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Faith is a gift of God

To the editor:

In her letter entitled “Choose or reject God’s love,” published in the 26-27 April Daily Mining Gazette, Rachel Laurn doesn’t seem to realize that she is contradicting herself when she writes that “God chose one man to start a race of people who could tell the world about this choice they have.”

God indeed chose Abraham, as we learn in Chapter 12 of Genesis and in Nehemiah 9:7, but nowhere is it written that Abraham chose God. The promise to Abraham of a homeland was unconditional, and it is not until verse 6 of chapter 15 of Genesis that we read that “Abraham believed in the LORD” and that God “counted it to him for righteousness,” even though it is evident that he believed the promise because already in chapter 12 he obeyed God and left for the Promised Land.

The fact is that none of us depraved sinners can exercise our will to do any good at all (Romans 3:12), and even all our good works are sin (Isaiah 64:6).

Due to our fallen nature, we are unable to believe by our own reason or strength. Faith is a gift of God, given through the hearing of the Gospel (Romans 10:17).

From it we learn that in the blood of Abraham’s Promised Seed, that is, Christ, there is redemption from sin for us all and that in his righteousness we are acceptable to God (Romans 3:21-26).

Those who despise the bitter suffering and bloody death of our Saviour on our behalf, at the hands of a wicked human race, and continue to believe in their own efforts and works will on the Last Day be numbered among those religious people who condemned Christ and tortured the incarnate God to death.

On that day, when he returns on a cloud, not to reign in a temple on earth but to judge the world and all its self-righteousness, those who believed not in themselves but in his blood and righteousness will be saved from the all-consuming fire, in which the heavens and earth shall “melt with fervent heat” (II Peter 3:12).

Warren Hepokoski

HANCOCK

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