Day: October 1, 2023

ABRAHAM BELIEVED

Romans 4:1-5 NET.

¹ What then shall we say that Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh, has discovered regarding this matter? ² For if Abraham was declared righteous by the works of the law, he has something to boast about — but not before God. ³ For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” ⁴ Now to the one who works, his pay is not credited due to grace but due to obligation. ⁵ But to the one who does not work, but believes in the one who declares the ungodly righteous, his faith is credited as righteousness.

It’s that time again. The first Sunday of the month is when we take another look at the most basic doctrine of the Christian faith. We call it the gospel. It is the good news of salvation by faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Last month we saw the gospel described in Romans 3:20-24, where Paul told the Romans that just having the Bible and doing what it says to do cannot save you. The good news of the gospel is not “do this and you can be saved.” But the Bible has revealed how we can be saved. Our salvation was accomplished for us by Jesus Christ, and we are saved not by imitating him, but by putting our faith in him and what he did.

Today we are also participating in the Lord’s Supper, or communion. Every time we reenact that ritual, we remember something. It is not designed to help us remember an idea. It’s not a pneumonic device. It is designed to help us remember an event: the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Our faith is in him and what he did for us. None of us was there when Jesus died. But by faith, we can still remember his sacrifice and declare our connection with him as our savior and his sacrifice as the means of God’s atonement for our sins.

The Book of Romans was originally a letter written by the Apostle Paul to explain his understanding of the gospel to the Christians in Rome. I mentioned last week that Rome had both Jewish and Gentile Christians. Paul was a Jewish Christian, and one of the things he wanted to explain in his letter was the relationship between the Jewish faith and his Christian faith. In chapters 2-3 Paul had made the case that everyone – Jew and Gentile alike – was a sinner, and no amount of good works could change them into saints. He explained that God is going to judge the secrets of all our hearts, and just being born as a child of Abraham according to the flesh is not going to account for anything on that judgment day. We are all lawbreakers, so just having a law against sin is not going to matter if you are constantly breaking it. Paul says that Jews and Greeks alike are all under sin. So, since that is the case, why is there an Old Testament, and what purpose did God have in giving us his revealed word in the first 39 books of the Bible?

That is the question that Paul addresses here in the fourth chapter of Romans. He goes back to the record in Genesis and exegetes the story of Abraham’s call.

Paul tells us that Abraham discovered something (1).

Sometimes when we discover some important truth, we call it having a eureka moment. The word eureka is the Greek for “I have found it.” It is the same verb that Paul used in this verse describing Abraham. Abraham discovered something.

When Paul calls Abraham “our ancestor according to the flesh” he is addressing his fellow Christian Jews in Rome. They were Christians, but they were also Jews. Abraham was their ancestor according to the flesh. They were related to him physically. Paul knew what that was like because he also was Abraham’s seed. When God promised Abraham a seed, he was referring to the Jewish race.

Paul knew that every Jew was tempted to trust in his physical heritage and to assume that he belonged to God by virtue of being that seed of Abraham. But Paul also knew that the more you focused on yourself as God’s seed, the easier it would be to miss what Abraham discovered. Paul wanted to stress something else revealed in Genesis: Abraham’s eureka moment. His Aha moment. When Abraham had his encounter with the God of the Bible, he discovered something that went beyond the limits of his ancestry. He had a change inside himself that could not be traced to his DNA. His discovery was spiritual.

Now, what Paul is saying to those physical Israelites at Rome is that if you miss that spiritual discovery, it won’t matter how related you are to Abraham according to the flesh! It won’t matter how loyal you think you are to the Jewish Law and traditions. None of that will matter because God’s call on Abraham’s life had nothing to do with those traditions.

Paul says that Abraham was not justified by works (2,4).

Paul goes back to the Genesis account, and he has a look at how the Bible describes Abraham when God first visits him in Haran. What is interesting as you read the account in Genesis 12 is the fact that there is no mention of Abram’s character there. God speaks to him and tells him to leave his country, his relatives, and his father’s household. But God never says anything about any law, and he never tells Abram that he is being chosen because of his obedience.

God does not call Abram a great man here. In fact, he tells Abram that he will make him into a great nation and that he will bless him and make his name great so that Abram will “exemplify divine blessing” (Genesis 12:2). The focus is never on what Abram did to impress God. The focus is always on what God is going to do for Abram. Abram was obedient to the call, but that obedience was not the basis for the blessing. The focus is not on the fact that Abram obeyed and went, the focus is on why he obeyed and went.

That is why in Romans 4:2, Paul says “if Abraham was justified by works” – implying that he was not. He was justified. God saved Abraham the moment he responded to his call. But that salvation did not come to Abraham because of obedience to the Law. There was no Law to obey. Abraham had no Law. But Abraham did have something from God that was better than the Law. Abraham had a promise.

The Aha moment for Abraham – his eureka moment – his discovery that set him on a spiritual pilgrimage from that day on for the rest of his life – was his response to that promise.

In verse 4, Paul says that if a worker gets paid for his work, that is not grace. It is an obligation for an employer to pay his employee. If the employees don’t get paid, they go on strike. So, if God had approached Abram and said “Do this, this and this, and don’t do this, this and that, and THEN I will bless you” it would have been justification by the works of the Law. But God came to Abram with the blessing of a promise first.

That left Abraham with two decisions to make. He obviously had to decide whether he was going to obey the call of God on his life and leave all that he knew to go to Canaan which he did not know. But before Abraham could choose to obey, he had a prior decision to make. This was a more important decision because it would serve as the basis for the other decision.

Paul says that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness (3, 5).

Abram decided to believe the promise. He decided to put his faith in the God who had appeared to him. Centuries before Moses stood on a mountain and passed the tablets of the Law to the Israelites, Abram decided to trust his life in God’s hands. It was that decision to believe God that made Abram the father of all the faithful.

In verse 3, Paul quotes Genesis 15:6. That verse says that Abram believed Yahveh, and Yahveh “considered his response of faith as proof of genuine loyalty.” Based on Abram’s response of faith, God credited him with a righteousness that he had not earned and could never earn. It was an imputed righteousness. It was the righteousness of Christ, credited to Abram’s account.

It is unfortunate that we must explain what actual credit is to talk about this idea. Most of us have cards in our wallets that are called credit cards. They should be called obligation cards because what they really mean is that we can borrow money we don’t have to pay a debt we can’t afford. There are over 7 billion of these “credit cards” in the world, causing a tremendous debt problem for us.

Real credit is something that you have now. When Moses wrote that Abram believed God and God credited that faith as righteousness, he was describing the beginning of a spiritual heritage. This heritage pre-dated Abraham’s physical heritage. Paul would write to the Galatians that if a person belongs to Christ, then that person is Abraham’s seed according to the promise (Galatians 3:29). Not “according to the flesh” which applies to all Israelites. Belonging to Christ makes a person Abraham’s seed according to the promise.

There were lots of advantages to being a physical Jew, a descendant of Abraham according to the flesh. But being saved by grace was not one of those advantages. To be saved by grace, you had to respond to God’s promise by believing in his word. The good news to all of us is that the promise of salvation by grace is not limited to a certain race, skin color, or family. It is a promise of spiritual and everlasting blessing. It is a promise that is open to every man, woman, and child.

You can say “yes” to Jesus at any time – if you have the time to decide to believe what God has promised about him. Even as we take the emblem of the bread – symbolizing our Lord’s body on the cross. You can say “I believe that Jesus allowed his body to be broken for me so that I would not have to experience the second death I deserve.” You can take the cup, symbolizing the Lord’s blood shed on the cross. You can say “I believe that Jesus’ blood was poured out as a sacrifice to atone and purify me of my sins, so that I can have the forgiveness I need, but could not purchase on my own.” If you say these things and believe them in your heart, God will accept that faith and you too will be credited with Christ’s righteousness.

All of us who have declared that faith have discovered what Abraham discovered. We have found that God is not a puzzle to be solved by hard work and harsh discipline. He is a promise to be believed – a destiny to be trusted. He is a God of grace in whom we can put our faith.