Even as. — The argument is here very condensed. Ideas lie close together in the Apostle’s mind which are some distance apart in ours. He asks whether, in bestowing the gifts of the Spirit upon the Christian Church, God made use of the medium of the Law or of faith. The answer he assumes to be faith; and his thoughts fly at once to that crucial instance of faith — the faith of Abraham.
Abraham believed God... — Quoted from the LXX. version of Genesis 15:6. The same quotation is made, in the same words and with the same object, in Romans 4:3, where see the Note. Comp. also the Excursus E to that Epistle, on “Imputed Righteousness.”