Only Through the Righteousness of Faith

On a road with no 100 km/h limit, driving however fast is no offense. In the same way, the law was given to make people aware of their sin, not so that by keeping it they might become righteous. The covenant God made with Abraham came four hundred and thirty years before the law, and a law that arrived later cannot annul it.

Abraham believed the word that he would be given a son, but when the promise was slow to be fulfilled, impatience led him to father Ishmael and even to think of making Eliezer his heir. Through these missteps he learned that God alone can give life, and when he was commanded to offer Isaac, the son born to him at a hundred, as a burnt offering, he passed through the struggle between human anguish and obedience and came to his resolve. God counted him righteous not because of his works but because of his faith in the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.

If keeping the law were the way of salvation, Abraham’s faith would have no place, and neither would the salvation of the Gentiles. To believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the only way by which we, too, are counted righteous today. When we hold fast to the Lord’s nail-scarred hands and fix our attention on God alone, the way we ought to live in this world becomes clear.