"You found his
heart faithful before You, And made a covenant with him To give him the land of
the Canaanite, Of the Hittite and the Amorite, Of the Perizzite, the Jebusite
and the Girgashite-- To give it to his descendants. And You have fulfilled Your
promise, For You are righteous. (Neh 9:8 NASB)
In charge of the
storehouses I appointed Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, and Pedaiah of
the Levites, and in addition to them was Hanan the son of Zaccur, the son of
Mattaniah; for they were considered reliable, and it was their task to
distribute to their kinsmen. (Neh 13:13 NASB)
"Catholic Nick" (who, in spite
of some lousy articles on "Mormonism"
does a great job on justification)
has a very useful blog post:
Did
God reckon Abraham's heart as faithful? (Nehemiah 9:8 and 13:13)
Neh 9:8 show that Abraham's
"heart" (לֵבָב; καρδια) was not seen as totally depraved before God made a covenant with him;
instead, like Cornelius in Acts 10, Abraham was in some way pleasing to God,
while in Neh 13:13, those mentioned in the verse were, in the LXX, ὅτι πιστοὶ ἐλογίσθησαν (for [the Greek uses the οτι-clause] they were considered [using λογιζομαι] reliable]).
These texts provide yet another
“body blow” against Protestant theologies.
Further Reading
Response
to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness
