It
is not enough
to believe that there is a God, or
even to believe that the God of the Bible is the true God. As James
tells us: “Thou
believest that God is one. Thou doest well.
The demons even believe, and tremble” (James 2: 19). No, salvation
depends upon believing what God has said.
This is seen very
clearly with Abraham. His justification rested on believing what God
had testified to him: “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned
to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4: 3). What had God said? God had
told him that even though both he and his wife were old, he would
have a son, and his seed would be as numberless as the stars of the
heavens (see Gen. 15: 1–6). Looked at through purely natural eyes
the fulfilment of this promise seemed impossible, but Abraham
believed what God had told him—and as a result God reckoned
him as justified. He was justified by faith.
Everything pointed to Abraham dying childless, but God had told him
otherwise and he believed what God had said. There was nothing that
Abraham could do to prove what he had been told and what he had
believed, for “faith is [the] substantiating of things
hoped
for, [the] conviction of things
not seen”
(Heb. 11: 1, my emphasis).
What was the result of
Abraham’s faith? The name of Abraham is renowned through all the
world, but like the rest of us, he was a sinner, “for all have
sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3: 23). Yet when
he believed God, the Scripture tells us that God “reckoned it” (that
is, his faith in God’s Word), “to him [as] righteousness” (Gen. 15:
6). Righteousness, instead of sin, was put to his account. Naturally
speaking, he was still a sinner, but in the eyes of God he was
reckoned as righteous. He was justified. Why?
Because he had
believed what God had said.
Faith, however, cannot stand alone, for “faith without works is
dead” (James 2: 26). When Phinehas stood up and executed
judgment in Shittim (see Num. 25: 1–15), God says of it that it
“was reckoned unto him for righteousness, from generation to
generation, for evermore” (Ps. 106: 31). Here the faith of the
man is seen in his works, and his faith is proved to be real. A
kind of easy belief is rampant today, but “a man is justified on
the principle of works, and not on the principle of faith only”
(James 2: 24). Thus with Abraham he proved that he
believed God by offering “Isaac his son upon the altar” (v21)
and so “by works” (v22) his “faith was perfected” (or
completed). Faith in God will be “perfected” by bringing forth
fruit for God—it cannot be otherwise. A fruitless faith that
professes to be the real thing will sooner or later be exposed
as seed sown by the wayside, in rocky places, or choked by the
thorns (see Luke 8: 5–15).
