John Calvin Commentary Galatians 3:7

"Know therefore that they that are of faith, the same are sons of Abraham." — Galatians 3:7 (ASV)

Having appealed to facts and experience, he now gives quotations from Scripture. First, he presents the example of Abraham. Arguments drawn from examples are not always so conclusive, but this is one of the most powerful, because neither in the subject nor in the person is there any ground for exception. There is no variety of roads to righteousness, and so Abraham is called the father of all them that believe (Romans 4:11), because he is a pattern adapted to all; indeed, in his person the universal rule for obtaining righteousness has been laid down for us.

Even as Abraham. We must supply some such phrase here as but rather; for, having posed a question, he immediately resolved to eliminate any basis for hesitation. At least the phrase “even as” (καθὼς) refers only to the verse immediately preceding, to the “ministration of the Spirit and of miracles by the hearing of faith,” as if he had said that, in the grace bestowed on them, a similarity might be found to Abraham's case.

Believed God. By this quotation he proves both here and in Romans chapter 4 that men are justified by faith, because the faith of Abraham was accounted to him for righteousness (Romans 4:3). We must briefly inquire here:

1. What Paul intends by faith.
2. What righteousness is.
3. Why faith is represented as a cause of justification.

Faith does not mean any kind of conviction that men may have of God's truth. For though Cain had a hundred times exercised faith in God when God denounced punishment against him, this had nothing to do with obtaining righteousness. Abraham was justified by believing because, when he received from God a promise of fatherly kindness, he embraced it as certain. Faith therefore relates to and concerns such a divine promise as enables men to place their trust and confidence in God.

As for the word righteousness, we must pay attention to Moses’s wording. When he says that

he believed in the LORD;
and he counted it to him for righteousness (Genesis 15:6),

he implies that a person is righteous who is considered as such in God's sight. Now, since men do not have righteousness dwelling within themselves, they obtain it by imputation, because God accounts their faith as righteousness. We are therefore said to be justified by faith (Romans 3:28; Romans 5:1), not because faith infuses a habit or quality into us, but because we are accepted by God.

But why does faith receive such honor as to be called a cause of our justification? First, we must observe that it is merely an instrumental cause. Strictly speaking, our righteousness is nothing other than God’s free acceptance of us, on which our salvation is founded. But as the Lord testifies to His love and grace in the gospel by offering us that righteousness of which I have spoken, so we receive it by faith.

And thus, when we attribute a man's justification to faith, we are not discussing the principal cause but merely pointing out the way in which men arrive at true righteousness. For this righteousness is not a quality that exists in men, but is the mere gift of God and is enjoyed only by faith—and not even as a reward justly due to faith, but because we receive by faith what God freely gives. All such expressions as the following are of similar meaning:

• We are justified freely by his grace (Romans 3:24).
• Christ is our righteousness.
• The mercy of God is the cause of our righteousness.
• By the death and resurrection of Christ, righteousness has been procured for us.
• Righteousness is bestowed on us through the gospel.
• We obtain righteousness by faith.

Hence, the ridiculousness of the blunder of attempting to reconcile the two propositions—that we are justified by faith and, at the same time, by works—becomes apparent. For he who is just by faith (Habakkuk 2:4; Hebrews 10:38) is poor and destitute of personal righteousness and relies on the grace of God alone.

And this is the reason why Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, concludes that Abraham, having obtained righteousness by faith, had no right to glory before God (Romans 4:2). For it is not said that faith was imputed to him for a part of righteousness, but simply for righteousness, so that his faith was truly his righteousness. Besides, faith looks at nothing but the mercy of God and a dead and risen Christ. All merit of works is thus excluded from being the cause of justification when the whole is ascribed to faith.

For faith—insofar as it embraces the undeserved goodness of God, Christ with all His benefits, and the testimony of our adoption contained in the gospel—is universally contrasted with the law, with the merit of works, and with human excellence. The notion of the sophists, that it is contrasted with ceremonies alone, will soon be easily disproved from the context. Let us therefore remember that those who are righteous by faith are righteous outside of themselves, that is, in Christ.

From this, too, we obtain a refutation of the empty objections of certain people who evade Paul’s reasoning. They tell us that Moses gives the name of righteousness to goodness, and so means nothing more than that Abraham was considered a good man because he believed God. Giddy minds of this sort, raised up in our time by Satan, endeavor by indirect slanders to undermine the certainty of Scripture.

Paul knew that Moses was not giving grammar lessons to boys there, but was speaking of a decision God had pronounced, and he very properly viewed the word righteousness in a theological sense. For we are not accounted righteous in God's sight in the sense that goodness is mentioned with approval among men, but only when we render perfect obedience to the law. Righteousness is contrasted with the transgression of the law, even in its smallest detail. Because we do not have it from ourselves, it is freely given to us by God.

But here the Jews object that Paul has completely tortured Moses’s words to suit his own purpose, for Moses does not discuss Christ or eternal life here, but only mentions an earthly inheritance. The Papists are not very different from the Jews, for though they do not dare to rail against Paul, they entirely evade his meaning. We reply that Paul takes for granted what Christians hold as a first principle: that whatever promises the Lord made to Abraham were additions to that first promise,

I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward (Genesis 15:1).

When Abraham received the promise,

In multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore (Genesis 22:17),

he did not limit his view to that promise, but included it in the grace of adoption as a part of the whole. In the same manner, he viewed every other promise as a testimony of God’s fatherly kindness, which tended to strengthen his hope of salvation.

Unbelievers differ from the children of God in this respect: while they enjoy the bounties of Providence in common with them, they devour them like cattle and look no higher. The children of God, on the other hand, knowing that all their blessings have been sanctified by the promises, acknowledge God in them as their Father.

In this way, they are often directed to the hope of eternal life, for they begin with the faith of their adoption, which is the foundation of everything. Abraham was not justified merely because he believed that God would multiply his seed (Genesis 22:17), but because he embraced the grace of God, trusting in the promised Mediator, in whom, as Paul elsewhere declares, all the promises of God are yea and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Know ye therefore, or, you know (for both readings are equally agreeable to the Greek word γινώσκετε). But it matters little which is preferred, for the meaning is the same; only the old translation (know ye), which I have followed, is more energetic. He says that those who are of faith are those who have relinquished all confidence in works and rely on the promise of God alone. We give this interpretation on the authority of Paul himself, for in the Epistle to the Romans he writes as follows:

To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness (Romans 4:4–5).

To be of faith, therefore, is to rest their righteousness and hope of salvation on the mercy of God. He concludes from the preceding statement that such are the children of God; for if Abraham was justified by faith, those who wish to be his children must also abide firmly by faith. He has omitted one remark, which will be readily supplied: that there is no place in the church for any man who is not a son of Abraham.