Romans 4:
Justification by Faith Evidenced in Old Testament. Paul is still answering the Jewish mindset behind the scenes. He is anticipating their often times resorting to the Mosaic Law and their Father Abraham. He is in effect saying lets go back and examine what Abraham taught.
1. 1, What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found?
a. Having brought up the superiority of the “law of faith” over the “law of works” he then turns to the origin of Abraham’s faith in the scripture. Him being the cornerstone of their law, the object of their devotion and identity. They held Abraham as the father of their religion. He says, let’s go examine Abraham and his justification before God. On what basis was he justified, was it according to some works he did while still in the flesh?
2. 2, For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.
a. Abraham. This is saying that if Abraham could boast, he could do that, just not before God. In other words, he could say that he is there in heaven because he was obedient. And when God required he sacrifice his son, he did so and earned his righteousness before God. He could say, I left my father and extended family to go to an unknown destination, in the wilderness out of obedience. I believed God when he said that I would be the father of many nations and it was by my great faith, obedience and sacrifice that I stand here in heaven, Abraham the righteous. The law leaves room for works, whereas faith does not.
3. 3, For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
a. In other words, he couldn’t glory before God by claiming works of faith. He simply believed what God said, there was no work in it.
b. Faith is not particular to Christians. In fact there is no character in faith. Every day, we have faith in all manner of things. Driving to work on the road with other cars, eating at a fast food restaurant, flying on an airplane. When your child falls and breaks their leg, you call 911 and you have faith that the ambulance will be there quickly. You’re neighbor offers to drive you both to ER, but you say no that’s okay, an ambulance will be here within minutes. You have faith that what the 911 operator said was true and you reject other help because you believe what they said. There is no special character in believing. Likewise there was no righteousness in Abraham believing God, he simply said, God is and has been dependable and I trust what he said is true. There was no righteousness in the act of believing God. God did not take his faith and accept it as righteousness. God did not take a small faith and somehow make it large. He took something that was not and made it so. Upon Abraham’s simply believing, God accounted to him righteousness. God called him something he was not. He was appointed righteousness. There is no work in that.
4. 4, Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.
a. If you were to do some labor for someone and they promised to pay you $10/hour, does the employer deserve praise for his paying you? No, there is no reason for praise in that. If the employer said, don’t you think you should be thankful for me paying you? Don’t you think I am generous for doing so? No, there would be no cause to give him praise, no cause for graciousness for paying his debt. In fact he is a debtor to you. Further, if he didn’t pay you, he would be a transgressor.
b. You would be counting on getting paid and you would count or reckon to your account what the employer owed you. You would perhaps plan on paying off a debt or making a purchase because you know that the funds are going to be in your account as soon as you get paid.
c. Example. Garage sale hypo story. Selling lots of gadgets and Bluetooth headphones. It was late in the day, I was getting ready to pack up. When a man came and wanted to buy a nice BT headset. He asked me how much it was and I said, $50.00. He said, oh I can’t afford that, thanks anyway. It was around the holidays and was feeling festive. So I asked, were you looking for a gift? He said, yes, I wanted to get something special for my father who has lost his hearing and needs an amplified headset. I’ve been searching all day through garage sales because stores are too expensive. I am hoping to find a deal. So I said I am going to make this a gift to you for free, God bless you and have a great day. He then proceeded to pull out a few dollars from his wallet and some change in his pocket and laid it on the table. I said, what is this? He said, well I just need to pay for this nice headset. So I got out my calculator and said that will be $54.13. He looked at me bewildered. I said, if you want to pay for the gadget, it is $54.13 or you can receive it as a gift for free. Make up your mind. So, he put the change back in his pocket took the headset and was thankful. If I would have said to my wife, you know that gadget I was selling for $50, well I sold it for $2.53, she would have said, What! That’s the worst deal I’ve seen you make. You must be going senile. He was insulting the value of my offer.
d. If there was a man $100 bucks short of his rent, and I gave it to him as a gift, and he said. Well, I don’t have any money, but I am going to wash your car. And I say, no my car is already clean and don’t need that just take the $100 and be thankful that’s all I want. But then he were to say, no, I must pay my way, that’s who I am and I just can’t accept something for nothing. So I’m going to wash your car. I would have snatched the $100 back from him and given him $5.00. Why, because he was insulting my grace by trying to purchase the $100 bucks with a car wash bill. I had given him $100 and he was trying to earn it with his measly car wash. It would have been insulting and offensive to have given him something of greater value and have him try to earn it with something inferior.
e. If you are coming to God by the works of the law there is no grace, if you are coming by grace there is no works. They are mutually exclusive. You cannot have one without the exclusion of the other.
5. 5, But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
a. Works. It isn’t that God sees our works as good or evil. God is not against good works; he’s not opposed to or doesn’t like good works. This sovereign God has simply pre-determined that works should be the fruit of salvation not the cause of it. That works are the fruit of my relationship with him not the cause of it.
b. When we think that we can precipitate God’s favor by our works, then we have not understood our depravity. The law has not done its work properly. The law was designed to do what Paul did in Chapters 1,2 and 3 convict that all are under sin, there is none that do good, no not one, they are all together unprofitable. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
6. 6, Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, 7, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. 8, Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
a. Ps 32:1,2 “David having been forgiven his murder, adulterous affair, and deception, he extols the hearer to rejoice in God’s grace whereby he would account a man righteous, forgive sin, who’s sin is not imputed to him.” He’s not talking about some Theological or doctrinal resolution. He’s talking about the release that he experienced in his own life. He’s talking about the joy and freedom from the burden that he experienced in his own soul that he’s forgiven. That he is in a state of blessedness before God. He said, “blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven”. You have got to see your iniquities in order to experience that blessedness. Jesus said, to those who have been forgiven much the same loveth much. The opposite of that is also true. If you haven’t been forgiven much, you wouldn’t love much. It’s not that some of us have sinned more than others, it’s that there are those whom recognize their sin or their sin is more recognizable; they see their separation, their depravity, their hopeless state, the law has adequately dealt with them in their heart, in their soul. And having that as their starting point come to the grace of God, who took the weight of their burden, the load of their guilt and the condemnation of their soul and freed them from it. Having adequately dealt with their death, burial and resurrection to new life for those in Christ.
b. Not impute sin. Like a bank that when a man draws from his account, the bank funds his debt and doesn’t debit it to his account having accounted it as full. We have spent our souls in sin and depravity yet God is not imputing our sin to us. Why? Because God took the debts, the deficits, the loans, what we spent and put it in Jesus account. Jesus took our sin, our debt and died for it as if it were his own suffering the loss because of what we spent.
c. King David was a pillar of their heritage. He was the greatest king in their history. Paul uses that to illustrate that even their hero to which they put their national identity, didn’t have works to credit his righteousness. He says blessed are those unto whom God imputeth righteousness. There is no work there. Using Abraham and now David would definitely strike at the foundations of their belief system. This would leave them nowhere to go.
7. 9, Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness.
a. He is asking a question to answer with another question. The Jew was ready to say, no this was only for circumcised Jews. So he quotes Gen 15:6 that his faith was reckoned for righteousness. Then he asks this next question.
8. How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
a. He asks, how was Abraham’s righteousness reckoned to him? Was it before or after he got circumcised?
b. Remember God called on Abraham when he was 75 years old. God told Abraham several times throughout his wonderings that he would be the father of many nations. When God told that to him and he believed, God said I have imputed righteousness to you because you believed what I said. Abraham didn’t believe on Jesus Christ, he didn’t believe that his sins were forgiven all he believed was that he was going to have a baby by his wife that was barren, that is it! And God said, Abraham because you believed in me, I am going to call that righteousness. Abraham was not yet circumcised. In fact, Abraham went in to Hagar to try and produce a child. He goes 25 more years after he and Sarah now were both incapable of producing seed. God says to Abraham, circumcise yourself, your child and all the males. After having done so, the next year, God brings about the promised child. It was 15 years earlier that God had accounted him righteous. God had called him righteous for 15 years before he received his son Isaac. So his point that Abraham was righteous before he was circumcised.
c. Was Abraham a Jew? He was not. Jews were descendents from the tribe of Judah one of Jacobs’ sons. Isaac had a son Jacob and he had 12 sons, one of which was Judah. Some 500 or so before the was a tribe of Judah and it was even later before they were actually called Jews. This is some 500 years before Moses and the Mosaic law. Abraham was a Gentile, he was not a Jew, he was not under the Mosaic law, he was not circumcised. There was no Sabbath keeping, no tithing spices, no high priest sacrifices. So God called that Gentile, non-Jew, non-law follower, uncircumcised man righteous. Even his righteousness precedes the act of circumcision hundreds of years before the law was given. So it was a Gentile that God declared righteous not a Jew, it was a Gentile not under any legal system. Paul has built a very good case.
d. Note: So even their claim to fame – circumcision was 15 years after he was declared righteous while he was uncircumcised. There is nothing in Abraham’s justification that substantiates the law as the provision that justified him. Circumcision was a cutting away of the flesh, the male member foreskin. It was a reminder. God often does things (Passover, Yom Kuppor, Feast of Booths, Hannakuh, even NT communion) that we would remember as we have a propensity to forget. Notice that God doesn’t have a circumcision of the elbow, cutting of the hand or hair. It is directed at the origin of much of the world’s woes – the male sex organ. Paul is calling the Jews attention to the facts of Abraham to unearth their foundation and inordinate prideful identification in him.
9. 11, And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also:
a. Seal. Circumcision was a sign and a seal of the covenant of faith. It is a sign, something that is displayed for a set purpose. A street post is a sign is to tell you where you are, to point the way. So circumcision is a sign pointing to the seal of the righteousness of faith.
b. Seal. It is something that is place after a contract or document has been closed. It is a legal attestation to the authority of the governing or issuing body.
c. Righteousness of faith. Circumcision was a sign of the seal of the righteousness that he already possessed before circumcision was made.
d. Gentiles. To a Jew, Gentiles were filthy scum of the earth; they were reserved for the dung heap of hell. They were God’s refuse of the world. This was the Jewish mentality. So the Jews at this point might have been bearing what he was saying to them but now he would have in sensed them, infuriated them. Here they had been holding to the law, laboring in the law, striving to keep the law, having gone to war, been targeted by the heathen nations around them. Then Paul comes along saying that this salvation was given to the dirty rotten heathen? Without the law? Without circumcision? Without the process of cleansings and keeping the Sabbaths and feast days and such? Anathema! They would cry.
e. Having worked their whole lives to keep this law, striving to attain it, satisfy it and then at the end of their life a Gentile sinner attains righteousness without the law. They couldn’t bear it. In fact there is a story about this. (Pearl points out).
f. Mat 20:1-16 the story of the laborers for a penny a day. Verse 12 key.
10. 12, And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.
a. In other words, the father of their faith, those who call themselves circumcised originated from a righteousness that came by a man who was yet uncircumcised. His righteousness did not come by way of his circumcision but before. And now the righteousness of an uncircumcised Gentile, non-Jew, non-law keeping man is the father of the circumcision and uncircumcision as well. Paul is slamming the lid shut on their foundation of holding to Abraham as the righteousness of the circumcised. Remember, the influence of Jewish law was so strong that it even affected the early church so radically, that the first ecumenical council of Jerusalem was called to settle Christian obligations to the law.
11. 13, For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
a. In other words, the promise that all generations of the faithful of God would come through Abraham was not made through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. In the same manner in the same likeness as Abrahams’ faith. In other words, Abraham believed God and God credited, accounted, reckoned to his account something that was not. Abraham brought nothing and God gave him something from nothing. God called something that was not something that was.
12. 14, For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: 15, Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.
a. If the law justified them, by the keeping of the law then justification by believing in the promise is invalid. If you are justified by the works of the law, then you can’t be justified by grace. They are mutually exclusive. Faith excludes works, works excludes faith. Gal 5:1-4.
b. Paul’s Argument. Law not given for almost 500 years after circumcision, so if Abraham was made righteous before the giving of the law, then the giving of the law cannot be the cause of imputed righteousness. He’s established the fact that imputed righteousness is not only independent of circumcision but is also independent of the Mosaic law, in fact Judaism. He’s establishing that a gentile can be grafted in, not by the law or circumcision, but before both of these with Abraham as the father of his faith.
c. Errant teaching church inherits promises of jews. They use this scripture and a few others to promote this teaching.
d. Heb 6:12 inherit the promise(s)... surely blessing I will bless thee and multiplying I will multiply thee.
e. Two immutable things, two promises. Abraham only received one Heb 7:6 …who had the promise(s). Statements God made: back in Genesis examining every time promise made 1 time, 1 promise, about 5 times it’s two promises. 1) Multiply your seed as the sand on the seashore innumerable and make you the head of a great nation. Your gonna have kids, your kids are gonna have kids and spread about the whole world. 2) And through your seed I will bless the whole world. Although Abraham only received one promise, he never received promise 2 until the SEED which should come which is Christ. The promise 1 came through the seed of Isaac, promise 2 came from the seed which is Christ which came through Isaac, the jewish nation. WHICH SEED WE ARE when we are baptized into his body. Thus we are blessed when we receive the righteousness by faith like of Abraham, we are baptized into Christ’s body and born again. The church has received promise 2, however the Jewish nation is the only one that has received promise 1. You must see that there is two promises or else you may wind up in error. You will have two sets of people trying to inherit the same promises in two different dispensations of time.
13. 16, Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,
a. In other words, our justification of the faith of Abraham is by the grace of God by the seed of Abraham through Christ. That all the whole world might be blessed. Jew and Gentile alike for he is the father of us all.
14. 17, (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.
a. God quickeneth “made alive” Abraham and Sarah’s bodies even though their bodies were dead, unable to produce seed and eggs anymore. They believed God even when their bodies testified contrary to the promise they received. They ignored the testimony of their bodies and believed the unseen. They believed the invisible and dismissed the tangible. They were persuaded until their faith was the substance and evidence of things hoped for and things not seen.
b. God called Abraham the father of a great nation when he was not and he believed it. God calls us righteous though we are not and we believe it. God calls him alive even though he was dead.
15. 18, Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations,
a. Abraham and Sarah’s bodies were dead but he believed God even still that he would receive the promises.
16. “according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. 19, And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead,”
a. His body was dead, but he didn’t consider it dead. When Abraham’s reason played through his options, he didn’t consider the fact that his body wouldn’t produce seed. Because he weighed against the word of God and the word of God outweighed his obvious dead body.
17. “when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara's womb:”
a. This is the dead thing God revives.
18. “20, He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;”
a. He may have staggered at many things, but not at the promise of God.
19. 21, And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. 22, And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.
a. That was faith. Being fully persuaded that what He promised, He was also able to perform. Abraham’s faith was not in his own faith, he wasn’t believing in his ability to believe. He wasn’t believing that his own faith was going to initiate anything. Abraham believed that God gave him an unconditional promise. That all the means and resources to fulfill that promise was in God himself. Being so, therefore it was imputed to him as righteousness. Not that his believing or faith was accepted as righteous, nor did God take his little faith and make it big faith. He simply believed God and God accredited to him, counted it to him as righteousness. God called it, counted it as something that it was not.
20. 23, Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; 24, But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;
a. This wasn’t written to Abraham alone, but to us also. In the same manner in the same likeness it is imputed to our account as well; if we believe on him that raised up Jesus from the dead. This was written for us so that we could see the manner, the pattern of Abraham’s justification that we also might follow in like manner.
21. 25, Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
a. Delivered as a criminal is delivered for our crimes. This verse separates the two actions of Christ on our behalf. The death and the resurrection.
b. Death. Christ died on our behalf. However his death was what paid or satisfied the law and penalty for our sins. However, it did nothing more than that. It says he was delivered for our offenses and raised for our justification. If Christ had gotten off the cross and said, your sins are paid for, see what you can do with the rest of your life. See if you can keep the law, the commandments, still got to keep them. Go ahead and do the best you can and I’ll come check you out at the end of life. Okay, hope you can keep this whole thing going, I’m leaving. Keep the worlds from colliding, the universe in its axis, yourself from disease and sickness, your all going to die anyway. And walk off. Yes, your forgiven but so what? You still live on planet earth, subject to disease and sickness and death. Just because he died for you and paid for your sin, doesn’t make you a son of God. Doesn’t give you a new body, it just paid the debt.
Resurrection. But when Jesus was raised from the dead, you were raised with him. That took you out of the old Adam and put you into the new Adam and made you a son of God. He not only paid your debt but adopted you. He said son you owe a debt too big for you, I’m going to pay it and going to adopt you. And I’m going to make you head of the company. You’re a rich man now. Jesus didn’t only pay for our sins, he placed us in the family. That is grace no top of grace, abounding grace. Though he died for our sin, he rose to justify us and impute to us not only his death but his life also. So that we receive his title, his name, his riches, his wealth, his peace, his life, his love, his favor, and a home in heaven. He makes us sons and daughters as well.
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