The Righteousness That Comes by Faith Text: Genesis 15:1-6
Introduction: The Ache of Unbelief
We come now to one of the most important passages in all of Scripture. If you were to rip certain pages out of your Bible, which God forbid, but if you did, the whole structure would collapse. This is one of those pages. What happens here in the dark, under the stars with an old man and his God, is the foundation for the central doctrine of the Christian faith, the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls: justification by faith alone.
But we must understand the context. Abram has just come from a spectacular military victory. He routed a confederation of kings, rescued his nephew Lot, and recovered all the stolen goods. He was then met by Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most High God, who blessed him. And in a magnificent act of faith, Abram refused the blood-soaked riches offered by the king of Sodom, declaring that Yahweh was his provider. He is at a spiritual high point. And it is precisely here, in the quiet after the battle, that the old fear creeps back in. The adrenaline is gone, the cheers have faded, and the central, aching question of his life returns: he is childless. God has promised him a great name and a great nation, but his wife is barren and he is old. The promise and the reality are at war.
This is where true faith is forged. Not just in the dramatic public stands, but in the long, quiet nights of waiting on God when the circumstances are screaming that God has forgotten His promise. This is a crisis of faith, and it is a crisis every single one of us will face. God's promises are clear, but our experience is contradictory. What do you do then? Do you manufacture a solution? Do you quietly give up? Or do you, like Abram, take your complaint directly to the Promiser?
The Text
After these things the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great.” And Abram said, “O Lord Yahweh, what will You give me, as I go on being childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Since You have given no seed to me, behold, one born in my house is my heir.” Then behold, the word of Yahweh came to him, saying, “This one will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.” And He brought him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your seed be.” Then he believed in Yahweh; and He counted it to him as righteousness.
(Genesis 15:1-6 LSB)
The Divine Reassurance (v. 1)
The scene opens with God initiating the conversation. God always comes to His people.
"After these things the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision, saying, 'Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great.'" (Genesis 15:1)
The timing is everything: "After these things." After the battle, after the blessing, after the refusal of Sodom's wealth. It is after our great victories that we are often most vulnerable to fear and doubt. God knows this. He comes to Abram with a direct command: "Do not fear." This is not a gentle suggestion. It is the command of a sovereign who knows that fear is the mortal enemy of faith.
And God immediately gives Abram the reason not to fear. He gives him a twofold promise. First, "I am a shield to you." Notice the grammar. God does not say, "I will give you a shield." He says, "I AM your shield." God Himself is the protection. The recent victory over the four kings was not due to Abram's tactical genius. It was because Yahweh was his shield. And the future threats, which are very real, will be met with the same divine defense. Our safety is not in a thing, or a circumstance, but in a Person.
Second, "Your reward shall be very great." This is a direct response to Abram's rejection of the king of Sodom's offer. Abram had turned down a massive earthly reward, and God comes to him and says, in effect, "You made the right investment. You turned down trinkets, and I am giving you the kingdom. I am your reward." This is the great secret of the Christian life. God is not just the giver of gifts; He is the gift itself. To have God is to have everything.
The Faithful Complaint (v. 2-3)
Abram's response is not what we might expect. He doesn't burst into a song of praise. He bursts out with the raw, honest ache of his heart.
"And Abram said, 'O Lord Yahweh, what will You give me, as I go on being childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?' And Abram said, 'Since You have given no seed to me, behold, one born in my house is my heir.'" (Genesis 15:2-3 LSB)
This is not the whining of unbelief. This is the wrestling of faith. Abram takes God at His word. He hears the promise of a "very great reward" and he holds it up against his lived reality. He says, "Lord, how can this be? A great reward is meaningless to a man with no son to pass it to. All your promises are channeled through this one, missing thing." He is not accusing God of lying; he is asking God to make sense of the contradiction.
He even has a solution worked out. His heir is "Eliezer of Damascus," a trusted servant. This was a common legal practice at the time. If a man had no son, he could adopt a servant to be his heir. This is Abram's Plan B. It is a reasonable, logical, human solution to an impossible problem. But God's promises are not fulfilled by reasonable, human solutions. They are fulfilled by divine, miraculous intervention. Abram's faith is struggling. He believes God, but he cannot see how God will do it, so he presents his own best effort. This is a picture of every attempt at works-righteousness. It is man trying to help God out.
The Impossible Promise (v. 4-5)
God does not rebuke Abram for his complaint. He answers it with a direct refutation of Abram's Plan B, and a staggering expansion of His Plan A.
"Then behold, the word of Yahweh came to him, saying, 'This one will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.' And He brought him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.' And He said to him, 'So shall your seed be.'" (Genesis 15:4-5 LSB)
First, God slams the door on the Eliezer option. "This one will not be your heir." God's plan will not be accomplished through human ingenuity or legal loopholes. It will be a creative miracle. The heir will come "from your own body." From Abram's own loins, from a man as good as dead, as the writer to the Hebrews tells us. The promise is impossible, which is precisely the point. It must be impossible so that when it comes to pass, only God can receive the glory.
Then God gives Abram a visual aid. "He brought him outside." He takes him out of the cramped, dark tent of his own limited perspective and finite reasoning, and brings him under the vast, open, star-filled sky. God is telling him to stop looking at his circumstances and to start looking at God's creative power. "Now look toward the heavens, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Of course he cannot. It is an exercise in futility, designed to overwhelm his human senses with the boundlessness of God's power and generosity. And then the punchline: "So shall your seed be." God takes Abram's request for one son and multiplies it by infinity. He promises not just an heir, but a galaxy of descendants.
The Great Exchange (v. 6)
We now arrive at the heart of the matter, the verse that the Apostle Paul will pick up and use as the cornerstone of the gospel.
"Then he believed in Yahweh; and He counted it to him as righteousness." (Genesis 15:6 LSB)
What did Abram do? He believed. He heard the impossible promise from the trustworthy God, and he rested in it. He stopped trying to figure it out. He stopped trusting in his Plan B. He simply took God at His word. This is saving faith. It is not a work. It is the cessation of works. It is looking away from yourself, your abilities, your circumstances, and your righteousness, and looking to God and His promise.
And what did God do? "He counted it to him as righteousness." The word "counted" is an accounting term. It means to credit something to someone's account. Abram did not have any righteousness of his own to offer God. He was a sinner. But when he believed God, God took that act of faith and credited it to his ledger as "righteousness." This is the doctrine of imputation. God did not make Abram inherently righteous in that moment. Rather, He declared him righteous. He treated him as if he were perfectly righteous, not because of what Abram had done, but because Abram had trusted in the promise of the One who would one day send the ultimate Seed, Jesus Christ.
This is the gospel in miniature. We are all like Abram, spiritually barren and as good as dead. We have no righteousness of our own. Our best efforts, our "Eliezers," are unacceptable to God. But God makes us a promise. He promises that if we will simply believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and was raised for our justification, He will do for us what He did for Abram. He will credit the perfect righteousness of Christ to our account. We are not saved by being righteous. We are saved by believing in a promise, and on that basis, being declared righteous by a gracious God. This is the only way anyone has ever been saved, from Abram's day to ours. It is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.