Keeping the Faith - Genesis 15:1-6

Bible Study Lesson for August 12

This passage is central to interpretation of Abraham’s story. We see its importance in Paul’s defense of the importance of faith over “works of the law” (Romans 4). It also comes up in James’s argument of the importance of good works in a living faith (James 2:21-24). Often these two New Testament letters are set in opposition to one another and Protestants tend to side with Paul and regard James with suspicion. Indeed, Martin Luther called James an “epistle of straw” because he was so concerned about the letter’s emphasis on works. If we have to choose between James and Paul on this topic, I think we should definitely err on the side of Paul. But I do not think such a decision is necessary. Before we look at the New Testament texts, we will look closely at this passage in the context of Abram’s story up to this point.

Verse 1: God’s Renewed Promise

A lot has happened since Abram and Sarai left Haran at the beginning of Chapter 12. They came to the Promised Land and Abram built a number of altars to God. They had to leave the Promised Land because of a severe famine and Abram bargained his wife’s safety for his own life. They came back to the Promised Land and Abram allowed his nephew Lot to have his pick of the land, trusting in God to provide for him (Chapter 13). Lot got captured and Abram went to his rescue, defeating an army that several kings couldn’t overcome. Throughout all of this, God has blessed Abram, leaving him richer and protecting him from harm. It is now that God speaks to Abram again for the first time since the initial call.

God speaks to Abram a word of comfort, a word of protection, and a word of providence. “Do not be afraid,” is a common introduction for God’s speech in the Bible and it reflects the inherent risk in talking directly to God. In the ancient world, it was believed that talking to God could result in death (see Isaiah 6:5), and indeed sometimes close or careless contact with God does result in death (see 2 Samuel 6:1-10, where the carelessness of the Israelites in transporting the Ark of the Covenant results in the death of a man named Uzzah). God makes it clear in these moments that since it is God who is approaching the person and not the person inappropriately approaching God, Abram need not fear.

God says to Abram, “I am your shield.” This is a word of protection. It is also a fair characterization of God’s activity on Abram’s behalf in the past three chapters. God has protected Abram. God protected Abram when Abram was faithful to God’s promise in not arguing with Lot but trusting in God’s protection and in sticking his neck out to rescue Lot with a risky military campaign. God also protected Abram when he failed to be faithful by pretending his wife was his sister so that the Egyptians wouldn’t kill him in order to marry her. Through all this, God has not allowed serious harm to befall Abram or Sarai.

God promises to provide for Abram: “your reward shall be very great.” So far this has already been true. Abram seems to leave every ordeal with more wealth than he entered it. But the main reward that God has promised Abram is that he will make of him a great nation (Genesis 12:2). This implies that Abram will acquire land and that Abram will have descendants who can inherit the land. This is what leads to Abram’s objection to God’s promise.

Verse 2-3: Abram’s Doubts

Abram responds to God’s reaffirmation of the promise with a protest. Abram is aware of everything God has done for him, but the question is, so what? When Abram left Haran, he was seventy-five years old and childless. The promise of God to Abram and Sarai in their barrenness is, as I have said in previous lessons, one of the central features of the story. Here we have an example of what it means to question God. Abram’s protest is straightforward: what good is God’s reward if Abram doesn’t have anyone to pass it on to? Abram’s question is, basically, will I have a legacy?

According to the customs of the time, Abram would pass on his property to a slave in his household if Abram had no children. Based on God’s promises, Abram assumed he would have a child by now.

In these verses, Abram represents all people of faith at one point or another. We are waiting for God to fulfill the promises we have come to hope in, and at some point, we wonder why God hasn’t gotten around to it yet. We have a tendency to do one of two things. Either we stuff down our discontent and act like nothing is wrong, or we try to figure out what we need to do to make God operate on our schedule. Abram instead models for us what it looks like to “take it to the Lord in prayer,” as the old hymn says. He doesn’t pull punches and he gets an answer from God.

Verse 4-5: God’s Response

In response to Abram’s question, God makes clear what the promise is. Abram will have a child and from that child a great multitude of offspring will become the nation of Israel. Walter Brueggemann points out that God doesn’t do anything to prove the promise at this point. Instead, God shows Abram the stars as a sign of how numerous his descendants will be.

I went outside last night before bed, hoping to see the Perseid meteor shower. I looked up and it was a remarkably clear night. As I stayed out longer and longer, and my eyes began to adjust to the darkness. I could see more and more stars filling my field of vision. I only wound up seeing one meteor, but that is okay. Because I got a little taste of what Abram saw. I couldn’t have counted the stars, because as I noticed, the longer I was outside, the more stars I could see.

Verse 6: Abram’s Faith

This verse is the crucial one in this part of the story. “And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” The story has followed an unusual trajectory, from promise, to doubt, to promise, to faith. But this is the way faith often works. Abram’s ability and willingness to express his doubt to God allowed God to reaffirm and more deeply explain the promise.

This is a decisive moment in Abram’s story, but as the New Testament authors make clear, it is most decisive because of what it shows us about Abram’s God. God responds to Abram’s trust with a blessing. God “credits” our trust to us as righteousness. In Romans 4, Paul makes a lot out of the use of the word “reckons” in this passage, and rightly so. According to Paul’s account of the story of Abram, God sees Abram as “one without works” who “trusts him who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5). This trust becomes the foundation of Abram’s ability to receive the covenant of God. Faith is trust, and it is on the basis of trust that the relationship with God is established.

What about James? I believe that James in chapter 2 is responding to some people who misunderstood Paul to say that it doesn’t matter what you do, all that matters is that you “believe in God.” James argues with this misunderstanding in a couple of ways. First, he points out that even the demons have to acknowledge God (see the many examples of exorcisms in the Gospels), but that acknowledgment by no means “saves” them. From there James turns to Abram, and shows that Abram’s faith was deeply connected to his works. He highlights Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, which however we interpret it must have required a lot of faith on Abraham’s part. It is worth noting that this faithful act of Abraham also results in a deepening of Abraham’s faith. The key seems to be James 2:26: “just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” The word spirit can also be translated “breath” or “wind.” You have to have a body to be alive. But without breath, life in the body won’t last very long. Just so, faith - a faith rooted in trust - without works will not last. But if works are understood as the breath, we could also say that breath without the body is just wind! Good works without faith are fleeting. They will not make a lasting difference.

A final note about Paul and James: another clue to the fact that the two are talking about different things is the examples of “works” they use. Paul is explicitly talking about circumcision (elsewhere in Romans he also uses the word “works” to refer to Jewish dietary customs and observance of festivals). James, on the other hand, uses the examples of the “Binding of Isaac” and Rahab’s risky act in welcoming the spies into her home in Jericho (Joshua 2). The important moments for building and sustaining faith are the steps we take in trust, not the rituals we perform to show our membership in the community of faith. There is an irony and a tension here: the only way to really come to trust God is by acting like you trust God.

When I was a child, my sisters and I used to play a “trust-fall” game, where one of us would stand behind the other and catch them when they fell backward. At first, you had to catch the other person really early in the fall, or else they would begin to shuffle their feet backward to catch themselves. But the more times you caught the other person, the further they would fall backward, until you could catch them just inches from the ground. One of my sisters was pretty good at using that trust to humorous, and painful, effect— she would get us to where we trusted her to catch us at a point that would have been too late to catch ourselves. After doing that a few times, she would let us fall squarely on our backsides. We would jump up to retaliate and she would be gone! The good news about learning to trust in God is that God is more reliable than that. If we trust in God, God will not finally let us fall. Abram in this passage is just at the beginning of learning this lesson. How much have you learned to trust God?