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It might be good to stop for a moment and think
again about what it was that occasioned this letter from
Paul. Remember that he's planning to visit Rome but has
so far been prevented. But in the meantime he wants to
make sure that the Christians in Rome have a sure
foundation for their faith. He's very much aware that the
gospel he's been preaching is opposed on various fronts,
but most especially it's been opposed by those who come
from a Jewish background, both outside and inside the
Church. His opponents have been trying hard to undermine
him by repeatedly going back to the Jewish heritage of
the Church. They would have argued that the Scriptures
were the word of God, and so Christians should be obeying
what those Scriptures taught. It was a very clever and
subtle argument, even if their methods of stopping Paul
weren't so subtle at times. |
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You see, the argument they were using was that
the Christian Faith sprang out of the Jewish faith; that
therefore the Jewish law was still in force. After all,
wasn't Jesus a Jew? Didn't he come from the line of David
and before him from Abraham? And surely Abraham as the
Father of the Jewish nation should be followed. And of
course it was Abraham who was instructed by God to
circumcise his son as a sign that he was part of the
covenant people of God. Can you see how the argument must
have gone? |
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Abraham's righteousness: By works or by Faith |
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Well, Paul has just finished arguing that
obeying the law will do no-one any good as far as earning
eternal life is concerned, but he still needs to deal
with this question, "What about Abraham and
circumcision?" So that's what he goes on to
consider. He asks "What was it that Abraham
discovered as far as salvation is concerned?" |
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Now this is an area where it's very easy to get
confused. You see Abraham did lots of things that showed
that he believed God. He left his home in Haran and
followed God to some unknown destination. He didn't give
up when it seemed impossible that he and Sarah might have
a child. He was ready to sacrifice Isaac when God asked
him to. And it would seem at a first glance that all
these things he did were what earned him God's good
pleasure. |
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So Paul asks: "what does the scripture
say?" Well, what does it say? "Abraham believed
God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." |
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Now Paul quotes this verse from Gen 15 knowing
full well that the Jewish teachers had used it in the
past to show how Abraham's action had merited the
righteous verdict by God. So he quotes it for a good
reason. He wants to clear up that misunderstanding.
Belief in God's promise doesn't constitute good works.
When God says he reckons it as righteousness the whole
idea is that it's not earned. It's without merit. Look at
the argument in v4. |
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If someone works for a wage, at the end of the
day they receive their wage as a right. There's no need
to reckon it to them, they just get it because it's
theirs by right. The idea of something being 'reckoned to
you' seems to be like a funds transfer from one persons
account to another. It's not their money until it's
transferred. So God assigns to Abraham a righteousness
that he didn't have by himself purely on the grounds that
Abraham believed him. |
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Now notice that this isn't something that's
confined to the experience of Abraham alone. David also
experienced the unmerited favour of God. David also
received a declaration of righteousness that he hadn't
earned. v6: "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; 8blessed
is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon
sin." David understood well the need for
forgiveness. He knew how flawed we all are, even those
who are chosen by God to do special things. And he knew
that if we're to be counted righteous by God, it will
only be as a result of God's good pleasure. It'll only be
if he doesn't reckon our sin against us, but instead
reckons us righteous. |
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And in fact as we saw in Rom 3:25-26 this has
always been the case. God has always forgiven people on
the grounds of his grace, reckoning righteousness to them
as a gift on the basis of their faith in his promises. |
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But even if that's the case, if God reckoned
Abraham righteous and David righteous as a gift, the
question still remains are the Jewish people better off
than Gentiles? "9Is this blessedness,
then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the
uncircumcised?" The Jews thought that they were the
special objects of God's love and mercy. They thought
that God's choice of them meant that the righteousness he
offered was also just for them and that to receive that
blessing people needed to become Jews. But that's to
forget the circumstances under which Abraham received
this blessing. |
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At what stage was Abraham declared to be
righteous by God? Was it before or after he was
circumcised? In other words, which is primary? Is it his
place as father of the Jewish nation which matters most,
or is it his belief in God's promise that matters most? |
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Well, he says, wasn't it before he was
circumcised? In fact circumcision, the sign of membership
of the Jewish people, was given later, as a sign or a
seal, of the righteousness that he had by faith while he
was still uncircumcised. |
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And what's more, he says, what was the content
of the promise of God that Abraham believed in the first
place? Wasn't it that he'd become the father, not just of
the Jewish nation, not just of the people of Israel, but
the father of many nations? So how can he be the father
of many nations? He isn't Adam. Only a few of the
people's of the world physically descend from him. Yet
God promised that he'd be the father of many
nations. In fact didn't he say that all people's on earth
would be blessed through him? So how can that be? |
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Well, it can be because the primary
characteristic for which he was reckoned as righteous,
wasn't anything he did. It wasn't any physical
characteristic. It was that he believed God's promises.
So he's found to be the father of all those who down the
centuries have also believed God's promises. |
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Because God's promise to Abraham was something
that could only be received through faith, so that
promise can also be received by anyone who will believe
it. |
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What was the nature of the promise that God made
to Abraham? Well, God promised that he would become the
Father of many nations, and that all the nations of earth
would be blessed through him. Paul extends this to
include the later promises made to his people, that their
king would rule over the earth. |
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And how was Abraham to achieve this promise?
Well, he wasn't, was he? There was no idea in what God
said that he had to do something to bring the promise
about. In fact as he suggests in v17, Abraham and Sarah
were as good as dead as far as having children was
concerned. There was nothing they could do about it. In
fact Sarah just laughed when she heard that she was about
to get pregnant. But Abraham believed in a God who gives
life to the dead. He believed in a God who calls into
existence things that don't exist. |
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Notice the importance of a clear understanding
of the nature of God in all this. Abraham's faith wasn't
blind faith. He didn't just take a punt on God's promises
coming true. He believed that God was God. That he was
the one who brought the universe into being. Who created
this world out of nothing. And if the God you believe in
can do that, then he could certainly cause Sarah to fall
pregnant. |
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So what was the nature of Abraham's response to
God's promise? It was to believe. Certainly he acted on
that belief. He left home and travelled to an unknown
destination, but, it was his belief in the nature of God
as creator and sustainer that mattered. |
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So what does that say to us? Well it says that
Abraham is in fact the father, not just of Jews, but of
all those who follow him in their faith in God. Can you
see why that's so? Look at v14: "14If it
were the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs,
faith would be nullified and the promise would be
void." If what mattered was the physical descent,
and the adherence to the external law, then we'd no
longer need to rely on God's promise. We'd know one way
or the other whether we were OK. If we weren't descended
from Abraham, then we'd be lost and if we were, then we'd
be OK as long as we kept the law. Of course that's a
problem because none of us can keep the law, and in the
end all the law does for us is to bring God's wrath down
on us, so that wouldn't be a solution at all would it? On
the other hand, if it's those who have faith in God's
promises who are the true descendants of Abraham, then
it's a different story. Then we find that all people are
included. Those who are circumcised, that is Jews, are
included on the basis of their faith in God, and those
who are uncircumcised are also included on the basis of
their faith in God. All are included on the basis that
they share the faith of Abraham. So Abraham becomes the
father of many nations, nations of those who believe in
the promise of God to reckon to all of us the
righteousness that comes through the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. |
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So what does that do to our good works? What
does it say about Abraham's obedience in leaving Haran
and travelling to Canaan at God's behest. Well, it says
that the mere action itself isn't what justifies us or
him. Abraham's obedience wasn't what made him righteous.
But at the same time his actions are the signs of his
belief. It would have been no use Abraham saying he
believed God and remaining right where he was. He had to
get up and go as a sign of his faith in God. So too, our
faith in God will inevitably lead to changes in the way
we behave. As we'll see in a couple of chapters time, our
faith in Jesus Christ as the means of righteousness
doesn't remove the need to live righteous lives. In fact
the opposite is true. If we claim a righteousness that
comes by faith in Christ, we'll be even more motivated to
obey God, to live up to this new status we have before
God. But our obedience will never be the basis on which
we claim to be right with God any more than Abraham
circumcising his son made him right with God. No our
standing before God comes about because we, like Abraham,
believe God's promise to give us a righteousness won for
us by Jesus Christ. |
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So, this is how Paul finishes this part of his
letter. He wants to remind us that what we discover in
the story of Abraham is recorded not just for the sake of
Abraham's immediate descendants, but for us as well. We
too will have God's righteousness reckoned to us if we
too are people who believe God's promises. Mind you the
promise that we're called to believe is a bit different
to what Abraham believed. Different at least in the sense
that it's far more fully developed. The promise that
we're called to believe is what we discovered last week:
that God will justify us freely by grace, that is as a
gift, on the basis that Jesus died on our behalf. |
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What does he say in v25? That he "was
handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised
for our justification." The lesson that we all need
to learn from the story of Abraham is that God justifies
all people on the grounds of faith, on the grounds of
their belief in God's promise, on the grounds of their
trust in the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Abraham is the father not just of the Jewish nation, but
of all who have faith in God: God who brought the world
into being, God who called Abraham to be the Father of a
great nation, God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead
for our justification. |
