James 2:21

‘Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?'

He then takes the example of Abraham, the first man who is said to have had ‘faith', the Abraham of whom it was said, ‘Abraham believed God and he counted it to him for righteousness' (Genesis 15:6)). So we are told that He had faith, and that as a result of that faith he was accounted righteous. No mention of works there. It was pure, untrammelled faith. But how do we know with an absolute certainty that he truly believed in God? A major reason is because he was genuinely prepared to offer his son Isaac on the altar at God's command, even to the point of raising the knife in order to do so, and was only restrained by a word from God. And what did this show, that Abraham was trying to earn God's favour? No it revealed his full faith in God. Then all men knew the depths of Abraham's faith. They knew that his faith in God was genuine, because it made him do something that all could see, something that few others would have done. They could not see his faith, but they could see that He had faith because of what He did. So Abraham was seen to be ‘righteous' because of what he was prepared to do. But the important point is that he had been reckoned as ‘in the right' long before in Genesis 15. He was not ‘put in the right' by his offering of Isaac in chapter 22. He was put in the right by believing in God long before in chapter 15. What his action in chapter 22 did was make his faith clear to the world, and to the angels, and in a sense to God (although God knew all the time). From then on there was no doubt that Abraham had true faith. He was ‘seen as righteous' and justified in the eyes of God and man by his works.

‘Justified by works.' This does not mean that God accounted him as righteous because of his works, for he was already accounted as righteous. It means that the righteousness that he had already had accounted to him was now revealed to both heaven and earth. God saw it. The angels saw and wondered. The world of his day saw and were impressed. Here, they said, is a man who has faith in his God. When a man is justified by faith, it means that because of his response to God, God accounts him as righteous. When he is justified by works it means that he is seen to have been already accounted as righteous and that his works now prove that he is so. They are the icing on the cake which shows what the cake is all about.

There is a special poignancy here in that what Abraham believed in chapter 15 was, among other things, that he would beget a son. And now in chapter 22 he was being called on to sacrifice that son. Thus he was proving not only his willingness to obey God in whatever He asked, but his willingness to believe that in some way God would replace his son, whose birth in itself had seemed miraculous, once he had offered him. This ‘work' was indeed a great act of faith. (God did not approve of most fathers who offered up their sons as sacrifices. Rather He condemned them because it was a kind of bribe and sop being offered to their god to avert their thirst for retribution on humans, or their anger against them. But Abraham was not acting to avoid retribution or God's anger. He was an already recognised as righteous man acting in obedient love towards his God. Abraham was not attaining righteousness or diverting wrath by offering his son. Rather he was revealing his faith in God's promises and his willingness to obey God because of that faith. He was seen as righteous because of the faith that he was revealing in offering to God the very one who was the reward of his previous faith, the child of promise, believing that God would still keep His promise. His works proved his faith, they did not supplement it.

‘Abraham our father.' All who had become Christians saw Abraham as their father, and themselves as blessed through God's promises made to Abraham (Galatians 3:6; Galatians 3:29). But there were very few, whether Christian or Jew who could trace their genuine ancestry back to Abraham (Jesus was one of the few exceptions). For most were not descended from Abraham, they were ‘adopted' sons of Abraham.