May 24: There’s a character of saving faith - Hebrews 11:6 tells us that it is believing that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. My reading in Romans 4 today adds the detail of being “fully persuaded” in spite of circumstances not being conducive to that belief. There’s a content of saving faith: the incarnation of the one-and-only, true-and-living God in human flesh, His substitutionary atonement and resurrection. There’s the implication of saving faith: simply acting as if these things are true: Abraham’s faith that caused him to leave his father’s country, not knowing where he went, to continue to try for a child, knowing God had promised Isaac, and to offer Isaac, believing God would raise him from the dead. Where does it become presumptuous? In Abraham’s and Sarah’s case, it was in taking Hagar to force it along. In Saul’s case, it was in offering the sacrifice in the stead of a tardy priest; and it also seems to have been getting ahead of God in pushing for deliverance from the Philistines. In what ways am I impatient and thus presumptuous in my relationship with God? To anticipate His reign, His justice, His holiness—these are characteristics of the righteous. To attempt to bring those about in the power of the flesh and unbidden, this is the presumption of the carnal and immature believer.
1 Samuel 13: Only two chapters before, Saul had mustered 330,000 fighting men, (1 Samuel 11:8), and wrought a decisive victory at Jabesh-Gilead. What provoked him to attack a garrison of the Philistines with only 3,000 men? Especially when the Israelites had been disarmed (1 Samuel 13:19). It was presumptuous of him to offer a sacrifice, as if he were a priest, 1 Samuel 13:8-14; but I’m also thinking this action against the Philistines was itself presumptuous. We’re not told God called him to go up against the Philistines, just that he had reigned two years.
Psalm 97: What about the people who worship pagan gods? Paul tells us “an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4); later admitting, “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice unto devils and not to God.” (1 Corinthians 10:20, cf., Deuteronomy 32:16-17) The Hebrew word in the text Paul is referring to in Deuteronomy is <
h7700>, šēḏ, “shade.” So it is literally an evil spirit, of the angels of Satan, and will be made to bow and confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father, Philippians 2:10-11, at that time when all men and angels do. The redeemed men and elect angels rejoice in Him
now, for His power to reign, for His justice, and for His holiness.
Romans 4:11-25: What is the essence of saving faith? Paul is taking pains to relate Abraham’s faith while uncircumcised, standing for an absence of legal obedience, no works to show, to the essential elements of saving faith. God raises the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. For us, that’s faith in the resurrection of Christ and in His declaration that we are righteous. For Abraham, it was the “deadness” of his wife’s womb and his own body at 100 years old. This hope against hope was repeated later in an even clearer way in his offering of Isaac, as Hebrews 11:19 tells us he believed God would raise him from the dead. In our case, we must believe on God, who raised Jesus up from the dead, after exacting the penalty due for our offenses on Him. Although I don’t see anything explicit about repentance or the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over oneself, as some insist a sinner must do before true salvation has taken place, I believe these things are implied in a full persuasion of one’s own deadness and complete trust in God’s power to do what is naturally impossible. As James tells us, it is by Abraham’s works in belief that we know he was justified. They don’t accomplish his justification: the cross is what actually did that for Abraham just as it did for us; but they show us his belief.
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