The Apostle Paul was directing his argument directly at his Jewish readers in 1st-century Rome. The Jewish leadership looked to “Father Abraham” as the supreme example of a man who was righteous before God. The teachers of the law had been teaching “works righteousness” in direct contradiction to Scripture for many centuries. They were teaching that Abraham had kept the law perfectly, even before the law was given. They said that Abraham kept it in anticipation of the law that was coming. So Paul uses Abraham, the “Father of the Faith,” to show how far the Jewish teachers had moved away from true faith, showing that just the opposite is clearly recorded in the Book of Genesis, and that the Jew has no genetic advantage because his is a descendent of Abraham.<\/p>\n
We love the humility of Bible expositor Pastor Harry Ironside. He was the pastor of Moody Church in Chicago 18 years. One summer while on vacation, he visited a Sunday School class in a local church. The teacher was struggling with the concept of salvation by faith. The teacher asked the class, “How were people saved in Old Testament times?\u201d After a pause one man replied, \u201dBy keeping the law.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d said the teacher. But Ironside could not remain silent and gently but firmly said, \u201cMy Bible says in Romans 3:20 that by works of the law shall no flesh be justified.\u201d The young teacher was a little bit embarrassed and not knowing what else to do, asked, \u201cDoes anyone else have an idea?\u201d Another in the class offered, \u201cThey were saved by bringing sacrifices to God.\u201d \u201cYes, that\u2019s right,\u201d the teacher agreed and tried to go on to another part of the lesson. But again Dr. Ironside could not ignore this obvious error and once again, gently corrected the teacher by saying, \u201cMy Bible says in Hebrews 10:4 that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.\u201d By this time the humbled teacher was sure that the visitor knew much more about the Bible than he did so he asked Ironside, \u201cPlease then tell us how people were saved in the Old Testament?\u201d Ironside gently said, \u201cBy faith\u2014the same way we are saved today.\u201d OK, that’s simple. Why do we make it so hard?<\/p>\n
\u201cLORD, keep us close to Your word today and use us to humbly share the truth of Your amazing grace.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Apostle Paul was directing his argument directly at his Jewish readers in 1st-century Rome. The Jewish leadership looked to “Father Abraham” as the supreme example of a man who was righteous before God. The teachers of the law had been teaching “works righteousness” in direct contradiction to Scripture for many centuries. They were teaching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11317"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11320,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11317\/revisions\/11320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}