[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =For not through law came the promise to Abraham, or to his seed, of his being the world's heir, but through faith's righteousness;= through the acceptance received by uncovenanted, unprivileged faith. [Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =For if those who belong to law inherit= Abraham's promise, =faith is ipso facto void, and the promise is ipso facto annulled.[56]= [Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =For wrath is what the Law works out;= it is only[57] =where law is not that transgression is not either.= As much as to say, that to suspend eternal blessing, the blessing which in its nature can deal only with ideal conditions, upon man's obedience to law, is to bar fatally the hope of a fulfilment. Why? Not because the Law is not holy; not because disobedience is not guilty; as if man were ever, for a moment, mechanically compelled to disobey. But because as a fact man is a fallen being, however he became so, and whatever is his guilt as such. He is fallen, and has no true self-restoring power. If then he is to be blessed, the work must begin in spite of himself. It must come from without, it must come unearned, it must be of grace, through faith. [Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Therefore it is on= (literally, "_out of_") =faith, in order to be grace-wise, to make secure the promise, to all the seed, not only to that which belongs to the Law, but to that which belongs to the faith of Abraham,= to the "seed" whose claim is no less and no more than Abraham's faith; =who is father of all us,= [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =as it stands written,= (Gen. xvii. 5), "=Father of many Nations[58] have I appointed thee="--=in the sight of the God whom he believed, who vivifies the dead, and calls,= addresses, deals with, =things not-being as being.= "_In the sight of God_"; as if to say, that it matters little what Abraham is for "us all" in the sight of _man_, in the sight and estimate of the Pharisee. The Eternal Justifier and Promiser dealt with Abraham, and in him with the world, before the birth of that Law which the Pharisee has perverted into his rampart of privilege and isolation. He took care that the mighty transaction should take place not actually only, but significantly, in the open field and beneath the boundless cope of stars. It was to affect not one tribe, but all the nations. It was to secure blessings which were not to be demanded by the privileged, but taken by the needy. And so the great representative Believer was called to believe before Law, before legal Sacrament, and under every personal circumstance of humiliation and discouragement. [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =Who, past hope, on hope, believed;= stepping from the dead hope of nature to the bare hope of the promise, =so that he became father of many Nations; according to what stands spoken, "So shall thy seed be."[59]= [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =And, because he failed not[60] in his (τῇ) faith, he did not notice his own body, already turned to death,