Faith as the True Seal and Inheritance Beyond Law

When the faithful turn aside like the sealed, the mystery of those justified by faith unfolds. Those who, after believing, emerge from Abraham’s circumcision—yet remain distinct from the faithful—may be counted as his children or reckoned as his offspring, forming a people apart from the uncircumcised justified by faith. The seal remained intact as long as no one from faith and uncircumcision had arrived. But when the foretold people formed from the uncircumcised justified by faith appeared, the seal and its sign were loosed, so that it could be said to the one desiring that seal: if you circumcise, Christ profits you nothing. For the law brings wrath; where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore, the promise comes through faith, so that it may rest upon grace, ensuring the promise is sure for all Abraham’s seed—not only those under the law, but also those who share Abraham’s faith, who is father of us all, as it is written: ‘I have made you a father of many nations.’ Before him, he believed in God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist. One must hear the apostle here without contention and grasp his intent. Some claim: ‘If there is no law nor transgression in that place, then surely no one transgressed before Moses.’ But if no one transgressed, then no one is blameworthy—not Cain, nor those who perished in the flood due to their own sins, nor the Sodomites in transgression, nor even Adam and Eve. Yet it must be told them: the Mosaic law does not work wrath in judgment, but wrath according to itself—making some stonecutters, others burning in fire, or subjecting others to another punishment. Even where there is no law nor transgression, the law still speaks to those under the law. Observe them and the law beside Paul, called the law of faith, which works God’s wrath, and where transgression occurs when the law of faith and the law of God intersect. But clearly, he is another law—namely, the law of God, by which alone he delights in the inward man. Yet another law exists: the law in his members, warring against the law of the mind. Beware lest this be the true worker of wrath; and where there is no law, this is neither transgression. Those under this law are in no way heirs, for if those under the law are heirs, faith is rendered void. In the catalogue of charismata distributed according to the measure of faith, faith itself is enumerated—for Paul says, with other gifts, to another faith in the same Spirit. And elsewhere he declares that from God he has graciously granted you not only to attain Christ, but also to suffer for his sake. But I think the apostles, being weakly persuaded, are to be in the faith that dwells in us… Even if the heirs and the promise are to be according to grace, yet this faith which precedes grace—by which it is said that it is of faith that it might be according to grace—cannot subsist without grace. And to all the seed, he says: either to those of the law or to those of Abraham’s faith, and not only to those of the law, but also if one should possess Abraham’s faith in addition to the law. For if we do not thus obtain, the promise will fall to those from Ishmael and those from Keturah, which is not pleasing. (Of the same) It is necessary, he says, it appears, to examine how being according to faith and according to grace follows the promise being sure; for if it were of the law, obtaining the sure promise would be impossible. Therefore, consider, as if a dyer were dyeing: the dyeing is made by faith concerning the soul, and especially the reasoning accounted to righteousness, so that the promise and grace through it might possess, by its inexhaustibility or immutability, certainty—which does not appear concerning the works of the law. Sometimes he feeds the righteous from his own righteousness and does evil; but I do not know whether it is written concerning faith that anyone has turned away from faith, having once been testified to have believed and been justified by faith. Then also the divine apostle seals with his testimony the thing said to him. (Of the same) [But what he says this is: as God is not a partial God but the Father of all, so also he; and again, as God is Father not according to natural kinship but according to the familiarity of faith, so also he; for obedience makes a father of all of us. Since neither]

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