A Portrait of Grace, Part 1
Abraham is perhaps the best picture of grace in the entire Bible, according to Pastor Chuck Smith in our continuing series taken from his book, Why Grace Changes Everything. Abraham is universally accepted as the father of all who believe in Jesus Christ.
It's one thing to talk about grace in the abstract, but quite another to describe what it looks like. If “a picture is worth of thousand words,” what kind of picture is grace?
Perhaps the best picture of grace in the entire Bible is provided by an Old Testament character cited by several writers in the New Testament. Abraham is universally accepted as the father of those who believe. He gives us a clear picture of what grace is and does.
In both Romans and Galatians, the apostle Paul goes back to Abraham as the prime example of a man whom God accepted on the basis of his faith. In Romans 4:3 (KJV), Paul wrote, What saith the Scriptures? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
The apostle uses the same example in Galatians 3:6-7 (KJV) where he wrote, Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.
Rehearsing the Story
Genesis 15 (KJV) tells us that Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were unable to have children. Yet God gave them a promise that through their seed, all nations of the earth would be blessed. Despite the improbability of it all, Abraham trusted God. Genesis 15:6 (KJV) says, And he believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness.
As year after year rolled on and no baby came, however, Abraham and Sarah began to doubt whether God was going to follow through on His promise. So one day Sarah took matters into her own hands and suggested that Abraham impregnate her handmaid, Hagar. They would then raise the child as if it were their own. (How interesting that the idea of surrogate parenthood isn't as modern a development as we'd like to think!) Hagar conceived and gave birth to a son, who they named Ishmael. Yet when this child was 13 years old, God repeated His promise to Abraham. Abraham still had a hard time believing that God would give him a son with Sarah. He told God that the idea was nice, but really, Ishmael was already there—why not just bless him?
How encouraging that Abraham, a man the Bible calls the “father of all those who believe” (Romans 4:11, KJV), struggled to believe that the promise could be fulfilled through Sarah! When the Lord repeated His promise to provide a son through Sarah, it was so incredible that Sarah laughed. Years later when the promise was fulfilled and Sarah gave birth, they named their son Isaac, which mean “laughter.”
As Isaac grew, his older brother Ishmael came to resent the attention lavished on this child of promise. At the party given to celebrate the weaning of Isaac, Ishmael stood at a distance, mocking his brother. When Sarah observed his spiteful attitude, she demanded that Abraham send away both him and his mother Hagar. She insisted that Ishmael would not share in the inheritance destined for Isaac.
Naturally, Abraham was crushed by this turn of events, but God assured him that He would take care of Ishmael. Abraham was to listen to Sarah and cast out the bondwoman and her son. It was clear that they could not inherit the promised blessing of God.
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In our next installment, Pastor Chuck further examines how Abraham is a portrait of grace.
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