Theologue: Abram simply believed
By Rev. E.B. Holschuh
Abram simply believed.
In the second verse of chapter 12 in the Old Testament book of Genesis, God makes a promise to a man named Abram after instructing him to pick up and move from the city of Ur in Babylon (present-day southern Iraq) to a place smack-dab in the center of Palestine: “And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing.” By the end of the next chapter, Abram has reached his destination. Then, in chapter 14, fighting breaks out in what is known as “The King’s War.” It’s here that “Abram the Hebrew,” as he has come to be known, joins forces with a guy named Mamre the Amorite and his two brothers, Eshcol and Aner, and they set off after Abram’s wayward nephew, Lot, who had been living in Sodom, the “Sin City” of the time, and who had been captured when the city was sacked. Because of His promise to Abram back in chapter 12, God protects him...
… and Abram and his boys recover everything taken from Sodom—possessions and people, including Lot. As Abram prepares to meet with the no doubt grateful king of Sodom, out of nowhere appears Melchizedek, the king of Salem and “a priest of God Most High,” with some bread and wine…and this benediction: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” After the blessing he gives Abram a tenth of all he has.
In chapter 15, God says to Abram, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. So shall your offspring be.”
God seldom allows our faith to remain static, and so we face crisis points which bring our faith from the abstract to the concrete, and from the general to the specific. Such is the case with Abram. Even though Abram is assured by God about his future generations, he nevertheless begins to have doubts when he considers his own childless marriage.
Abram was no spring chicken. He was 75 years old when God told him to take his family and possessions and move to an unfamiliar place about 400 miles away, promising that through him would come a great nation. Abram did as he was told by God, which included, later, circumcising himself and his entire household as a sign of God’s covenant with him.
Certainly by such obedience this man Abram was deserving of God’s favor; in fact, many Jewish religious leaders assumed that Abram was justified (that is, saved) by his obedience to God. Descendants of “Father Abraham” (God changed his name to Abraham, “father of many” in chapter 17) claimed entitlement to God’s favor and expected redemption, both spiritual and political, from the promised Messiah.
Abraham simply believed. In the New Testament book of Romans, Paul uses Abraham as an example to demonstrate that faith—not obedience, which we could never pull off anyway, nor any amount of good works—is required for salvation. People who believe that God responds to good works, that salvation is either fully or somewhat dependent upon what we do—such things about which we could easily boast, like Pharisees, before God — are like workers awaiting payment in return for services rendered.
While God’s justification of Abraham occurred four millennia ago, it was still based on faith alone, as is a sinner’s justification today. Yet obedience, then and now, cannot be discounted—4,000 years ago God told Abraham what to do and he did it; 2,000 years ago, God told Jesus what to do and HE DID IT. God justifies the ungodly, weak, needy, and undeserving, sinners like you and me, through faith alone in Christ alone. By Christ’s death and resurrection our sins — past, present, and future — are forgiven.
Always, God has saved men by grace, through faith. There is no other way. While Abram was saved by faith in the One Who would come, we are saved by faith in the One Who has come. That is the only difference.
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Pastor E.B. Holschuh serves at Zion Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Alamo. He is a retired Navy Senior Chief and former English and Russian teacher and always looking for new ways to reach people; people can reach him in English or Russian at pastor@zionalamo.org. Check out “Fear or Faith?”, the official podcast of Zion Lutheran Church (episodes in English, Spanish, Russian, and Korean) available on most popular podcast platforms.