Romans 4:1-12

“The Faith of Father Abraham – Part 1”

Romans 4:1-12 (Message #9)

March 13, 2016 (Sligo, Ireland)

INTRODUCTION:

Salvation by works was a common misconception among Jews. Therefore, it became a major stumbling block for Early-Church Christians who just imported some of their erroneous Jewish thinking into their newfound Christian faith (cf. Acts 11, 15, Galatians, etc.).

The Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus taught that Abraham was given justification and the rite of circumcision because he anticipated the Mosaic Law. Habakkuk 2:4 was incorrectly translated: “The just shall live by their faithfulness.”  Thus, Law-keeping was generally believed by the Jews to be a fundamental element of salvation.

Even today among Christians the question of how God dispensed salvation in the OT is still confusing for many. In fact, many people think that the OT saints were saved by the works of the Law, and NT saints are saved by grace through faith. Some assert that Law-based salvation only extended from Moses until Christ and that the Law entered because the Jews rejected grace. Either way, many Christians mistakenly believe that God has two ways of salvation—(1) by keeping the Law, and (2) by grace through faith.

TRANSITION:

I used to teach in a seminary in Brazil. I eventually got so that I could anticipate many of the questions that my students would ask even before they posed their question. It was the same way with the Apostle Paul. In chapter 4 of Romans he anticipated the question people would ask; namely, “How were OT saints saved?” By good works? By Law-keeping? By animal sacrifices? By religious rites? By their covenant connection to Israel? NO!!!

In Romans 3 Paul teaches that salvation is by grace through faith, apart from the works of the Law. The question arises whether this then is a change from how God justified people in OT times. The answer is, “NO! Salvation has always been by grace through faith.”

MAIN BODY:

Verse 1: “What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?”

• Abraham was revered by the Jews as the father of their nation, their great patriarch, and a shining example of a righteous man who was justified before God. The question, though, is “How did Abraham get justified before God?” Remember, Abraham was born long before the giving of the Law so the works of the Law obviously played no part in his justification. “How then did it happen?” Paul asks.

Verse 2: “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.”   

• Paul’s point is that Abraham was NOT justified by his works but by his faith in God, and because this was true he had no basis for boasting. In fact, we know that no one has a right to boast before God, ever, even the best of people. Abraham, like us, was just a sinner who threw himself on the mercy of God and believed that God would one day provide a perfect sacrifice to atone for his sins, and not for his only, but for the sins of the whole world.

Verse 3: “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.””

·         As always, Paul’s answer is based in Scripture. “What does the Bible say?” This should be our default question as well, on every subject.

• Paul here quotes Genesis 15:6. In the context the LORD had just finished telling Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens, and the Word of God says that Abraham believed God, and God reckoned his faith to him as righteousness.
• Paul writes about the faith of Abraham in other places too. In Galatians 3:6-9 we read, “Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. ⁷ Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. ⁸ The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the nations will be blessed in you.’ ⁹ So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.” And you can read more about Abraham’s faith in Hebrews 11:8-12, 17-19.

Verse 4: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.”

·         This is simple, straight forward logic. If you work at a job you are recompensed with wages. It is your just pay for honest labor. The money you receive is not a gift; it is money owed to you. You’ve earned it. But in this context, “the one who works” refers to a religious person who is frantically trying to win God’s favor and attention by means of good works and religious acts. Basically Paul is saying that if you want to try and earn your salvation by your own efforts God will pay you what you have earned, but your wages will turn out to be a pittance and certainly not enough to pay for your ticket to Heaven.

·         A gift, on the other hand, is some good thing you receive, not because it is owed to you, but because someone wants to bless you and make you happy. You can’t work for a gift. Your only two choices are to accept it or reject it. You can’t earn it.

Verse 5: “And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,”    

• In the whole context, Paul has been using Abraham as his example. According to Genesis 15 Abraham had kept no law, had rendered no service, and had performed no ritual to earn God’s favor. He had simply believed God’s promises to him, and as Paul says here, “his faith was credited to him as righteousness.” When Paul says, “…And to the one who does not work…”  he’s not talking about spiritual laziness with no effort expended to seek after a godly life. He’s referring specifically to the fact that Abraham was not doing anything to try and merit God’s favor. He merely took God at His word and his faith was counted to him as righteousness. He understood that salvation is a gift.

Verses 6-8: “…just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ⁷ ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; ⁸ blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.’”

• Here Paul quotes King David’s words recorded in the Septuagint in Psalm 32:1-2, “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity.” In other words, God does not continue to credit unrighteousness to a sinner that repents, but rather, forgives him when he confesses his sin and turns from it. And this has nothing to do with good works, and everything to do with pure unadulterated grace.  

Verse 9: “Is this blessing then only for the circumcised [Jews], or also for the uncircumcised [Gentiles]? We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.”     

• There are two questions in play here. The first is: “Is this gracious gift of God’s righteousness only for the Jews, if is it also for the Gentiles?” Of course, we have already answered this. There is ONE MEANS of salvation and it is for both Jews and Gentiles. Jesus is the only Saviour and the only way to approach Him is by faith. Nothing else works.
• The second issue is in the second sentence: “We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.” Abraham had not earned God’s grace, because grace is a free gift. It can’t be earned. Abraham had simply believed God and God counted that faith to him as righteousness.

Verse 10: “How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.”     

• You’ll notice that Paul is leading us through this discussion very slowly and deliberately. He uses repetition, saying the same thing in different ways. He wants to make sure that we get it.
• “How then was it [i.e. faith] counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised?”  Abraham was declared righteous by God [see Gen. 15:6] approximately 14 years before he and his servants were circumcised as a sign of the covenant with Jehovah. Moreover, according to Galatians 3:17Abraham lived 430 years before the Law was given through Moses, and thus, he couldn’t have been justified by the Law.
• Moreover, when you stop to think about it Abraham wasn’t even a Jew when God declared him “righteous” because there still wasn’t such a thing as a Jew. Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees in Sumer of Mesopotamia. That was in what is today southern Iraq. One day the LORD appeared to Abram and promised him that if he would leave Ur and journey to a land that he had never seen God would make his descendants outnumber the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky. God also promised Abram that from his descendants one “seed” would be the Saviour of all mankind. Abram obeyed God and left the city and journeyed across the Fertile Crescent into the land of Canaan where he and his descendants were pilgrims until God gave them the land as an inheritance. Abraham had two sons—Ishmael and Isaac, but God said that the covenant blessings would only come through Isaac. However, Isaac wasn’t a Jew either. Isaac eventually had two sons—Esau and Jacob. God said that He would give the covenant blessing through Jacob’s line. But Jacob wasn’t a Jew either, at least not yet. In fact, he was a low-life sneaky-weasel of a man that seemed to have little worth as a human-being. But God chose to use him anyway. After working him over and doing a tune-up on him, God changed Jacob’s name to Israel. This man Jacob/”Israel” ended up with 12 sons, but they weren’t Jews either yet because there still wasn’t such a thing. But those 12 sons of Israel grew up, got married, had scads of children and became the fathers of 12 tribes, that today we call the “Twelve Tribes of Israel,” which is just another name for the Jewish Race. All of that historical detail just to say that Abraham, during his lifetime, was no more Jewish than I am! So God declaring him righteous had nothing to do with Jewishness!

Verse 11: “He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he [already] had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well,”     

• Circumcision did not save anyone. It couldn’t. It was simply the outward physical sign of a covenant that God initiated between Himself and His people, Israel. In Genesis 17 God told Abraham that he and all his male servants, along with all his male descendants were to submit to circumcision as a seal of the unique covenant bond Abraham and his seed had with God. This set them apart as God’s chosen people, through whom He would one day reveal the Messiah, who would be the Saviour, Christ the Lord.
• But Paul’s point here again, is that circumcision entered the story after Abraham was declared righteous. Abraham found grace in the eyes of the Lord before he was circumcised.
• “The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well,”  To whom is Paul referring here? Read it again: “…the father of all who believe without being circumcised.” That means you and me! We believed in Christ even though we had no connection to Israel or to Judaism. And Abraham is our father, too, because we follow in his footsteps of simply believing God’s promise to save anyone who comes to Him in simple faith, believing in the Lord Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. So Abraham is not only the father of the Jews but he is our father, as well, because like him we have been saved and made righteous through faith alone, apart from works, or rituals, or hoops of any kind.

Verse 12: “…and to [also] make him the father of the Circumcised [Jews] who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.”     

• Today around the world there are millions of Messianic Jews who have come to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Promised Messiah spoken of through the prophets. They are circumcised Jews who love the NT Scriptures along with the Law of Moses and the OT but who realize that salvation is by grace through faith apart from keeping the works of the Law. They are our Jewish brethren. Many of them call themselves “Completed Jews.” Paul of Tarsus was just such a man. He was a circumcised Jewish Christian who reveled in the fact that he had come to know the true Messiah. He valued his Jewish roots but he also fought hard against those who tried to impose Judaism on Gentile converts to Christianity because he understood that salvation has nothing to do with being Jewish and everything to do with simple faith in Christ’s completed work on the Cross.

CONCLUSION:

One of the most precious portions of Scripture to me is John 17 that has been called “the High-Priestly Prayer” of Jesus. In it Jesus prays for His disciples, especially The Apostles into whom He had poured His life and teaching for 3½ years. But they are not the only ones He prays for there. He prays for us here at Sligo Baptist Church as well. Listen carefully.

²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone [i.e. his Apostles]. I pray also for all those who will believe in Me through their message, ²¹ that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. ²² I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are one— ²³ I in them and You in Me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me.

Did you hear it? “I pray also for all those who will believe in Me through their message.” That’s us! We came to Christ through the witness of a bunch of Jewish guys who came to believe that Jesus was their promised Messiah. They went out and evangelized the world with that message. They wrote books and letters that became our NT Scriptures. They all died martyrs death’s because the world hated them but they never quit. They knew what they knew and were convinced that the only way to God is through His Son, Jesus. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those Jewish guys, our brothers in the faith, who set their Jewishness aside to carry the Gospel to anyone who would listen. Eventually the Good News made its way to you and to me. The question is, are we passing it on to others who need to know, or are we sitting around comfortably waiting for someone else to go tell them?

Jesus said that when the world sees our genuine oneness with Him as proven by our genuine unity with other believers, then the world will begin to believe our message. In other words, Christian unity is a powerful proof of the validity of the Gospel message and the secret of effective evangelism. Only when we are truly in love with Christ, and truly love one another, and truly love lost people, will we begin to see the harvest we long to see. I pray that it will begin to happen soon, for I long to see it.

FEEDBACK:

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