The Prototype Believer

Most of us remember long boring road-trips during our childhood. Before the day of portable DVD players, iPods, and Nintendo 3DS’s there wasn’t much to do apart from read or count cars.

Not being much of a reader then, car-counting was my thing. One of the games my twin brother and I used to play was to see who could spot the most models of our own car on the road. It always amazed me how many there were when you started looking.

But there was a time when there was only one. Before the assembly line started rolling out thousands of Ford Cortinas, there was one, the prototype that all the others were modeled upon.

That’s how Abraham is set before us in the Bible; he’s a prototype of all other believers. Although there were believers before Abraham (e.g. Abel, Enoch, Noah, etc.), God presents him as the prototype believer, the one that all subsequent believers are to model themselves on (Rom. 4; Gal. 3).

So, what was exemplary about Abraham’s faith? I’d like to highlight two key features from the last few verses of Romans 4:

His faith diminished obstacles and difficulties.
God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. Aged 99, he was still not a father. Indeed, Romans 4 tells us that the child-producing part of his body was already dead, as was his 91-year-old wife’s womb. These were huge obstacles in the way of fulfilling this promise.

But Abraham “did not consider” this double deadness (Rom. 4:19). That does not mean that he ignored the difficulties or that he denied reality. That’s not faith; that’s stupidity. Rather, “did not consider,” means that although he saw and understood the difficulties very clearly, he did not let what he saw and understood determine what he believed.   Continue at David P. Murray