In Genesis 31, Jacob refers to Isaac’s fear as the LORD Himself, the God who was with him during his sojourn in Syria in his service to his uncle Laban. This way of speaking is equivalent to referring to our faith as the One we believe. Thus, scripture gives the precedence for referring to faith’s object as our faith.

"Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely thou hadst sent me away now empty. God hath seen mine affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked thee yesternight" (Gen. 31:42).

From Jacob’s confession, we understand that the "fear of Isaac" was not Isaac's attitude of reverence, but the One Isaac believed in reverence and godly fear (Heb. 12:28). Jacob said this One was his fear also. Jacob spoke these words after twenty years of persecution under his uncle Laban (Gal. 4:28-29). From similar circumstances, the Psalmist confessed His hope: “Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word” (Ps. 119:161). As a child reverences his father, and stands in awe of him, so the child of God stands in awe and reverence of God. The fear of God is the reverential awe of a child for His Father. All men ought to fear God their Maker in this way. “Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him” (Ps. 33:8). But no man fears God until God instills his fear in man’s heart. Scripture says of all men, “There is no fear before their eyes” (Rom. 3:18). Until we believe Christ, we will not fear God’s goodness (Hosea 3:5).

But this point about faith can be drawn from Genesis 31:42. Isaac's “fear” was the LORD Himself. His fear was the One he believed, the object of his fear. Just so, the believer's “faith” is the One he believes. All who have been given the gift of faith believe Christ crucified. To believe the Son of God, is to believe that He who is the Son of God in His divine nature, is God’s eternally appointed Christ, and has come in sinless human nature as our Substitute and Mediator. He has fulfilled God’s holy law in precept and in justice. Christ fulfilled the law to honor God’s name and to establish everlasting righteousness for His people (Matt. 5:17; Rom. 10:4; Dan. 9:24). He took the sins of God’s elect and bore them as His own (1 Pet. 2:24; Ps. 40:12). He endured the curse of God’s law that was upon us (Gal. 3:13). He made satisfaction for sins (Rom. 3:25; Isa. 53:11). Christ fulfilled the law in its precept and its penalty in completion and in perfection (John 19:30; Rom. 10:4; Heb. 7:11, 19; 10:14). Love fulfills the law. Christ fulfilled the law by His love to His Father (Deut. 6:5, His God) and by His love for His people (Luke 10:25-37, His neighbor). Christ’s love is the only love that fulfills the law (Mark 12:28-34). His love for His Father moved Him to lay down His life as a sacrifice in obedience because His law is worthy of Christ’s obedience (Heb. 10; Php. 2:6-8; John 10:17-18; 14:31; Ex. 21:2-6; Ps. 40:8; 119:47, 48, 97; Ps. 138:2). His love for His people moved Him to lay down His life for them, though by their sin they made themselves His enemies (Eph. 5:25; Gal. 2:20; 1 John 3:16; Acts 20:28; Rom. 5:10). Therefore, the object of the believer’s faith is Christ crucified. The object of our faith is Christ, who by His fulfillment of God’s law  in His obedience unto death, is the righteousness of God (Jer. 23:6). Only faith’s object fulfilled God’s law in its precept and its penalty (2 Pet. 1:1). Therefore, the faith by which we are justified before God is Christ’s obedience (Rom. 5:17-19, 21). Christ’s obedience is our righteousness (Php. 2:8; 2 Cor. 5:21). God’s declaration to that fact in His resurrection is our justification. By Christ’s resurrection, God declared Him to be righteous (Rom. 4:25). And God declares the believer to be righteous by the righteousness of Christ imputed to him (1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 4:6-8; Heb. 1:3; 10:14). Therefore, we were justified with Christ in His resurrection (Rom. 4:25). The faith by which God enlightens our understanding to Christ the object of our faith, persuades us that God’s testimony concerning His Son is true. We therefore look to Christ alone as all of our salvation (1 John 5:9-13). Whenever we give a reason for the hope that lies within, we point away from ourselves to the Lamb of God. He is Himself the Way, Truth and Life, our faith and our hope (1 Pet. 3:15; 1 Tim. 1:1). As Jacob confessed when facing the persecution of that deceiving Laban, so do we when our sins and fears persecute us. When accusations from within and from without threaten to rob us of our peace and joy in Christ, our salvation and inheritance, as Jacob confessed, “the fear of Isaac” was his fear, so we join every saint in saying, “our faith is Christ crucified.” We refer to our Savior as our faith because He is the One we believe. The Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil world and redeem us from all iniquity and the curse of God’s holy law is Himself our faith (Gal. 1:4; Titus 2:14; Gal. 2:20). Our Redeemer is our faith. “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law, there shall no flesh be justified” (Gal. 2:16). When Christ is our faith, we believe Him. In believing Him as our righteousness, and not in believing our act of faith, we possess that peace and joy that God gives to everyone who sees Christ as all. He is our faith, the One we believe, the One by whom God delivered us from all our enemies and in whom, God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places (Eph. 1:3-7).

God declares Christ crucified in the Gospel. His testimony concerning Christ is the testimony of Christ’s person and work. His work is the righteousness of God by which we are justified (Rom. 3:21-22, 24-26). This is the Gospel. When He declares it to us by His Spirit, it is the power of God to our salvation, and in which we live (Rom. 1:16-17; 1 Pet. 1:23; James 1:18; John 6:63; 1 John 5:9-13). His command to live breathes His Spirit to us with faith in Christ (Ezek. 37:4-14). The breath of God’s Spirit enables us to believe as breath enables us to live (Gal. 2:20). Faith is identified by its object. It is Christ crucified. Therefore, “the faith of Christ” takes the words from Genesis to throw the weight of faith’s virtue onto Christ where it belongs. When we say, “We are justified by the faith of Christ,” we mean, “we are justified by the One we believe.” We believe in Him our righteousness (2 Pet. 1:1). Christ crucified is our justification. We are justified by His blood (Rom. 5:9). “Jacob sware by the fear of his father Isaac” (Gen. 31:53). The believer lives and is assured of eternal life by the faith of Christ, the LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS (Jer. 23:5; Isa. 45:24-25). “24 Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness and strength: even to him shall men come; and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed. 25 In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory” (Isa. 45:24-25). Christ is the object of our faith. He is our righteousness, our justification, our glory, our all (Col. 2:9-10; 3:10-11).

Rick Warta

The blood of Christ is sprinkled on the throne of God, and that blood establishes God’s throne in both justice and mercy (Heb. 4:16; 12:24; Rev. 5:6; Ps. 85:10; 89:14; Prov. 20:28). The blood of Christ is sprinkled on our conscience by the Spirit of God, and the sprinkling of Christ’s blood there gives us peace and joy in our heart (Heb. 9:13-14; 1 Pet. 1:2; Rom. 15:13). Scripture says that the blood cries to God, and God hears the blood. Abel's blood cried to God from the ground for justice to be satisfied with vengeance upon his murderer (Gen. 4:10). But Christ’s blood cries from heaven to God in heaven, crying that God's name has been glorified, His justice has been satisfied, and His throne has been established in both justice and grace by Christ's own blood, even for those who, by wicked hands murdered Him (Luke 23:34; Acts 2:23). He who suffered for the sins of God's elect now speaks peace to them from heaven by His blood (Col. 2:20; Rom. 5:6-10; 2 Cor. 5:18-21). God hears the blood. It is by what God hears and thinks of the blood that we, the ungodly, are justified (Rom. 3:24-25; 4:4-5; 5:9; Ex. 12:132 Cor. 5:21). When God calls us to life from the dead by His Spirit of grace, through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, He enables us to hear the blood (Rev. 1:5). Do you, by God’s testimony of Christ in the Gospel, hear what God hears from the blood of Christ (Heb. 12:24)? Has God spoken peace to your heart by His blood (Rom. 4:20-25; 5:1)? Do you believe God, believing what He testified of His Son, that Christ is all the hope and salvation of every serpent-bitten sinner who looks to Christ (1 John 5:9-13; 2 Sam. 23:5; Luke 2:30; Isa. 12:1-3; 45:22; Num. 21:6-9; John 3:14-15)? May God give faith to you and me that we might see the Lamb of God, and so come to God by Him who shed His precious blood, and in coming, worship God by Him (Heb. 10:19; John 4:22-24). “...unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood...be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen” (Rev. 1:5b-6)!

“Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab. 3:17-18).

Job said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15). Jesus fulfilled those words in His own sufferings. Of Christ it was preeminently said, “He trusted (He rolled upon) the LORD that He would deliver Him” (Ps. 22:8). Oh, blessed assurance, Christ was heard (Heb. 5:7)! Faith -- God-given faith, God-sustained faith -- glorifies God by believing God’s word against the fiercest storms and against the assault of the fiercest enemies, even against all evidence to the contrary, faith holds fast to God’s word. Such faith glorifies God because it is God’s own work (John 6:29; 2 Thess. 1:11). God always looks upon and delights in His own work. God’s work of faith in the hearts of His people points them to Christ. And it is to Christ alone that God looks for His people (Heb. 12:2; Ex. 12:13; John 3:14-15; Isa. 45:22-25; Rom. 10:4; 1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 1:6). God’s works shall all glorify Him. Before Peter entered that temptation in which he denied his Lord and Savior three times, Christ already prayed for him. He prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail (Luke 22:32). That is God’s work in His people. What do we learn from these things? We learn that there is never a time when God will forsake His own (Heb. 13:8) or deny Himself and those He loved in Christ from eternity (Rom. 8:33-34). And we learn this: there is never a time when we cannot look to Christ (Heb. 10:19; 4:15-16). Oh, blessed hope! Though in ourselves we do not rise even to the level of unprofitable servants (Luke 17:10), yet we can look away and see that Christ is altogether profitable, altogether lovely, that He alone is worthy and that He always pleases our God and Father for us, and therefore, we are pleasing to God in Him (Matt. 3:17; 17:5; Rev. 5:1-13; Rom. 5:19; 10:4; Heb. 10:5-18). Though our sins deserve punishment, though our own conscience finds good reason why God should deal with us as our sins deserve, yet faith reaches within the veil by the broken body and shed blood of our Savior (Heb. 10:20), and such faith comes to God, though a sinner, with empty cup and empty hand, and freely takes and drinks from the water of life that springs from the throne of God because of the blood of Christ (Rev. 22:17; Isa. 55:1-3). Faith comes with the precious promise that we can come at all times by the blood of Christ (Heb. 4:14-16; 10:19; 1 John 1:7-10; 2:1-2). In so coming, we find sweet assurance that it is well with our souls (Song 2:6; Isa. 40:1-2). Can God deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13)? Did He not say that we are one with Christ (Gal. 2:20; Rom. 6:6-11; Eph. 5:30; Isa. 42:1-6; Rom. 5:12-21)! Can He deny His Son? Can He refuse the obedience of His own dear Son that led Him to shed His precious blood for sinners, who did all of His Father’s will from His heart with all of His soul and mind and strength? Will God the Father turn away from the pleadings of our Advocate, who pleads God’s eternal will, God’s everlasting love, and who answered justice with Himself, whose blood made satisfaction in heaven’s court? Has not the Spirit of God said that our God, “justifieth the ungodly” (Isa. 45:21-25; Rom. 3:26; 4:4-5)?! Has He not given us a sure and faithful testimony that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, even great and the very chief of sinners (Ps. 25:11; 1 Tim. 1:15)?! Has He not said that with Him, nothing is impossible (Matt. 19:26; Luke 1:37)?! Does not the Spirit of God in this evil and late hour in earth’s history say, “Come” (Rev. 22:17)?! Does not our dear and blessed Savior command us to look to Him and be saved (Isa. 45:22)? Therefore, though all the circumstances of our lives suggest otherwise, though our own sin torments our conscience, yet there is a place of refuge and repose in the sweet promise of God. Every sinner is accepted in Christ, accepted even as God’s own Beloved Son (Eph. 1:6; John 17:23-24). Every believing sinner is as righteous as Christ is righteous, because he is in Christ (1 Cor. 1:30). All in Christ have been made holy, perfected, are without blame, and have been forever found by God the Father in Christ, in love (1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 5:19; 8:38-39; Heb. 10:10, 14; Eph. 1:4; Col. 1:20-22; Jude 1:24; Zep. 3:17). Therefore, in every trial, the confession of the afflicted, downcast soul, when given to see with eyes of faith that Christ is all in all of life and salvation is this: “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab. 3:18)! What a comfort, what rest, what joy, what precious faith that brings this cup of blessing from the spring of God’s grace and enables us to find Christ to be our all before God!
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“Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever” (Ps. 73:25)!

When reading scripture, I always look for and am delighted when I find that my own case as a sinner is recorded in God's word. It delights me to know that the Spirit of God, who searches the deep things of God, who knows His will (Rom. 8:26-27; 1 Cor. 2:10), has spoken of Christ throughout scripture as all of my hope. As we love to sing, “Though poor and needy, I can trust my Lord; though weak and sinful I believe His word. O glad message! Every child of God ‘hath everlasting life’” (from the hymn, “Verily, Verily”). That is the message of Psalm 32. That well-known Psalm of David deals with the doctrine of justification: how God justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:4-8)! The apostle Paul uses Psalm 32 to teach justification from the Old Testament. The truth taught is the most blessed of all: God “justifieth the ungodly.” He therefore justifies sinners without any works done or to be done by them, without any merit found in them, and without any merit to be found in them, but by the free grace of God alone, on the just ground of Christ’s redeeming blood alone (Rom. 3:24-25). The apostle teaches that sinners receive this justification in application by God-given faith alone, apart from all works on their part. The entire matter of our salvation therefore removes all boasting from all men. God alone receives all of the glory in our salvation (Rom. 4:4-8; Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 9:13; 11:5-6; 1 Cor. 1:30-31; Jer. 9:23-24).

David said it this way: “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” (Ps. 32:1 as quoted by Paul in Rom. 4:7-8). David first says that some men are actually justified: their iniquities are forgiven; their sins are covered, to them, the Lord will not impute sin. David continues in Ps. 32 to relate his own experience. Have you ever wondered as a sinner if your sin is too bad for God to forgive you? Take heart, fellow-sinner! God justifies the ungodly! He holds David before us to show us that He must necessarily justify by His grace, in spite of our sins. David committed adultery. He murdered the husband of the woman he made to sin. He then covered it up. He showed by this that he knew full well that what he did was wrong. He then lived in public hypocrisy for some time afterwards. But David said that when he kept silent about this, when it remained hidden, unconfessed in his own conscience, when he would not bring it before God, that “my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long” (Ps. 32:3). David explained why his heart pained him. It was not for qualities in himself. He was afflicted by the chastening hand of God in grace. God’s hand afflicted David’s conscience. “For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah” (Ps. 32:4-5). Therefore, David’s affliction of conscience and his confession of his sin was itself the work of God. Jeremiah said it this way. "Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God" (Jer. 31:18-19; Acts 5:31; 2 Tim. 2:25).

But then, in Psalm 32, David says something that is very comforting to every believing sinner. He said that all of the godly pray this way to God. All of the godly pray about these two things: they confess their sins, and they look to Christ. David said everyone that is godly prays as he was taught to pray! He confessed his sin to God, and to God he looked for mercy in Christ as his sin-atoning, justifying righteousness. This is precisely what the Publican prayed (Luke 18:13; Rom. 3:24-25). He asked God to have mercy on him, though a sinner, considering the propitiatory sacrifice! David and the Publican prayed the same prayer: receive me for Christ’s sake alone, as my propitiation to God. “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah” (Ps. 32:6-7)!

What a mercy! Our coming to God as sinners by the blood of Christ is God’s work in us (John 6:37-40, 44-45; Col. 2:12; Ps. 80; Hosea 13:9; 14:1-2)! When we are afflicted in conscience for our sins, and when that affliction drives us to Christ for mercy, as the leper’s plague drove him to Christ (Matt. 8:2), and as Bartimaeus’ blindness drew forth his importunate cry to Jesus that he might see (Mark 10:47-51; Luke 18:13; Heb. 10:19), and when we also confess our sins in so coming (1 John 1:7-10), then we find that our great Advocate and Intercessor (Rom. 8:26-27, 34) is the propitiation for our sins by His own blood. Therefore, on that ground, He advocates for us before God (1 John 2:1-2). He who is our propitiation to God by His blood advocates to God for us by that blood. And He sends to us the grand proclamation from heaven that He has received release, forgiveness, justification for sin-bound, law-cursed captives! “The ungodly Justified! Sinners forgiven! The lawful debtor redeemed! Liberty to captives” (John 5:24; 8:11; Luke 18:13; Rom. 8:1; Lev. 25:10; Isa. 61:2; Luke 4:18; Col. 1:14; Eph. 1:7)! As David and the Publican and the leper and blind Bartimaeus, so does “everyone who is godly.” All who are godly thus pray as David prayed, because we find it in our heart to do so because God afflicts our conscience because of our  sin and from the Gospel, tells us of His grace in Christ (2 Sam. 7:27; Ps. 32:1-4; Ps. 130:4). This is the prayer of everyone that is godly, all sinners whom the LORD has brought to look to Christ (Isa. 45:22; John 3:14-15).

What a blessing of grace our God has given us to draw us to Christ for the cleansing of all of our sins, at all times, but especially when the weight of God’s hand lies heavy upon our conscience (Ps. 32:4). There is no sweeter communion than to come to Christ for continuous and repeated cleansing of our sins, and to find our life and satisfaction and delight in His broken body and His shed blood (John 6:56). “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found” (Ps. 32:6)! The godly are those given to Christ, those Christ made holy by His blood (Heb. 13:12; 10:10), those justified and made blameless in Christ, by His one offering of Himself to God for them (Eph. 1:4-6; Heb. 10:14). Coming to Christ in this manner is the work of the Spirit of God in us (John 6:29, 37-40, 44-45).

Rick Warta