The example of Abraham
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📚What then shall we✭ say that Abraham our father has found, as pertaining to the flesh? 2 📚For if Abraham was justified by works, he has reason to boast; but not in the presence of God. 3 📚✭For what does the Scripture say?Abraham believed God, and it was put to his account as righteousness.
4 📚✭Now to him who works his wage is not reckoned as grace, but as something owed. 5 📚But to him who does not work✭ but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, that faith is put to his account as righteousness. 6 📚✭Even as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
7 📚Blessed are those whose
transgressions are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered.
8 📚Blessed is the man whose sin
the Lord will not count against him.
9 📚Does this blessedness come only on the circumcised✭, or on the uncircumcised✭ also? For we say that faith was put to Abraham’s account as righteousness. 10 📚✭How was it put to his account? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. 11 📚And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith he had while he was still uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all those who believe, even though they are not circumcised, that righteousness might be put to their account also; 12 📚and the father of the circumcised, that is, of those who are not only the circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had when he was still uncircumcised.
13 📚✭ ✭For the promise that he would be the heir of the world, did not come to Abraham, or to his offspring, through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. 14 📚✭For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect, 15 📚✭because the Law produces wrath. For where there is no Law, there is no transgression.
16 📚✭Therefore, it is by faith that it might be by grace, so that the promise would be certain to all of Abraham’s offspring, not only to those who are of the Law but to those also who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all 17 📚✭(as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations), in the sight of him whom he believed, that is, God, who makes the dead alive✭, and calls things which are not as though they were.
18 📚✭Abraham, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, in accordance with what was said to him, “So shall your offspring be”. 19 📚And he was not weak in faith; he did not consider his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, nor yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb. 20 📚He did not stagger at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, 21 📚and was fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform. 22 📚✭And therefore it was put to his account as righteousness. 23 📚✭Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was put to his account, 24 📚but also for us, to whose account it shall be put, if we believe in him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 📚✭He was delivered up for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.