4:19
“And not being weak in faith…”
How’s your faith today? Let’s test it. Do you really believe that millions of years from this night you will still be alive and well? Do you really believe that Jesus rose from a grave, and that your body is going to do the same? Do you believe that because of Jesus’ work on Calvary, all your sins can be forgiven?
Then you are strong in faith. Because God said all those things and even went to the trouble to have it written down. Faith comes from hearing God’s Word. Believe God’s very words and you are strong in faith.
Faith, for us, does not mean believing everyone who stands behind a microphone or publishes a website. That’s called “credulity”. Persons who believe everything they see or hear are called gullible, not strong in faith. You are allowed to disbelieve a thousand things and still be strong in faith if you believe the right things. And the right things are recorded for us.
Prophecies fail. How do you know which ones are from God? You “feel” it? Then you are the source of truth? We should come to you every time a prophecy is given somewhere? No, false prophets have been among us
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from the beginning and they will be with us to the end. The true prophecies and teachings are in the Book God gave us. Cling to it as though your life depended on it. ‘Cause it does.
To be strong in faith means looking at and listening to the right things and ignoring the wrong things…
“…he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old),…”
What a thing to say about Abraham’s body! Already dead. There is an interesting difference between the KJV and the NKJV here: a comma. Now there are no commas in the original Greek. We put commas in to explain what is being said. Is Paul telling us that Abraham didn’t think his body was already dead, or is Paul commenting that Abraham’s body was indeed dead? The Greek doesn’t tell us. The context seems to…
I note that some of the modern translations try to help the Greek even more by suggesting that Paul was saying his body was as good as dead. I prefer to take “as good as” out, but leave the NKJV comma in. Too much liberty with a text is dangerous.
As far as Abraham was concerned, for all practical purposes, his body was now dead, in the same way as Sarah’s womb was dead. No life, humanly speaking, left in Abraham’s reproductive system, to pass on to the next generation, some descendant. I’m a hundred, for goodness’ sake. I can hardly see or hear or walk up a hill. Death has set in. My body has been dying a little at a time.
But God says I’m going to have a son. And God cannot lie. And God has all power. If he says old dead Abraham is going to have a son, then Abraham is going to have a son. And he won’t be diseased or imperfect in any way. He’ll grow to have children of his own who will also have children. Nations will come, rising up all over the earth. I believe you God. Now go ahead and do what is on your mind. I’m all in.
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Oh that we could have faith like that. Grabbing hold of a promise in the word and believing it, ignoring all that our senses tell us. What, live forever? Let me take you to the cemetery! People don’t live forever. Don’t look at the cemetery. Look at God’s promise. What, no sin, look at my past, how can it be? Don’t look at your past, look at God’s promise. What, I’m going to have a child at age one hundred? Well, that doesn’t happen. But I believe you anyway, God.
One word of caution. When you read the histories of God’s men and women, remember that you are not those people. Not everything that was promised to them will happen to you. I doubt that anyone listening is going to have a child at one hundred. We honor the faith of these people, based on the promise given to us, not to them. This is where Paul is going in this passage. Be sure you have found a promise that is directed to you before you start believing God for it!
Just for the record, men can, even today, theoretically go on having children until they die. The record seems to have been set for modern men in India, who had a child at age 96, then just decided he was done having children. That is a clear exception to the rules, and it must be noted that men who engage in child-production in later years run a serious risk of bringing a less than perfect baby into the world.
Abraham retains the record for old-age childbearing. That part of him that could bear children, or that even desired to, was dead. Desire leaves men more often than does fertility. Abraham had a lovely wife, in her day, and he was a dashing young man at one time, but the days of their spring and summer and even fall, were done.
Abraham was ninety and nine when the promise was made (Genesis 17:1). He was told the blessed event would happen on that very day one year hence. And according to 21:2, that’s exactly what happened.
Abraham was, according to Paul, “about” one hundred. Why “about” one hundred and not just one hundred? Well, Isaac was not born on
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Abraham’s birthday. If you would ask me my age, I would tell you I am seventy-two. But actually, I am seventy-two plus . In other words, I’m about seventy-two.
So, at age one hundred, Abraham was essentially dead. And let’s not forget
“…the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”
The eggs inside a woman eventually lessen and become less suitable for a pregnancy. Forty-plus is viewed as dangerously close to the edge, though women have had healthy babies into their sixties. That’s as high as most discussions of this topic go. A baby born in a woman’s sixties is called a miracle.
Abraham’s wife was ninety when the promise was confirmed to her that one year later she would have a child. She was therefore ninety-one at delivery day. Ninety-one.
The story of Abraham and Sarah is a story of resurrection. To have a resurrection you need an all-powerful God. He is introduced in 4:17, “God, who gives life to the dead.” Then you need someone dead. In this case there were two someone’s. Abraham’s body was essentially dead, as far as child-production, and Sarah’s womb was likewise dead, 4:19. Both were about to be brought to an unprecedented life. Impotence, infertility, totally reversed by the power of God, and the line that leads to Christ continues.
Before Paul finishes this subject, he will be talking of another who was dead and raised up, none other than that very Lord Jesus Christ. (4:24) Death has stalked the people of God from the beginning, from Abel to Jesus to His followers. But the gates of death and hell itself have not prevailed, nor will they!
4:20
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“He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief…”
KJV has it “staggered” which has some strange connotations in our day. Actually the Greek diakrino is translated a number of ways in the New Testament. Two of them we have before us, “stagger” and “waver”. Also “contend”, “make differ”, “discern”, “doubt”, “judge”, “be partial.” Basic meaning, “to separate thoroughly, to withdraw from or oppose, to hesitate, to discriminate.”
Do you see anything that pulls all those ideas together? Abraham was given a word from God. He took a hard look at it, ran it through his system, which now included the very grace of God, and discerned that what he was hearing was true and he could believe it. And he would choose to believe it, though he didn’t know fully why.
Faith is not intellectual understanding. And you will note that Abraham went through a process that Paul does not mention here.
Starts in Genesis 12. The introductory promise of a land, a nation, and a worldwide blessing. No comment from Abraham? He just up and went. It was childlike faith. God found him, somehow revealed himself to him, and he just believed.
But in Egypt he had to help God out a little, and lied about his wife. He got rebuked by man, but God let it pass, because at least Abraham was on the right path.
Genesis 13, another phase, a repetition about the land and the descendants that would come from him. Well, he could see the land. God had come through so far, sure He’ll keep the rest of the promise. But I am getting a little older here!
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Genesis 14, loses and regains Lot, and meets the Lord in the person of Melchizedek, who blesses Him. A shot in the arm, like we all need sometimes, and Abraham carries on.
In Genesis 15, we see what actually looks like the wavering or staggering or whatever that word means. God comes to him again, and Abraham says, I don’t get it. No child has come to us yet. How can I have all those descendants you are talking about?
Here was the hardest test so far. When God is moving and blessing and guiding and we see visible results of His hand on our lives we say, I believe! I’m with you! But when time passes and passes and passes and nothing happens? So God had to assure him again, No, it’s going to happen. Can you trust me in the dark? You’ve trusted me this far.
Here is where the famous salvation-by-faith passage shows up. Abraham says, okay, I don’t see how this could possibly happen, but I believe. That’s when God’s righteousness was conferred to Abraham.
That’s how it is conferred to you. Lord, I’ve been so bad. I know you promise to forgive anyone who comes to you, but look, Lord, my past is obnoxious. When God says, Trust Me anyway, and you say, okay, I believe you will save me, you are saved.
Abraham keeps asking questions, keeps making some faith-less decisions, but God is faithful. You may have messed up even after you trusted Christ, but God is faithful. Just keep walking with Him as Abraham did. God’s promises will be kept!
“…but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God.”
Every time he asked God for help in his faith, God gave him that help, and his faith grew stronger. God will never make faith sight while He is asking you to believe, or else it wouldn’t be faith any longer. But He will strengthen your faith by little clues, other Scriptures, providential
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happenings, nudges along the way. We are not totally blind on our way, but believing God for what he has promised is essential to our walk with Him.
When we believe God is going to do what He said He would do, and then God does it, God gets all the glory. There isn’t a specific Scripture in Genesis that talks about Abraham “glorifying God.” The point is that faith glorifies God. You want to be one who brings God glory? Trust Him! Trust His Word, even in the most difficult parts.
They said – and still say – the story of Jonah is foolish. Whales couldn’t swallow humans and the humans live to tell about it. True, but “whale” is not in that passage, rather “great fish.” I always believed that story. Then one day they were cutting up a shark back in the 1940’s, and lo and behold! a live human being. Those who had held fast to the Scriptures when all were laughing at them, gave God glory when the Scripture was confirmed.
4:21
“and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform.”
There are people who make promises to us, and we have trouble believing them because we are not sure they are able to perform them. “I will love you forever,” says the man under the moonlight, but forever is a long time, and this man will grow old and die. Or find someone else to love someday. Can I believe his grand words?
Then there are those with the power but who really don’t want to promise me anything. Bill Gates could take care of my financial needs for the rest of my life. He has the power, but as far as I know he’s not interested in such a proposal.
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When you find someone who has the will and the power to bless you, you have struck it rich. Abraham found such a one. And Abraham was not necessarily looking for this God. God chose him out of all the pagans living in Ur of the Chaldees, 2000 B.C. He revealed himself to Abraham several times as a believable friend and guide. Led him to Canaan. Let him survive a famine. Helped rescue his nephew. Blessed him through Melchizedek.
By the time Abraham was confronted again with the promise, He was convinced that this God could do whatever He said He could do. Not only could, but would. So he believed. And changed history. Not only world history, but his own, as we have already seen, and as Paul repeats in verse 22:
4:22
“And therefore, ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness.’” Abraham was listening hard here. God was promising a son. A nation.
Many nations. The land. Prosperity. Why, the whole world was going to be blessed through him. But when had the subject of righteousness come up?
When had the Lord said to him, Seek Me and My righteousness, and all these material blessings will come to you? I see no record of it. Maybe behind the scenes, unrecorded.
Is it true that the goodness of God in our lives brings us eventually to look at our sin, our need to be holy before a holy God? When I first began to seek the Lord, it wasn’t for righteousness. I wanted a phone call from my dad. That’s it. I got that. And that phone call caused me to move ahead with the relationship.
My parents got a bag of groceries from the local church. That motivated them to take me to church. They never went back. I have never stopped.
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And oh, along the way, I ran into righteousness, holiness, the Spirit, the end-time prophecies, the Scriptures…
Don’t be concerned about the order of events in your life or the lives of those to whom you will offer salvation. They may not be interested in salvation, but a cup of cold water or a shared meal or a few dollars might be your part in their salvation history. Don’t be ashamed to share the Good News, but not everyone is ready for the whole story right now.
Abraham believed God for the material things God was promising, then introduced to him a new idea altogether. Righteousness. Right standing with God. You believe Me for these things? Now you can believe Me to make everything right in Heaven concerning Abraham. Now you can truly be a friend of God. By chapter 18 in Genesis, we see the Lord God of Heaven condescending to this Abraham, sharing his plans with him, listening to his intercessions.
Good things can happen when you start believing.
4:23
“Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him,”
Now we come to the real reason that you and I in this century, most of us Gentiles, are even talking still about a man who lived four thousand years ago. Paul is very to-the-point here. He says, God did not give us this record of Abraham for Abraham’s sake, or for the Jews’ sake. He’s not just talking about an ancient patriarch, as good as that story is. Imputation hasn’t gone out of style. Imputation is God’s way of saving many people. Imputation is in fact the only way God saves fallen man.
And for those who could possibly have forgotten, we are all fallen. The human race is lost without God’s saving us. And the only way He could do it is by taking the righteousness of His Son and crediting it to us.
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4:24
“but also for us.”
How clear can it be? These verses Paul has been quoting from Genesis are for us. Bring it home, Christian. You are in the book of Genesis. You were in the mind of God from the beginning and from before the beginning.
You were there in the mind of God, at and before the foundation of the world, because that is when the Lamb was slain for you.
Revelation 13:8 speaks of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. When the earth and solar system was put in place, the plan of salvation was in place too. In the mind of God Jesus was already sacrificed, and all the things He allowed the planet to go through until then were just building up to the one moment when He would appear and take care of sins forever.
Hebrews 9 points out that it was only one sacrifice that was needed. When God does something, it is finished. He says, this is not like the Jewish sacrifices that had to take place every year. If it was like that, he says, this Jesus would have had to offer Himself as a sacrifice to God every year, and He still would be offering Himself, as in the Roman mass heresy. Six thousand years, once a year, six thousand sacrifices.
No, just one. And in that sacrifice the Lamb takes away the sins of the world. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive them.
There was a lot going on in God’s mind even before the foundation of the world. Paul in Ephesians 1:4-5 says that God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world…. Having predestinated us to adoption as sons… according to the good pleasure of His will… He chose us, determined the holy life we would live, decreed our adoption in Heaven. It’s all been settled long ago. It’s a done deal:
“It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him…”
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What shall be imputed? Righteousness. The same righteousness that Abraham received. And who shall receive this blessing? Everyone in the world? The Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, right? So everyone is saved now?
Not in my book of Romans. It shall be imputed to us who believe in the same God as Abraham, who trust His promises and yield their lives to Him. Remember that, even though it was of grace, Abraham had to believe. God didn’t grant righteousness to the other pagans in Chaldea or Canaan. Abraham believed God’s Word. When you truly believe God’s Word of salvation, you too shall have righteousness credited to your account.
Later in the epistle Paul will say that with the heart we believe and receive righteousness, then with the mouth we confess and that salvation is now flowing through the system. Starts with grace on the inner man. That stirs up hope. Hope soon becomes faith. Faith travels up through the mouth gate and turns into salvation, deliverance from sin. But it is not just a generic faith, according to Paul, it is a faith in the God who raised up Jesus from the dead, and he says that first, right here.
“who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead,”
Abraham was dead as far as any capability or desire to have children. God raised Abraham from that death. Sarah’s womb was dead. God raised up Sarah’s womb.
Jesus too was dead. There was no human way for man to be saved now.
Do we understand that even Christ’s death was not enough, without His resurrection? Paul says later that we cannot be saved unless we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. Why? The price has been paid. It is finished. Debts canceled. Why couldn’t Jesus just return to Heaven at that moment? After all, His resurrection has been a major stumbling-block to
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faith for many. Even in Paul’s day, whether he spoke to the wise Greek Athenians or the Edomite Agrippa or the Roman Festus, resurrection was the line over which people would not go. They appreciate the martyr Jesus, the Jesus of fond memory. Why didn’t God leave it there?
Why the resurrection? Paul is actually going to deal with this in the next and final verse of chapter four, when he talks about the Jesus
4:25
“…who was delivered up because of our offenses…”
This part we have come to understand, though who appreciates it as he ought? A sacrifice for sin had to be made. Jesus offered Himself up to be that Sacrifice.
The word for “delivered” is used in Acts 12:4 and 27:1, speaking of how both Paul and Peter were given over to the authorities and imprisoned. We came across that same word in 1:24, where Paul speaks of how God “gave them over” to uncleanness. It’s a transfer from one authority to another. God wants to rule our lives. We won’t have it, so He says, okay, rule yourself.
Jesus wanted to rule men’s hearts. They said no, and transferred Him to those who could harm Him.
A real translation problem surfaces in this verse. Normally the differences between the two translations are minor “cosmetic” surface issues. Here, a bit more.
One little Greek preposition can make a doctrinal difference if it is translated one way or the other. And Greek prepositions can go different ways, even as English.
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Notice the KJV says that Jesus was delivered up for our offenses. The NKJV has taken an alternate meaning of the Greek dia and says that Jesus was delivered up “because of” our offenses.
Leaving the Greek for a moment, let’s look at the English. Do “for” and “because of” mean the same to us? “I’d be willing to die for you.” That means, if I had to donate an organ, or take a bullet aimed at your body, I’d do it in a minute.
Or we could say, I think I’m going to die because of you. That’s a statement of blame. You gave me the wrong medicine. You crashed the car I was riding in.
I notice that most translations follow the KJV here, and stay with “for.” The Amplified says “because of” in this part of the verse, then says “to secure” in the last part. That‘s an interpretation, and a good one, I think, but not a translation.
Both KJV and NKJV wanted to be consistent, and translate dia the same way. Although “because of” makes Biblical sense in part A, it’s a little stiff in part B. Let’s look at that:
“…and was raised [for, because of] our justification.”
To put “because of” there makes it sound like justification came first, then came His resurrection. “For”, on the other hand, means that it was the resurrection that justified us.
Which is it? Back to that question: Why did Jesus absolutely have to rise from the dead?
Imagine if Jesus had not raised. What have we then? Just another dead man who made a lot of big claims. But He’s gone. He said He was the Son of God. He said he would rise the third day. He said we too will be raised and live forever with Him. He promised all this and so much more.
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And if He does not rise? What then? None of the promises are true. He was not the Savior from sin after all. He did not have the power over death and hell after all. A dead dishonest Messiah is no Messiah at all. The Jews had had their Messiahs before. They would have others later.
But none rose from the dead! Except Jesus. It was the resurrection that God used to point to His Son. It was the resurrection that had to be seen by eyewitnesses and written in a book for us. And if we believe that God raised this Jesus, this Messiah, from the dead, we also believe in the atonement He effected at his death.
Salvation was finished on the cross. It was declared by His resurrection. One without the other will not work. A bloodless salvation or a salvation without a resurrection, impossible.
I think KJV has it right. He was raised for our justification. We must believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, just as Abraham, in this precious fourth chapter of Romans, and the book of Genesis, believed God that God would raise up his dead fertility and Sarah’s dead womb, and produce a son. Not just any son, but a son whose line would one day produce the Son.
That faith justifies us before God. Makes us righteous. Puts us in right standing.
