For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
For what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it (that is, his believing) was counted unto him for righteousness (Genesis 15:6). Romish expositors and Arminian Protestants make this to mean that God accepted Abraham's act of believing as a substitute for complete obedience. But this is at variance with the whole spirit and letter of the apostle's teaching. Throughout this whole argument, faith is set in direct opposition to works, in the matter of justification, and even in the next two verses. The meaning, therefore, cannot possibly be that the mere act of believing-which is as much a work as any other piece of commanded duty (John 6:29; John 3:23) - was counted to Abraham for all obedience. The case of Abraham here adduced (as Meyer justly observes) is not that of a man simply trusting or having confidence in God, but of one confiding in a promise which pointed to Christ. What makes Abraham the father of all believers is something far more than the subjective state of heart implied in the general state of trust in God: it is the essential oneness of the Object of Abraham's faith with that of all Christians-implicitly apprehended and embraced by him, and explicitly by them-it is this (as Meyer, Tholuck, Philippi, and others remark) that makes the faith of Abraham, in the view of our apostle, the grand pattern case of justification by faith. Faith, in his case as in ours, is but the instrument that puts us in possession of the blessing gratuitously bestowed. Even Jowett says, 'The faith of Abraham, though not the same with a faith in Christ, was analogous to it:
(1) as it was a faith in unseen things (Hebrews 11:17-19);
(2) as it was prior to, and independent of, the law (Galatians 3:17-19); and
(3) as it related to the promised seed in whom Christ was dimly seen' (Galatians 3:8)