It isn’t having faith that matters, but the object of that faith. How many times are people encouraged to “just have faith”? It means to keep an optimistic persepective, to trust that it will all work out, to trust in the good intentions of another person sometimes believing that they will keep their promise and be able to carry out what they intend. Is that faith always well-placed? Our faith is not in human goodness or capacity. The law, God’s Word, shows us just how far off the mark we are. From there we trust in the power of God to save. We trust God who calls dead things to life and things into being that were not. (v. 17). Abraham had such an experience of trusting God; wavering and faltering though his faith was, it was well-placed in God. How then for us who look to Jesus who died for us and rose again for us “for our sins”?