No secular conscious programme has had to do with this. Causes entirely beyond the reach of human combination have been, as a fact, combined; the world has been opened to the Abrahamic message just as the Church has been inspired anew to enter in, and has been awakened to a deeper understanding of her glorious mission. For here too is the finger of God; not only in the history of the world, but in the life of the Church and of the Christian. For a long century now, in the most living centres of Christendom, there has been waking and rising a mighty revived consciousness of the glory of the Gospel of the Cross, and of the Spirit; of the grace of Christ, and also of His claim. And at this hour, after many a gloomy forecast of unbelieving and apprehensive thought, there are more men and women ready to go to the ends of the earth with the message of the Son of Abraham, than in all time before.
Contrast these issues, even these--leaving out of sight the mighty future--with the starry night when the wandering Friend of God was asked to believe the incredible, and was justified by faith, and was invested through faith with the world's crown. Is not God indeed in the fulfilment? Was He not indeed in the promise? We are ourselves a part of the fulfilment; we, one of the "many Nations" of whom the great Solitary was then made "the Father." Let us bear our witness, and set to our seal.
In doing so, we attest and illustrate the work, the ever blessed work, of faith. That man's reliance, at that great midnight-hour, merited nothing, but received everything. He took in the first place acceptance with God, and then with it, as it were folded and embedded in it, he took riches inexhaustible of privilege and blessing; above all, the blessing of being made a blessing. So now, in view of that hour of Promise, and of these ages of fulfilment, we see our own path of peace in its divine simplicity. We read, as if written on the heavens in stars, the words, "Justified by Faith." And we understand already, what the Epistle will soon amply unfold to us, how for us, as for Abraham, blessings untold of other orders lie treasured in the grant of our acceptance. "Not for him only, but for us also, believing."
Let us turn again to the text.
[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =For not through law came the promise to Abraham, or to his seed, of his being the world's heir, but through faith's righteousness;= through the acceptance received by uncovenanted, unprivileged faith. [Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =For if those who belong to law inherit= Abraham's promise, =faith is ipso facto void, and the promise is ipso facto annulled.[56]= [Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =For wrath is what the Law works out;= it is only[57] =where law is not that transgression is not either.= As much as to say, that to suspend eternal blessing, the blessing which in its nature can deal only with ideal conditions, upon man's obedience to law, is to bar fatally the hope of a fulfilment. Why? Not because the Law is not holy; not because disobedience is not guilty; as if man were ever, for a moment, mechanically compelled to disobey. But because as a fact man is a fallen being, however he became so, and whatever is his guilt as such. He is fallen, and has no true self-restoring power. If then he is to be blessed, the work must begin in spite of himself. It must come from without, it must come unearned, it must be of grace, through faith. [Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Therefore it is on= (literally, "_out of_") =faith, in order to be grace-wise, to make secure the promise, to all the seed, not only to that which belongs to the Law, but to that which belongs to the faith of Abraham,= to the "seed" whose claim is no less and no more than Abraham's faith; =who is father of all us,= [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =as it stands written,= (Gen. xvii. 5), "=Father of many Nations[58] have I appointed thee="--=in the sight of the God whom he believed, who vivifies the dead, and calls,= addresses, deals with, =things not-being as being.= "_In the sight of God_"; as if to say, that it matters little what Abraham is for "us all" in the sight of _man_, in the sight and estimate of the Pharisee. The Eternal Justifier and Promiser dealt with Abraham, and in him with the world, before the birth of that Law which the Pharisee has perverted into his rampart of privilege and isolation. He took care that the mighty transaction should take place not actually only, but significantly, in the open field and beneath the boundless cope of stars. It was to affect not one tribe, but all the nations. It was to secure blessings which were not to be demanded by the privileged, but taken by the needy. And so the great representative Believer was called to believe before Law, before legal Sacrament, and under every personal circumstance of humiliation and discouragement. [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =Who, past hope, on hope, believed;= stepping from the dead hope of nature to the bare hope of the promise, =so that he became father of many Nations; according to what stands spoken, "So shall thy seed be."[59]= [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =And, because he failed not[60] in his (τῇ) faith, he did not notice his own body, already turned to death, near (που) a century old as he now was, and the death-state of the womb of Sarah.= [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =No, on the promise of God--he did not waver by his unbelief,[61] but received strength[62] by his (τῇ) faith, giving glory to God,= the "glory" of dealing with Him as being what He is, Almighty and All-true, [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =and fully persuaded that what He has promised He is able actually to do.= [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =Wherefore actually (καὶ) it was reckoned to him as righteousness.= Not because such a "giving to God the glory" which is only His eternal due was morally meritorious, in the least degree. If it were so, Abraham "would have whereof to glory." The "_wherefore_" is concerned with the whole record, the whole transaction. Here was a man who took the right way to receive sovereign blessing. He interposed nothing between the Promiser and himself. He treated the Promiser as what He is, all-sufficient and all-faithful. He opened his empty hand in that persuasion, and so, because the hand was empty, the blessing was laid upon its palm.