The Call to Holiness: Abraham's Faith

And the just shall live by faith. "I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect" (Genesis 17:1). Thirteen years have passed since Sarai played God and made a colossal mess of Abram's life, her own life, and Hagar's life. I love how the Lord gets right to the point: "I am the Almighty God." We can hear the echo, Why did you doubt Me? "Walk before Me"--another echo, because you can't hide your mistakes. "And be thou perfect"--another echo, even though everyone will insist this isn't possible. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" (Genesis 18:14).

"And without faith it is impossible to please Him" (Hebrews 11:6). In Genesis 17, Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, and Isaac is named as the coming child of promise--born specifically of Sarah. "And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her" (Genesis 17:16). Oh, how gracious the Lord is to salvage hope from this familial disaster in which Ishmael is now a teenager quite full of himself, as later chapters reveal in his mockery of his infant half-brother, Isaac. And yet the Lord does not spend even one syllable chastising Abram for his failure of faith--even though the entire world knows that's what it was. Instead, He redirects Abram's attention to the promise-package he received so many years ago, and this time Abram gets to peek inside and see Isaac in embryo, despite all impossibilities. But there is one condition: Abram, now Abraham, must keep the covenant of circumcision.

I love the "no longer" words of God. They snap the chains of our undoing. "No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations" (Genesis 17:5). Again, we hear echoes of Hagar's well in the wilderness and God's promise to multiply the descendants of Ishmael. And yet, this promise is new, having been unfolded incrementally across many years. And each new stage of blessing calls forth an evermore refined response--a wholehearted obedience mysteriously unripe until this very moment. Abraham leaves Abram behind with all of his mistakes, misgivings, and manipulations. "For I have made you a father of many nations" (Genesis 17:5). God speaks, not in conditional terms, but in perfected terms in His call for Abraham's perfection. His promise is present in the here and now--"for I have made." Who could not respond to such a perfect promise as this? And it continues into the infinite future, "I will make you exceedingly fruitful" (Genesis 17:6). But all of this depends upon Abraham's obedience to the covenant, and in this he must walk before God and be perfect. "As for you, you shall keep My covenant" (Genesis 17:9). And this covenant is implemented so that Almighty God can "be God to you and your descendants after you" (Genesis 17:7).

If we study the nature of God's covenant with Abraham, we see that it rests in a completed act of Abraham's obedience, and yet this act is not equated with Abraham's first declaration of righteousness. "And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). This crediting of righteousness to Abram's account occurs when Abram believes the Lord's promise of an heir from his own body (Genesis 15:4-6). In this initial justification, we see the abiding condition in which Abraham must walk before God even after he has completed the outward condition of the covenant. He must walk by faith. He cannot rest in his own works (circumcision), perfect though they be. He must continue to "walk" before the Lord and "be perfect" or "blameless" by faith. There is faith before there is holiness in the life of every believer, but there is no holiness without faith. We cannot by any means call Abram a holy man before his obedience in God's covenant of circumcision, and yet the holiness by which we now know him--the holiness which gives him courage to intercede for his morally bankrupt nephew in Genesis 18--must be maintained moment by moment. "The just shall live by faith" (Hebrews 10:38).

Centuries later, the Apostle Paul will wrestle with this fact among legalistic Jews who do not trust in Christ. And he will call them uncircumcised in heart because they refuse to live by faith. God's covenant with Abraham is not thus discarded; it is fulfilled in Christ, who came to remove once and for all the code of sin against us. But this removal is without meaning if He removes the consequences only. He must remove the presence of sin itself from our hearts, or our walk of faith is not possible. Let us remember that it was after Abram's justification by faith that he fell so far from faith by fathering a child by Hagar. And yet, instead of browbeating him for this, God draws a line of sharp separation between Abram and Abraham. Abraham must know perfection in a way that Abram never could, justified though he may be.

Abraham now knows that it is far better to let God be God in fulfilling His perfect will for our lives than to require divine intervention to deliver us from the consequences of our own will. Abraham from here forward will experience a maturing of his faith, and this new journey of the covenant he begins with immediate obedience, for "that very same day Abraham was circumcised and his son Ishmael; and all the men of his house, born in the house or bought with money from a stranger, were circumcised with him" (Genesis 17:17). This symbolic removal of all that is unholy included the addition of all that is happy. And such it will always be when the soul surrenders completely to God. This happiness cannot be tainted by any former bitterness, and the God who promises to bless Sarah before and after she gives birth to Isaac later hears Sarah's cynical laugh and rightly calls her to account (Genesis 18:12-14). And yet in Genesis 17, God hears Abraham's laughter and lets it pass, for this is apparently a laugh at himself for the absurdity of all the pain he has caused by failing to wait on God. And without reproach, the Lord three times insists that Sarah shall have a son (Genesis 17:16, 19, 21).

Why the Lord's full revelation comes only after Abram's monumental lapse of faith we cannot know. But the fact that it came at all is in itself a miracle of grace. Abram was surely broken by his failure. Can we even imagine his shock when, after thirteen silent years, God appeared once again to him? "Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him" (Genesis 17:3). He literally collapsed for joy. The presence of Ishmael in his life could in no way replace the Presence of the Lord. We are not saying God left Abram during this time, for His promises to Hagar prove otherwise, as does the unchanged nature of all God's promises. And yet Abram must have surely felt the absence of any new word from the Lord in all this time. But the Abram who failed the test in believing Isaac through Sarah would be born (an Isaac he did not know by name or by origin at that time) will later pass the test in believing Isaac can be raised from the dead (Genesis 22).

Abram's sanctification has been long in coming, and now as surely as his new name is Abraham, he is set apart by God for a divine destiny that is as personal as it is national. We have seen Abram leaving Ur with an imperfect faith (Genesis 12-13); we have seen him sojourn in an unknown land with a growing faith (Genesis 14-17), but we will ultimately see him entering Hebrews' Hall of Fame with perfect faith (Genesis 18-25; Hebrews 11:8-19). Along this epic journey, Abraham has emerged almost ex nihilo as the father of the faithful. And yet, if we connect the dots, we find his pedigree rooted in Shem, whose life of 600 years overlapped Abraham's by 150 years. Thus, Shem's legacy from knowing his godly father, Noah, the great grandson of Enoch, is clear, even though Eastern society continued to decay ever since the Tower of Babel near Ur in Shinar.

The pilgrim who leaves the site of civilization's great Ziggurat is known for building four altars that reached the Throne of God. We see Abraham building at least four altars along his Canaan journey, the fourth being where he would willingly have offered his own son at God's command. Each altar, like the stages of Abram's growing faith, marks an encounter with God and commemorates a milestone of his pilgrimage. First, God promises Abram land, and Abram erects an altar (Genesis 12:7). Abram builds his second altar in Genesis 12:8, between Bethel and Ai, where he calls upon the name of the Lord. He builds his third altar near the oaks of Mamre when he and Lot part ways and God reiterates His promise of land and blessing (Genesis 13:18). Abraham's fourth altar on Mount Moriah foreshadows Mount Calvary (Genesis 22).

"Remove not the ancient landmark," Proverbs 22:28 and 23:10 remind us. Well could this apply to those altars of faith left behind by godly ancestors. As surely as we may infer that Shem touched the life of Abram, we know that Abram touched the life of Jacob. Jacob knew without knowing that he wanted his grandfather's God more than he wanted anything on earth. And Abram's second altar built between Bethel and Ai becomes the place where a fleeing Jacob many years later would dream of a Ladder to heaven. Jacob awakens with a jolt, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not" (Genesis 28:16). And in this, we see that even the imperfect faith of Abram left behind a legacy for his promised and blessed descendants to follow.

A study of Abraham's altars would lead us naturally to a study of his prayers. And yet Abraham's most famous prayer he prayed standing yet before the Lord while interceding for his grossly careless nephew, Lot (Genesis 18:22). And so we see the faith of this perfected man operative not only for himself but especially for the lost--or nearly lost. The godly man will pray after everyone else has given up--or given in. This father of the faithful, called the "friend of God" (James 2:23), answered the call to holiness one hot desert day when he left Ur of the Chaldees. We see his starting point, his stopping points, and his stuck points. And the only way out of this plateau of spiritual stalemate is utter abandonment to God. From this plateau, Abraham will ascend the hill of the Lord with clean hands and a pure heart, for his perfect faith leads him all the way home.