ABRAHAMIC
FAITH?
What is it?
Is it important to the Christian?
From
Abraham to Christ!
From Christ to you!
The gift of God through Jesus Christ
our Lord!
One
of the Bible characters revered by Christians, Jews, and Moslems alike is
the patriarch Abraham. To the Jews, Abraham is the ancestor from whom the Hebrew
people sprang. They look back
to him as Father Abraham, the first Hebrew…the man whose dealings with
the Lord God of heaven and earth were the foundation of Israel’s intense
monotheism-belief in one God only-and its religious worship in the midst
of pagan nations serving a multitude of idols.
To the Moslems, the
followers of Mohammed, Abraham is remembered and revered as the father of
Ishmael and grandfather of Esau, ancestors of the Arabian people from
which Mohammed sprang and in whose land Islam, the Mohammedan religion,
began and is yet centered. Islam,
too, with its worship of Allah alone, has always been intensely
monotheistic.
Christians, also, with
the Old Testament as an integral part of their Bible, regard Abraham with
affection and respect, remembering that the very first verse of the New
Testament speaks of Jesus Christ as “the son of Abraham.”
Christians, too claim to worship only one God – the God of
Abraham – the Lord God of heaven and earth.
It cannot be denied that the true Christian faith of the New
Testament is thoroughly monotheistic.
Abraham, thus, is seen
as the physical or spiritual ancestor of peoples who alone in a
polytheistic or atheistic world teach the worship of the one and only God.
Abraham appears as a great beacon light in the history of mankind-
one of those extremely rare individuals who tower head and shoulders above
the common lot and from whose lifetime a new era can be dated.
It is no wonder then,
that Abraham is mentioned time and time again in the New Testament, that
he is held up before the eyes of Christians as an example whose faith and
obedience to God are to be followed. It is strange to hear professing
Christians today dismiss Abraham’s life and faith as having any great
importance for us, especially in light of New Testament teaching to the
contrary.
The Apostle Paul, for
example, in the midst of his great doctrinal epistles to the Romans and
Galatians, makes it a point to bring into his discussion the faith of
Abraham. Almost the entire
fourth chapter of Romans is taken up with this matter. In verse 11, Paul
calls him “the father of all them that believe,” that is, of all true
Christian believers. If you
are a real Christian, should you not wish to know something about one who
is called your father? In
verse 12, he is called the father of those who walk in the steps of his
faith. It is apparent, then,
that the faith of Abraham, or Abrahamic Faith, is or should be an
important matter to Christians.
Galatians 3 also, is
largely concerned with the Abrahamic faith.
Here, Paul stresses the great importance of the covenant God made
with Abraham. The Apostle
points out that Jesus Christ, our savior, is the promised seed of Abraham.
Let us read verses 26, 27, and 29:
“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on
Christ…and if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs
according to the promise.”
From the biblical
standpoint, it is a momentous thing for a person to be reckoned of the
seed of Abraham. Paul implies
as much when he declares that those who are Abraham’s seed are “heirs
according to the promise” (Gal.
3:29). It is obvious that an
heir should be interested in his inheritance, and if we are heirs as Paul
says, we should have a vital interest in what we are to inherit.
This inheritance is
inseparably joined to a certain “promise” connected with Abraham.
Notice Galatians 3:18 “For
if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave
it to Abraham by promise.” What
is this promised inheritance and what part do Christians have in it as the
seed of Abraham?
The writer of Hebrews,
summing up the history of Abraham from the Book of Genesis, says in
Hebrews 11:8,9: “by faith,
Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after
receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither
he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange
country.” This land in
which Abraham sojourned, or lived as a stranger, was the land of Canaan,
later called Palestine. It
says that Abraham was to inherit this land “afterwards” and calls it
the land of “promise.” Verse
13 says that he died in faith, not having received the promise.
In Acts 7:5, the martyr Stephen refers to the same fact, declaring
that God gave Abraham “none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set
his foot on: yet he promised
that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after
him.”
This might seem like a
contradiction – that God promised Abraham and his seed the land of
Palestine as an inheritance – and Abraham died without ever inheriting
it, first living there as an alien and stranger.
But just here is where
the Abrahamic faith comes in. Abraham
believed in resurrection, that God is able to raise the dead.
Hebrews 11:19 states as much.
Though he died, not ever receiving the promised inheritance of the
land, this could not frustrate God’s purpose or promise.
There is a resurrection coming some day, and then, according to the
words of the Lord Jesus Christ, Abraham will have his inheritance in the
Kingdom of God. (Luke 13:28, 29) This
Kingdom will be established on the earth when Christ returns, and will
have its center in the Promised Land.
The Abrahamic faith holds dearly to God’s great promises, for
“if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according
to the promise.”
Our faith and hope as
Christians, as the seed of Abraham, look forward to the inheritance with
Abraham in the Promised Land of the Kingdom of God on earth, when the Lord
Jesus Christ returns. This is
what “Abrahamic faith” means!
Lacey Church Of God Of the Abrahamic
Faith
Lacey, Washington 98503
E-mail: churchofonegod@comcast.net