Abraham's Faith and the Father's Love

…altar?” (James 2:21). Do the Spirit-bearing writers, then, say things contrary to one another? What, then, do we say to this? To him, when he was already far on in years, the God of all promised a son, quite beyond all expectation, and said that the offspring to come from him would rival the countless multitude of the stars (Genesis 15:5). And because he honored the one who promised, bearing witness to God by this that he can accomplish all things, he was justified before him (Genesis 15:6), and received, as a reward worthy of so God-loving a mind, the forgetting of his former offences. In due course God made the oracle concerning Isaac a trial for the righteous man (Genesis 22:1–2); but in this too he was faithful and loved God, as one who put nothing ahead of his love for God. Yet, as the Savior's disciple says, “Faith was working together with the works, and by the works faith was made firm” (James 2:22). And the admirable Paul himself said somewhere of our forefather Abraham: “By faith he offered up Isaac when he was tested; he who had received the promises was offering up his only son, he to whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named’; for he reasoned that God is able even to raise from the dead” (Hebrews 11:17–19). So even if it should perhaps be said that he was justified by works because, when tested, he offered up Isaac, this too was for him a clear proof of the firmest faith.

“Not only that, but we also boast in God” (Romans 5:11). Our Lord Jesus Christ, making plain the truly admirable love of God the Father which he showed toward us, brought forward as proof the goal of his work in the flesh and his suffering on the cross, saying somewhere: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). For he truly gave his own Son for us; and we have been redeemed, set free from death and sin. For the Word “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) for no other reason than this: that by enduring the death of the flesh he might triumph over the rulers and authorities (Colossians 2:15) and destroy “the one who has the power of death, that is,” Satan (Hebrews 2:14); that he might do away with corruption and, with it, remove the sin that had tyrannized over us; and that he might thus make powerless from then on that ancient curse which human nature underwent in Adam, as in the firstfruits of the race and as in its first root. For Adam, by transgressing the commandment, offended his Creator; that is why he became both accursed and subject to death. But the Master of all took pity again on those who were utterly lost. For the Son came down from heaven, forgiving offences, justifying the ungodly by faith (Romans 4:5), and, as God, reforging human nature into incorruption and bringing it back to what it was in the beginning. For a new…