The Call to Holiness: Abraham's Faith

"I am the Almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect" (Genesis 17:1). Straight as an arrow, this word from the Lord pierces the painfully crooked thirteen-year silence in Abram's life since Hagar returned from the desert to give birth to their son Ishmael. Sarai's hopes of raising Hagar's son as her own have been overruled by God Himself, who promised Hagar her own lineage. Even so, Hagar's hopes of seeing Ishmael grow into a great nation no doubt seem as far away as the desert to which she fled well over a decade ago. And Abram's hopes have likely been eroded as he watches Ishmael grow up to be a rather brash, mocking version of Hagar.

We would expect this sudden break in God's silence to gush forth a torrent of chastisement. But God does not scold Abram. God's long silence has given Abram ample time to scold himself. What God does do is quite amazing: He presents Abram with three truths that slice right through his jumble of mistakes. First and foremost, "I am the Almighty God." Was not this the source of Abram's error? He allowed Sarai, his wife, to play God, and this tragic choice has played out across millennia to this day. Second, "Walk before Me." Was this not the point of Abram's entire journey of faith? And yet how many times have we seen Abram taking a detour of doubt, leaning on his own understanding? Third, "And be thou perfect." Ouch! Surely not! And yet what is the alternative? Who can say the enormous harm done from even one seemingly "normal" misdeed?

Abram falls flat on his face as the Lord thus addresses him in the loving sternness that only God can show, sustaining us even as He breaks us into indistinguishable pieces. Abram is ready to be remade into Abraham, and his divine moment has arrived. From henceforth, he rises as a new man with a new name and even a new Sarah. Their son will be named Isaac, fusing together the laughter of his cynical mother and his surprised father. God's grace is astonishing, after so far a fall from faith. "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).

There is one condition: God's new covenant with Abraham will require the ritual of circumcision not only for every newborn male but also for every male in his household at any age. Thus shall all his descendants keep this covenant with God. Centuries will pass before the true nature of this covenant will be fully understood. An outward act of obedience, this covenant can only be kept from within through a walk of faith, which the Apostle Paul centuries later will call the circumcision of the heart. But, meanwhile, Abraham catches a glimpse of the holiness made possible by faith. And he responds with immediate obedience (Genesis 17:23-27). This obedience marks the beginning, not of Abraham's justification, but of his sanctification. And yet even this one act of obedience is considered "complete" only as it continues in a daily walk of faith.

I fear that we miss this truth today, trusting in our initial moment of justification as a one-time event in the same way that the Jews later came to trust in circumcision. But neither the moment of justification nor the crisis of sanctification remains a static experience in the life of the true believer. Both represent the beginning to a whole new life. But what of those who point back forty years to a divine moment with God--are they living for Him today? Is His manna not fresh every morning? Justifying faith and sanctifying faith are never stagnant, never stale, for "the just shall live by faith" (Hebrews 10:38). The writer to the Hebrews tells us that, "without faith it is impossible to please Him" (Hebrews 11:6).

Abraham is only just beginning a steeper and sweeter highway to holiness. The faith that led him many years earlier to leave the site of civilization's great ziggurat near Ur in Shinar (the location of Babel) will lead him to build at least four altars of consecration on his journey to Zion. The fourth of these altars he will build some twenty-five years after this crisis of consecration marked by the covenant of circumcision. He will lead his beloved Isaac up the slopes of Mount Moriah to offer him to Almighty God. From this mountaintop, 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.