A Beautiful Key

Here is something beautiful I never saw in Romans before.  I've always been intrigued with this section early in Romans but never have seen before how it can be used to interpret later passages in Romans 7 and 8.

This is from Romans 4:

"[Abraham believed] God, who brings to life the dead, and calls those things that are not as though they were.  Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which is spoken, so shall they seed be. And being no weak in faith, he considered his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of sara's womb...and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able to perform"

The references to a dead womb (unable to receive life) and his own dead body (unable to offer anything good) brings to mind the references to our dead flesh that can do nothing but produce dead works.  And God is able to raise the dead and the promise is made later in this letter to the Romans that the "Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies".  I wait for this, but when I read 1 John and other places about what those signs of life are, well, I'm starting lately to see them, but had not before.  Why?  Didn't I only have to believe?  Why was I acting more like a disconnected branch, a sick tree bearing bad fruit?

Look at Abraham believed God, that real life would be given.  But the actual quickening of the dead happened years later.  Now Abraham did not know how it would happen or when.  And when life did not appear yet, it was not the fault of Abraham, that he was doing something wrong.  Though he did try to readjust the understanding of the promise at one point and thought that since he had not seen the fulfillment of the promise yet that maybe he misunderstood, that it wasn't as wonderful as he thought it was going to be and that he needed to adjust his approach.  And the thing is, Hagar conceived.  It seemed to work.  It wasn't until later that the fruit was manifested to be a work of the flesh.

The sad thing is, in today's microwave, instant society, Abraham probably wouldn't have given up after the Hagar debacle.  He would have assumed that his approach just needed to be adjusted and he would have tried one misguided attempt after another and Isaac never would have born!

But he hung on and believed God would perform as he promised, exactly as he promised.  His faith became so strong that he actually was willing to sacrifice Isaac, after all that waiting.  But God is the one who raises the dead, and it may not happen in my timing, but it will be as wonderful, if not more wonderful, than everything I thought it would be, that it should be, if we believe what is described in the Gospels and Paul's letters and especially in 1 John.  Beyond belief!  But I'm going to believe exactly that.