THE allusion to the demons is a powerful illustration of the point in hand. None believe more decidedly than they; none anticipate their doom more surely or keenly. But such faith has no link with a new nature from God, nor does it issue in works that please Him. The demons are subject to the evil will of their chief, the devil. Man alas! plays his part in a way most offensive to God, boasting of a faith with even less feeling than the demons, and without the works testifying to a life received from Him. There is nothing to “show,” as there ought to be and must be if the gospel were accepted as it is truly, not men's but God's word, which is also energetic in those that believe.
“But art thou willing to learn, O vain man, that faith apart from works is dead (or, idle)? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when (or, in that) he offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” (vers. 20, 21).
As to the difference of reading in the first of these verses, the great majority of MSS. gives “dead “; but the witness for “idle” is ancient and excellent. The shade is but slight, the substantial sense remains as before. Only there was here as elsewhere the danger of assimilation, for the chapter ends with the conclusion that faith apart from works is “dead.” If “idle” were the true text in ver. 20, the language of ver. 26 would not be a repetition but a striking and effective climax. Hence Alford, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, with Westcott and Hort, prefer it.
Then we are confronted with an appeal to Abraham's case, always of the greatest weight with his descendants, and in the present instance an overwhelming disproof of the evil that is combated, “Was not Abraham our father justified by (or, out of) works when he offered Isaac his son upon the altar?”
It is the more decisive, because the work of Abraham here adduced had nothing in common with the benevolent or philanthropic works which men mean by “good,” and boast of as sure to weigh with God. To be willing to slay his son Isaac, on the contrary, this class of men would consider atrocious in Abraham, and only worthy of Moloch as they blasphemously add. They do not believe that God ever put Abraham to such a test, and become more and more bold in treating it as the Syrian legend of a barbarous age and of a heathen superstition.
Our Epistle, and it is not alone in this (for the Epistle to the Hebrews, wholly distinct as it is in character, is emphatically in accord), cites it as a deed of the highest moral excellence, and proving Abraham to be justified by works. It was characteristically an act contrary to every instinct of a father. It was enhanced by the fact that Isaac was “thine only son, whom thou lovest,” as God said in putting Abraham to this extreme proof. There was, on the face of the demand, the apparent frustration of those blessed hopes of blessing, long promised by God, “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed,” to say nothing of making of him a great nation, and making his name great. How could this be if Isaac must now die, and this so unaccountably by his father's hand, as an offering to the God Who had wrought wondrously in giving him, and now strangely required his sacrifice? Doubtless God could give another son, and by Sarah if it so pleased Him; but this would not meet the case. For had not God said in calling his wife not Sarai but Sarah (Gen. 17) that the son of her, to make her mother of nations and of kings of peoples, would be this very Isaac, with whom He would establish His covenant for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him? There in fact it was Abraham's faith rested. He laughed, we may say, at impossibilities, in contrast with Sarah's laughter incredulous at first. The real impossibility was for God to lie. He was sure therefore that if Isaac had now to die, God would raise him up from the dead in order to make the promise good. Abraham's faith was now, not as before, that God would give him a son of Sarah, but that He could not fail to raise this son from the death now required, in order to fulfill all He had promised. Never such a trial of faith; never such a triumph by grace.
Long before this event, if late in Abraham's fruitful course, it is written that he believed in Jehovah, and He counted it to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:1616But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. (Genesis 15:16)). This is the most express acknowledgment of him as justified by faith. And scripture uses it beyond controversy in this way and to this end, as in Rom. 4. But in Gen. 22, as referred to in our Epistle, we behold the believing man “showing” his works and thereby justified. Nor can anything be more certain than that Abraham's work in offering Isaac his son on the altar derived all its value from his faith in God's call; so much so that without this it would have been heinously evil.