Study Desk

First I want to say that I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because people everywhere in the world are talking about your faith.

I mean that I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you.

The Good News shows how God makes people right with himself—that it begins and ends with faith. As the Scripture says, "But those who are right with God will live by faith."

God makes people right with himself through their faith in Jesus Christ. This is true for all who believe in Christ, because all people are the same:

God sent him to die in our place to take away our sins. We receive forgiveness through faith in the blood of Jesus' death. This showed that God always does what is right and fair, as in the past when he was patient and did not punish people for their sins.

And God gave Jesus to show today that he does what is right. God did this so he could judge rightly and so he could make right any person who has faith in Jesus.

So do we have a reason to brag about ourselves? No! And why not? It is the way of faith that stops all bragging, not the way of trying to obey the law.

A person is made right with God through faith, not through obeying the law.

Of course he is, because there is only one God. He will make Jews right with him by their faith, and he will also make those who are not Jews right with him through their faith.

So do we destroy the law by following the way of faith? No! Faith causes us to be what the law truly wants.

So what can we say that Abraham, the father of our people, learned about faith?

because the Scripture says, "Abraham believed God, and God accepted Abraham's faith, and that faith made him right with God."

But people cannot do any work that will make them right with God. So they must trust in him, who makes even evil people right in his sight. Then God accepts their faith, and that makes them right with him.

Is this blessing only for those who are circumcised or also for those who are not circumcised? We have already said that God accepted Abraham's faith and that faith made him right with God.

Abraham was circumcised to show that he was right with God through faith before he was circumcised. So Abraham is the father of all those who believe but are not circumcised; he is the father of all believers who are accepted as being right with God.

And Abraham is also the father of those who have been circumcised and who live following the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Abraham and his descendants received the promise that they would get the whole world. He did not receive that promise through the law, but through being right with God by his faith.

If people could receive what God promised by following the law, then faith is worthless. And God's promise to Abraham is worthless,

So people receive God's promise by having faith. This happens so the promise can be a free gift. Then all of Abraham's children can have that promise. It is not only for those who live under the law of Moses but for anyone who lives with faith like that of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

Abraham was almost a hundred years old, much past the age for having children, and Sarah could not have children. Abraham thought about all this, but his faith in God did not become weak.