Paul continues to present his argument that the way to truly know the love of God is through faith in Jesus Christ. From chapter 1 through the first half of chapter 3 he paints a picture of all people, both Jew and Gentile as being under the wrath of God with no hope of getting out of that sticky, downward spiraling situation other than God’s intervention.
Then in the latter part of Chapter Three he has speaks of how though the righteousness of Jesus Christ, God has made a way to be restored to the relationship with God that God had always intended, and some translations use the word ‘atonement’… which if you break it down means our at-one-ment with God. How? Well through the gospel which Paul suggests comes to us through faith, faith that focuses upon Jesus Christ, and trusts in Him for forgiveness.
In Romans, Paul has all sorts of discussions going on at the same time. Like a good book or drama there are themes interwoven within themes. It may be helpful as we go through this chapter that we draw out those themes.
Firstly there is the discussion about how can we be right with God. Is it based on what we can do or is it about what can God can do? (or to rephrase that… is it by our works that God accepts us… or are we accepted by God only through God’s Grace). So there is the works/grace argument.
Secondly there is a related discussion taking place about righteousness and unrighteousness. Paul is arguing that no matter how ‘right’ we try and make ourselves before God it is never ‘right’ enough. That the only was for us to be truly right with God is for God to make it right! And that says Paul, is exactly what God had done through Jesus Christ and in particular through two things; Jesus sacrificial offering of Himself for the sins of the world upon the Cross and His resurrection from the dead.
Thirdly an argument that’s rumbling along that is best described as ‘bragging rights’. There were those amongst the Jewish contingent who felt that being Jewish had to count for something significant. What was the point in God choosing people and giving them laws about sacrifice and circumcision, if at the end of the day all those laws counted for nothing?
Paul now launches into a discussion about Abraham in which these three themes are explored.
NRS Romans 4:1 What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." 4 Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. 5 But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
Paul begins chapter 4 by addressing the ‘bragging rights’ argument. The Jews were proud of their physical heritage. That’s why in the Old and the New Testament you have all those genealogies. It mattered who your family were! Matthew’s gospel, the one most directed towards a Jewish audience begins with what to the Jewish mind was so important… who were this guys descendants? The ancestor of every Jew, according to the flesh, (including of course Paul himself), was Abraham. Did that give him an advantage over the Gentile?
Now the next argument… the one about works and grace… is bought in. What was it that marked Abraham as the one chosen by God to be their ancestor in the flesh? Was it the fact that Abraham lived a more moral, exemplary life than anybody else on the planet? Was it Abraham’s works that made God take notice of him and say, “Well let’s start a nation through that man?”
If that were the case then Abraham, and all those after him, would have something to brag about. But the story that we are given isn’t an Abraham story, it’s a God story. And to prove his point Paul quotes Genesis 15:6 "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Grace, not works, was the basis of Abraham’s acceptance by God.
That scripture leads into the third argument; the one about righteousness and unrighteousness. If people could not ‘work’ their way righteous then how did people become righteous? Paul’s answer is ‘Through believing’.
William Barclay comments, “God had come to Abraham and bid him leave home and friends and family and kindred and livelihood, and had said, “If you make this great venture of faith, you will become the father of a great nation”. Thereupon Abraham had taken God at God’s word. He had not argued; he had not hesitated; he went out not knowing where he was to go. It was not the fact that Abraham had meticulously performed the demands of the law that put him into his special relationship with God; it was his complete trust in God and his complete willingness to abandon his life to God. That for Paul was faith, and it was Abraham’s faith which made God regard him as a good man” (Barclay; Letter to the Romans P63)
The righteousness of Abraham was a righteousness bestowed upon him by God as he acted upon his faith in God. To underline how this notion was quite in line with Jewish teaching Paul goes on to share words from Israel’s greatest King, ‘King David’ in verses 6 and 7.
6 So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works: 7 "Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin."
David, though a great King was also one in whom the fault line of sin ran deep. Last study we saw how Paul’s view of humanity was that even in the best of us the fault line of sin still ran through (just like geographic fault lines run through continents) and that sooner or later the cracks begin to appear. Nowhere did that show clearer than in David’s unlawful taking of Bathsheba for his wife and the arranged murder of her husband. It is in the context of David’s undeserved forgiveness that these words are from Psalm 32 are quoted “Blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin."
So far so good, but one of the thorniest issues between Jewish and Gentile Christians was that of circumcision. There were Jewish believers who felt that for Gentiles to be true Christians then they needed to be circumcised. Paul strongly opposes that viewpoint. Let’s read how he deals with it!
9 Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We say, "Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness." 10 How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, 12 and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.
Paul poses a question. At what point in Abraham’s experience did he receive acceptance by God, was it a) the moment he trusted in God or b) the moment he was circumcised? Obviously faith came first! Circumcision for Abraham was a sign that he had believed, (V11 a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised) not something that caused him to be a believer.
Because the faith came first Abraham is the Father of all who have the kind of faith that he had, be they circumcised or uncircumcised, Jew or Gentile.
13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. 16 For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, 17 as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations") -- in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
Let me read for you that passage as it appears in the Message Bible:
Romans 4:13-17
That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God's decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God's promise at that—you can't break it.
This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that's reading the story backwards. He is our faith father.
We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing.
I really like the way verse 13 is phrased. “That famous promise God gave Abraham – was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based upon God’s decision to put everything together for him… which Abraham then entered when he believed”
Based on this verse, faith (…faith being one of Paul’s real important words and ideas…) is believing that God is ‘capable of putting everything together for us’.
In that sense we are not called to having a blind faith, a faith in something that we can’t define or explain, but a faith that rests upon trust that when we surrender our lives to the higher power of God something tangible will happen. Things will come together. Circumstances will work out. We will be assured that God truly is at work for good in and around those whom hear and respond to God’s call to discipleship.
Now for me that’s a more helpful way of thinking about faith than it being some kind of ‘magic’ that enables things to happen that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Faith is more about moving into those things that God has already prepared for us. Faith doesn’t mean we will be protected and shielded from all that is out there, rather that whilst we are traveling through those things, God will stand with us.
When you consider some of the trials that Paul faced it is clear that faith is not a guarantee for a trouble free existence! Neither was it that way for Abraham. It had everything to do with trusting in what God promised and believing that God would hold true to His promises. This is just what Paul goes on to tell us!
18 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become "the father of many nations," according to what was said, "So numerous shall your descendants be." 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already1 as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. 20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
Abraham had things the right way around. He didn’t think up one day, “Hey… wouldn’t it be great if I could have a big family and be the Father of many nations”. That was something he never imagined or dreamed. The whole notion seemed a little absurd.
But then God spoke into his situation and told him that against the odds things were going to happen that were out of the ordinary and invited Abraham to trust and obey, to align himself with what God had said God would do. It was that action of bringing himself under the agenda of God rather than living by his own agenda that Paul describes as being faith. And that ‘faith’ brought Abraham into the center of God’s hopes and desires. Abraham ‘does the right thing’. Paul continues:-
22 Therefore his faith"was reckoned to him as righteousness." 23 Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.
How do we ‘do the right thing’? How can we be people of faith like Abraham? This is a theme Paul will continue to build upon. At this stage of the argument he is just opening things up.
God has not promised to make us parents of great nations but God has acted in a decisive way to change the world through His Son Jesus Christ. His death was an act of redemption. His resurrection released a tidal wave of hope into the world.
These are the things we are called to place our trust in… that God has acted in Christ against all that would cause us to despair. That God still has a plan, still has an agenda that is not the agenda of this world and invites us to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
And all this is a matter of grace. Nothing we deserve. Nothing we can earn. Nothing that we can claim the credit for. Nothing that we could ever dream up. Our call is simply to be people who ‘believe’ in Jesus Christ.