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| Anita Engleman, Ichabod, Walther on his smartphone, Mrs. I, Zach Engleman - pilgrims to the Holy Land. |
Zach:
I have been thinking of Genesis 15:6, where Abraham believed God and righteousness was imputed to him:
And he believed in the LORD; and He counted it to him for righteousness.
Abraham was righteous over 400 years before the giving of the Law at Sinai. The Israelites were delivered from Egypt before the Law was given also.
This is a very important teaching on the righteousness of faith, as Luther writes:
“With these words, Paul makes faith in God the supreme worship, the supreme allegiance, the supreme obedience, and the supreme sacrifice. Whoever is an orator, let him develop this topic. He will see that faith is something omnipotent, and that its power is inestimable and infinite; for it attributes glory to God, which is the highest thing that can be attributed to Him. To attribute glory to God is to believe in Him, to regard Him as truthful, wise, righteous, merciful, and almighty, in short, to acknowledge Him as the Author and Donor of every good. Reason does not do this, but faith does. It consummates the Deity; and if I may put it this way, it is the creator of the Deity, not in the substance of God but in us. For without faith, God loses His glory, wisdom, righteousness, truthfulness, mercy, etc., in us; in short, God has none of His majesty or glory where faith is absent. Nor does God require anything greater of man than that he attribute to Him His glory and His divinity; that is that he regard Him, not as an idol but as God, who has regard for him, listens to him, shows mercy to him, helps him, etc. When He has obtained this, God retains His divinity sound and unblemished; that is, He has whatever a believing heart is able to attribute to Him. To be able to attribute such glory to God is wisdom beyond wisdom, righteousness beyond righteousness, religion beyond religion, and sacrifice beyond sacrifice. From this it can be understood what great righteousness faith is and, by antithesis, what a great sin unbelief is.” [1]
[1] Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works: Lectures on Galatians. Volume 26. American Edition. Ed. Jaroslav Pelikan. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, (1963), p. 227.
