‍When Was Abraham Justified?

‍The Bible says that Abraham was justified on at least three different occasions

  Gary Hoge

‍Is justification a one-time event in the life of a believer, or is it a process having a beginning, a middle, and an end? According to Presbyterian theologian Dr. D. James Kennedy, it is the former. He wrote that justification “is an act—not a process. It is done in the twinkling of the eye. In an instant, it is complete and perfect forever.”¹

‍There are two problems with this view, though. The first is the fact that the Bible does not always present justification as a past-tense event. Instead, it presents justification in the past, present, and future tenses:

‍Past justification:

‍Since we have now been justified by his blood … (Romans 5:9).

‍Therefore, since we have been justified through faith … (Romans 5:1).

‍Present justification:

‍If, while we seek to be justified in Christ … (Galatians 2:17).

‍You who are trying to be justified by law … (Galatians 5:4).

‍Future justification:

‍For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:37).

‍For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. (Romans 2:13).

‍The second biblical problem with the idea of a once-for-all justification is that according to the Bible, Abraham was justified on three separate occasions. The first is recounted in Hebrews, chapter 11, the “Faith Hall of Fame”:

‍Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval . . . by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-10).

‍The Bible describes this in Genesis 12:

‍Now the Lord said to Abram, . . . “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives . . . I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you” . . . So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him. (Genesis 12:1, 2, 4).

‍Abraham believed what the Lord had said, and by faith he went out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. By faith, Abraham “gained approval” from God. In other words, he was justified at that time. 

‍In Genesis 12-14, we see Abraham walking in obedience to God. He builds altars many times, and invokes the Lord by name; God gives him the promised land; Abraham fights the battles of the Lord and defeats the four kings and rescues his nephew Lot. In Genesis 14, Abraham worships God with Melchizedek who was a “priest of God Most High.” Melchizedek blesses Abraham, and Abraham gives him a tenth of everything. All these good works, these acts of obedience, were done in faith before Genesis 15.

‍Then, in Genesis 15, God said to Abraham, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:5). The Bible says, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”

‍Now flash forward a few thousand years. The apostle Paul is attempting to refute the Judaizers, who said Gentile Christians must be circumcised in order to be saved. Paul wants to show that righteousness does not come by way of the ceremonial Law of Moses, but by faith in Christ:

‍By the works of the Law [circumcision, etc.] no flesh will be justified in His sight . . . Now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested . . . even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe . . . Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law. (Romans 3:20, 21, 27, 28).

‍It’s worth noting that Paul is not talking about Christian good works, he’s talking about the outward works of the Mosaic Law. Paul always emphasizes the importance of good works, the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5) as he calls it, in contrast to the futility of the works of the ceremonial Law. He wrote, “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts” (1 Corinthians 7:19). Now to make his point that righteousness (justification) comes by faith and not by circumcision (and therefore that the Gentile Christians do not need to be circumcised), he tries to show that Abraham was justified before he was circumcised:

‍If Abraham was justified by works [i.e., circumcision], he has something to boast about; but not before God. What does the Scripture say? “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” . . . Is this blessing then upon the circumcised, or upon the uncircumcised also? For we say, “Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.” How then was it reckoned? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised; and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be reckoned to them . . . For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law [i.e., through circumcision], but through the righteousness of faith (Romans 4:2-13).

‍Now Paul says Abraham was justified in Genesis 15, but he does not say that this was the first time Abraham was justified. Indeed, it obviously was not the first time that Abraham’s belief was credited to him as righteousness, because it was not the first time “Abraham believed the Lord” and acted in faith on that belief. Abraham was initially justified no later than Genesis 12 when he believed God’s promises and went out “by faith” to a new land, so his justification in Genesis 15 was a subsequent, further justification. The Bible also says that Abraham was justified yet again:

‍But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected . . . You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone. (James 2:20-24).

‍The incident James describes happened in Genesis 22, fourteen years after Abraham was justified in Genesis 15. So the Bible tells us that Abraham was justified on each of these three different occasions. My question, then, for those who say that justification is “complete and perfect forever in an instant” is simply, when was Abraham justified? Was it in Genesis 12, Genesis 15, or Genenesis 22? Catholics, who see justification as a process, would answer that he was initially justified in Genesis 12, and then further justified in Genesis 15 and Genesis 22. I really have no idea what the Protestant answer would be.

‍Further, the Protestant definition raises the difficulty of having Paul say that Abraham was not justified by works, while James says that he was. In Catholic theology, Abraham, like the rest of us, was not initially justified by works, but years later, he increased in righteousness (justification) through his faith-filled works, by which his faith was made complete. 

‍These verses synthesize quite easily into Catholic theology, but they seem to be incompatible with the Protestant understanding of instantaneous justification. Martin Luther resolved this conflict by concluding that the book of James was defective! He wrote, “This defect proves that the epistle [of James] is not of Apostolic provenance . . . He [James] does violence to scripture and so contradicts Paul and all of scripture. . . . I therefore refuse him a place among the writers of the true canon of my Bible.”²

‍I assume that most of us do not feel we have the right to sit in judgment of the Scriptures, and that we must continue to accept the book of James as inspired. The Catholic resolution to this apparent conflict is to point out, as I did before, that James is not talking about the “works of the Law” that Paul is talking about in Romans; he is talking about Christian good works (e.g., seeing a “brother or sister without clothing and in need of daily food” (James 2:15) and doing something about it). 

‍There is no conflict between James and Paul, as Martin Luther thought, because they are not talking about the same kind of works. Paul said that the works of the Law (i.e., circumcision, etc.) are useless, and James would agree. James said that Christian good works, though, are necessary, and Paul would agree. Paul frequently exhorted people to be “rich in good deeds” in order to “lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” (1 Timothy 6:17-19).

‍__________

^‍1 D. James Kennedy, Truths That Transform, (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1974), 73.

^‍2 Martin Luther, quoted in John Dillenberger, John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1971), 36.