July 30, 2025 - Galatians 3:6 - "What is it to Believe God?"

Galatians 3:6

“Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

There are many today who testify that they believe IN God or that there is a God, but don’t believe God. They say they believe that the Bible is the Word of God, or that it contains a word from God, and yet they do not believe THE GOD of the Bible.

When the Scriptures tell us that Abraham believed God, it is regarding how God was pleased to reveal Christ in him and how that when the fulness of the time would come, God would send forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we (including Abraham and all of the LORD’s elect before and since the cross) might receive the adoption of sons, "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

1.) Abraham believed God: The revelation of the Promised Seed; Christ, by Whom God would justify sinners by HIM, in His coming, doing, and dying, “ And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness" (Genesis 15:6).

2.) It was accounted to him: What was accounted to him? Romans 4:5,9 tell us that FAITH was accounted to Abraham for, or, UNTO that righteousness that Christ would earn, establish, and finish. Righteousness was not imputed to Abraham until Christ completed the work, but FAITH was accorded to him to look to the day when Christ would come in the fullness of the time and fulfill it. He and all of God’s elect in the Old Testament were granted FAITH because of the Christ Who would come and accomplish it on their behalf.

Today, we, since the cross, look back by God-given FAITH to Christ Who came and finished the work. It was not the act of FAITH that was Abraham’s justification. His FAITH that was attributed to him was unto that righteousness. The word ‘for’ here means ‘unto’. It underscores that the righteousness was yet to be fulfilled, but the Promise of it, revealed to Abraham, was ‘unto’ or ‘toward’ its fulfillment when Christ would come.

Abraham and all of God’s elect in the Old Testament age died believing the Promise and trusting God to justify them upon completion of His redemptive work. And, in time, their justification was accomplished exactly as God promised in THE FAITH granted them by Grace, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it (FAITH REVEALED) the elders obtained a good report" (Hebrews 11:1-2). “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:38-40).

The Bible does not teach that Abraham was inherently righteous, or that his faith, in itself, made him righteous. Rather, it reveals that the faith given to him by the Spirit of God enabled him to look beyond himself to the promised Christ, trusting in the righteousness that God would one day reveal and accomplish in His Son.

Abraham believed the Gospel as it was preached to him—that in his seed, which is Christ, all nations would be blessed (Genesis 22:18). His faith was counted to him for righteousness, not because of the act of believing, but because of the Object of that faith: the righteousness of Christ. Yet Abraham, like all the elect, was not justified until the cross—when Christ, by His obedience unto death, established that righteousness and brought in everlasting justification. Like all Old Testament believers, he died and went to Sheol, the place of the dead (Luke 16:19-31), to wait for the Promised Redeemer to come and, through His resurrection, raise them and bring them with Him into heaven upon the completion of His redemptive work (Ephesians 2:6). Abraham’s faith looked forward to what Christ would do; our faith now looks back to what Christ has finished. In both cases, it is by Christ alone—through His sacrificial death—that all the elect are justified. One Faith. One Sacrifice. One Righteousness.