7. “Blessed are theywhose sins are forgiven,whose wrongs are pardoned.
8. Blessed is the personwhom the Lord does not consider guilty.”
9. Is this blessing only for those who are circumcised or also for those who are not circumcised? We have already said that God accepted Abraham’s faith and that faith made him right with God.
10. So how did this happen? Did God accept Abraham before or after he was circumcised? It was before his circumcision.
11. Abraham was circumcised to show that he was right with God through faith before he was circumcised. So Abraham is the father of all those who believe but are not circumcised; he is the father of all believers who are accepted as being right with God.
12. And Abraham is also the father of those who have been circumcised and who live following the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
13. Abraham and his descendants received the promise that they would get the whole world. He did not receive that promise through the law, but through being right with God by his faith.
14. If people could receive what God promised by following the law, then faith is worthless. And God’s promise to Abraham is worthless,
15. because the law can only bring God’s anger. But if there is no law, there is nothing to disobey.
16. So people receive God’s promise by having faith. This happens so the promise can be a free gift. Then all of Abraham’s children can have that promise. It is not only for those who live under the law of Moses but for anyone who lives with faith like that of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
17. As it is written in the Scriptures: “I am making you a father of many nations.” This is true before God, the God Abraham believed, the God who gives life to the dead and who creates something out of nothing.
18. There was no hope that Abraham would have children. But Abraham believed God and continued hoping, and so he became the father of many nations. As God told him, “Your descendants also will be too many to count.”