Doubtless if we had lived with Abraham we would not have been impressed with the greatness of his character, and the extraordinary stretch of his faith; and it is possible we might have found other men living at the same time who would have made a much more favorable impression upon us.

Very few of God’s real saints can be measured by those who are contemporary with them because every creature of the human race has inevitable imperfections and individual peculiarities which often serve to detract from the real magnitude of his character. But the work of God always has the characteristic of durability and of coming out into brighter light the more it is searched into.

The more closely we analyze God’s works the more wonderful they become, and the longer our study of them is pursued the more momentous the impression they make on us. This is just as true of God’s work in making a saint or a great hero as in making a tree, or a mountain, or an ocean.

God chose Abraham as a personal nucleus around which to crystalize the Jewish nation. Hence God providentially led him in such a way, and through such experiences, as to make him a typical character in setting forth the great race of Bible saints, and the divine pattern of religious experience.

1. We find in the life of Abraham all the items that go to make up a New Testament saint, and all the steps of Christian progress that belong to the advanced believer of these times. We see in Genesis 12:1 that the Lord called Abram away from his father’s house and kindred into an unknown region, both of providence and of faith. “The Lord said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, into a land that I will show thee.”

Migration of some sort is the starting point of all growth and development.

There can be no progress for the future except by disturbing and displacing the arrangements of the present. Abram was called to go westward, into a new country and away from old social environments, that his soul might not be entangled socially, politically, or financially, with his old surroundings; and this going forth into a new country was also a going forth of his soul into a new region of divine favor. This beginning step in Abraham’s life must be the beginning step in some way or other in every life that is given to God, and into which the Lord can incorporate His principles.

In thousands of cases there must still be a literal emigration from our old surroundings of childhood and youth into a new section of country and new surroundings, that are providentially adapted to mold our lives and bring forth our latent capabilities. But if not literally, there must still be in spirit, and thought, and faith, the going forth of every soul into a new field of possibilities to which it is divinely called.

2. The next distinguishing feature in the life of Abraham is recorded in Genesis 14:1–20, in which he returned from the slaughter of the kings, and had captured his nephew, and on his return from the north of Palestine to Jerusalem he met Melchizedec, the priest of the most high God, and gave to this priest of God one-tenth of all his spoils. Here we see that the giving to God and His cause one-tenth of what we receive was practiced by Abraham six hundred years before the giving of the law. Hence to teach that giving to the Lord a tenth of all we receive is merely a part of the Jewish ceremonial law is a great mistake.

If the facts could be gathered it would be seen that many thousands of God’s professed followers do not prosper in business, and are much hindered in their spiritual lives, because they do not prove themselves to be the true spiritual seed of Abraham in this matter of giving one-tenth to the Lord.

Multitudes of Christians suppose this law is not binding on them, and while boasting that they live under a superior dispensation to that of the Jews, they do not begin to measure up in this matter to the old-fashioned righteousness that Abraham had before the giving of the law. I am constantly finding people who fail in their lives and finances solely because they rob God of His tenth.

And, on the other hand, I am continually meeting fresh cases where persons begin paying the Lord their tenth, on the Abrahamic line, and immediately God works wonders for them, both spiritually and temporally.

3. The next step in Abraham’s life is recorded in Genesis 15, where he received the clear witness to the righteousness of faith. “After these things, the Lord said to Abram, Fear not, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. And Abraham believed in the Lord, and he counted his faith to him for righteousness.” It does not say that God’s personal righteousness was imputed to Abraham, but that God accepted Abraham’s faith, and counted his faith to him for righteousness. This event in Abraham’s life is made by St. Paul a great, towering argument for justification by faith alone, without any righteousness on our part.

The Scriptures teach four kinds of justification: (1), without faith and without works, where Paul says that in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive, and that a free gift of justification unto life has passed upon all men, that is, upon all men in infant existence. (2), a justification that is by faith alone, without works or any merit whatever on our part, but simply accepting God’s free gift of Jesus as our own, and our sin bearer, this is the justification of a penitent sinner of which the justification of Abraham in Genesis 15 is a great historical type and pattern. (3), the justification of the believer, which is by faith to be proved and accompanied by good works, that flows out from a loving faith. This is the justification described by St. James, and which so many people fail to understand, and fancy that James and Paul contradict each other. (4), a justification at the judgment day, which is by works alone, where the faith is never mentioned, for we see in all the accounts of the judgment that the rewards and punishments are based with great accuracy on the works of the person, whether good or bad. This life is preeminently a life of faith, but the judgment will be a realm of fruit or works, which have grown out of faith or the lack of faith.

Thus we see that this fifteenth chapter of Genesis is God’s great lighthouse on justification by faith alone, which throws its cheering beams across the turbulent centuries, and guides every broken-hearted sinner and humble penitent into the quiet harbor of peace with God, as a result of justifying faith.

In the same chapter we see how God gave to Abraham the witness of His favor, by sending a smoking furnace and a burning lamp to pass between the pieces of his sacrifice on the altar. This furnace and burning lamp very beautifully set forth the Holy Spirit in His operations in witnessing to our hearts the facts of our salvation.

4. The next epoch in Abraham’s religious life is mentioned in Genesis 17, where he had a distinct call to Christian perfection, which was sealed by the rite of circumcision. “And when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him, and said, I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.” The word Almighty means the all-sufficient God; literally, the word signifies to be outpoured, as from a fountain. The Hebrew word signifies a mother’s breast full of milk for her child, and the secondary meaning is a fountain pouring forth a continual and exhaustless stream.

Hence we see that God’s call to perfection was linked with the affirmation that God is an eternal and exhaustless sufficiency of grace, and that by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon Abraham, He could make him perfect in his heart toward God.

At this call from God, Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, and made a covenant that Abram should be the father of many nations; and then God changed his name, indicating the thorough and radical transformation of Abraham’s spiritual life. The Lord said, “Thy name shall no more be Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham.” The name Abram signifies father, and the name Abraham means a high father, that is, a grandfather, hence the father of a great multitude. This divine act in perfecting the heart of Abraham in faith and love was accompanied by the rite of circumcision, as a seal to that great work of grace. In like manner, when believers are purified and perfected in their heart-life by the outpouring of the all-sufficient Holy Spirit, then their hearts are circumcised, and they become the true spiritual seed of Abraham. It is this work of heart circumcision, and the perfecting of the soul in love, that lifts the believer into the rank of the real elect, and constitutes him a member of the Bride of the Lamb.

The New Testament invariably speaks of justification as being a call of God, and of sanctification as being the work of election; hence Peter urges us to make our calling and our election sure, that is, our justification and sanctification sure. Paul often speaks of our justification as our calling, and then in Philippians, in speaking of his desire to be in the first resurrection literally, in the resurrection which is out from among the dead he speaks of it as the “high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” This difference between the calling and the high calling corresponds exactly with the difference between the name Abram and Abraham, or father and high father. Thus Abraham had a definite epoch of sanctification in his life several years after his justification.

5. Another step in the religious life of Abraham was that of definite healing. We see in Genesis 20:17 that Abraham prayed unto God, and the Lord healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his servants. Thus Abraham was fully abreast with all the advanced religious thought and teaching and experiences of the present day under New Testament light. There is not a single intimation that Abraham ever had any physician except the Lord, and if he was ever sick a day we do not know of it, though he lived to be one hundred and seventy-five years. What is still more wonderful, we have no account of the children of Abraham ever taking drugs, or having any physician, except the Lord, for about one thousand years, covering the time from the call of Abraham to the days of king Asa. Instead, then, of supposing that faith for divine healing is a new and erratic notion, be reminded that it was believed and practiced by the patriarchs hundreds of years before the first lines of Scripture were committed to manuscript. How slow the Christian church has been to get to the great fundamentals of religious life and experiences, as set forth in Abraham.

6. The next great step in Abraham’s life was the remarkable testings of his faith as recorded in Genesis 22. “God did test Abraham’s faith, and said, Take thy only son Isaac, and offer him up for a burnt offering in the land of Mount Moriah.” This great event of offering up Isaac constituted the climax in Abraham’s spiritual life on earth. After that great crisis had past, God then spoke to Abraham, saying, “Now I know that thou fearest God, and because thou hast not withheld thy son, by myself have I sworn, that in blessing I will bless thee.” Many people suppose that the epoch in a Christian’s life when he is fully sanctified and baptized with the Holy Spirit is the great crisis of his life, but such is often not the case.

We see in the life of Abraham, which God arranged to be the pattern for Abraham’s spiritual seed, that the great peculiar crisis in his life came after the making of his heart perfect, in the extraordinary trial of his faith, in which every part of his moral being of faith and obedience was stretched to its utmost tension. The Apostle James, under inspiration of the Holy Ghost, in searching for proofs of the effects of faith and the trial of faith, selects that one in Abraham’s life, not where he was justified in Genesis 15, or sanctified in Genesis 17, but where his whole spiritual being was subjected to a crucial test, in the offering up of the son, and which forever settled the character of Abraham, for all ages, and for all worlds.

God still deals with His true servants on these old Abrahamic lines, and the great crisis of every saint’s life comes after the work of sanctification.

It is these deeper testings of humility, and self-abnegation, and faith, and love that prove the very core of one’s character, and lead the tried child of God out through a deeper death to self and into the ocean of boundless, spotless, tender love, into the abiding, fiery presence of the three persons of the Godhead, that glow like the sweet furnace of heavenly love in the soul.

Just as there are a great many justified believers who do not pass into the state of heart circumcision and Christian perfection, so there are many who are sanctified but who fail in the awful testings that afterwards come to their faith. They allow themselves to get discouraged, or they tone down, or compromise, and do not reach this great gulf stream experience of burning love which has been witnessed to by many saints in all the past.

7. Another item in Abraham’s faith was that of the first resurrection. We are told in Hebrews 11:19 that God would raise Isaac from the dead, but the Greek says he counted that God was able to raise Isaac from among the dead, using the word which is constantly used to indicate the first resurrection. So Abraham believed in the resurrection of the holy dead previous to the general resurrection. In this respect he was way ahead of the great mass of theologians and preachers of the present time, who blindly fancy that they are in great advance of the Old Testament saints.

8. Another item in Abraham’s faith was that he apprehended the bridehood of Jesus under the form of a glorious city of sanctified souls. We are told in Hebrews 11 that Abraham looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God; and then again that God hath prepared for them a city. This city is spoken of by St. John in Revelation, and is emphatically denominated as the Lamb’s wife, that is, an organic structure of purified and glorified human beings, in the form of a city. And this city is spoken of by John over and over again as that special number of glorified saints denominated by the peculiar number of one hundred and forty-four thousand, which is taking the divine government number of twelve, and multiplying it by itself, and then multiplying this twelve times twelve by one thousand. This is the city whose soft golden light fell on the eye of Abraham’s faith.

And in connection with his apprehension of the bridehood of the Lamb, he also, by faith, apprehended the millennial reign of Jesus, when he would be glorified with Christ, and reign with Christ on this earth as “the heir of the world.” Paul tells us in the fourth chapter of Romans that Abraham, through the promises of God, became “the heir of the world.” Hence this thought of the saints coming back with the Lord Jesus, as heirs of God, and joint heirs of Jesus, to own and govern this world, filled the faith of the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament. We are told over and over again in the Book of the Psalms that the meek shall inherit the earth, and that the righteous shall inherit the land forever, and that those who keep the Lord’s way shall be exalted to inherit the land.

Now look at this array of thoughts and experiences in the life and faith of Abraham, sweeping the entire range of justification, sanctification, divine healing, the giving of the tenth, the first resurrection, and the millennial reign on this earth with Jesus and His sanctified ones; then compare this vast field of Abrahamic religion with the dwarfed, and sickly, and indefinite experiences of the great bulk who profess Christianity, and we see that Abraham, way back yonder in the morning of the ages, without a church, or a preacher, or a Bible, or a hymn book, had the knowledge of God and of His kingdom, and an experience in the things of God, and a sweep of faith which throws into eclipse millions of those who profess to be living under the full blessing of New Testament light. Well may St. Paul, in the fourth of Romans, in speaking of the traits of a real Christian, designate him as one who walks “in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham.” It is for those who walk in these steps of old-fashioned Abrahamic religion to be among the number that, in the coming kingdom of Jesus, shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God.