Previously in Romans 3, we saw how there are none righteous, no not one. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is no difference between the Jew and Gentile, the Law stops everyone’s mouth, and the whole world stands guilty before God. If that were all there was to the story, we all would be doomed and damned for eternity. However, we have been justified freely by His grace through redemption in Christ Jesus. Jesus appeased God’s wrath for us on the cross by shedding His blood to pay for our sins. We have to only receive it by faith. This is a marvelous transition from the wrath of God on sinful man in the first three chapters. Examples are a useful tool when teaching, and Paul will give us a real-life example of someone who was justified by faith.
He turns to Abraham, the most esteemed man in Judaism, to illustrate his point. He asks what Abraham, their father according to the flesh, had found? Abraham was the father of the Jewish people. God had called him out of Ur of the Chaldees, and promised to give him the land of Canaan to his descendants. The problem was, he did not have children, and his wife was past child bearing years. However, God promised him a son through his wife Sarah. She did bear him a son, Isaac, whose wife bear him Jacob, who became the patriarch of the nation of Israel. In relation to Abraham’s son, Abraham asked God what He would give him since he was childless and the heir of his house was his servant? God responded that He would give him an heir that would come from his own body. Then the Lord took him outside, told him to look up to the heavens, and to count the stars if he was able. He told Abraham, “So shall your descendants be.” Then it says that Abraham believed in the Lord, and the Lord accounted it to him for righteousness. (Genesis 15:1-6) This is the first time the word “believe” and “righteousness” appear in the Bible, and this passage is quoted four times in the New Testament in support of God’s imputed righteousness based on faith. This is the Gospel in the Old Testament, Abraham believed in (put his trust in) the Lord, and the Lord put this belief to his account for righteousness.
Coming back to Romans, Paul says that if Abraham were justified by works, he would have something to boast about, but not before God. Someone may be impressed by the works of another, but as Paul has already pointed out, there are none righteous or who do good before God. He then quotes from this passage in Genesis, ‘“Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”’. The word “accounted” is an accounting term, and means to put down to one’s account or to impute. God imputed His righteousness to Abraham based off his faith. David Guzek writes, “The Apostle Paul does not say that Abraham was made righteous in all of his doings, but God accounted Abraham as righteous. Our justification is not God making us perfectly righteous, but counting us as perfectly righteous. After we are counted righteous, then God begins making us truly righteous, culminating at our resurrection.”
There are two opposing paths one can take here, the first being that of grace. Grace is the unearned favor of God, freely given to us with nothing expected in return. In contrast, to the man who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. It’s like working your tail off all month for a paycheck, but at the end of the month, the employer says, “No, you actually owe me.” There’s no way our works (however good they may be) can erase or somehow make up for our sins before God. As a result, we will owe Him on the day of judgment unless we have believed and have been accounted righteousness for that belief as Abraham was by the God who justifies the ungodly. God doesn’t just save the one who is good by man’s standards, but He saves the ungodly, the worst of the worst.
David understood this when he said, “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.” David, a man guilty of capital punishment on two accounts (adultery and murder) under Jewish law, understood what it meant to be forgiven. Not only does the Lord not impute our sin to us, He imputes Christ’s righteousness to us in its place. This is a good God who would do this for us.
Lest the Jewish reader should think they are the only recipients of such blessings, Paul makes the case that Abraham was justified before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision, the seal or stamp of the righteousness of the faith that he had prior to his circumcision. Abraham was justified 14 years prior to his circumcision, so the Jew could not argue that circumcision had anything to do with his justification, nor could they argue that Gentiles needed to be circumcised in order to be declared righteous. In so stating, Abraham is the father of all who believe.
The promise that Abraham and his descendants would be heir of the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. If it were through the law, then faith would be made void and the promise would be of no profit. This is because the law brings about wrath. If we recall from chapters 1-3, the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, and that all of mankind is under this sentence of Divine judgment. If the Lord had not given us the law or written it on our hearts, there would be no sentence against us, but because He is a perfectly loving and just God, He has. Therefore, our works can only leave us in debt to God, and therefore subject to His wrath. For this reason, it must be by faith so that we can have access to the grace of God, and it can be made available to all people, Jew or Gentile. This makes Abraham the father of us all, and is a fulfilment of the Scriptures which state, “I have made you a father of many nations”
God is a miracle-working God; He gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist into existence. Abraham believed this. He was in an impossible situation, but in hope (joyful and confident expectation), believed in the promise of God. He did not allow his body which he considered to be as good as dead or the deadness of Sarah’s womb to persuade him otherwise, but was strengthened in his faith. He was fully convinced that God was able to perform what He had promised. It was for this belief that it was accounted to him for righteousness.
This wasn’t written for Abraham’s sake alone, but for ours as well. We too were dead spiritually with no hope of fixing the problem on our own, but by believing in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, God’s righteousness will be credited to our account as well. This is interesting that Paul refers to Him who raised up Jesus: all three members of the trinity are credited with the resurrection, so this could be a reference to the Father or the Holy Spirit. To believe in one person of the trinity is to believe in the others as well. God, as a triune being, is responsible for our imputed righteousness, and it is because of Jesus who died for our sins and who was raised to life again for our justification.
This is such a simple concept that people often like to complicate it further by adding to what we need to do to be saved (e.g. baptism, communion, repentance, public profession of one’s faith, etc.) Although these are all things a true Christian should do, none of them have saving power in and of themselves. The proof is that if you take any one of them alone or all of them together, they are outward acts of obedience that cannot erase sins previously committed, and only leave us fallen short of God’s righteous and holy standards. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that it was by grace that they were saved, through faith (reliance upon Christ for salvation), and not of themselves. It is the gift of God, and not of works, lest anyone should boast. There is nothing that you or I can contribute or offer God for our salvation; it is a free gift. I cannot stop doing enough bad things and do enough good things to make myself right with the Lord. I can only believe in the One who justifies the ungodly and be counted as righteous before Him. Missler writes, “The ransom has been paid. The divine justice has been appeased. The holiness of God has been vindicated. ...And the believing sinner is declared justified from all things. Such is the testimony of Chapter 4. We can’t add to it. It is blasphemy to even try.”
In closing, I want to take a look at one final passage in the Gospel of John. There was a man who came to Jesus by night named Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, part of the strictest sect in Judaism. The Pharisees prided themselves in their own righteousness, keeping the law, and even all the rules in their extra-biblical texts. Jesus did not commend him for this, nor did He even mention it. He cut right to the chase when He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” You see, being a Christian is not God reforming or improving the old man, for as we will see in a couple chapters, the old man must die. The true spiritual life is being reborn. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Co 5:17) In explaining how this re-birth takes place, He takes Nicodemus back to an Old Testament passage in numbers. The people murmured against God and against Moses, and as a result, the Lord sent poisonous snakes among them that bit them, killing many of them. After the people repented, the Lord told Moses to make a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole, so that whoever looked upon it would be healed. In the Bible, the serpent represents sin, and bronze represents judgment. Whoever trusted the word of the Lord through Moses looked upon it and was made well. So too, we have been bitten with the poisonous bite of sin, but our sin has been judged on the cross in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus told Nicodemus, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:14-15) We look to Jesus by faith, we are born again, and are imputed His righteousness. In the following chapter Paul will finish his discussion on justification by faith, and discuss how our faith in the Lord causes us to triumph in trouble.
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