Justification by Grace: The Abraham’s Story
Over the years, in my walk with God, I have realised that it is a very hard thing for men to believe that their works and religious activities do not contribute anything to the justification which they have in God. But the hard truth is that by faith, grace is offered to us in Christ Jesus and righteousness is ours, not earned by our works, but it’s been given freely to those who believe in Christ Jesus. A couple of years back, I was led to minister to a friend, who confessed to me that she had not been in church for so many years, to be specific, since childhood. And at the time we were friends, she was a bit over 43 years of age. In a bid to allow her to gradually grow and mature in Christ, I did not bombard her with too many scriptures because I realised she was so scared of being condemned due to her distance from God, as she confessed to me.
During one of our discussions about repentance and re-tracing her steps back to God, she opened up to me that she was very convinced that the magnitude of her sins and worldly activities could never be overlooked by God, let alone forgiving and accepting her back into His Kingdom. She further explained to me that she did not even have the confidence to come into the church to worship God. This confession really helped me to identify a major area to focus on. With the help of Holy Spirit, she was made to understand that her works were not cardinal to the salvation of her soul. The most paramount is faith, by which all men are granted grace to be justified before God. All she was expected to do was re-dedicate her life to Christ, have faith that she was restored, and keep the hope alive.
The journey of Abraham with God has been characterised by faith, grace and belief, with immediate cultural and emotional influences. After the Lord has called Abraham in Genesis Chapter 12 and promised that he will be made a great nation… “I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great, and thou shall be a blessing.” he obediently departed with his wife and all he had. He was 75 years of age and was childless, but he yielded to the command of God.
Having waited for another ten years without the promised child through Sarah, in her impatience, Sarah mounted pressure on Abraham to take Hagar, her Egyptian handmaid, so they could have a child by her, who would automatically become Sarah’s legal child then, by the cultural law of the time and age. Their intention was to do it their way since God seemed to have forgotten He made a promise to give them a child of promise, the heir of the great covenant. Abraham, at this point, compromised his stand with God by yielding to the pressure from his wife and also conforming to the culturally accepted norm of the age instead of waiting on God to perfect what he had started. The Law Code of Hammurabi (144-145) stated that:
“Throughout the Ancient World, childlessness was considered to be a serious problem. If a wife failed to bear children, she might give her maidservant to her husband. If the maidservant produced a baby, it counted as the wife’s child. If such a maidservant started to take on airs and act the equal of the wife, she could not be sold, but she would be kept strictly as a slave. If neither wife nor maidservant produced a child, a man was permitted a second wife, but again, she was not allowed to be equal in status to the first wife. (144-149)”.
The above fact does not justify Abraham’s and Sarah’s act of helping God to make things happen, even when God had given His word and promised that an heir of the great promise would be birthed at the appointed time. The impatience of the couple about the state of their childlessness eventually gave birth to the terrible consequences of the birth of Ishmael, which finally gave birth to the Muslims with a belief different from the Jewish Christian faith in God. The perspective of God’s walk with Abraham was much wider than his understanding, and that’s why he agreed with his wife to help God, who does not need the help of any man to fulfil His promise at any point. Genesis 17:15-22 states the reassurance and emphasis on His promise and also confirms it, even after 15 years of giving the promise. “And God said to Abraham, as for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name, And I will bless her, and indeed give you a son by her. Then I will bless her and make her a mother of many nations; kings of people shall come from her”.
Despite the doubts of Abraham and his wife, coupled with their compromising, disbelieving and disobedient acts in response to the promise of God, the Lord followed through and blessed them with Isaac, the child of promise. In addition to this, despite the unbelieving attitude of the duo and the carnal approach to waiting on God, Ishmael was blessed by God. Paul reacted to this in his epistle to the Galatians 4:22-23, “For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, but he of the freewoman was by promise.” It could then be said that Abraham’s walk with God was not a smooth sail of righteous acts of his but by the grace drawn from the faith he has in God. Abraham was not a perfect model as many perceive, but a man who was sustained and justified by grace.
This article is adapted from Walking with God by Rev. Ayodele Afuye
