Faith makes us right with God and helps us do the heavy lifting of God’s work. Within the Jewish faith, there was a long tradition of people being “justified by works” (Romans 4:2). The model for being justified was Abraham. But then the apostle Paul came along and saw something that needed to be fixed. Paul made an important discovery when he studied the story of Abraham in the book of Genesis. He realized that it was simply not true that Abraham was justified by works. “What does the Scripture say?” he asked in his letter to the Romans. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (v. 3). Yes, Abraham was made righteous by believing God, not by following the law. He was justified by his faith, not by his good works.