When was Abraham declared righteous (i.e. justified) by God?
In Romans 4:3, Paul refers to Genesis 15:6 as God's justifying of Abram, on the grounds that he believed God.
In very similar language, James 2:21 tells us that Abraham was considered righteous when he offered Isaac as a sacrifice (Genesis 22).
Traditionally, the debate over these accounts surrounds the means of justification: was it by faith or by works? Of course, James is saying that Abraham's faith worked and Paul would no doubt agree. Saving faith works - and in Genesis 22 Abraham demonstrated saving faith by his works.
All well and good.
But when was Abraham justified? That question has an underlying assumption: justification is a once-for-all declaration by God that someone is in the right with him (on the basis of faith in the work of Jesus). Perhaps the assumption is biblically unwarranted.
It seems clear that James is positioning justification in Genesis 22, Paul in Genesis 15. And as if that wasn't confusing enough, the same Paul can speak of people being justified at the final judgement: in Romans 2:13 he declares that "it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous". When will this justification happen? "This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares" (Romans 2:16).
So are these additional justifications? Is a person justified more than once? Or is this making justification a process and not an event, such that a person is not ultimately justified until that final declaration?
It's neither of those. It is simply saying that God can, at any point, declare what is true of someone: that, by virtue of faith in Jesus - a faith that demonstrates itself by appropriate works - they are right with him, they are justified.
In Genesis 22, Abraham is (implicitly) declared to be righteous, not on the basis of his earlier belief in God but because of his present demonstration of the same faith. I can be declared to be a justified man today, not because I believed in Jesus some years ago but because it is visibly so of me today that I have faith in him.
What if that demonstration is presently lacking? Was the earlier declaration only provisional? Was it not as definitive as it seemed? This co-opts the debate about once saved, always saved and the solution remains the same. The declaration by God is real; it is not provisional from his perspective. Yet it is correct to say that it is real in that moment. And it does need to be worked-through in my own experience of it.
Someone helpfully suggested that there is a similarity in the multiple attestations that Jesus was God's Son - at his baptism, at his transfiguration, in his resurrection. Those declarations were real and not provisional. Yet they were also 'real in that moment'. They were not made with respect to the past nor to the future (although of course both past & future are in some way involved and implicated). And, very interestingly, the resurrection of Jesus, in which he is declared with power to be the Son of God, is also spoken of as his vindication, his justification.
There might be a big 'So what?' looming at this point. Perhaps the following give some observable outcome to the discussion:
i. If God can declare Abraham justified in the midst of his life (referring to Genesis 22) without any threat to Abraham's confidence in his eternal security within God's covenant, then he can also do so at the end of Abraham's life, again without threat to Abraham's sense of assurance during his life on earth. Each declaration is real, at that point in time. To speak of a final justification on the basis of the whole life lived (Romans 2:13; 2 Cor. 5:10) is not destructive of assurance in the present, because assurance is most-fully rooted elsewhere, in the finished work of Christ. Did the Father's declaration of the sonship of Jesus at his baptism cast a shadow over whether he had been God's Son prior to that event? I think not.
ii. And if God can declare Abraham justified on the basis of works as demonstrative of faith (as in Genesis 22, refracted through James 2:21) without collapsing the whole notion of justification by faith alone, then he can again do so at the end of Abraham's life without subverting the sole efficacy of Christ's saving work. To believe in a final justification on the basis of works is not to believe in works-salvation. The works are only & ever demonstrative.
iii. And if the declaration 'justified' can be made on several occasions (on as many occasions as God himself chooses to examine a person's faith, perhaps - in keeping with Genesis 22:1) then it cannot be said to be a performative declaration; it can only bear witness to what already is. That is, justification is not conversion. It is subsequent to it and declarative of it. It is more akin to the Spirit witnessing to our spirits that we are the children of God - taking & speaking the verdict of 'justified on the basis of Christ's work, as received by a faith that works'. If the declaration can be made on more than one occasion, it cannot be co-terminus with conversion.
