Justification By Faith: Two Examples Series

One of my favorite movies is Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. It’s the true story of a lifelong con man named Frank Abegnale who, over the course of his career posed as an airline pilot, a medical doctor, a lawyer, and a college professor, all the while passing millions of dollars in fraudulent checks before finally getting caught.

In the movie, Frank idolizes his father, who in the opening scene is making a speech to his Rotary Club after accepting their Businessman of the Year award. His speech is simple. I’ll show you the clip—it’s just about a minute long.

[show clip]

There’s a reason I showed you this clip. This story of the two little mice wasn’t just the story Frank’s dad told himself. It became the story we tell ourselves all the time.

When I was trying to find the clip so I could show you, I actually found another video telling the story. Here’s a couple of screen shots from that video.

[With Great effort the mouse climbed out]

Then, the video gave what it saw as the moral of the story:

[The mouse realized God helps those who help themselves]

A 2000 Barna research poll asked over a thousand people, representing 30 different faiths whether they agreed with the statement: “The Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves.” 75% agreed that it did.

A 2016 survey conducted by LifeWay research found that three-quarters of Americans (77 percent) say people must contribute their own effort for personal salvation. Half of Americans (52 percent) say good deeds help them earn a spot in heaven.

And while I want to believe that we in the church know better, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve bought into the same myth of the two little mice—that somehow we can paddle and paddle and paddle and paddle until we churn that cream into butter and save ourselves.

Paul was facing the same issue in Romans 4. He’s taken us through the argument that neither Jew nor Gentile is righteous. All are equally under condemnation and judgment.

In other words, every one of us us in the position of these two little mice. That’s Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

But then, there’s 3:24: and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

God’s word does not say, “And are justified by their hard work and their perseverance and their commitment to paddle and paddle and paddle and paddle until they can crawl their way out of the hole.

In verse 28, he goes on,

28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

So maybe the Jews at this point were going, “Okay… okay… so GentiIes are justified by faith apart from the Law. But we Jews—we circumcised—we get there through keeping the law, right? We’re the second mouse!

And Paul says, no, no, you’re missing the point. Romans 3:30:

30 since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

And the Jews are like, no. God gave us the law. Every Jew ever is righteous because he keeps the law and unrighteous if he doesn’t. He gets circumcised on the eighth day, he doesn’t work on the sabbath, he doesn’t eat bacon, or shrimp. It’s always been that way, it always will be that way. Tradition!

And I imagine there were some people in the church in Rome—remember that this was a church made up of both Jews and Gentiles.

And maybe they had heard all of the theological, doctrinal, academic arguments that Paul had been using in the first three chapters, and maybe they’re saying, “Okay, Paul. We’ve heard your intellectual arguments. But now we want you to prove it. Show us someone who is righteous apart from the law.

And what Paul does next is brilliant. Look at it with me, beginning in Chapter 4, starting in verse 1:

4 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather 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 counted to him as righteousness.”

Now, there’s two possibilities of translation with verse 1. The option the ESV and most other translations take is that the phrase “according to the flesh” refers to Abraham—that is, Abraham is the physical ancestor of the Jewish people. However, the word order in the Greek has the phrase “according to the flesh” immediately after the verb that’s translated “gained, or found, or discovered.” Which would mean the verse ˆshould read, “What then, shall we say that Abraham our forefather gained according to the flesh?”