Against All Hope

The city of Samaria was starving to death. Ben-hadad's siege had run so long that ordinary supply lines had collapsed entirely — people were paying eighty pieces of silver for a donkey's head, and two women had made a pact to eat their own sons. This isn't hyperbole. It's recorded history in 2 Kings 6, and it is exactly as horrifying as it sounds. When the king's own officer heard Elisha promise the famine would break by the next day, he scoffed — not as an outsider mocking Israel's God, but as a man inside the covenant whose circumstances had exhausted every category he had for what was possible.

That's the kind of promise Abraham was living inside of. Romans 4 has already told us what kind of God we're dealing with — "the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (v. 17). Now, in verses 18–25, Paul shows us exactly what that faith looked like up close: not faith in the abstract, but faith staring at two specific, undeniable facts, and refusing to let those facts have the final word.

Abraham's faith wasn't naive. The word "impossible" had entered the chat. Sarah wasn't just too old for children — she'd been barren even before that. This wasn't blind optimism, crossed fingers, or "it'll all work out." This was the point where the only honest answer left was, "Only God." And Abraham had already proven, fourteen years earlier with Hagar, that there was nothing in him that could force this promise into existence on his own.

This isn't just positive thinking. Faith isn't ignoring the circumstances — it's trusting a God who simply isn't bound by them. Even when Abraham looked straight at the despair of the moment, his faith never decided to crawl back into bed. Maybe you've had your own Hagar moment — a shortcut taken because waiting on God felt unbearable. Here's the good news buried in Abraham's story: that moment didn't disqualify him. The promise was never resting on his track record to begin with.

So what was the trick that let Abraham hold on? Not self-generated resolve. Not sheer force of will. Paul tells us: he "grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God." Rather than crawling back in bed, his faith went and competed in an Ironman — and Paul gives us the mechanism. Faith works like a muscle. The circumstances were the resistance. Giving God glory in spite of them was the exercise. It's always easier not to do it — but that's exactly what makes the muscle grow.

Paul is specific about what Abraham's conviction rested on: he was "fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised." Not just present. Not just caring. Able. And it turns out God was able — Sarah bore a son named Isaac. That same conviction didn't stop there. Years later, when God asked Abraham to offer that very son, Hebrews tells us Abraham trusted God could raise the dead if that's what it took to keep His word. It's as if Abraham looked to God and said, "I'll do anything you say because I believe you can do everything you promise."

That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. Not his obedience. Not his track record. Not even the strength of his faith itself. Justification isn't the grade we get at the end of the course for checking off every requirement in the syllabus. God isn't a professor tallying up a passing score. His faith — simply trusting God — was enough for God to declare him righteous. Not earned. Not produced. Not worked for. Credited. Given. Counted.

It's easy for a doctrine like this to get chalked up to a concept that belongs in a thick book on a shelf. But let's never forget it impacts real people. It impacts you. Abraham may not have been able to articulate that he was justified by faith — but that doesn't change the fact that he was. Paul makes this same argument a second time, in his letter to the Galatians: "those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith." This was never just an argument about one man, on one afternoon. It was always meant to reach further than Abraham himself.

Paul steps back from Abraham's story and tells us exactly why he told it: "the words 'it was counted to him' were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also." That verse was never a history lesson. It was always aimed at you. The same faith. The same God. The same kind of impossible. Abraham looked at a hundred-year-old body and a dead womb and believed God could bring life from it. You're being asked to look at a cross and an empty tomb and believe the same thing.

If you're trusting Christ this morning, hear this: your faith, however small it feels some mornings, is not too weak for this. It never rested on the size of your faith. It rests on the size of the God your faith is aimed at. And if you've never turned from trying to earn what can only be received — you don't need a stronger record. You need to stop trusting the record altogether. Turn from it, and turn to the God who raised Jesus from the dead. He is able to do this for you — not because of what you've done, but because of what He's already done.