Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Matthew Henry says: “In Christ’s death He paid our debt; in His resurrection, He took out our acquittance.” But Scripture goes much further in this matter of justification than the satisfaction of all claims of God’s justice against us. We are set in a new place of acceptance, the Risen Christ, that has nothing to do with our old place. God will now go on to “create us in Christ Jesus.” It will be “justification of life,” as we shall see in Chapter Five.

Only, we repeat, let us always remember that we are justified as ungodly, and now we are “new creatures in Christ Jesus.’ Here, indeed, is a great mystery. God does not declare us righteous as connected with the old Adam—old creatures, we might say. Nor does He declare us righteous because we are new creatures. But God that calleth the things not existing as existing,
acts in justification, declaring the ungodly who believe on Him, righteous: not because of any process of His operation upon the creature, but by His own fiat, reckoning to the beliving one the whole work of Christ on his behalf. This involves God’s giving this ungodly believing one a standing in Christ Risen; and God will go on by an act of creation, to cause him to share Christ’s risen life, which is justification of life. But it is as ungodly that he is declared
righteous. We must hold fast to this, the first point of the gospel (I Corinthians 15:3).

We are indeed said to be justified by or in His blood (5:9), but if there had been no resurrection, His death would have availed us nothing. So Paul says that both Peter and he were “justified in Christ” (Galatians 2:17): that is, in the Risen Christ, in view, of course, of His finished work on the cross. When our Lord said, “It is finished,” He announced the penalty paid for every believer that shall be. But He lay under the power of death for three days and
nights, His body in Joseph’s tomb and His spirit in Paradise.

Now justification involves not only, negatively, the putting away of our
guilt; but, positively, a new place and standing. For the old Adam was
utterly condemned, as his history, and the law, and finally the cross, fully showed. If I am a sinner, and my sins are transferred to the head of Christ my Substitute, and He bears the penalty of them in death, then where am I, if Christ be not raised? His death and resurrection are one and inseparable as regards justification. Christ being raised up, God announces to me, “Not only were your sins put away by Christ’s blood, so that you are justified from all things; but I have also raised up Christ; and you shall have your standing in Him. I have given you this faith in a Risen Christ, and announce to you that in Him alone now is your place and standing. Judgment is forever past for you, both as concerns your sin, and as concerns My demand that you have a
standing of holiness and righteousness of your own before Me. All this is past. Christ is now your standing! He is your life and your righteousness; and you need nothing of your own forever. I made Christ to become sin on your ‘behalf, identified Him with all that you were, in order that you might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

I must here quote the vigorous, triumphant words of Martin Luther, from
his commentary on Galatians, touching these words, “delivered up for OUR
trespasses”: “Christ verily is the innocent, as concerning His own person, and the unspotted and undefiled Lamb of God, and therefore He ought not to have been hanged upon a tree: but because, according to the law of Moses, every thief and malefactor ought to be hanged, therefore Christ also, according to the law, ought to be hanged. For He sustained the person of a sinner and of a thief: not of one, but of all sinners and thieves. For He being made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, is not now an innocent person, but a sinner which hath and carrieth the sin of Paul, who was a blasphemer, an oppressor, a persecutor; of Peter, who denied Christ; of David, who was an adulterer and a murderer; and, briefly, Christ, who hath and beareth the sin of all men in His own body, not that He Himself committed them, but for that He received them, being committed or done of us, and laid upon His own body, that He might make satisfaction for them with His own blood. Therefore whatsoever sins I, thou, and we all have done and shall do, hereafter, they are Christ’s own sins, as verily as if He Himself had done them. To be brief, our sin must needs become Christ’s own sin, or
else we shall perish forever.

“Also learn this definition diligently (‘Who was delivered for OUR trespasses’), that this one syllable being believed, may swallow up all thy sins: that thou mayest know assuredly, that Christ hath taken away the sins, not of certain men only, but also of thee. Then let thy sins be not sins only, but even thy own sins indeed.

“Thus may we be able to answer the devil accusing us, saying, Thou art a sinner, thou shalt be damned. No, say I, for I flee unto Christ who hath given
Himself for my sins. Therefore, Satan, thou shalt not prevail against me in that thou goest about to terrify me, in setting forth the greatness of my sins, and so to bring me into heaviness, distrust, despair, hatred, contempt, and blaspheming of God. Yea, rather, in that thou sayest, I am a sinner, thou givest me armour and weapons against thyself, that with thine own sword I may cut thy throat, and tread thee under my feet; for Christ died for sinners! Moreover, Satan, thou thyself preachest unto me the glory of God; for thou puttest me in mind of God’s fatherly love toward me, wretched and damned sinner: ‘Who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John
3:16). And as often as thou objectest that I am a sinner, so often thou callest me to remembrance of the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, upon whose shoulders, and not upon mine, lay all my sins; for the Lord hath laid all our iniquity upon Him’ (Isaiah 53:6). Again, ‘For the transgressions of His people was He smitten’ (53:8). Wherefore, when thou sayest I am a sinner, thou dost not terrify me, but comfortest me above measure.”

So Paul closes his setting forth of this great resurrection side of our salvation, saying, He was raised for our justifying. Doubtless other and eternal ends were in view in God’s raising up Christ; but lay fast hold of this, that in your case it was for the purpose of declaring you who believe righteous, that God raised Christ. And further, of giving you a hitherto unheard of place, to be in Christ, one with Him before God forever, loved as Christ is loved, seen in all the perfectness and beauty of Christ Himself, glorified with Him, associated with Him as companions, that He might be the
First-born among many brethren!

There is no limit to God’s favor toward those in Christ!

JUSTIFICATION—A REVIEW

I. What It Is Not

1. It is not regeneration, the impartation of life in Christ; for although
it is “justification of life”—meaning God will give life to the justified, he is justified as ungodly.

2. It is not “a new heart,” or “change of heart,”—indefinite expressions at best, but having in them no proper definition of justification.

3. It is not “making an unjust man just,” in his life and behavior. The English
word justified, as we all know, comes from the Latin word meaning to make just or righteous; but this is exactly what justification is not, in Scripture.

4. It is not to be confused with sanctification; which is the state of those placed in Christ,—“sanctified in Christ Jesus”; and consequently the manner of their walk in the Spirit.

II What It Is

1. It is a declaration by God in heaven concerning a man, that he stands righteous in God’s sight.

2. God justifies a man, on the basis or ground of the “redemption that is
in Christ Jesus” (3:24). See 5:6: We are “justified by [or in] His blood”;—the blood the procuring ground, or means; God the acting Person.

3. God who has already acted judicially, in pronouncing the whole world
guilty (Romans 3:19), now again acts judicially concerning that sinner who becomes convinced of his guilt and helplessness, and believes that God’s Word concerning Christ’s expiatory sacrifice applies to himself; and thus becomes “of faith in Jesus” (3:26,RSV, margin): God’s judicial 102 pronouncement now is, that such a believing one stands righteous in His sight.

4. Justification, or declaring-righteous, therefore, is the reckoning by God to a believing sinner of the whole value of the infiinte work of Christ on the cross; and, further, His connecting this believing sinner with the Risen Christ in glory, giving him the same acceptance before Himself as has Christ: so that the believer is now “the righteousness of God in Him” (Christ).

Negatively, then, God in justifying a sinner reckons to him the putting away of sin by Christ’s blood. Positively, He places him in Christ: he is one with Christ forever before God!

Wondrous prize of our high calling!

Speed we on to this,

Past the cities of the angels,—

Farther into bliss;

On into the depths eternal

Of the love and song,

Where in God the Father’s glory

Christ has waited long;

There to find that none beside Him

God’s delight can be:

Not BESIDE HIM, NAY, BUT IN HIM,

O BELOVED ARE WE!

—C. P. C., in Hymns of Ter Steegen.

82 The doctrine of Abraham as being the “father of all that believe,” has
yet to be announced,—as is done later in this same chapter.

83 (1)“It was reckoned unto him as righteousness”; here the word “reckoned” is logidzomai, a great word with Paul, used 41 times in the New Testament,
35 of which are in Paul’s epistles, 11 of these here in Chapter Four. Where it is used as in verse 3, here, of God, it is always a court word, God acting as Judge and accounting or holding as righteous those who, as Abraham, believe in Him; or the contrary, as is implied in verse 8; “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin,”—implying that there are those to whom He will reckon sin and its guilt.

In Chapter 4:5, we see what is reckoned by God as righteousness: “his faith is reckoned as righteousness,” This does not mean that faith is a meritorious act, as indeed it could not be,—being simply extending credence to One who cannot lie! Therefore, without being itself righteousness, it is reckoned as righteousness; the ground of such reckoning being of course the work of Christ on the cross. (Compare on this (Compare on this word the note on Chapter 5:11)

84 (1)We beg the reader’s permission to relate below an experience of our own, as illustrating “To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that
declares righteous the ungodly”:

Years ago in the city of St. Louis, I was holding noon meetings in the Century Theater. One day I spoke on this verse,—Romans 4:5. After the audience had gone, I was addressed by a fine-looking man of middle age, who had been waiting alone in a box-seat for me.

He immediately said, “I am Captain G—,” (a man very widely known in the city). And, when I sat down to talk with him, he began: “You are speaking to the most ungodly man in St. Louis.”

I said, “Thank God!”

“What!” he cried. “Do you mean you are glad that I am bad?”

“No,” I said; “but I am certainly glad to find a sinner that knows he is a sinner.”

“Oh, you do not know the half! I have been absolutely ungodly for years and
years and years, right here in St. Louis. I own two Mississippi steamers. Everybody knows me. I am just the most ungodly man in town”’

I could hardly get him quiet enough to ask him: “Did you hear me preach on ‘ungodly people’ today?”

“Mr. Newell,” he said, “I have been coming to these noon meetings for six
weeks. I do not think I have missed a meeting. But I cannot tell you a word of what you said today. I did not sleep last night. I have hardly had any sleep for three weeks. I have gone to one man after another to find what to do. And I do what they say. I have read the Bible. I have prayed. I have given money away. But I am the most ungodly wretch in this town. Now what do you tell me to do? I waited here today to ask you that. I have tried everything; but I am so ungodly!”

“Now,” I said, “we will turn to the verse I preached on.” I gave the Bible
into his hands, asking him to read aloud: “To him that worketh not.”

“But,” he cried, “how can this be for me? I am the most ungodly man in St. Louis!”

“Wait,” I said, “I beg you go on reading.”

So he read, “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly.”

“There!” he fairly shouted, “that’s what I am,—ungodly.” “Then, this verse is about you,” I assured him.

“But please tell me what to do, Mr. Newell. I know I am ungodly: what shall I do?”

“Read the verse again, please.”

He read: “To him that worketh not,”—and I stopped him. “There,” I said,
“the verse says not to do, and you want me to tell you something to do:
I cannot do that.”

“But there must be something to do; if not, I shall be lost forever.” “Now listen with all your soul,” I said. “There was something to do, but it has been done!”

Then I told him how God had so loved him, all ungodly as he was, that He sent Christ to die for the ungodly. And that God’s judgment had fallen on
Christ, who has been forsaken of God for his, Captain G——’s, sins there
on the cross.

Then, I said, “God raised up Christ; and sent us preachers to beseech men, all ungodly as they are, to believe on this God who declares righteous the ungodly, on the ground of Christ’s shed blood.”

He suddenly leaped to his feet and stretched his hand out to me. “Mr. Newell,” he said, “I will accept that proposition!” and off he went, without another word.

Next noonday, at the opening of the meeting, I saw him beckoning to me from the wings of the stage. I went to him,

“May I say a word to these people?” he asked.

I saw his shining face, and gladly brought him in.

I said to the great audience, “Friends, this is Captain G——, whom most, it not all of you, know. He wants to say a word to you.”

“I want to tell you all of the greatest proposition I ever found,” he cried: “I am a business man, and know a good proposition. But I found one yesterday that so filled me with joy, that I could not sleep a wink all night. I found out that God for Jesus Christ’s sake declares righteous any ungodly man that trusts Him. I trusted Him yesterday; and you all know what an ungodly man I was. I thank you all for listening to me; but I felt I could not help but tell you of this wonderful proposition; that God should count me righteous. I have been such a great sinner.”

This beloved man lived many years in St. Louis, an ornament to his confession.

85 This world hates the God of David, because it hates grace. The world rather likes David’s taking Uriah’s wife (for that is the world’s manner of
life!). But for Jehovah not to reckon this sin as damning guilt, and freely to forgive David,—and that so fully as to give “her that had been the wife of Uriah” another son, and bestow His special love on him (Solomon) to the extent of giving him a personal name, Jedidiah “for Jehovah’s sake” (II Samuel 12:24, 25) and placing this woman Bathsheba in the official genealogy of Christ (Matthew 1:6); and, above all, for God to call David a man “after His own heart,”—all this rouses the ire of a vile, self-righteous, neighbor-judging, blind, grace-ignorant, impenitent world,—a world that has neither repented, nor means to repent, of the very sins, into which David fell, and of which he repented most deeply. God’s record of David is “a man that will do all my purposes” (Acts 13:22, margin). How about it, critic of David’s God? Have you repented? Do you desire to do all God’s purposes? If not,—well, you will shortly meet the God of whom your false mouth has prated!

86 “Paul has turned the Jew’s boast upside down. It is not the Gentile who
must come to the Jew’s circumcision for salvation; it is the Jew who must come to a Gentile faith, such faith as Abraham had long before he was circumcised . . . When Isaac was saved, he was not saved by his circumcision any more than was his father before him. God never promised salvation except to faith. He never promised a perpetual nationality except to circumcised men who believe”—Stifler.

87 “The sacraments and ceremonies of the Church, useful when viewed in
their proper light, become ruinous when perverted into grounds of confidence. What answers well as a sign, is a miserable substitute for the thing signified. Circumcision will not serve for righteousness, nor baptism for regeneration”—Hodge.

88 These “steps of faith” of the uncircumcised Abraham would embrace all
Abraham’s story from his “call” in Genesis 12 to his circumcision in Genesis 17,—when he was 99 years old: (1) The revelation of the God of glory to Abraham, while yet in Ur of the Chaldees, and his evident turning from idols to Him. (2) Obedience to the command to get out of his country, from his kindred, and from his father’s house (Genesis 12:1-4); tarrying indeed at Haran on his way until his father died (Acts 7:4; Genesis 11:31). (3) The altar-worship of Jehovah in Canaan (Genesis 12:7, 8). (4) Choosing his portion with God: Lot’s separation from Abraham (Genesis 13), and Abraham’s arrival at Hebron (“fellowship”). (5) The victory over the kings (Genesis 14), (6) Accepting through Melchizedek the new revelation of “God Most High, Possessor of Heaven and Earth,” and the rejection of riches from men (Genesis 14). (7) Believing God’s bare word concerning his seed, and being thus “accounted righteous” (Genesis 15).

“Notice that in the seventh of these steps, there is the peculiar element of
counting on God, as God, to do the impossible. On the God who calleth the things not being, as being!

No doubt, there were further walkings and testings until the offering of Isaac in Chapter 22, after which we find no more testings: Abraham’s faith had become perfected. So James writes (see above), “The Scripture was fulfilled that saith, Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.” This word “fulfilled” is deeply significant. There was and always is, the prophetic, as well as the declarative element in justification,
(that is, in God’s accounting a sinner righteous). It is “the God who calleth the things that are not as though they were,” (Romans 4:17) who acts in justification. The moment He declares sinners righteous, they are so, having immediately the standing of being in Christ before Him. But they will also be manifested, by and by, and be glorified with Christ. “Glorified” they are already in God’s mind (8:30). What James insists on is that there will be a living walk, fulfilling the Divine declaration that the man is righteous.

This living walk also is before Him whom we believe, even God (4:17). It has no reference whatever to men. The explanation by some that Abraham was “justified by faith before God and by works before men” is trivial! Both in Genesis 15:6, when God accounted him righteous, and in 22:15 to 18, Abraham was alone with his God. When James says, “By works was faith made perfect,” he is expanding the statement, “Faith wrought with his works.” Paul has almost the same Phrase: “In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). Of course saving faith is a living, acting thing, as against mere opinion or profession; and this again is what James is insisting on. Works are the result of a true faith; but they are not, like faith itself, a condition of salvation. What “works” did the dying thief perform? You say. None: he cast himself on Christ as he was. Good. So must you and I: only that!

89 Dean Alford with his usual clearness says: “The inheritance of the
world then is not the possession of Canaan merely, either literally, or as a type of a better possession,—but that ultimate lordship over the whole world which Abraham, as the father of the faithful in all peoples, and Christ, as the Seed of Promise, shall possess: the former figuratively indeed and only implicitly,—the latter personally and actually.”

90

2. Now Paul completely shuts out the legalists from heirship with Abraham’s
seed. Because, as Weiss says, “If those persons were the possessors of the promise, who on the basis of a law had entered upon this inheritance of their father Abraham, (on the ground that it had been offered to them as a reward for the fulfillment of this law), then faith, which according to its essence is a confidence in the attainment of salvation, would be rendered void, and the promise, which has full assurance of that which is promised, would be made of no effect. For the law, in view of the sinful condition that prevails, can be completely fulfilled by none, and necessarily produces wrath. But the bestowal of that which is promised pre supposes the continuation of the graciousness of Him who made the promise; and this graciousness becomes equally impossible, as does the believing confidence—if law must be fulfilled to secure it!”

When law comes in, it conditions everything upon obedience to it. It had to be “disannulled” when a better hope was brought in! (Hebrews 7:18, 19)

91 The reason God hates your trust in your “good works” is, that you offer
them to Him instead of resting on the all-glorious work of His Son for you at the cross.

Reflect:

1. What it cost God to give Christ.

2. What it cost Christ to put away sin,—your sin, at the cross.

3. What honor God has given Him “because of the suffering of death.”

4. What plans for the future God has arranged through Christ’s having made
peace by the blood of His cross, to reconcile “things upon the earth and things in the heavens, unto Himself.”

Now, by that uneasiness of conscience on account of which you keep doing “dead works,” you neglect all God is, has done, and desires, for you; and
substitute your own uncertain, fearful, trifling notions of “works that shall please God.” You would make God come to your terms, instead of gladly accepting His great salvation and resting in the finished work of Christ.

It is ominously bold presumption, when God is calling all to behold His Lamb, to be found asking God to behold your goodness, your works!

92 Greek, katargeo, from kata, “down from”; and ergon, “work”; literally,
therefore, to put out of work, or out of business, to render ineffective; a word often used by Paul, and most important in his exposition. Its uses in Romans are seen in Chapters 3:3, 31; 4:14; 6:6; 7:2, 6. It occurs in his epistles 26 times, and elsewhere only once, but that once is illuminative: “Cut it down: why doth it also cumber (katargei) the ground?” (Luke 13:7). The ground was unchanged, but rendered wholly unproductive through the shade of, and the use of all the moisture by, the fig tree. This is the exact meaning: a result
otherwise to be expected is by some hindering power annulled. Remember
this word!

93 This remarkable compound word (zoē, life, plus poieō, make) is
translated in the King James Version by the poor word “quicken.” The
Revised Version is right. The King James Version uses the same feeble
word, “quicken” to translate the mighty word of Ephesians 2:5, a marvelous word of three components: a preposition, (“together with,”—sun)—plus our compound word, “make-alive,” of Romans 4:17, above,—the whole really meaning, “made-alive-together-along-with”—Christ’ God enlifes us in Him,—us who once were in the other Adam, dead in sins! “Quicken” is not only
pitiful, but lamentable in such a verse, as it hides the fundamental truth of a believer’s union with Christ in life and position.

94

1. I cannot refrain from quoting John Bunyan’s Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, in his contrasts of faith and unbelief:

“Let me here give the Christian reader a more particular description of the
Qualities of unbelief, by opposing faith unto it, in these particulars:

1. Faith believeth the Word of God, but unbelief questioneth the certainty of the same.

2. Faith believeth the word, because it is true, but unbelief doubteth thereof, because it is true.

3. Faith sees more in a promise of God to help than in all other things to
hinder; but unbelief, notwithstanding God’s promise, saith. How can these things be?

4. Faith will make thee see love in the heart of Christ when with His mouth He giveth reproofs, but unbelief will imagine wrath in His heart when with His mouth and word He saith He loves us.

5. Faith will help the soul to wait, though God defers to give, but unbelief will snuff and throw up all, if God makes any tarrying.

6. Faith will give comfort in the midst of fears, but unbelief causeth fears in the midst of comforts.

7. Faith will suck sweetness out of God’s rod, but unbelief can find no comfort in the greatest mercies.

8. Faith maketh great burdens light, but unbelief maketh light ones intolerably heavy.

9. Faith helpeth us when we are down, but unbelief throws us down when we are up,

10. Faith bringeth us near to God when we are far from Him, but unbelief puts us far from God when we are near to Him.

11. Faith putteth a man under grace, but unbelief holdeth him under wrath.

12. Faith purifieth the heart, but unbelief keepeth it polluted and impure.

13. Faith maketh our work acceptable to God through Christ, but whatsoever
is of unbelief is sin, for without faith it is impossible to please Him,

14. Faith giveth us peace and comfort in our souls, but unbelief worketh
trouble and tossings like the restless waves of the sea.

15. Faith maketh us see preciousness in Christ, but unbelief sees no form, beauty, or comeliness in Him.

16. By faith we have our life in Christ’s fulness, but by unbelief we starve and pine away.

17. Faith gives us the victory over the law, sin, death, the devil, and all evils; but unbelief layeth us obnoxious to them all.

18.
Faith will show us more excellency in things not seen than in them that
are, but unbelief sees more of things that are than in things that will
be hereafter.

19. Faith makes the ways of God pleasant and admirable, but unbelief makes them heavy and hard.

20.
By faith Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob possessed the land of promise; but
because of unbelief neither Aaron, nor Moses, nor Miriam could get
thither.

21. By faith the children of Israel passed through
the Red Sea, but by unbelief the generality of them perished in the
wilderness.

22. By faith Gideon did more with three hundred
men and a few empty pitchers than all the twelve tribes could do,
because they believed not God.

23. By faith Peter walked on
the water, but by unbelief he began to sink. thus might many more be
added, which, for brevity’s sake, I omit, beseeching every one that
thinketh he hath a soul to save or be damned to take heed of unbelief
lest, seeing there is a promise left us of entering into His rest, any
of us by unbelief should indeed come short of it.”

95 The King James Version along with certain commentators reads
“considered not.” William Kelly says: “There is excellent and perhaps
adequate authority of every kind (mss., versions and ancient citations)
for dropping the negative particle.” It is remarkable in this nineteenth verse that whichever reading we adopt, the resultant statement is not inconsistent with the context, though the two readings are opposite as can be.

96

1.The moral grandeur, yea, sublimity, of Abraham’s position cannot be put into human description.

Alone (except for Melchizedek) in a world that had left God, Abraham became by his faith, the silver thread that bound his seed to the God the
world had deserted! Out from Eden man had gone, and then away from
God’s presence, to found, in Cain’s city, a state of human affairs with
God left out. Condemned and judged by the Deluge, they had built their
proud Babel-tower. Scattered, again by Divine judgment, over the earth,
they set up wood and stone “gods,” and sacrificed to demons, glorifying
the very lusts of their degradation: such was man’s state, without God
and without hope, in the world.

And then—Abraham!

Walking by a principle the world could not know, direct faith in God as He
is,—as He reveals Himself step by step to this friend of His, Abraham comes quietly, but how wondrously, upon the scene. Even the Hittites, though they said of him, “Thou art a prince of God among us,” yet knew him not,—neither Abraham, nor his blessed God.

Faith in God cannot be understood, nor those who have it known, except by the men of faith. And because real faith in God enters into all the walk and ways of a trusting soul, such a one becomes, like Abraham, a “stranger and
pilgrim on earth.”

The Lots, the Ishmaels, one by one, withdraw from Abraham. He dwelt at “Hebron,” which word means “communion.” Lot, though saved at last, walked as a worldling,—“by sight.” Ishmael, as after him Esau, knew nothing of God.

But Abraham knew, and progressed steadily in knowledge of his God, even to the ready offering of Isaac upon the altar.

There was a seven-fold revelation of God to Abraham: First, it was as “the
God of glory” that He appeared first in Ur of the Chaldees (Acts 7:2).
Second, He revealed Himself to him as Jehovah (Genesis 12:8; 14:22; 15:2,
8),—although not opening to him, as afterwards to Moses in Israel the
meaning of that Name (Exodus 3:15); third, as El Elyon, God Most High,
“Possessor of heaven and earth”: and the Disposer of lands, and kings:
(Genesis 14:19 to 22; Daniel 3:26; 4.2; 5:18, 21); fourth, as Lord (Adonai,
Jehovah—15:2, 8); fifth, as El Shaddai, the Almighty God (17:1); sixth, as “the Everlasting God” (21:33); and seventh, as Jehova-Jireh” (22:14): The God who will Provide,—Especially, a Lamb for sacrifice (22:8).

Christ, in His ministry on earth, said “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad!” And, finally, Paul tells us in Hebrews 11 that this great man of faith “looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose Architect and Maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10),—that is, the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21; 22. Thus Abraham was taken into God’s complete confidence—as he himself had had complete confidence in God! “The Friend of God”—what a title! No angel or seraph had that name!

97 The word translated “wavered” (Romans 4:20), originally means to discriminate; then to learn or decide by discrimination; then to dispute or contend inwardly; then to be at variance with oneself, to hesitate, doubt. See
Thayer’s Lexicon, where he finally translates: “Abraham did not hesitate through want of faith.”

Uncertainty, inward balancings and strugglings of faith with unbelief (as the father of the demoniac cried, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief”) such was not the state of Abraham’s soul. Having committed himself to God’s
promise, which was wholly beyond human possibility, he went steadily
forward. This had the double result of giving glory to the God whom he
believed, and of making Abraham himself stronger and stronger in faith.

Two travelers on their way home came to a river frozen over, but evidently
not as yet with thick ice. One said, “I am afraid that ice will not bear my weight,” and he sat down in the cold. The other said, “I am going home,” and strode forward over the ice with steady step. He had committed himself! He refused to look at circumstances; and every step strengthened his resolve to go ahead. He reached the other bank, and eventually his home. The other man stayed back in the cold.

Mr. Moody used to say, “Unbelief sees something in God’s hand, and says, I
wish I had that. Faith sees it, and says, I will have it!—and gets it.” As one has said:

“The steps of faith fall upon the seeming void,

And find the rock beneath!”

98 God let Abraham wait many years, over thirteen at least (compare Genesis 16:16 with Genesis 17:1) before He began to let him realize the promises in the birth of Isaac.

99 “We have also a precious suggestion of some reasons (if we may say so)
why God prescribes Faith as the condition of the justification of a sinner. Faith, we see, is an act of the soul which looks wholly away from ‘self (as regards both merit and demerit), and honours the Almighty and All-graciousin a way not indeed in the least meritorious (because merely reasonable, after all), but yet such as to ‘touch the hem of His garment.’ It brings His creatures to Him in the one right attitude—complete submission and confidence. We thus see, in part, why faith, and only faith, is the way to reach and touch the Merit (value and power) of the Propitiation”—Moule.

100 Ernest Gordon in the Sunday School Times says, “A French Unitarian preacher, M. Lauriol, in speaking at the recent synod of Agen, said, ‘Purity of
heart and life is more important than correctness of opinion,’ to which Dean Doumergue answers shrewdly, ‘Healing is more important than the remedy, but without the remedy, there would be no healing.’”

Faith is the only faculty by which we can lay hold of God. “Let him take hold
of My strength,” is God’s command (Isaiah 27:5). But we cannot reach His
greatness—we are dust. We cannot look upon His face, for He dwelleth in light unapproachable. We cannot apprehend His wisdom, for it is infinite, incomprehensible ,—“reasonings of the wise, (regarding God) are vain,” Then how shall we lay hold of God at all? By believing Him! The weakest of men can believe what God tells him! Praise be to His Name! Faith, simple faith, connects us with the Mighty One! Paul says, “The faith of God’s elect” involves “the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness” (Titus 1:1). “Purity of heart and life” without the correct, accurate, constant teaching of doctrine,—“the doctrine which is according to godliness” (I Timothy 6:3)—is simply a philosopher’s speculation or a Romanist’s lie, or a “Modernist’s” imagination.

101 Satan, our deadly foe, has one target at which he constantly aims,—the
faith of a believer. We believe that Satan’s whole effort is engaged directly against faith in Christ. Millions of demons—unclean spirits, dumb spirits, lying spirits—swarm the air of this earth to carry on, together with those angelic principalities and powers who fell with Satan, the terrible program, with its “lusts of the flesh” and “of the eyes,” and “the vainglory of life,” called in Ephesians 2:2 “the course of this world” (literally,—the aion of this cosmos, that is, the present stage of this world-order). But Satan himself, filled with hellish jealousy against the Son of Man who came and spoiled the strong man’s house (in the wilderness temptation); and triumphed over all
Satan’s baits at Calvary, when He put away the sin of the world from God’s sight (a fact which is true already, as Satan, and instructed saints, well know, and which will be made good openly soon, in the new heavens and new earth),—Satan himself, we say, is at present chiefly occupied blinding men to the redemption and glory that are in Christ, and in preventing and hindering the progress of every believer. Every one who confesses the Lord Jesus is openly challenged by the prince of this world. It is well that “the God of peace shall bruise Satan under our feet shortly!” But God meanwhile says, “Whom resist, steadfast in your faith!”

102 ”Wherefore as condemnation is not the infusing of a habit of wickedness
into him that is condemned, nor the making of him to be inherently wicked who was before righteous, but the passing of a sentence upon a man with respect to his wickedness; no more is justification the change of a person from inherent unrighteousness by the infusion of a principle of grace, but a sentential declaration of him to be righteous” (i.e., in his standing before God)—John Owen.