It might be good to stop for a moment and think again about what it was that occasioned this letter from Paul. Remember that he’s planning to visit Rome but has so far been prevented. But in the meantime he wants to make sure that the Christians in Rome have a sure foundation for their faith. He’s very much aware that the gospel he’s been preaching is opposed on various fronts, but most especially it’s been opposed by those who come from a Jewish background, both outside and inside the Church. His opponents have been trying hard to undermine him by repeatedly going back to the Jewish heritage of the Church. They would have argued that the Scriptures were the word of God, and so Christians should be obeying what those Scriptures taught. It was a very clever and subtle argument, even if their methods of stopping Paul weren’t so subtle at times.
You see, the argument they were using was that the Christian Faith sprang out of the Jewish faith; that therefore the Jewish law was still in force. After all, wasn’t Jesus a Jew? Didn’t he come from the line of David and before him from Abraham? And surely Abraham as the Father of the Jewish nation should be followed. And of course it was Abraham who was instructed by God to circumcise his son as a sign that he was part of the covenant people of God. Can you see how the argument must have gone?
Abraham’s righteousness: By works or by Faith
Well, Paul has just finished arguing that obeying the law will do no-one any good as far as earning eternal life is concerned, but he still needs to deal with this question, "What about Abraham and circumcision?" So that’s what he goes on to consider. He asks "What was it that Abraham discovered as far as salvation is concerned?"
Now this is an area where it’s very easy to get confused. You see Abraham did lots of things that showed that he believed God. He left his home in Haran and followed God to some unknown destination. He didn’t give up when it seemed impossible that he and Sarah might have a child. He was ready to sacrifice Isaac when God asked him to. And it would seem at a first glance that all these things he did were what earned him God’s good pleasure.
So Paul asks: "what does the scripture say?" Well, what does it say? "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness."
Now Paul quotes this verse from Gen 15 knowing full well that the Jewish teachers had used it in the past to show how Abraham’s action had merited the righteous verdict by God. So he quotes it for a good reason. He wants to clear up that misunderstanding. Belief in God’s promise doesn’t constitute good works. When God says he reckons it as righteousness the whole idea is that it’s not earned. It’s without merit. Look at the argument in v4.
If someone works for a wage, at the end of the day they receive their wage as a right. There’s no need to reckon it to them, they just get it because it’s theirs by right. The idea of something being ’reckoned to you’ seems to be like a funds transfer from one persons account to another. It’s not their money until it’s transferred. So God assigns to Abraham a righteousness that he didn’t have by himself purely on the grounds that Abraham believed him.
Now notice that this isn’t something that’s confined to the experience of Abraham alone. David also experienced the unmerited favour of God. David also received a declaration of righteousness that he hadn’t earned. v6: "David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works: 7"Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin." David understood well the need for forgiveness. He knew how flawed we all are, even those who are chosen by God to do special things. And he knew that if we’re to be counted righteous by God, it will only be as a result of God’s good pleasure. It’ll only be if he doesn’t reckon our sin against us, but instead reckons us righteous.
And in fact as we saw in Rom 3:25-26 this has always been the case. God has always forgiven people on the grounds of his grace, reckoning righteousness to them as a gift on the basis of their faith in his promises.
But even if that’s the case, if God reckoned Abraham righteous and David righteous as a gift, the question still remains are the Jewish people better off than Gentiles? "9Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised?" The Jews thought that they were the special objects of God’s love and mercy. They thought that God’s choice of them meant that the righteousness he offered was also just for them and that to receive that blessing people needed to become Jews. But that’s to forget the circumstances under which Abraham received this blessing.
At what stage was Abraham declared to be righteous by God? Was it before or after he was circumcised? In other words, which is primary? Is it his place as father of the Jewish nation which matters most, or is it his belief in God’s promise that matters most?
Well, he says, wasn’t it before he was circumcised? In fact circumcision, the sign of membership of the Jewish people, was given later, as a sign or a seal, of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.
And what’s more, he says, what was the content of the promise of God that Abraham believed in the first place? Wasn’t it that he’d become the father, not just of the Jewish nation, not just of the people of Israel, but the father of many nations? So how can he be the father of many nations? He isn’t Adam. Only a few of the people’s of the world physically descend from him. Yet God promised that he’d be the father of many nations. In fact didn’t he say that all people’s on earth would be blessed through him? So how can that be?
Well, it can be because the primary characteristic for which he was reckoned as righteous, wasn’t anything he did. It wasn’t any physical characteristic. It was that he believed God’s promises. So he’s found to be the father of all those who down the centuries have also believed God’s promises.
Because God’s promise to Abraham was something that could only be received through faith, so that promise can also be received by anyone who will believe it.
What was the nature of the promise that God made to Abraham? Well, God promised that he would become the Father of many nations, and that all the nations of earth would be blessed through him. Paul extends this to include the later promises made to his people, that their king would rule over the earth.
And how was Abraham to achieve this promise? Well, he wasn’t, was he? There was no idea in what God said that he had to do something to bring the promise about. In fact as he suggests in v17, Abraham and Sarah were as good as dead as far as having children was concerned. There was nothing they could do about it. In fact Sarah just laughed when she heard that she was about to get pregnant. But Abraham believed in a God who gives life to the dead. He believed in a God who calls into existence things that don’t exist.
Notice the importance of a clear understanding of the nature of God in all this. Abraham’s faith wasn’t blind faith. He didn’t just take a punt on God’s promises coming true. He believed that God was God. That he was the one who brought the universe into being. Who created this world out of nothing. And if the God you believe in can do that, then he could certainly cause Sarah to fall pregnant.
So what was the nature of Abraham’s response to God’s promise? It was to believe. Certainly he acted on that belief. He left home and travelled to an unknown destination, but, it was his belief in the nature of God as creator and sustainer that mattered.
So what does that say to us? Well it says that Abraham is in fact the father, not just of Jews, but of all those who follow him in their faith in God. Can you see why that’s so? Look at v14: "14If it were the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith would be nullified and the promise would be void." If what mattered was the physical descent, and the adherence to the external law, then we’d no longer need to rely on God’s promise. We’d know one way or the other whether we were OK. If we weren’t descended from Abraham, then we’d be lost and if we were, then we’d be OK as long as we kept the law. Of course that’s a problem because none of us can keep the law, and in the end all the law does for us is to bring God’s wrath down on us, so that wouldn’t be a solution at all would it? On the other hand, if it’s those who have faith in God’s promises who are the true descendants of Abraham, then it’s a different story. Then we find that all people are included. Those who are circumcised, that is Jews, are included on the basis of their faith in God, and those who are uncircumcised are also included on the basis of their faith in God. All are included on the basis that they share the faith of Abraham. So Abraham becomes the father of many nations, nations of those who believe in the promise of God to reckon to all of us the righteousness that comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So what does that do to our good works? What does it say about Abraham’s obedience in leaving Haran and travelling to Canaan at God’s behest. Well, it says that the mere action itself isn’t what justifies us or him. Abraham’s obedience wasn’t what made him righteous. But at the same time his actions are the signs of his belief. It would have been no use Abraham saying he believed God and remaining right where he was. He had to get up and go as a sign of his faith in God. So too, our faith in God will inevitably lead to changes in the way we behave. As we’ll see in a couple of chapters time, our faith in Jesus Christ as the means of righteousness doesn’t remove the need to live righteous lives. In fact the opposite is true. If we claim a righteousness that comes by faith in Christ, we’ll be even more motivated to obey God, to live up to this new status we have before God. But our obedience will never be the basis on which we claim to be right with God any more than Abraham circumcising his son made him right with God. No our standing before God comes about because we, like Abraham, believe God’s promise to give us a righteousness won for us by Jesus Christ.
So, this is how Paul finishes this part of his letter. He wants to remind us that what we discover in the story of Abraham is recorded not just for the sake of Abraham’s immediate descendants, but for us as well. We too will have God’s righteousness reckoned to us if we too are people who believe God’s promises. Mind you the promise that we’re called to believe is a bit different to what Abraham believed. Different at least in the sense that it’s far more fully developed. The promise that we’re called to believe is what we discovered last week: that God will justify us freely by grace, that is as a gift, on the basis that Jesus died on our behalf.
What does he say in v25? That he "was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification." The lesson that we all need to learn from the story of Abraham is that God justifies all people on the grounds of faith, on the grounds of their belief in God’s promise, on the grounds of their trust in the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Abraham is the father not just of the Jewish nation, but of all who have faith in God: God who brought the world into being, God who called Abraham to be the Father of a great nation, God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead for our justification.
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