4:13
“For the promise that he would be the heir of the world…”
Heir of the world. This one man, Abraham, to be heir of the world? And not just Abraham, though it was to him that the promise was first given. Where is this promise? Genesis 12:3, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 15:5, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able… so shall your descendants be.” Genesis 18:18, “… all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in Abraham.” Genesis 22:18, “In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed…”
In Genesis 15:18-21, Abraham’s descendants are promised a specific land from which they will bless the nations. Abraham is promised innumerable people, fatherhood over many nations, to be a blessing to the entire world.
What a promise. Jesus added in Matthew 5 that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” Those who are of faith produce that sort of fruit that makes them suitable to receive such blessings. We are included in this promise to Abraham. He inherits the earth. We inherit the earth.
The connecting verses that put Abraham and “the meek” together are in Galatians 3. First, verse 16: “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ.”
This time I believe the New King James misses it and the King James is right on. The Hebrew is clear. The word for seed is zehrah . It means literally a physical seed, like an apple seed. It can have a figurative meaning, like “child”. But in the context, and in connection with what Paul says later, as God’s Spirit-led interpreter of the Hebrew text, it can never
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mean “descendants”, plural. The NKJV people were trying to help us out by using a more familiar word, but they missed the idea altogether.
Paul says God was promising a particular Seed, or child, or descendant, in that passage, and that particular Child is none other than the Son, not only of Abraham, but of God. What else does Paul say in Galatians 3? In verse 26, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” So the promise is to a Seed or Child that will come from Abraham. Jesus is that Child. And through faith in this Child you are a son of God. Then in verses 28 and 29: “… for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Huge! Abraham inherits the earth. Through Christ. But I am in Christ. So I inherit the earth with him and all the “meek-hearted” children of God, the born-again that look like Jesus, who said of Himself, “I am meek and lowly of heart.”
“was not to Abraham or his seed through the law…”
He has already proved it was not through circumcision that Abraham was justified, made right with God, because Abraham had saving faith before he was circumcised. Now, if that is true, it obviously follows that Abraham was not saved by the law, because the law of Moses did not show up for another five hundred years! No poster showing the Ten Commandments was in Abraham’s kitchen. No Scripture box was at the door or worn around his neck. Isaac was not going to sit and memorize Torah. There was no Torah.
The law is holy and good and pure, but it cannot save. God’s law was written on Abraham’s heart. And it is that same method that God uses to this day. Christ first, then the ways of Christ through His Spirit. The letter still kills, but the Spirit guiding us gives life.
We are people of the Book because the Book reveals Christ. To try to live the Book without Christ is vain and leads to Pharisaism. But on the other
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hand, a man who has met Christ loves the Book, as a woman in love delights in those love notes and poems sent to her by the lover.
“… but through the righteousness of faith.”
How odd the juxtaposition of those two words seems to us, even though we have known Him many years. Righteousness. Faith. A righteousness procured by faith. And not just any faith. But faith in the promises of God. Faith in the provision of God, as Abraham had, remember, on his own “Calvary” hill, where he almost sacrificed his own son. What was his faith? The Lord will provide a sacrifice. What is our faith? The Lord has provided a sacrifice. This is our joy. This is our life.
4:14
“For if those who are of the law are heirs…”
Another point to be made in favor of his case. Imagine with him that only those who keep the law are heirs of the promise. Here’s my promise, says God. Keep the law perfectly and I’ll let you inherit the whole world. It’s all yours. Just keep the law.
What a tragic and sad thing for God to dangle in front of humanity. We are altogether born in sin. We are all about ourselves from the moment we come through the birth canal into the river of life. Screaming, crying, give me this and that. And that commitment to the flesh does not change until God changes it.
Now here is God standing before us, after we probably already have broken the law, and saying, just keep it perfectly, and you’re in?
“faith is made void.”
A little different word from 4:1, where the Greek can mean “abolish altogether.” Here the Greek means to make empty, vain. You can still
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believe if you want, but it’s not going to do you any good. How can I believe a promise when the promise is conditional on me keeping the law?
“… and the promise made of no effect.”
The angry father confronts the teenager who has just wrecked his car. Son, you do not drive this car until you learn how to drive it! The son could well ask, How do I learn to drive Dad’s car if he never lets me drive it? A vain promise. An empty promise. No effect.
The mortgage officer calls. Ma’am, we’d love to have you keep your house. But you’re three payments behind. You can keep your house if you will make those three payments by Wednesday at 1 p.m. An empty promise. An impossible condition. She can’t pay, or she would have.
That brings us closer to the truth of our situation. We can’t pay. We sinned. We are not righteous. If we could only be righteous by God’s standards, we would. Or if we could pay for the sins committed, we would. But we can’t. The promise of eternal life is still out there, but we don’t have the price.
So God through Jesus pays the price. Believe in Jesus’ righteousness applied to your soul, and you’re back in business. The promise is yours. Not through the law. Through faith.
3:15
“because the law brings about wrath;”
We’ll learn more later about how good and holy the law is. But wherever it shows up, God’s anger shows up with it. Look at Israel in the wilderness. Given the law at Sinai. Unbelief and rebellion set in. A golden calf.
Murmuring. Complaining. Covetousness. All the original nation, over twenty years, old dies in the wilderness.
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Look at that same Israel in the Promised Land. The tabernacle becomes the temple. The law of God is enthroned in the Ark of the Covenant.
These were a people of the book if ever there was one.
But over the decades the book gets lost. Disobedience set in. Idolatry. Pagan practices. Josiah finds the book and brings revival to the nation by following it. But it is too late. The corruption of disobedience has been ingrained too long. The temple goes down, the very walls of Jerusalem go down. The law has been broken and God is angry.
“God is angry with the sinner every day.” The sinner breaks the law. The law brings wrath.
“… for where there is no law, there is no transgression.”
You own farmland. You take your little dirt bike and speed across it any which way. Travel as fast as you please. Turn left and right with no signal. Slam on the brake with no warning. And nothing will happen. There is no law on your farmland. You’re free.
Take that bike outside the limits of your farm, on to a county road, where the posted speed is 35. Travel 40 miles an hour and you are a law-breaker. If the law officer is near, you will pay the price for breaking the law.
You cannot transgress, and therefore be punished for breaking, a law that does not exist. He is not saying here that ignorance of a law is an excuse. He made it clear in chapters one and two that all men are included under sin if only their conscience convicted them of such. No, he is saying that the absence of law is what makes the difference between God’s wrath and God’s favor.
There has never been a time on the planet when some law or other did not apply to man. There were no Ten Commandments in the Garden. Only
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one rule. Cain was a murderer and was convicted of such. Nimrod opposed God. That was enough, Moses or no Moses.
Law has prevailed in Heaven and on earth from the beginning. It is the breaking of law that brings and will always bring, God’s wrath.
Paul brings out in the next chapter that sin was in the world from Adam, but that it was not “imputed” or “credited” until Moses. Sin brings death, and death surely entered the planet before Mt. Sinai, but the official recording of what sin is and how God must judge it, did not enter the world until the Sinai event.
We’ll talk more of that in chapter 5. For now, the simple statement that if there is no law, there can be no breaking of the law, and therefore no punishment for it. It is a hypothetical case of which Paul speaks, a bit different from what he will say in chapter 5. It is saying that, in fact, since there is always “law” present in some form or other, man is always condemned by breaking it. Man needs another way to find favor with God.
4:16
“Therefore…”
What’s the “therefore” there for? Since the promise given had nothing to do with law, since you’ve got to have a law to have a sin, since the law brings wrath but Abraham didn’t break a law here, he just believed… since all of that is true, we conclude that
“…(it is) of faith…”
What is of faith? What are we talking about? The promise! I’m giving you a promise that the law will not be able to stop. I’m telling you something that can only be accepted by faith. You’re going to be the heir of the world, Abraham, not because of anything you did or did not do. Do you
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believe it? Yes, says Abraham, I believe it! So now he’s got it. His faith earned it? Oh no, Paul won’t allow that:
“… that it might be according to grace…”
You think you can believe without grace? How can you believe the promises of the Bible? You weren’t there when they were first given out. You didn’t hear a voice from Heaven or have one of the apostles or prophets speak to you. Where does your faith come from? Why do you believe the Bible so freely and simply? Grace. By grace we are saved, by means of faith.
Grace supernaturally flows into faith which produces salvation. You only thought you believed all by yourself. Not so. Grace came first. Touched your heart. You responded by believing. That’s what happened to our father in the faith 4,000 years ago…
“…so that the promise might be sure to all the seed…”
The descendants. All those who are going to be included in the promise are made aware of it by grace. Abraham’s faith alone would not do it. He’s a great example, but if the grace of God were not sent ahead to all those that God has included in the promise, those people would not believe like he did. It had to be faith, yes. But it had to be grace, even more than that.
You mean faith does not equal righteousness? Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible says that faith was counted or accounted or credited as righteousness. God puts the grace in, faith is produced and you are saved. If it is just you trying to believe impossible things and somehow some days believing and some days not, you could claim that as proof that you worked your way to God’s favor. Even believing could be considered merit.
But no man can claim merit before God! It’s all of grace.
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From the great hymn of Charles Wesley. He sure sounds like John Calvin sometimes, though the Wesleys were on the other side of that argument:
“ ‘Tis mystery all! The immortal dies! Who can explore His strange design? “In vain the firstborn seraph tries to sound the depths of love divine!
“‘Tis mercy all! Let earth adore, let angel minds inquire no more.”
Mystery and mercy, every bit of it. Grace all. We didn’t die for our sins. We didn’t give new birth to ourselves. We didn’t come to Jesus first. He came to us and what could we say to such love as He offered? A total pardon for eternity.
“… not only to those who are of the law…”
That is, the Jew. He has made this point already. “… but to those who are of the faith of Abraham…”
He does not say “Gentile” here, but merely expands the borders of the Kingdom to include any person of any ethnic background who has saving faith, the faith of Abraham, who was justified freely by God before he obeyed one command of the law, which did not exist at the time, or before the physical rite of circumcision.
“… who is the father of us all…”
No need to belabor this point. Paul has explained clearly why he considers Abraham to be the father of Jew and Gentile believers. But he does add another explanatory Scripture here, Genesis 17:5.
4:17
“(as it is written, ‘I have made you a father of many nations’)”
“Many” doesn’t tell it all. He has already said in verse 2 of that chapter that he is going to be multiplied exceedingly. The Hebrew hamon is not
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the normal word for “many.” It is translated “multitude” in other places, and actually literally means a “noise”, a “tumult”, a “loud sound.” Amos 5:23 has God declaring to Israel, “Take away from me the noise – hamon – of your songs.” God doesn’t want to hear Israel singing songs they don’t mean. But he uses the same word as is given to Abraham. Much noise implies many people. A multitude of nations make a lot of noise.
We usually think of the physical nations that came from Abraham. Of course, Israel and Judah. Through his actual firstborn Ishmael came the Ishmaelite nation. Through grandson Esau came the Edomites. Through his wife Keturah came the Midianites. By extension one might want to include nephew Lot’s two creations, Ammonites and Moabites. I read fanciful speculations online of other possibilities, but suffice it to say that even in the natural, the promises were fulfilled.
But the point Paul is making goes far beyond the natural. He has told us that any man from any nation who believes in Jesus is Abraham’s seed. Abraham then becomes the father, the origin of spiritual blessing, of all the families of the earth, as was the original statement of the promise.
Not just a multitude of people. A multitude – a huge noise – of nations ! “… in the presence of Him whom he believed – God…”
A very curious arrangement of words here, giving rise to different translations and different interpretations, none of which are seriously significant to the overall text, but which deserve a bit of consideration.
The word translated “before” in the KJV seems to be a key. That word is translated “before” only here in the entire New Testament. “Before” translates many other Greek words, and over two hundred usages of the word in English come from those other words. So why translate katenanti as “before” here? The word according to Strong means “directly opposite.” The -enanti part means in front of. So the idea is of something or someone standing right across from you, and very close to you.
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That’s why the NKJV decided to clarify with “in the presence” as opposed to “coming ahead of in time”. Mark 13:3 uses the same Greek word in Mark 13:3, talking about how Jesus was sitting “over against” (KJV) or “opposite” the temple. He was facing the temple, relatively close to it, so He could use it as a part of his lesson.
God appointed Abraham to be a Father of many nations in a face-to-face encounter that stretches through most of Genesis 17. He had spoken to Him before. He had given Him a vision of Himself before. But in this chapter that Paul quotes, the Lord “appeared” to Him and started talking. Abram immediately went to His face. The conversation continues, God doing all the talking, and when He was finished, it says “God went up from Abraham.”
God was directly opposite. God was in front of Him, next to Him, face-to- face. Oh, Abraham already believed, according to chapter 15. But now, Paul says, the God whom He believed showed up in person. Faith comes first, then sight. Trust him for your righteousness, follow His Word, but don’t be surprised if other encounters occur as needed. Don’t be disappointed if they do not. One day all of us will have an encounter with the God that we trusted. Faith will become sight for us all, and we too will all land on our faces before God, joining the four and twenty elders, the angels and saints of all time, worshiping Him and hearing His voice speak to us.
“…Who gives life to the dead…”
Why bring that up here? The promise was about life. Many nations coming from my body! That has to start with the first child. But it hadn’t started yet! One hundred years old. I’m dead to desire. I’m dead to fertility. My wife’s womb is dead. Nothing lives in there.
It’s okay, Abraham. God gives life to the dead. Some of you have hoped for something to happen, some promise to be kept to you that hasn’t
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materialized yet. Your hopes have died. You don’t even pray for it any more. But God, if and when He so desires, can give life to the dead. If your prayer needs to change, He will tell you how to change it. But don’t stop praying. God gives life to dead things.
When Jesus was here, He proved how He can do that. He is resurrection. He is life. His own dead body was raised by that same Spirit that gave life to Sarah’s womb, and will give life to your own dead body one day.
“…and calls those things which do not exist as though they did…”
The many nations that were coming did not exist in Abraham’s day. God spoke of them as though they did exist. And one day, they did.
One day this planet did not exist. God said, Let there be, and it was.
Gideon, a mighty man of valor? That man did not exist when the angel first confronted Gideon, hiding with all his people from the oppression of the Midianites. But God called it into being by speaking the word to Him.
The Seed that would eventually crush the serpent’s head did not yet exist on earth, but one day He would be here. The King that will reign in righteousness and the Kingdom itself, are not in place yet, but they will be. Because God kept His promises to Abraham, we know He will keep the other promises He has made.
What does not exist in your life? Love, joy, peace? When the Spirit of God is allowed full sway, they will come and flourish. Because of God speaking His Word into your life, those things which do not exist now, and can only be received by faith now, will materialize before us… just as in the life of Abraham,
4:18
“…who, contrary to hope, in hope believed…”
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We lump faith and hope together as though they were the same. In English it can seem that way. “I’m hoping for a good harvest this year. I believe I’m going to have a good harvest this year.”
The way the language has deteriorated, neither of those expressions convey the Biblical idea. But notice that even in the text before us, “hope” is used two ways:
“Contrary to hope” means that in Abraham’s experience, nothing like this had ever happened before or was about to happen. This kind of hope is a natural expectation. We have reason to hope for the sun to rise tomorrow and the grass to grow in the spring. But we have trouble hoping that one terminally ill will survive or that a child can be born to a person in her 70’s or 80’s. It is contrary to our normal expectation that these kinds of things will happen. Life is life and it has certain rules, and we must abide by them. Yes, and the Enemy comes along and reinforces the fact that what we see under the sun is all there is.
But that “hope” can be re-educated. Do you hope to rise again, Christian? Yes. You’ve seen how God intervenes in human affairs and changes all the rules. Jesus rose from the dead, as did Lazarus and several other Bible figures. So your hope is now different. Now, though Abram’s normal hope says “this cannot happen”, something has come along to change his expectation.
That something is a word from God, believed on from the heart.
Oh sure, his name was Abram, “father of many”. Hope was built into his very name. But what disappointment, even ridicule perhaps, that he had to bear over the decades as it seemed to become clear that the father of many was to be the father of none. Abram was losing hope. He complained to God that the only hope he had of passing on his legacy was to give everything to the hired servant.
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Then God spoke. And Abram believed God. In hope, he believed God. The KJV gives the idea that Abram believed in a thing called hope. No, the other way around, as corrected by the Greek and the NKJV, “in hope, believed.”
The hope came seconds before the faith. He had lost hope. Now he gains hope. Something is saying, “It not only can be, it will be.” Hope rose up and out of hope came faith.
This is consistent with Hebrews 11:1. “Faith is the substance – the realization – of things hoped for…” Hope is born, giving us the incentive to believe. It’s a fine line of difference, but one that is drawn by Scripture writers and therefore profitable for us.
Most men are lost, without hope. When we preach the Gospel, some of them are awakened by hope. They listen more closely. And one day they believe. Hope is a bit generic. It gets our attention, it keeps us alive long enough to believe. Faith is specific. It gives me the ground upon which I can hope.
That’s why false gospels are so tragic. A man is awakened by the possibility of life not being so bad after all. He listens to the false message, whether the prosperity gospel or the signs and wonders gospel or the social gospel and he believes it, because his hope said maybe there is something more, something better.
Abraham and all his seed have been given not only a generic hope, but a specific word to believe, the word of faith in Jesus Christ. Abraham first believed it,
“… so that he became the father of many nations…”
Again without belaboring a point, Abraham was infused with the grace of God to hope, to expect something from God that minutes before he did not expect, for all expectation was gone. From hope he jumped to
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outright belief, and the belief turned into a reality. We have already listed all the nations that were the outcome of God’s grace and the faith given to Abraham,
“…according to what was spoken, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ ”
Paul takes us back to Genesis 15:5 here, and that wonderful night when Abraham looked into a star-filled sky and started counting stars, but had to leave off, because you can’t count stars. Then perhaps he began imagining nations and peoples and started counting them, but again had to leave off, because God said, “You can’t count them, either.”
