“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.” (James 2:23/KJV).
Today I am sharing with you yet another verse of scripture about faith and believing. I like to point you to the fact that the Greek word for faith, ‘pistis’, does also take the meaning of faithfulness or fidelity.
Here Abraham’s faith is linked to the concept of friendship. Abraham was called a “friend of God”.
Faith has something to do with relationship. It involves loyalty.
It was Abraham’s trust and his loyal attitude towards God because of which he was reckoned as righteous. In the same manner God will consider us as righteous, when we believe him. Theologians call this the justification by faith. “Abraham believed God and it was imputed unto him for righteousness.”
Still as we read the account of his life we find, that he did some questionable things. At one time he was settling in a place and he said Sarah was his sister*. The king of the area had an eye on her and had her brought to his house. Abraham kind of imperilled his wife. Only because the king had a dream at night he did not take Sarah for his wife.
Abraham merely had been scared to say Sarah was his wife. Sarah was beautiful. He was afraid somebody might harm him in order to get her.
God intervened by speaking to that king in the night. God told him he would have to die, if he took Sarah for his wife, because she was a married woman. (Cf. Genesis 20).
As you give your life to Jesus and as you trust him as your Lord and Saviour, God is considering you as righteous because of Jesus’ righteousness. This is what we call justification by faith. It means sins and guilt forgiven.
Still as we go along we may be doing some questionable things. This may be because of a lack of understanding or as in Abraham’s case because of fear.
In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul challenges us to pursue love. In verse 7 he says that love “believeth all things”. This means there is a way for our faith and faithfulness towards God to penetrate all areas of our attitudes and of our thinking.
*(Of course from the genealogies we know that Sarah was in fact Abraham’s half sister when he took her for his wife.)
