Saturday, December 11, 2021

Noah and "Gracious Merit" in Genesis 6 and Hebrews 11

  

The Hebrew writer mentions another man of great faith, namely, Noah (Hb 11:7): “By faith, Noah, when warned about the things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” Genesis 6:8-9 reads: “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord...Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” In Es 44:17 it states: “Noah was found perfect and righteous; in the time of wrath he kept the race alive...” We notice here even more pertinent language regarding gracious merit. The context indicates that God, who was about to destroy the whole world because of its unrepentant wickedness, views Noah as “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time.” Genesis 7:1 is even more direct: the sacred author quotes God directly as saying, “because I have found you righteous in this generation.” It is God who claims to be making the judgment about Noah’s righteousness, and it is clear that it was for Noah’s righteousness that God saved him and his family. Noah pleased God sufficiently that God, by his grace, saved Noah and his family. Within the strict limits of law and perfection, Noah could never have merited God’s favor. He, like everyone else in the human race, was born in sin. But in anticipation of his setting aside of the strict demands of the law through the atonement of Christ, God could look at Noah differently. The system of grace through which God can look favorably upon Noah, as it was with Abel, is implied in the phrasing “in the eyes of the Lord,” which, again, is a literal translation of the Hebrew text. Noah could please God by his faith and works to the point that God, under the auspices of his grace, could reward Noah with salvation.

 

A Protestant may object at this point that though he sees no problem with Noah’s meriting of God’s grace, Noah was already “saved” and thus everything he did was just part of his sanctification, not of his justification. First, this form of argumentation merely begs the question, since one must first prove that justification and sanctification are not simultaneous and continuous events. . . . Second, we can certainly agree that the context of the Genesis passage connotes that Noah’s life prior to this incident was one of holiness and faith. Thus, we can assume that Noah had received justification prior to the Flood. This fact, however, only proves our point that much more powerfully. It is the entire righteous life of Noah that God is viewing through the eyes of grace, not just one incident in which to impute him with so-called alien righteousness. It is the whole life of Noah that is pleasing to God, which, in turn, motivates God to give Noah the continued grace of salvation rather than cast him off with the wicked (cf. 2Pt 2:5; Ez 14:14). If Noah had become a wicked man some years or months prior to the incident in Genesis 6, the Scriptures teach that such a person would not have been counted as righteous (cf. Ez 18:24). In receiving God’s grace, the contrast set up is between those that live righteous lives in the sight of God and those who do not. The former receive the continued grace of God, the latter do not. . . . God’s saving of Noah and his family from the Flood is just another instance of the continuing justification in his life and the lives of all the Patriarchs. (Robert A. Sungenis, Not By Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification [2d ed.; State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Inc., 2009], 77-78)

 

Further Reading


Gracious Merit in the Bible


More biblical evidence of "gracious merit"


Response to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness