Church Family News: Sunday 13th July 2025

What does Scripture say?
“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Therefore the promise comes by faith … to those who have the faith of Abraham.”
Romans 4:3, 16 (NIV)

Was Abraham a Christian?
I was driving through Selly Oak this week when I noticed a book table on the pavement.  It was covered with a banner which boldly proclaimed that “Abraham was a Muslim!”  When I looked more closely I saw that it went on to say, “Like Moses!  Like Jesus!”

My first response was to think, “I don’t think so!”  But it led me to ponder the matter a little further.  As a pure matter of history, Abraham couldn’t be a Muslim as there were no Muslims in his day.  In fact, there were no Muslims before Mohammad, and he lived around 600AD, more than two and a half millennia after Abraham.

On the same basis, Abraham couldn’t be a Christian either because we read in Acts 11:26 that “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch,” again two millennia after Abraham, so nobody was called a Christian before the first century.

And yet, at a deeper level, don’t we want to say that Abraham was a Christian?  Or at least that he’s a Christian now, in heaven?  That’s because he’s our father, even our brother, in the faith – our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s the point Paul makes in Romans 4:16 when he argues that “the promise comes by faith … to those who have the faith of Abraham.”  And who are those who have the faith of Abraham?  It’s those who are like Abraham when he “believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6).  That is, we trust in Christ, and not in ourselves, for the righteousness we need before God.

On a similar basis, we could argue that Moses too is a Christian now, even if it would be strange to say that he was a Christian when he lived on earth.  Jesus, of course, is the one in the list who isn’t a Christian – because he’s more than that.  He’s nothing less than the Christ, the one whom Christians follow and worship.

Prayer
Lord, I thank you that I’m righteous in your eyes simply when I trust in you and what you’ve done for me in Jesus, and I thank you for those like Abraham and Moses who show me what that saving faith looks like.  Amen.

Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)