The gospel begins with us deciding what kind of relationship we want to have with God. As President Dallin H. Oaks has reminded us, “The first principle of the gospel is not ‘faith.’ The first principle of the gospel is ‘Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Articles of Faith 1:4).” (“Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,” General Conference, April 1994). Do we trust Him? Do we believe His promises? Are we willing to follow His guidance, to bend our will to His?
Was Abraham perfect? No. But he did believe in God. When God promised him a son over and over again for many years, Abraham had plenty of opportunities to give up, to stop believing. But he did not. “He believed in the Lord; and [the Lord] counted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
How would you define righteousness? Doing good deeds? Obeying God’s commandments? Maybe accomplishing great things? Abraham did some great things. He also made mistakes. God called him righteous not because of these actions but simply because he never gave up on God’s promise.
Mormon explained that even activities we generally associate with righteousness aren’t actually righteous if we do them for the wrong reason.
God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good; for if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing.
For behold, it is not counted unto him for righteousness.
Moroni 7:6-7
In Paul’s epistle to the Romans, he discusses at length the verse from Genesis quoted above. In that discussion, he uses three different verbs to describe what God did: “count” (Romans 4:3, 5), “reckon” (Romans 4:9), and “impute” (Romans 4:22). That last verb he borrows from Psalm 32, where David says that we are blessed when we are forgiven, when God does not “impute” sin to us. (See Psalm 32:1-2, Romans 4:6-8.)
To impute something is to give someone credit for it, to say that it belongs to them. If it’s something negative, we blame them. If it’s something positive, we honor them. God honored Abraham because, through numerous discouraging experiences, he never stopped believing. “Against hope,” he “believed in hope” (Romans 4:18). “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God” (Romans 4:20).
And what about us? Paul said, “It was not written for [Abraham’s] sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead” (Romans 4:23-24). God called Abraham righteous because of his faith, and He will do the same for us.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland declared:
We can hope, we should hope, even when facing the most insurmountable odds. That is what the scripture meant when Abraham was able to hope against hope—that is, he was able to believe in spite of every reason not to believe—that he and Sarah could conceive a child when that seemed utterly impossible…. Why should we not hope that righteous desires and Christlike yearnings can still be marvelously, miraculously answered by the God of all hope?” We all need to believe that what we desire in righteousness can someday, someway, somehow yet be ours.
“A Perfect Brightness of Hope,” General Conference, April 2020
Today, I will exercise faith in Jesus Christ. I will trust Him to fulfill His promises, even if that fulfillment is delayed. I will remember that the act of believing—and sustaining that belief over time—counts as righteousness.
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