This divine word in the Bible is deep, and we are unable to understand it if we only read superficially. Abraham received God’s element by a process of divine infusion. Although righteousness had been reckoned to Abraham, he had not yet experienced that righteousness in a solid, concrete way. Likewise, we may have Christ as our righteousness without actually experiencing Him in a substantial way. At the moment we called on Him, we received Christ, and Christ was made our righteousness. However, Christ must still become our experience. Thus, we need a Sarah.
Sarah typifies grace. Hagar, Abraham’s concubine, typifies the law (Gal. 4:22-26). We have Christ within us, but we lack the experience of this Christ. Who can help us with the experience? Sarah. Remember that Sarah typifies God’s grace. Do not work with the law by going to Hagar, but cooperate with grace by going to Sarah. If you join yourself to Sarah, you will experience Christ as your righteousness. Do not go to the law and do not make up your mind to do good. We need to recall Paul’s own experience as recounted in Romans 7: “To will is present with me, but to do is not.” If you will to do good, it means that you are turning to the law. If you determine to honor your parents, love your wife, or submit to your husband, you are turning to the law and marrying Hagar. The result of this union is always an Ishmael. However, if you join yourself to grace, this union will bring forth Christ, the real Isaac.
Isaac signifies the solid experience of the righteousness which God had reckoned to Abraham. On the day you believed in the Lord Jesus, Christ was given to you and infused into you. You responded in faith, and your faith was reckoned by God as your righteousness. In this way, God made Christ your justification, your righteousness. However, at that moment you did not have the actual experience. After you were saved, you went to Hagar, to the law, making up your mind to do good. To a certain extent you were successful, but the result was Ishmael. Now you must join yourself to God’s grace, to Sarah. With Sarah you will have a genuine experience of the Christ you have already received.
In typology, the righteousness which God reckoned to Abraham was Isaac. According to Genesis 17:21, God came to Abraham and said, “Next year at this time Sarah will bring forth a son.” In Genesis 18:10 God reiterated this word in a slightly different way: “Next year at this time I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” If we put these verses together, we will realize that the birth of Isaac was actually the coming of God. Unfortunately, the King James translation obscures these two verses, using the phrase “time of life.” The correct rendering of this phrase is found in the New American Standard Version, which says, “Next year at this time.” The Lord told Abraham that the birth of Isaac next year would be the coming of God. Therefore, the birth of Isaac was extraordinary: it was the coming of God.
We may apply all this to our experience. In the gospel preaching, through the appearing and transfusion of Christ, we reacted to God in believing with Christ as faith. Then God reckoned this faith back to us as our righteousness, which was a real experience of Christ at the time of our salvation. That was a return of Christ, a further coming of Christ to us after we reacted to God in believing with Him as our faith. As a result of Christ’s appearing and His divine transfusion, He became our faith, reacting to God. This faith was reckoned back to us by God as righteousness, and Christ further became the righteousness of God to us. By a further coming of Christ through God’s grace, we had Christ as our righteousness before God. We may summarize the process this way: in His appearing and transfusion Christ became our faith to God, and in return Christ became God’s righteousness to us. Then Christ became our experience.
Furthermore, we not only have Christ as the righteousness of God reckoned to us, but we have also the experience of Christ as our Isaac. We treasure this experience, holding it as dear and precious and cherishing it as our only begotten.