(Genesis) 28 - Abraham and Justification by Faith — S. Lewis Johnson

Abraham’s Journey and the Victory Over the Eastern Kings

The scripture reading is in the 15th chapter of the book of Genesis. While you are finding that chapter, let me remind you that in our study of the book of Genesis, we are in the midst of that part of Moses' account that has to do with the life of Abraham.

Abraham has made his way into the land, then evidently out of the will of God to Egypt where God did protect him and keep him and bring him back into the land. Then after the strife between the herdsmen of Lot and the herdsmen of Abram, Lot chose for himself the plains near Sodom and moved there while Abram lived by the oaks of Mamre in Hebron.

And then in the 14th chapter, the immediately preceding chapter, we read and studied the account of the invasion of the kings from the east after the five rebel kings had rebelled against them in the land.

And Abram won a great victory and retrieved Lot and also the spoils which the kings from the east had taken in their victorious campaign. Then at the end of that chapter, you'll remember Abram was approached by the king of Sodom who said, give the people to me and take the goods for yourself.

And Abram in this very majestic reply said, I have sworn to the Lord God most high possessor of heaven and earth that I will not take a thread or a sandal, thong, or anything that is yours, lest you should say I have made Abram rich.

It was a tremendous renunciation. And now we read in Genesis chapter 15 verse 1 through verse 7 these words, after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying, do not fear Abram, I am a shield to you, your reward shall be very great.

Incidentally, in the Hebrew text at this point, it is possible to render this in two ways. One way is the way that I have just read, I am a shield to you, your reward shall be very great. The other possibility for which there is some support is I am a shield to you and your exceeding great reward.

It is very difficult to be absolutely sure of the rendering of the text here, but in the light of what Abram says in verse 2, what wilt thou give me, the reading in the New American Standard Bible and in other translations is probably to be preferred.

Abram’s Heir and the Promise of His Own Offspring

Verse 2, and Abram said, O Lord God, what wilt thou give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. He refers to his servant, the trusted servant, evidently the servant who went to seek a bride for Isaac, and that is described in Genesis chapter 24.

We do not know in Hebrew tradition of the heir of someone without a child being a servant in the household, but we do know from the newsy texts of the 15th century B .C., texts that have to do with life to the east of the Tigris River, that it was not uncommon for individuals who were childless to make a trusted servant their heir in order that proper arrangements and proper burial might be carried out in other matters.

And so it is possible that Abram, so far as his condition was concerned, since he had no children, as far as he was concerned, his heir was likely to be Eliezer of Damascus. Now Abram was so concerned over this, he did not bother to give the Lord a chance to reply to that.

He replied before the Lord replied, and we read in verse 3, and Abram said, Since thou hast given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir. I notice the statement one born in my house, because of course that could cover a servant.

Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This man will not be your heir, but one who shall come forth from your own body. He shall be your heir. And this is a vision. Remember in verse 1 it says, These things came to Abram in a vision.

The vision evidently is a vision of Abram in his tent, because we read in verse 4, the word of the Lord. Oh, verse 5, And he took him outside, that is, outside the tent, evidently, and said, Now look toward the heaven, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.

And the Lord answered, And he said unto him, So shall your descendants be. The Hebrew term is a collective term, probably, and it is simply, So shall your seed be. But since that may be understood individually or collectively, personally I think this is a mistranslation.

We should simply have, So shall your seed be. And in that way the interpreter is able to look at the context and say, Is this seed singular or seed plural? But the translators are correct in this instance, because surely a plural is meant here.

But the term itself has both meanings, and sometimes it's good to leave it somewhat ambiguous and require the student of Scripture to make the deduction himself. Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.

And I'd like to say just a word about that too. Now notice the last two words, as righteousness. Strictly speaking the Hebrew text says simply, Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him righteousness.

Now we are left somewhat in doubt as to the meaning. Should this be and he reckoned it to him as righteousness? Or should it be he reckoned it to him as the means for obtaining righteousness? Unto or with a view to righteousness?

Now you see this introduces a little bit of a problem. Is faith itself righteousness? Or is faith the means by which the righteousness becomes ours? Now we believe, that is we who preach the Word, we believe that faith justifies, but not in and by itself.

Simply because it grasps the obedience of Christ in his sacrifice. In other words, faith is a means by which we lay hold of Christ. It's an instrument. The rest of the Bible makes that plain. So in this case the translators of the New American Standard Bible have erred.

Now their translation is possible grammatically, but impossible theologically. And since the text permits a different rendering, we should I think render this,. Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him with a view to righteousness.

Now this is confirmed by the fact that this text is used in Psalm 106 and verse 31. And there, the psalmist referring to this same idea says,. And he reckoned it to him,. Let's it occur. And adding the preposition le, which means to or for or unto, unto righteousness.

And the apostle Paul in the renderings of the New Testament also contains the idea of unto righteousness. So we are not to think then that faith itself is righteousness, but faith is the means by which the righteousness that is found in the sacrificial work of the Lord Jesus becomes ours.

The Problem of Justification Before a Holy God

Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him for or unto righteousness. The rest of the Bible makes that very plain. May the Lord bless to us this reading of his word. In the eyes of many, the greatest problem with which the Bible deals is how can a just God justify the unjust?

Our subject this morning, Abraham and justification by faith, will seek to answer that question. We know from the study of the Bible that the law of God condemns all men. There are certain demands that are made, demands that mean the perfect fulfillment of all of the righteous demands of a holy God.

Now there are two ways to meet the demands of the holy law of God. One way is to keep the law of God perfectly. Anyone who puts himself under the Mosaic law is responsible to keep that law perfectly. The apostle Paul puts it very plainly and forthrightly in Galatians chapter 3 and verse 10 when he says, For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Curse it is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them.

So if it is necessary for us to keep the law of God perfectly in order to be justified, it's clear from the teaching of the word of God itself that we have not done this and therefore we are under the curse.

If it were simply a matter of a human judge with whom we have to do, then things might not be so bad because human judges may make mistakes. There is an old story of a brother who was arrested or a man who was arrested charged with stealing a gold watch and chain.

After all the evidence of the complaining witness had been heard, the judge looked down upon the prisoner and announced, The sentence of this court is acquittal. Well, he was not very well educated and so he said, Judge, I just don't understand what that means.

He said, Well, the sentence is that you stand acquitted. Well, what does that mean? He said, It means that you are acquitted. And so he said, Well, judge, does it mean that I've got to give the watch back?

And so it is an evidence of the fact that human judges, while they are judges, may err. In the case of the divine judge, there is no error. If we have not kept the law of God perfectly, we shall not be acquitted by that law.

Furthermore, this under the law and therefore under the curse means everyone, not simply the ordinary person, but it's true even of those who are most religious. There is another story of a certain bishop who was traveling incognito in England.

And on the platform where the trains were coming, there was also an ardent young evangelist who was seeking to win people who happened to want to board the train. So he went up to the bishop who was traveling incognito and he said, Are you saved, brother?

Well, the bishop betrayed his particular profession because he stood aghast at the thought of question about his salvation and he blurted out, Do you know who I am? I am the bishop of Woolwich or Sandwich or whatever he was.

And the young man said, Well, don't let that stand in your way. This morning at the breakfast table we were discussing some of these things and one of the ladies at the table had the nerve to say that in her opinion, of the groups that would be in hell, the largest two groups would be those of lawyers and preachers.

Well, whether that's true or not, she said as we left, I know you agree with me too. Well, whether or not that's true, we do know this, that not one of us has kept the law perfectly and so consequently we cannot meet the demands of the law by keeping the law.

Now, the other way is to pay the penalty. And we can all pay the penalty, but unfortunately the penalty for the broken law is death and consequently we cannot pay the penalty and still live. Therefore, it is a problem.

How can a just God justify unjust men? Now, it is with this question that Genesis chapter 15 deals. And it is remarkable that in the patriarchal age, right at the beginning, so to speak, of the biblical record, we find a clear-cut answer to the question.

For in Genesis chapter 15 and verse 6, we read of an unjust man, then he believed in the Lord and he reckoned it to him for righteousness. Now, the apostle Paul in the New Testament will use this same text in order to stress the fact that the way of salvation in the New Testament is the same as the way of salvation in the Old Testament.

H. C. Leupold, the Lutheran commentator, has suggested that this chapter is really a monumental chapter. Well, it is a monumental chapter because it is a chapter upon which much of Paul's thinking in the New Testament is built.

He cites this very text, both in the epistle to the Romans and in the epistle to the Galatians. And furthermore, he cites the text of the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, chapter 2, verse 4, the just shall live by faith, which is built upon this Genesis 15 text at least two times.

And the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was, also cites it. And so we have the text upon which this text, built upon this text, cited three times, and we have this very text cited at least twice in the writings of the New Testament authors.

And so consequently, it's clear that this is an important section of the Word of God. Martin Luther said concerning the doctrine of justification by faith that it was articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae, which means the article of a standing or falling church.

Now, what he meant by that was that the way in which the church handles the doctrine of justification by faith determines whether the church will stand or whether it will fall. Luther, no doubt, was right.

This fundamental question does determine the Christian character of a congregation. If this doctrine of justification by faith is believed and proclaimed fervently from the teaching platforms and in the personal lives of the saints of a particular church, that church will stand.

But if this doctrine is not proclaimed, if hedged, if it is hedged, if the doctrine is watered down, if it is covered over with errors, so that it does not firmly and clearly and accurately go forth, that church will fall.

The Five Solas and the Reformation Doctrine of Salvation

It is the article of a standing or falling church. Back in the Middle Ages and then after for a few centuries, it was customary for men who were theologians and preachers to communicate with each other by the use of Latin.

In fact, this was true for many centuries before that. But in the age of the Reformation and the following decades in which there was a great deal of theological thought and communication and also struggle, men communicated with each other by Latin because Latin was the scholar's language.

If they did not know one another's language, they all knew Latin, and so they could communicate. Consequently, certain Latin phrases appeared over and over again in theological writings. There are five great Latin phrases that occurred so often that they've even found their way into English, English writing on theology.

And we often hear of sola fide, by faith alone. Sola gratia, by grace alone. Sola scriptura, by Scripture alone. Solo Christo, by Christ alone. Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be glory. So in the development of the Reformation faith, these ideas, the Scripture, the Scripture alone is the foundation for our faith.

Our salvation is traceable to what Christ alone did, what he did by himself in shedding his blood for us. That is a grace salvation. It is something that comes to us by faith alone. And the ultimate aim and goal of all theological thought is the glory of God alone.

Now, when we turn to Genesis chapter 15 and verse 6, we have one of those texts in which there is stressed sola fide, by faith alone. Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it, faith, to him for righteousness.

Those five solas, incidentally, have been called the gospel of the five onles. And it is important that we understand them and really make them a part of our own thinking. The Latin adjective solus aum is the background of this.

It means only or alone. There are two parts to chapter 15. With the chief joint, as Professor Funrat has suggested between verses 6 and 7. In the first section of the 15th chapter, we have revelation from the Lord.

And then in that revelation, a confirmation of the promise made to Abraham concerning great reward to follow through the birth of someone from his own body. And then in the latter part of the chapter, which we want to try to cover next week, the Lord willing, we have the ratification of the Abrahamic covenant by blood sacrifice in what is to my mind one of the most interesting and most important parts of this entire part of Genesis.

God’s Promise to Abram and the Testing of His Faith

Well let's look now to first the promise that was made to Abraham according to the first verse of Genesis chapter 15. We read, after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying, do not fear Abram.

Incidentally, it has been said by some students of the book of Genesis that this do not fear is a reference to the kings that he had just defeated. Do not fear them, Abram, thinking that perhaps Abram may have thought that they would return in order to take revenge upon him.

It may be more likely that do not fear refers to what is evidently upon Abram's heart. How is the promise of a seed going to be fulfilled to me since I am childless? Do not fear, Abram. Don't fear, the promises shall be fulfilled.

I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. Now Abram has been tested in the realm of anxiety. He has been tested in the realm of ambition. But now the pressure will particularly build up around a new center and that new center will be the promise concerning the son that is to come.

We know that he came as Isaac. But Abram now will be pressured by the fulfillment of the promise of the descendant in whom all the families of Israel are going to be. How will this great man of faith deal with the delay in the fulfillment of the promises of God?

And in spite of many failures, through this section you will notice that the faith of Abram shines forth. He is a man who fails in many ways, but fundamentally his faith is in the Lord and he is looking for that seed that is to come.

In that respect he is very much like most of us who are Christians. We know we fail. We know that day by day we fail often. But fundamentally a transformation has taken place in our lives. We have been given new life and even though we may do certain things that are displeasing to the Lord, we do not want to do them.

And further we want to do things that please him. And the work of the Holy Spirit within the life of the believer is to gradually transform him into the likeness of Jesus Christ, never completed as long as we are living, completed only when we enter the presence of the Lord.

It is the fundamental bent of a person's life that is the important thing. And you will see in Abram a fundamental change has taken place since those days in Ur of the Chaldees. Do not fear, Abram. I am a shield to you.

Your reward shall be very great. He has seen God's protective hand when he was in Egypt. He has seen the might of his power and the defeat of the kings by his 318 men. But can God fulfill his promise of a son?

Sarah, so far as he knows, is barren. He does not have any children. And God now gives him a promise which essentially is this. Abram, you have made a great renunciation. When you said you will not take the spoils, lest, the king of Sodom should say, you have made Abram rich, made Abram rich.

Therefore, your reward shall be very great. So the great renunciation is answered by the great reward that the Lord promises. Now, Abram, I am sure, is like most of us. I think that if I had been in Abram's shoes, I might have replied exactly as Abram did.

After all, a general reward is not the thing that is bothering Abram. It is the specific fulfillment, the son that is specifically for disturbing him. And so he blurts out then in verse 2, whether in despondent skepticism or not, he blurts out in expostulation that he set his heart upon the promises that have been made.

And he will not be satisfied with any general reward. He wants some definition. So he says, O Lord God, what wilt thou give me since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? Since thou hast given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.

So he expresses the impatient misgivings of his heart. Now, you might be inclined to think, well, that's an evidence of Abram's unbelief. Well, it is a kind of partial unbelief we would have to grant.

But fundamentally, he believes those promises. He's impatient about them. He's disturbed they haven't been fulfilled or they're not in process so that he can put his finger upon it. But he is concerned about the promise, and he does believe that such a thing has been given to him, and he's interested in it.

And he doesn't want any legal heir only. He would like to have someone from his own body. And so the Lord gives him a pledge in verses 4 and 5, the word of the Lord came to him saying, This man shall not be your heir, but one who shall come forth from your own loins, or rather from your own inward parts, from your bowels.

The Hebrew word is often translated in the authorized version. In other words, Abram, you're not going to have a legal heir only, but you're going to have someone who will come from your own generative organs.

It will be from your own bowels, from your own body. And the one who comes forth, that one will be your heir. Now I think that that must have increased Abram's, the paradox of this thing, because the Lord takes him out and says, Now look at the stars.

And look at all of those stars and see how many there are and see if you can number them. And if Abram thought about the vastness of those stars against the fact that he didn't even have one son, the Lord's pledge makes it even more difficult for him, if we look at it from the human standpoint.

Well, he takes him outside the tent, this is all in vision, and he asks Abram to look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you can. Now this would have meant a great deal to Abram, perhaps more than we understand, because as I understand it, in the East, when you look into the heavens at night, you can frequently see vastly more stars than you can see in our Western world.

And if that is true, then of course the vastness of the stars was a beautiful, illustrative picture of what God was going to do. It was a giant object lesson. It was something that was put on God's flannel board, and Abram looked and saw.

And it was a magnificent promise, but if we remember, he doesn't have any son at all. The paradox is increased. Now we, at this point, by the narrator, are turned from Abram, who is stargazing, and the narrator now turns to us and adds the words.

Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him for righteousness. This has been called the biggest word in the chapter. Well, I don't know whether it is or not, but it's one of the big words of the chapter, and it's one of the big words of the Bible.

Then he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him for righteousness. Now I'd like to stop for just a moment and say a few words about the three important words of verse 6. Now you'll remember that this text is the basis of Habakkuk 2 .4, that just shall live by faith.

So we have then he believed by faith in the Lord, and he reckoned it, live, for righteousness. Now the just. So Habakkuk meditated upon this, thought about it, reflected upon it, and finally wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit that magnificent compression of spiritual truth, the just shall live by faith.

That's what he saw from Genesis 15 .6. Incidentally, that shows us again how the students, the authors of Scripture were students of Scripture. They studied the Word of God. You must not think of them as being secretaries who waited in an office for someone to bring in a new tape so that they could sit down and type out the dictation that had been given to them.

They studied the Word of God. That's one of the reasons why they were the recipients of the divine revelation. They were students of Holy Scripture. They reflected upon Holy Scripture. They made it part of their morning, noon, and evening, and even nighttime life, as David may explain.

They studied the Scripture, and so they came up with these expressions under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that have been used by God. The just shall live by faith. That's Habakkuk's exposition of Genesis 15 .6.

Faith as Knowledge, Assent, and Trust

Now let's look at the first expression. Then he believed in the Lord. Now this is the first occurrence of the word believe in the book of Genesis, and it's the first, therefore, in the book of the Bible.

It is not, this faith is not described. Someone might say, what is faith? Well, that's a good question. Moses would say, well, I didn't bother to describe what it was. I simply asserted it. Now theologians seeking to answer that natural question have suggested that faith includes knowledge.

That is, if you have true faith, you must have some substance that you believe. Knowledge, revelation, some word from the Lord. So when a man has faith, he must have some object of his faith. He must be taught some truth, knowledge, notitia.

Then assensus or assent, he must assent to the truthfulness of that bit of divine revelation, the object of his faith. And finally fiducia or trust. Now trust is simply the committal of a person to that particular bit of information which he has received and to which he has given assent.

So faith is something that includes knowledge, it includes assent, it includes trust. Faith is a strongly intellectual thing then. It is not simply intellectual, but it is strongly intellectual. It is a belief of a particular proposition which concerns usually a person as well as a truth.

Now notice here, there's a great deal of debate in modern theology over the nature of biblical things. Are we to think of biblical things as propositional truths? For example, is the Bible a collection of propositional truths or is it simply a means by which we have encounter in a personal way with God?

Well of course we cannot solve a question like that since the truth lies in the combination. Notice this faith is personal. He believed in the Lord. Now the Lord had just said, so shall thy seed be, but the text says he believed in the Lord.

That is, he believed the thing that the Lord had said. He had knowledge, he assented to it, he trusted what the Lord said. But in so trusting it, he believed in the Lord. But it was also propositional.

The proposition he believed was, so shall thy seed be, as he looked up and saw the stars. So it was a proposition to which he gave assent and credence, faith, but it was also a proposition of a person.

So his faith is personal and propositional. Strictly speaking, it was a very broad kind of faith because when Abram looked up and was told, so shall thy seed be, that particular promise stretched from the time of Adam all the way down to the last soul that shall ever believe in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

For they are all the sons of Abraham. In a sense it was a plan for history. It was God's plan of the ages. So shall thy seed be, for that's what God is doing. He is gathering together a vast number of people called the sons of Abraham who are believers as Abraham was.

That's why we're all here. Now what part in this the gasoline crisis has, I don't know. But the reason you're here is that you might have a particular relationship to this vast plan that God is carrying out, God's plan of the ages.

And so when Abraham believed in the Lord, he was in a sense simply giving faith or his belief in God's plan of the ages. He believed in the Lord as he told him about that vast number of people like stars in the heavens who should believe.

When I was in the insurance business in Birmingham, Alabama, after I had gotten out of college, Dr. Lewis Barry Chafer of Dallas Seminary came for a weekend of meetings. And I attended the meetings and we met on Friday night and Saturday morning and Saturday night and then Sunday morning in the Wallum Presbyterian Church.

And Sunday evening in the Wallum Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. One of the messages that Dr. Chafer gave was a message on justification. And he referred to this text. Now Dr. Chafer was a man who didn't know any Hebrew and he didn't know any Greek, but he had picked up a lot of things from Bible teachers who knew a little something about both of the languages.

And he did know that the word for believe in the Old Testament was the Hebrew word amen, from which we get the very common expression in English. It's been transliterated into Greek as amen and then carried over into our language as amen or amen, which we attach to the end of our prayers.

It means simply, truly, verily. It's the word that the Lord uses when he attaches verily, verily to his statements. To believe was fundamentally, it was a word that meant to be firm, reliant. And so it has to do with a kind of firm credence.

But anyway, Dr. Chafer said, now since this is the word from which we get the word amen, let's render it that way. And so he said, when God said, so shall thy descendants be, then Abraham amened the Lord.

He simply said amen to what God had said. And that is the faith. It is to acknowledge the truthfulness of the words of God and rest upon them. Now I want to add one other thing here before we move on to reckon.

You'll notice that there is no legal work that Abraham is to do before he's justified. He has simply shown the stars and the text reads, he believed the thing that the Lord had shown him. So there were no legal works to be done.

He was not to run out and be baptized in order to be saved. He was not to run out and do some other sacramental work in order for the benefits of the saving work of God to become his. No legal work was required.

Furthermore, no cultic work was required. He was not required to offer a sacrifice in order to be saved. So no sacramental work, no legal work was necessary before he was pronounced righteous before the Lord.

He believed in the Lord and he reckoned it for righteousness. Now in a moment there is sacrifice that takes place and his faith works because he believes and then obeys the Lord. He gets the animals the Lord tells him to get and he carries it out.

In a sense, he shows that his faith is genuine faith by the works that he does. But it was the faith that saved him by which he was reckoned righteous. So he believed. The second thing is he reckoned it to him.

Imputation and the Righteousness of Christ

Now that's the source of the doctrine of imputation. You see what happens in a Christian salvation is that when he believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, righteousness is reckoned to him. Righteousness is imputed to him.

He is regarded as being righteous when inherently he is not righteous. It is on the basis of this statement that we have the fully developed doctrine of imputation in the New Testament. I'll say more about it in a moment.

But in the Old Testament this term was used of priestly judgments in the law of Moses. When the priest did something according to the word of the Lord, he reckoned a certain thing to be true. It was a judgment by the representative of the Lord in the Levitical law.

So here, this is a judgment not by an intermediary like a priest but by the Lord himself. He reckoned Abram to be righteous by virtue of the instrumentality of his faith. And then finally, the third word is righteousness.

Righteousness refers to a right standing before the Lord. Now we've had the adjective righteous before in the book of Genesis chapter 7 verse 1. But this is the first time that we have the word righteousness so far as I remember.

It's a term of relationship. It means that the person who is righteous is a person who is in the right relationship to the Lord. Now let me say a few words by way of a little bit of theology. Now I know what you're thinking.

My goodness, what have you been giving us up to this point if that's not theology? Well, that wasn't theology. Really that was simply exposition. It's a rather interesting thing to me. We live in an age that is dedicated completely to precision in its increasingly technological life.

Have you noticed the way people throw around the letters of the alphabet in different combinations? Do you ever feel a little ignorant when they talk about E-R-P or P-C-R or N-O-P or B-double-O-B or whatever it may be?

That last is what you feel like isn't it? You're so embarrassed you're afraid to even ask what do those things mean that you're talking about. Well, it's amazing to me in an age in which we talk about these technological, precise terms that in the Christian church we should have people running around insistent that precision in faith and creed constitutes some kind of menace.

It does not. To be precise in what we believe is simply to be true to the Word of God. Unfortunately that is the reason that when people do speak theology, others sit and do not understand anything. I received a letter last month from a former student of a theological school.

He said in his letter to me that it's been two years since he was at theological school and he said that at this school he had only one series of lectures from me, which happened to be two lectures on Bultmann's theology.

But he said since my graduation in 1977 I have listened to all of your 132 tapes on systematic theology and many others on the books of the Bible. And then he mentions, I say this in the spirit of the Apostle Paul, not to glorify myself but to glorify the Lord.

Your clear and pure proclamation of the grace of God in Jesus Christ has been so influential on my life and intellect that I am hardly the same person I was two years ago. Understanding not only what it means to be saved by grace but also what it means to be kept by grace, I've experienced a new strength to cope with life's battering and the unleashing of certain abilities which I knew I possessed but could never marshal by means of my own rebellious will.