What constitutes belief in YHWH today?

What constituted belief in YHWH for Abraham was “facing the fact,” Romans 4:19, “that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and Sarah’s womb was also dead,” so no way could they produce the offspring YHWH had promised them. 

The only way YHWH could fulfill his promise, then, was if he did it for them. Which is exactly what Abraham believed, that in YHWH there really was a “God who gives life to the dead, and calls things that are not as though they were” (17). And for believing that he was credited with righteousness (3) – one hundred percent right standing with God. 

Paul then gives a second example in King David, because David at one point had messed up his life so badly that he had to face a fact too, that his sins had rendered him “as good as dead” as well, and no way could he make up for the horrors of what he’d done (6) unless God did it for him. Which is exactly what David believed – that in YHWH there really was a God who gives life to the dead – which in his case was forgiving his sins and not counting his sins against him (7-8). And for believing that he too, like Abraham, was credited with righteousness (6). 

Both these examples Paul then uses to lead into what constitutes belief in YHWH for us today, because what was written about Abraham is “also for us” (23-24). And what was written about David is for us too, because we’re also faced with the fact that sin rendered us as good as dead, and there was nothing we could do about it either. But Jesus did what was needed for us, by being “delivered over to death for our sins” (25). 

And that’s what we’re being asked to believe, just like Abraham was being asked to believe that YHWH would give him a son. But YHWH also offered proof to help Abraham believe, by telling him to look up at the stars, as obvious proof that he, the Creator of all those stars, was fully capable of producing just as many descendants for Abraham. And it was then that Abraham believed (Genesis 15:5-6). 

And God’s done the same for us, having “raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (Romans 4:24), because there’s our proof that he “gives life to the dead” to help us believe he’ll raise us from our old dead selves too. 

And that for us is what constitutes belief in YHWH, that in both Jesus’ death and his resurrection we believe God has done for us what we could not do. But “Why is our belief so important?”….(next blog)