Belief and Righteousness
Three times the New Testament says that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. This is one of the arguments people use against baptism being a requirement for salvation. I'd like to look at it a little further and explore what righteousness and belief are in Bible terms and what these verses mean in context.
Righteousness:
The Strong's concordance defines as righteousness as justification or holiness, or innocence. Easy enough to grasp I guess. We've all sinned and God said "be holy as I am holy", so we need a way to get to the holiness. When we get to that place where we are holy, sanctified, consecrated, set apart for divine purpose, that's righteousness.
Belief:
Belief is the part that trips a lot of people up. Is believing in Jesus just thinking that He's real and thinking He died for us? The context of the Bible and Greek meaning seems to say it's a bit more than that, a lot less surface-level.
In the Greek, the words for faith and belief have the same root. To believe is to have faith. To have faith in the Greek means to entrust yourself to something, to have confidence, to rely on,. It's this idea that you are fully persuaded, nothing doubting. That's admittedly harder than people want to claim, especially when you take something like Jesus saying that by faith we can move mountains. I've never once met someone who has so much confidence in Jesus's statement, a full persuasion of it, to the point that they actually tried to move one. Belief in human terms is thinking that Jesus saves, but in the Bible it's this trust that He will, so much to the point that whatever He tells you to do you do it without hesitation.
Three times we're told that Abraham entrusted himself to God, relied on God, was fully persuaded in God, and it was counted as righteousness. Let's look and see what this means regarding our salvation.
Romans 4 talks about Abraham's faith being counted as righteousness and how that was before he was circumcised. It wasn't the act of circumcision that made Abraham righteous. Abraham's faith was counted as righteousness back in Genesis 15. He didn't get circumcised until two chapters later. Abraham had an assurance that God was speaking the truth before the idea of circumcision came up. Once circumcision was brought into the picture it did become part of Jewish law and it was expected to be obeyed, but being circumcised was not when God called Abraham righteous.
It's important to note that Romans was written to the church. It wasn't written to unbelievers to tell them how to get saved. It was written to those who were already saved, and the book of Romans is very largely the difference between walking in the Spirit verses walking in the flesh and the contrast between the law of the Jews and the freedom from sin and death. Maybe you learned the "Romans road to salvation" like I did growing up or maybe you didn't, but there's been a lot of erroneous doctrine made by building on verses out of context. So, keeping in mind that Paul is instructing the church here, and that he is dealing with this idea of following the Old Testament laws and (in this chapter) circumcision, let's look at what this means for us.
Paul isn't saying that God doesn't have a requirement of obedience. He's not saying we shouldn't do good works. He's not saying there isn't a command to be obeyed. What Paul is saying, is that we aren't made righteous by following the law or commandments (which, there were roughly 613 of, not just 10), but instead, we are made righteous by full persuasion that, what God says He will do. And since the letters to the believers are more about staying saved than being saved, we can go on to say that the idea here is that we didn't become righteous by obeying those 613 laws and after our conversion those laws won't keep us saved either. To become saved we put our trust in Jesus and to stay saved we keep it there.
Paul talks about Abraham again in Galatians 3, and again we are going to look at it in context. The Galatians, like the church in Rome, were struggling with whether or not certain laws should be kept. Paul has to remind them, just like he reminded Rome, that we aren't saved by obedience to the Old Testament law; the church is made righteous by faith.
10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
We can't be made righteous by the law because there is no way to obey all 613 commands.
13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
Paul goes on to tell us that the law had a purpose, if we could have lived it then it would have saved us but since we couldn't it was there to teach us our need for Christ and it kept us until Christ could send the promise of the Spirit.
Now onto James 2
23 And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.If you aren't looking at context, by the third time you see the same thing repeated in three different letters, it would be understandable to be like "yep, see! All I gotta do is believe and I'm righteous!" But remember we ARE looking at context because context tells us where and when each verse applies. So what is the context here in James 2? James starts the chapter talking about people in the church showing favoritism to the well-off, the well-dressed and treating the poor more....poorly. He talks about how the rich oppress them and blaspheme the name of Jesus and how, if they fulfilled the law according to the scriptures, they would love the poor man as they love themselves. He tells the church that if they are showing favoritism it is sin and if they break part of they law they are guilty of the whole thing. He follows that by telling them to provide for brothers and sisters in need. Then we get to verse 14
14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
What good is it to say we have faith if we don't have good works accompanying it? James is very clear here that we cannot be saved and unloving to other members of the body at the same time. But we still haven't got to the Abraham part yet, so let's keep going.
20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? 22 Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? 23 And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. 24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
So, we can see that these verses aren't justification for not obeying things that Jesus has commanded. Now, not knowing what Jesus has commanded might be part of the problem so if you stick around we'll definitely get into that. If you open your Bible with an open, humble heart the Lord is more than happy to show you His requirement for salvation first and then for daily living.
Next time, let's look at belief a bit more and how faith and grace work for our salvation. Until then, <3
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