Musings: Notes From My Daybook

It's dark and old and yet incredibly full of life. The apostle Paul in Romans 4 raises up the story of Abraham to speak about the radical movement of faith and expects his readers to stand amazed. I stand amazed and I'm not even singing a song.

In the twilight of human history God calls to Abraham and says, "Take a look at the stars in the sky. Can you count them?" "No," says Abraham. "But that is how many your offspring will be," replies God. "And Abraham believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness" (Gen. 15.6).

Abraham has no children. In fact, Sarah is not even pregnant. She is old; he is old. No kids and God says you will be innumerable descendants. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Abraham believes God's word. He trusts God's instruction.

Now the believing that Abraham does is not your garden variety faith. Abraham's faith is the kind that sets out to an unknown land with only a voice in your head telling you to do so. It is offering the best lands to his nephew Lot. It is rejecting the possibility of having a servant fill in for a son or having a son with another woman. It is a faith that vibrantly and intentionally acts in a way that is consistent with claims of faith. Abraham without wavering, relies upon God's promise. Abraham lives his life acting on the claims of faith.

Now here is where Paul picks up the story and takes it to the Roman church. Rather than seeing that being righteous was about being and doing the right things, God's understanding of being or doing right is something else. Namely, doing or being right has a lot to do with trusting God. Paul is carefully, powerfully presented Abraham as righteous--outside of law. Abraham is righteous because he lives out of the frameworks of faith.

Hoping against hope, Abraham keeps right on believing, trusting that God knows what he is doing, even when there is no human possibility available.

That raises two warnings for me.

First is the ongoing danger to want to rely on the doing of a law or a code or a system of some sort in order to prove ourselves worthy of God. Such an illusion is devious on several counts. For example, can a person really ever fully live a perfect life? Or, which one of us really thinks that we can come up with the right list? Or, as is often the case, what if we can't agree on what the list is supposed to look like?

The second matter is much more subtle. It seems to me that many North American Christians may not be living out a life of faith simply because they are waiting for God to spell out more clearly what they are supposed to do. We all can give a polite round of applause for Abraham's faith, but after all, that was then and this is now.

To really sell out and live by faith would be just a little too risky today. We wouldn't want to do something too radical, too on the edge, so many of us may be trying to get by on a reduced dosage of God's call to faithful living. We trust, but we will also make sure the insurance policies are paid and we have plenty of money in the bank.

But then, in typical midrashic fashion, Paul pulls a fast one that leaves me standing exposed and vulnerable. Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," was written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. . . . (Rom 4.23-24)

I guess Abraham wasn't the only one who is given the call to live the life of faith.