"Are you a son of 'Father Abraham'"? All Who, By Repentance Towards and Faith in the LORD Jesus CHRIST Are Sons and Daughters of "Father Abraham"! A Point to Ponder!

A Devotional Reading For June 19. 2025

Father Abraham

"Are you a son of 'Father Abraham'"?

“What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?”

Romans 4: 1.

Now, the apostle is at the root of the matter. For Abraham is counted the father of the faithful. Consequently, the man whose way of attaining justification must needs be exemplary to all the children of Abraham. Now, the question is, how did Abraham find it? How he found that which some of his children sought and missed? (Romans 9: 32). That is, how he found justifying righteousness. For it was that which Israel sought and attained not unto (11: 7). “Did he find it,” said Paul, “by the flesh?” Or, as he was in the flesh? Or, by acts and works of the flesh? But what are they? Why, the next verse tells you “they are the works of the law” (Romans 4).

“If Abraham was justified by works;” that is, as pertaining to the flesh, for the works of the law are none other but the best sort of the works of the flesh. And so, Paul calls all they that he had before his conversion to Christ: “If any other man,” saith he, “thinketh he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more.” And then he counts several of his privileges. To which he at last adjoined the righteousness of the moral law, saying, “Touching the righteousness which is in the law, [I was] blameless” (Philippians 3: 4-6). And it is proper to call the righteousness of the law the work of the flesh. Because it is the work of a man, of a man in the flesh. For the Holy Ghost does not attend the law, or the work thereof, as to this, in man, as man; that has [been] confined itself to another ministration, whose glorious name it bears (2 Corinthians 3: 8).