The fourth chapter of Romans is one of the richest in the Bible, in the hope and courage which it contains for the Christian. In Abraham we have an example of righteousness by faith, and we have set before us the wonderful inheritance promised to those who have the faith of Abraham. And this promise is not limited. The blessing of Abraham comes on the Gentiles as well as on the Jews; there is none so poor that he may not share it, for “it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed.” [Romans 4:16.]
The last clause of the seventeenth verse is worthy of special attention. It contains the secret of the possibility of our success in the Christian life. It says that Abraham believed “God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” This marks God’s power; it involves creative power. God can call a thing which is not as though it existed. If a man should do that, what would you call it?—A lie! If a man should say that a thing is, when it is not, it would be a lie. But God cannot lie. Therefore, when God calls those things that be not, as though they were, it is evidence that that makes them be. That is, they spring into existence at his word. We have all heard, as an illustration of confidence, the little girl’s statement that “if ma says so, it’s so if it isn’t so.” That is exactly the case with God. Before that time spoken of as “in the beginning,” there was a dreary waste of absolute nothingness; God spoke, and instantly worlds sprang into being. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth … For he spake, and it was; he commanded, and it stood fast.” Psalm 33:6–9. This is the power which is brought to view in Romans 4:17. Now let us read on, that we may see the force of this language in this connection. Still speaking of Abraham, the apostle says:—
“Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb; he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.” Romans 4:18–22.
Here we learn that Abraham’s faith in God, as one who could bring things into existence by his word, was exercised with respect to his being able to create righteousness in a person destitute of it. Those who look at the trial of Abraham’s faith as relating simply to the birth of Isaac, and ending there, lose all the point and beauty of the sacred record. Isaac was only the one whom his seed was to be called, and that seed was Christ. See Galatians 3:16. When God told Abraham that in his seed all nations of the earth should be blessed, he was preaching the gospel to him (Galatians 3:8); therefore Abraham’s faith in the promise of God was direct faith in Christ as the Saviour of sinners. This was the faith which was counted to him for righteousness.
Now note the strength of the faith. His own body was already virtually dead from age, and Sarah was in like condition. The birth of Isaac from such a pair was nothing less than the bringing of life from the dead. It was a symbol of God’s power to quicken to spiritual life those who are dead in trespasses and sins. Abraham hoped against hope. There was human possibility of the fulfillment of the promise; everything was against it, but his faith grasped and rested upon the unchanging word of God, and his power to create and to make alive. “And therefore it was imputed unto him for righteousness.” [Romans 4:22.] Now for the point of it all:—
“Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.” Romans 4:23–25.
So Abraham’s faith was the same that ours must be, and in the same object. The fact that it is by faith in the death and resurrection of Christ that we have the same righteousness imputed to us that was imputed to Abraham shows that Abraham’s faith was likewise in the death and resurrection of Christ. All the promises of God to Abraham were for us as well as for him. Indeed, we are told in one place that they were especially for our benefit. “When God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself.” “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” Hebrews 6:13, 17, 18. Our hope, therefore, rests upon God’s promise and oath to Abraham, for that promise to Abraham, confirmed by that oath, contains all the blessings which God can possibly give to man.
But let us make this matter a little more personal before leaving it. Trembling soul, say not that your sins are so many and that you are so weak that there is no hope for you. Christ came to save the lost, and he is able to save to the uttermost those that come to God by Him. You are weak, but he says, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” 11 Corinthians 12:9. And the inspired record tells us of those who “out of weakness were made strong.” Hebrews 11:34. That means that God took their very weakness and turned it into strength. In so doing he demonstrates power. It is his way of working. For “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence.” I Corinthians 1:27–29.
Have the simple faith of Abraham. How did he attain to righteousness?—By not considering the deadness and powerlessness of his own body, but by being willing to grant all the glory to God, strong in faith that he could bring all things out of that which was not. You, therefore, in like manner, consider not the weakness of your own body, but the power and grace of our Lord, being assured that the same word which can create a universe, and raise the dead, can also create in you a clean heart, and make you alive in God. And so you shall be a child of Abraham, even a child of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
I am going to speak … on the subject of evolution. I want you to pay close attention, and find out for yourselves whether or not you are an evolutionist. … [The following] statements are all copied from a treatise on evolution, written by one of the chief evolutionists; therefore they are all correct, so far as they go, as definitions:—
“Evolution is the theory that represents the course of the world as a gradual transition from the indeterminate to the determinate, from the uniform to the varied, and which assumes the cause of these processes to be immanent in the world itself that is to be thus transformed.”
“Evolution is thus almost synonymous with progress. It is a transition from the lower to the higher, from the worse to the better. Thus progress points to an increased value in existence, as judged by our feelings.”
Now notice the particular points in these three sentences: evolution represents the course of the world as a gradual transition from the lower to the higher, from the worse to the better; and assumes that this process is immanent in the world itself thus to be transformed. That is to say, the thing gets better of itself; and that which causes it to get better is itself. And this progress marks “an increased value in existence, as judged by our feelings.” That is to say, you know you are better, because you feel better. You know there has been progress, because you feel it. Your feelings regulate your standing. Your knowledge of your feelings regulates your progress from worse to better.
Now in this matter of progress from worse to better, have your feelings anything to do with it? If they have, what are you? Every one … who measures his progress, the value of his experience, by his feelings, is an evolutionist: I care not if he has been a Seventh-day Adventist for forty years, he is an evolutionist just the same. And all his Christianity, all his religion, is a mere profession without the fact, simply a form with no power.
Now I read what evolution is, in another way; so that you can see that it is infidelity. Then, if you find yourself an evolutionist, you know at once that you are an infidel: “The hypothesis of evolution aims at answering a number of questions respecting the beginning, or genesis, of things.” It “helps to restore the ancient sentiment toward nature as our parent, and the source of our life.”
One of the branches of this sort of science, that has done most toward the establishment of the doctrine of evolution, is the new science of geology, which has instituted the conception of vast and unimaginable periods of time in the past history of our globe. These vast and unimaginable periods, as another one of the chief writers on this subject—the author of it indeed—says, “is the indispensable basis for understanding man’s origin” in the process of evolution. So that the progress that has been made has been countless through the ages. Yet this progress has not been steady and straight forward from its inception until its present condition. It has been through many ups and down. There have been many times of great beauty and symmetry; then there would come a cataclysm, or an eruption, and all would go to pieces, as it were. Again the process would start from that condition of things, and build up again. Many, many times this process has been gone through; and that is the process of evolution,—the transition from the lower to the higher, from the worse to the better.
Now, what has been the process of your progress from the worse to the better? Has it been through “many ups and downs”? Has your acquiring of the power to do good—the good works which are of God—been through a long process of ups and downs from the time of your first profession of Christianity until now? Has it appeared sometimes that you had apparently made great progress, that you were doing well, and that everything was nice and pleasant; and then, without a moment’s warning there would come a cataclysm, or an eruption, and all be spoiled? Nevertheless, in spite of all the ups and downs, you start in for another effort: and so through this process … you think, as judged by your feelings,—is that your experience? Is that the way you have made progress?
In other words, are you an evolutionist? Don’t dodge; confess the honest truth; for I want to get you out of evolutionism. … There is a way to get out of it: and every one who came … an evolutionist can go out a Christian. So if, when I am describing an evolutionist, so plainly that you see yourself, just say so,—admit that it is yourself, and then follow along the steps that God will give you, and that will bring you out of it all. But, I say plainly to you that, if that which I have described has been your experience, if that has been the kind of progress that you have made in your Christian life, then you are an evolutionist, whether you admit it or not. The best way, however, is to admit it, then quit it, and be a Christian.
Another phase of it: “Evolution, so far as it goes, looks upon a matter as eternal.” And “by assuming” this, “the notion of creation is eliminated from those regions of existence to which it is applied.” Now if you look to yourself for the principle which would assure that progress that must be made in you as certainly as ever you reach the kingdom of God; if you suppose that that is immanent in yourself, and that if you could get it rightly to work, and superintend it properly when it had been thus got to work, it would come out all right,—if thus you have been expecting, watching, and marking your progress, you are an evolutionist. For I read further what evolution is: “It is clear that the doctrine of evolution is directly antagonistic to that of creation. … The idea of evolution, as applied to the formation of the world as a whole, is opposed to that of a direct creative volition.”
That is evolution, as defined by those who made it,—that the world came, and all there is of it, of itself; and that the principle that has brought it to the condition in which it is, is immanent in itself, and is adequate to produce all that is. This being so, in the nature of things “evolution is directly antagonistic to creation.”
Now as to the world and all there is of it, you do not believe that it all came of itself. You know that you are not an evolutionist as to that; because you believe that God created all things. Every one of you would say that you believe that God created all things,—the world and all there is in it. Evolution does not admit that: it has no place for creation.
There is, however, another phase of evolution that professedly is not absolutely antagonistic to creation. Those who made this evolution that I have read to you did not pretend to be anything but infidels,—men without faith, for an infidel simply is a man without faith.—Even though a person pretends to have faith, and does not actually have it, he is an infidel. Of course, the word “infidel” is more narrowly confined than that nowadays. The men who made this evolution that I have read to you were that kind of men; but when they spread that kind of doctrine abroad, there were a great number of people who professed to be Christians, who professed to be men of faith, who professed to believe the word of God, which teaches creation. These men, not knowing the word of God for themselves, not knowing it to be the word of God, but their faith being a mere form of faith without the power, these men, I say, being charmed with this new thing that had sprung up, and wanting to be popular along with the new science, and really not wanting to forsake altogether the word of God and the ways of faith, were not ready to say that they would get along without God, without creation somewhere, so they formed a sort of evolution with the Creator in it. That phase of it is called theistic evolution,—that is, God started the thing, whenever that was; but since that, it has been going on of itself. He started it, and after that it was able of itself to accomplish all that has been done. This, however, is but a makeshift, a contrivance to appearances,—and is plainly declared by the true evolutionists to be but “a phase of transition from the creational to the evolutional hypothesis.” It is evolution only; because there is no half-way ground between creation and evolution.
Whether you are one of this kind or not, there are many of them, even among Seventh-day Adventists,—not so many as there used to be, thank the Lord!—who believe that we must have God forgive our sins, and so start us on the way all right; but after that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Accordingly, they do fear, and they do tremble, all the time; but they do not work out any salvation, because they do not have God constantly working in them, “both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12, 13.
Taken from the book, Lessons on Faith.
©1995 by TEACH Services, Inc., used with permission. www.teachservices.com
In 1888, the Lord brought a message of righteousness to the Church through Elders E.J. Waggoner and A.T. Jones. This message was identified as the beginning of the loud cry of the third angel whose glory was to fill the whole earth in preparation for the second coming of Jesus.