He Considered His Own Body and Was Not Weak

Paul writes a description of Abraham's faith that most people have heard and almost nobody has heard correctly.

He says: and being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb.

And the way that gets preached, most of the time, is: do not look at the facts. Refuse to acknowledge the diagnosis. Do not say the number out loud. Faith means you do not consider the negative.

But go and look at the account itself, because Abraham considered plenty.

In Genesis 17, when God tells him this, he falls on his face and laughs and says: shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

He says both numbers out loud. Directly to God. He did the arithmetic in front of the One who had just made the promise.

So whatever Paul means by considered not, it cannot mean that Abraham refused to look, because the record has him looking and counting and laughing about it.

He looked and was not moved

Read the whole sentence, because the clause everybody skips is the one that matters.

He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. (Romans 4:20-21, King James Version)

He staggered not at the promise.

The word is about being shaken off balance. Paul is saying that Abraham took the full weight of the facts and did not lose his footing, and that is a completely different claim from saying he never weighed them.

A man who has not looked is not strong. He is just uninformed. Strength only exists where a real weight was applied, and Paul is describing a man who took the weight.

You are able to look straight at it and stay standing, and God has never once asked you to be uninformed. That is not me reading around a verse. Romans 4:20 uses a word about being shaken rather than a word about seeing, and it is the Holy Spirit who holds a person steady while they are looking at something hard.

Denial is not faith and it is exhausting

I want to say the practical thing, because pretending is one of the heaviest jobs a person can take on.

If faith requires a person never to say the true thing, then every honest sentence becomes a betrayal, and a person ends up managing their own mouth constantly. They cannot tell their spouse the real number. They cannot say the diagnosis to a friend. They cannot admit the business is not working, because admitting it feels like breaking something.

That is not rest. That is a full time job of self surveillance, and it has nothing to do with trust.

And this site has said it in a dozen ways already. The widow said she had a handful of meal and heaven did not flinch. Peter said we toiled all night and took nothing, and then let down the net. Honesty and faith are on the same side and always have been.

You are free to say the true thing, and it has never once been the same as unbelief. 1 Kings 17:12 and Luke 5:5 both have an honest report right before an act of obedience, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a person from confusing accuracy with a lack of trust.

What he actually did with the facts

So if he did not refuse to look, what did he do.

He put the promise next to the facts and did not let the facts overrule it. That is what considered not means in that sentence: he did not treat his body as the deciding evidence.

Both things were true at the same time. He was a hundred. God had said it. And he made a decision about which of those two was going to determine his expectation, and that decision is what Paul calls being fully persuaded.

Notice that the persuasion is about God's ability, not about the circumstances improving. Fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. The confidence sits on the character of the One who spoke, and not on anything in the situation looking better.

You have a promise and a set of facts, and He has never once asked you to delete one of them. Romans 4:21 puts the persuasion on God's ability rather than on the odds, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a word weigh more than a number inside a person.

He also got it wrong once

I have to include this, because Romans 4 can make Abraham sound like a man who never wobbled.

He did wobble. Before Isaac, he and Sarah tried to arrange it themselves through Hagar, and it produced a wound that is still visible in that story generations later. That was presumption, and it came from the same waiting.

Paul is not describing a man who did it flawlessly for twenty five years. He is describing the settled shape of that man's faith across a long stretch, and Genesis keeps the failure on the record right alongside it.

That is the honest version, and it is far more useful than a hero.

You are not disqualified by an attempt to help it along, and one wrong arrangement has never once ended a promise. Genesis 21 has Isaac arrive after Genesis 16, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps working with a person after they tried to do it themselves.