Abraham’s Righteousness, Credited and Recorded for You
No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.”
But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Things happened in history to a real man named Abraham. His history was handed down and recorded and preserved for hundreds of years. With a breakthrough here or an archeological discovery there, scholars find out more and more about what they already know and occasionally discover some new things.
When Moses and the rabbis repeated the story over and over, they said that Abraham’s faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” The rabbis in Jesus’ day and even today memorize those words with the precision of a college marching band performing their fight song over and over again at a football game.
But those words weren’t memorized and repeated for Abraham. He was long gone by the time scholars and linguists translated the words from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into English.
Those words weren’t printed in 2001 for Abraham.
They were printed for you!
To be as righteous as Abraham is discouraging. To be faithful for a few hours beyond church on Sunday can feel impossible as soon as we hit traffic outside the parking lot. But for all who believe that Jesus paid our price, we can be “counted righteous” just like Abraham was. Abraham would continue to mess up a lot, but his righteousness was never taken away from him. As we trust that Jesus completely died to take our sin away completely, we walk in the same kind of righteousness that Abraham had.
Instead of growing in our guilt at all of the things we fail at, we can grow in love for Jesus as we see the power of His salvation. God did something, and when we trust what He did, He completes the act by counting that faith as righteousness.
He did it, we responded, then He did it even more.