though every advance in time corresponded to an increase in Abraham's faith. That'd be easy, but hardly true to life. Sometimes his faith plateaued. And sometimes it even decayed. Abraham's journey was one of ups and downs alike. The faith he had to go to Canaan faltered when it came to staying in Canaan. The faith he had to hope for a son didn't necessarily stay strong when God said he'd picked the wrong mother. The faith he had to believe God was met with uncertainties and doubts, and probably days where his mind and heart were just elsewhere. Abraham's faith often excelled, but in between the grand summits, he “still displays at times a lack of trust in God.”12 Sometimes Abraham's faith flourished, and sometimes it floundered. Some tests he passed with an A+; some tests got returned with, “See me after class.”
When Abraham's faith struggled, his faith generally recovered, though sometimes it took a while. But his lapses had their consequences, as they always do. His detour to Egypt introduced him to Hagar, the occasion of his and Sarai's eventual fleshly attempt to force the promise, hence their marital spat, hence Abraham's resistance to his wife's fuller inclusion. It may even be that Abraham's difficulties in believing God's promise of the land led to the necessity of his seed needing to spend centuries oppressed outside the promised land. Lapses bring their consequences, though they may not be seen for years to come. And the same's usually true for us. “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin,” says the Apostle (Romans 14:23). God always offers his ready forgiveness, but that forgiveness doesn't automatically erase the temporal consequences of our sins – the things we've broken, the bad habits we've acquired, the burdens we've adopted, the new obstacles we've invented.
But Abraham also shows us the unthinkable kindness of God, who has a way of bringing beauty out of ashes (Isaiah 61:3). Sometimes, even our lapses turn toward our benefit in his hands – O happy fault! Abraham made such a mess of things in entering Egypt, yet God brought him up richer than ever before, blessing him in the face of his folly. Abraham's household dispute with Lot brought the tragedy of disunity, but God used it to further detach Abraham from his pagan roots, to expand the promise, and ultimately to set Abraham up to meet Melchizedek and bear witness before Bera. Abraham's impregnating Hagar was transparently not what God had in mind, and the fruitful penance of circumcision would become a badge of honor to his children. Lapses yield advances; backtracks are turned around; wounds are transfigured; a cross becomes a crown.
And now, basking in this kindness and mercy of God, Abraham escorts his guests, who seem to be gazing in the direction of Sodom, where Lot is (Genesis 18:16). And Abraham hears his Good Shepherd musing aloud over whether to keep hiding his plans and deeds from Abraham, in light of Abraham's destiny (Genesis 18:17). It's as if God is “communing” with Abraham “like one friend to another” now.13 And in this new paragraph, for the first time, we hear God admit why he chose Abraham, why he's decided to 'know' Abraham so intimately as to make him a friend of God. We learn what the point was in God giving Abraham such things to believe in.
The aim of his faith is that Abraham – and each Abrahamic believer – should “keep the way of the LORD” (Genesis 18:19). Keeping the Lord's way means following in the Lord's footsteps, pursuing the path he's laid out, living life the way he leads and directs.14 It means going where he sends, and not veering off on unethical detours and unspiritual tangents. The big question facing God's people, Abraham's house, would often be “whether they will take care to walk in the way of the LORD as their fathers did, or not” (Judges 2:22). It became a way of expressing the sum total of his law, to “walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you” (Deuteronomy 5:33). This was the way to which God referred in telling Abraham he must “walk before me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1) – undeviating from the way of the Lord. So “wait for the LORD and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land” (Psalm 37:34).
But how is Abraham supposed to keep the Lord's way? By “doing righteousness and justice,” God remarks here (Genesis 18:19). Righteousness is a word often broad enough to encompass any and all kinds of virtuous behavior, “the cleanness of my hands” (Psalm 18:20), and more specifically to “keep the commands of God,” whatsoever they might be.15 'Justice,' or 'judgment,' is originally a government word, meaning to set up and run a community rightly, to enact proper laws; but it also can mean to behave lawfully. The prophets tell us that justice is something God expects from every human being: “to do justice,” no less than “to love kindness” (Micah 6:8). Every human is called to be a person “who does justice and seeks truth” (Jeremiah 5:1).
And the biblical sense of justice especially means to “deliver from the hand of the oppressor” (Jeremiah 22:3), to act in the interest of those in need, intervening to save the vulnerable and endangered in much the way Abram did when he rushed to rescue Lot.16 So too, righteousness can mean, not just any kind of virtuous behavior, but generosity or benevolence that goes beyond justice (Proverbs 11:4; Deuteronomy 24:12-13).17 Because God is himself just and righteous, “he loves righteousnesses,” actions that exemplify righteousness (Psalm 11:7). So it's no wonder God loves Abraham as a dear friend, since Abraham had, in his great display of hospitality atop so many other things, “rendered himself deserving of such great regard for his obedience to God's commands,” the obedience of faith issuing in justice and righteousness.18
This pair, justice and righteousness, when put together, mean to “promote life and well-being for all” – they are social virtues.19 And they are the guardrails of the way of the Lord. Any man, any woman, can “do justice and righteousness” (Ezekiel 18:5), which is wonderful since “to do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice” (Proverbs 21:3). Thus, “blessed are they who keep justice, who do righteousness at all times” (Psalm 106:3)! But this was especially necessary for a king, as “David did justice and righteousness to all his people” (2 Samuel 8:15). His heirs were tasked to “do justice and righteousness” in how they governed (Jeremiah 22:3), and when they repeatedly refused, the prophets nursed hopes that one day “in the tent of David” there'd be “one who judges and seeks justice and is swift to do righteousness” (Isaiah 16:5), a “righteous branch” to “do justice and righteousness in the land” (Jeremiah 23:5). We know that their hopes were made good by the arriving of Jesus, an Eternal King, who “teaches the way of God truthfully” (Matthew 22:16). In fact, the first name for Christianity was “the Way of the Lord” (Acts 18:25).
This is the purpose of God knowing Abraham. In fact, God won't be satisfied if Abraham spends his life doing justice and righteousness, and then dies in peace at a ripe old age (Genesis 15:14). That's a fine way for him to spend his life, but Abraham's story isn't meant to end there. “I have known him,” says God, “so that he may command his children and his house after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19). Abraham himself is learning how to do justice and righteousness, but as he begins to raise his children and more fully lead his household, he needs to pass on what he's been given. He needs to see to it, so far as is in his power, that they believe the same faith, do the same deeds, keep the same way of the Lord. In no other way can those after him carry Abraham's life forward than by replicating his same faith and obedience.20
So this line “highlights Abraham's role as a teacher,” and it lays the groundwork for parents to teach their kids, for priests and prophets and preachers to teach the people of God.21 Abraham – and those who would continue the Abrahamic tradition – will need to teach the truth, to guide and form those under them, and even to bind them by command, charging them to walk in this way, to do these acts but not those acts.22 Simply put, what God is describing here is what we, taking cues from the Gospel of Matthew, call discipleship.
The aim of Abraham's faith is for him to keep the way of the Lord. He will do that by doing righteousness and justice, that is, obeying God's commands, developing in moral virtue, acting in the interest of the needy, and generally seeking to promote life and peace and wholeness wherever he goes. Not only that, but the aim of Abraham's faith is to disciple those who come after him in his household, both those born of him and those who enter some other way – everyone, especially, who might bear the covenant sign, must learn from Abraham how to keep the way of the Lord which it calls them to.
God explains that these tasks are related to Abraham's special destiny, in that “Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation” (Genesis 18:18). That, of course, is hardly a new thought: this saga began to God telling Abram, “I will make of you a great nation” (Genesis 12:2). It's not going to be enough for Abraham to raise up a few sons; it's not even going to be enough for him to transmit his legacy to his house after him.23 It's going to take a whole nation, an organized community on the world stage which is ordered on principles of social and political justice, which can strive after the righteousness that exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34), which can thus become “the righteous nation that keeps faith” (Isaiah 26:2).
Obviously, in one sense, this is about Israel. Israel, as the seed of Abraham's house and the bearers of its sign of its covenant, were to be a great and mighty nation ordered by social and political justice, a righteous nation keeping faith with God. But in a greater sense, amidst Israel's difficulties in transmitting that legacy, they were sent first prophets but finally the promised Messiah. Jesus came as the Righteous One, the King who really does righteousness and justice. Truthfully teaching the things of God, he discipled his apostles in the way of the Lord, charging them to them go forth and disciple others in all of his righteous commandments. Thus, the Church, would be the great and mighty nation, an organized community on the world stage in a radically new way. Discipleship isn't meant to result in a bunch of individuals operating in parallel. Justice and righteousness are social realities, and the individuals discipled by Abraham – and Christ the Son of Abraham – are discipled in the way of the Lord for the life of the Church which is the great nation on the way. Discipleship detached from the Church is just not, then, what the Lord has in mind. The fullness of his commandments cannot be carried out out of communion with the Church of Christ which we confess in the Creed. Discipleship is churchly, and he, the True Teacher, the Lord, “will fill Zion with justice and righteousness” by his Spirit at work (Isaiah 35:5).
But to say that isn't the end of the story either. There's more in these rich words of God! Because God doesn't merely call to mind that Abraham is destined to become a great and mighty nation. God also mentions that “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him” (Genesis 18:18). Again, that's hardly new information: we've already heard this pledged before Abram ever kissed Terah goodbye, that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). But God highlights it again now. However great and mighty a nation this Abraham should become, it will always be for the sake of the other families of the earth. Abraham is meant to be a blessing, Abraham's house is meant to be a blessing, the Church is meant to be a blessing, for all nations.
Discipleship therefore has an outward orientation. It's not enough that we practice justice and righteousness among ourselves, in our ecclesiastical halls. We must teach and model the righteous commandments of Christ to the nations of the earth. We must teach and model justice to the nations of the earth. We must practice justice toward the poor of the world beyond the Church, and must give generously and righteously of ourselves. That is the terminus of this mission: that by the Abrahamic justice and righteousness promulgated and perpetuated in the Church through the ages, these things would spill over as blessing to every nation, drawing them to Christ by showing them the life of Christ offered for the life of the world.
And all this – Abraham leading his house in his example of doing righteousness and justice so as to keep the way of the Lord, resulting in a nation that does such things and becomes a locus of blessing for all nations – is the point, the mission. But then one last phrase wraps things back around on themselves. The point of the point, God adds, is “that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him” (Genesis 18:19).
That's a fascinating little phrase for God to choose as the closing crescendo of his soliloquy. God has known and chosen Abraham to raise up such a house and such a nation in order that God may bestow on Abraham that which God has already promised to Abraham prior to Abraham following through. Or, to put it another way, that which God promised to Abraham on the basis of faith prior to Abraham's actions will become re-promised and then fulfilled precisely through Abraham's actions fueled by his faith. And that doesn't quite sit so well with our common idea, a deeply Protestant and Evangelical idea, of the supreme superiority of faith – that the best thing, the most beautiful gift of the gospel, is that we are blessed and justified precisely when undeserving, all apart from any works of the law; that then, just then, we may celebrate “the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works” (Romans 4:6). All well and good. But this passage unsettles things.
See, throughout the journeys of Abraham, there's a common pattern, and it really does go like this: God makes a promise to Abraham. Abraham believes that promise; his faith apprehends that promise for him. Faith lays hold... and yet God's method of ultimate delivery is to then make the promise also dependent upon Abraham's works. God delights to involve Abraham's own faith-motivated works into the plan to deliver the promise, so that when the promise is made good, Abraham might thereby “receive reward for his own practice of virtue.”24
God announced in chapter 12 that Abram's seed would own this land. Abram believed and gave thanks. Only later, though, did Abram's faith blossom in a peace-loving generosity that merited from God a deeper, bigger promise of the land (Genesis 13:14-16). And even then, he had to walk obediently through the land in order to establish his legal claim (Genesis 13:17). God made the land promise first when Abram reached the land; but the more developed form of the promise, in hindsight, was reserved for Abram's sacrifices and steps and sweat.
So too, God hinted over and over again that Abram would have seed (Genesis 12:7; 13:16), and finally clarified that the seed would involve a biological son of promise (Genesis 15:4). Abram believed, and that simple belief was itself reckoned as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). Later, God re-proposed the same promise in conjunction with a command: circumcision (Genesis 17:10-16). It was after Abraham obeyed, and after he then went the extra mile in hospitality to the heavenly, that Abraham now received that promise and its fulfillment as a reward, because now he'd done righteousness in his deeds (Genesis 18:6-10). God first counted Abram's faith as righteousness apart from works, so that God could shape Abraham into a more righteous person whose deeds would be righteous deeds indeed, “deeds appropriate to the covenant.”25 What was first offered as a promise to simply believe was later made clearer, later made better, by being newly conditioned on obedience and moral performance.26 But St. Paul would remind us that that still doesn't give Abraham room to boast before God, since even after “he had done many things well,” yet “every deed of his was perfected by faith.”27
Many promises given to Abraham were meant for those who'd come after him – his children, his household, his nation. And the promise was theirs for simply being Abraham's children, inducted into his covenant generally through no action of their own, but called to imitate Abraham's faith. But Abraham must disciple his children precisely so they can be made worthy to inherit in practice what's already theirs by promise, so that they can be changed into people fit for the promises first made to their father.28 Such a transformation is, in the logic of the story of Abraham, “the indispensable precondition for the fulfillment of the divine promises.”29
And so for us. We're absolutely saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:9); that's our basis of grace (Romans 11:6). But God's normative plan for each of us is to transform us through exercising that faith in love, in deeds of justice and righteousness, such that we become people who fit the promises – and then, when God gives them to us, he “will render to each one according to his works” (Romans 2:6). Through the Holy Spirit working in us, in our faith, we are presently being “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Those works are done out of the transforming power of Christ in us by faith.30 Even so, they could never strictly merit any of the things God has promised us; and yet they can help us fit those promises, such that God suitably chooses to reward them as meriting.31
Looking just at the moment we're born again, we're initially justified purely by faith; but looking at our whole life from before the judgment seat of Christ, we'll see how he imparted to us a righteousness that increased in us and changed us and worked its way out in our lives, in such a way that, through the holy feedback loops in which he delights, we've become people who fit the promises, people who receive it not only as a gratuitous gift but also as a reward for good and faithful servants, for sons and daughters bearing their Father's likeness. The purity in which the Church is finally clothed is simultaneously “the free gift of righteousness” and “the righteous deeds of the saints” (Romans 5:17; Revelation 19:8), for “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” – so saith the Scriptures (James 2:24). “For the righteousness that he has done, he shall live” (Ezekiel 18:22), and yet “the righteous shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). That life by righteousness believed, that life by righteousness done – in the end, it's all one seamless garment of believing God, which is to say, of trusting Jesus, of heeding the Spirit, of obeying the Father, of living out the law of Christ – that is all. Amen.
1 Augustine of Hippo, Answer to Faustus the Manichean 22.34, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/20:322.
2 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 83.
3 Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations 2.14, in Ancient Christian Writers 14:113.
4 Brant Pitre, Michael P. Barber, and John A. Kincaid, Paul, a New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology (Eerdmans, 2019), 185-186.
5 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 36.14, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:336.
6 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 110.
7 Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers 7.33.4, in Pieter W. van der Horst and Judith H. Newman, Early Jewish Prayers in Greek (Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 36.
8 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 315.
9 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 478.
10 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 14.2.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:157.
11 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 100.
12 Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 183.
13 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 42.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:421.
14 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 299.
15 Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 167.
16 Moshe Weinfeld, “'Justice and Righteousness' – משׁפט וצדקה – The Expression and Its Meaning,” in Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman, eds., Justice and Righteousness: Biblical Themes and Their Influence (Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 242-243.
17 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 171.
18 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 42.7, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:422.
19 Terence E. Fretheim, Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith (University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 79.
20 Mark J. Boda, A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the Old Testament (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 25.
21 Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 245-246.
22 Alex Varughese and Christian Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 108.
23 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 325.
24 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 42.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:423.
25 Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 176.
26 James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 12-50: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2020), 113.
27 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 5.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 61:141.
28 Augustine of Hippo, Questions on the Heptateuch 1.38, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/14:29.
29 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 131.
30 James B. Prothro, A Pauline Theology of Justification: Forgiveness, Friendship, and Life in Christ (Cascade Books, 2023), 101.
31 Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 152-153.
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