Righteousness by Faith Alone

Many New Testament believer's think that Paul’s teaching on the justification by faith is a post-cross doctrine. However, man has been required to believe God, and has been justified by faith (taking God at His Word), from the VERY BEGINNING! Justification by faith is not a New Testament doctrine – it has always been and will always be. It was required before and after the fall to believe God’s Word.

The Promise of redemption from the fall, the Seed of the Woman, was

given even before Adam and Eve took one step out of the Garden. Do you

realize the promise of the Seed of the Woman is the Gospel of Grace? 

It was God’s grace that sent us from the Garden as a security measure lest we

eat from the eternal fruit of the Tree of Life in our then fallen state. This was

not necessarily because we were a stench to Him, although we were pretty

stinky after that, but if we ingested eternal fruit while fallen, we would have

self-imposed eternal damnation. From the get-go, Beloved, the good news

of the Gospel of Grace has always been the revealed will of God in the earth.

And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:16,17

Some quote the Scripture noted above as though God didn’t start dealing with man graciously until after Jesus. The Mosaic Law was not only the requirement of the sacrificial system for our earthly realm, but more importantly, the spiritual realm that we fell from. It was the type and shadow of the Sacrifice to come! It might be helpful to understand John 1:16, 17 in the Greek which reads as an accumulation or progressive grace. 

In short summary, God called Abraham to faith in Him and by Abraham's faith, he would become the Father of Faith for all those who believe. Then progressively, The Lord continues His ways by calling Moses as a deliverer.  Moses, helped locate us in the fall by diagnosing our illness, wrote the prescription for us and God, in Christ, fulfilled it! The two are parts of His singular progressive plan of salvation! God didn’t “get over His crank about sin” in the New Testament and then somehow was able to relax and became gracious. God has always been gracious – grace is His Nature! He has continually justified the souls of His elect by their faith and through their faith in Him.

When the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches about justification by faith, he illustrated over and over that God’s Church, the Elect of grace (those whom He predestined), in both the Old and New Testament, lived by faith. Again, it is a Gentile-centric worldview that thinks justification by faith began in the New Testament. What does the Scripture say about Abel’s blood? That it is righteous! How is Abel, the first generation after the fall, made righteous? He chose to believe the promise of God and God deemed him righteous because of it! Abel offered a substitutionary sacrifice, just as many of the Old Testament believers did, because they believed in the Seed that would someday replace their substitutionary offerings. Though it was a mystery to them what exactly that would look like and didn’t know exactly how God would redeem us from the Serpent’s control, they nonetheless made their offerings by faith.

By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. Heb 11:4

Question: do our offerings speak, and are they still speaking? Abel had some potent righteousness, the kind that only comes from and endued by God!

Our gracious God offered His blessing to ALL the families of the earth through our Father Abraham. Unbeknownst to Abraham, he was a part of God revealing His mystery. Through the election of grace, Abraham’s linage, Israel, was chosen for the manifestation of God in the earth. Through him God would bring forth the Seed, Jesus our Messiah!

Now the LORD had said to Abram: Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Gen 12:1-3

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your Seed, who is Christ. Gal 3:16