PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

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The main thing that we read about in this Chapter is the faith of Abraham. Paul has to show the Jews that there is more to their religion than the Law of Moses. So he writes about Abraham and he says:- ‘ Abraham was not just one man who lived long ago. What God did with Abraham, He will do with other people, Abraham was not the only one.’ This is why Paul here also talks about David. David lived long after the time of Moses. Abraham lived long before Moses. Both knew the grace of God. God said that Abraham would be the ‘father of many nations’. So he is not one odd man for whom God does something different.

What God did in the life of Abraham begins in Genesis 11:26. We read about his death in Genesis 25:7-10. The chapters in between are wonderful. It is worth reading them just to see how God taught Abraham to pray. We can also read about the promises which God made to Abraham. The first is in Genesis 12:2-3, but there are at least five others. Each time God promises more to Abraham.

Now Paul uses words from Genesis 15:6 and from 17:5 and 17:11. In Romans 4 he seems to think about Isaac and Abraham (Genesis 22) in verses 17 and 25. The story of Abraham is in Paul’s mind all through the chapter.

Verses 1-5 Abraham was justified by faith.

So we may think about Paul again. He talks to a Jew. (verse 1) The Jews were proud that they could call Abraham their father. See, for example, John 8:33,37,39,53 and 56. So Paul asks what the life of Abraham means. We forget a great number of other people, but we remember a few because their lives mean something special. Abraham is one of these. Later Paul will ask whether all the Jews can really call themselves ‘the children of Abraham’. He will also ask whether this honour belongs to Jews and to no one else.

(verse 2) Really, the life of Abraham is not a story of his good works. In any case, we could never stand in front of God and tell Him how proud we were of Abraham’s good works. [4.1] What matters is what God’s Word says about Abraham. Genesis 15:6 says that Abraham had faith in God. Just as we may have a bank account, so Abraham had an ‘account’ with God. We do not know whether there were sins which reckoned against him. We do know that on the credit side there was his faith. God reckoned Abraham’s faith to him as righteousness.

In verses 4 and 5, Paul gives us a picture to help us to understand this. A man works for someone else. So he has a right to be paid for the work which he has done. The man that he works for owes him his wages. The money that is paid is not a favour. (verse 4) [4.2] ‘If a man gives you money, it may be a debt that he owes to you. Perhaps this is for work which you have done. Otherwise he is doing you a favour’. Paul does not say:- ‘God never owes any man anything. We can never do works for which God will owe us wages.’ But this is the way for us to think on to verse 5. ‘The man who does not work’ may be a very busy man. He works because he loves God and other men. Paul does not mean that this man does not do anything. He knows that what he does will not get him the ‘righteousness of God’.

The word ‘wicked’ or ‘ungodly’ here means that the man does not fear and honour God. He does not think of God as good, great and holy. The grace of God can change that man. When grace changes his heart, he will put his trust and his faith in God. He will no longer trust himself or his own works. God will see his faith and He will add that faith to the man’s ‘account’ as righteousness.

Paul says that was true of one man, Abraham. He was not the only one.

Verses 6-8 The example of David

(Verse 6). David was another man who knew God‘s grace, like Abraham. So Paul uses the first two verses of Psalm 32 (verse 7). He might have used the first verses of Psalm 51, but they are David’s prayer at one special time. Instead he uses a psalm which does not belong to one special time. Psalm 32 tells us that any man whose sin God has forgiven should be very happy. He should be happy because he knows that God has forgiven him. (Psalm 130:4; Psalm 119:38) He is ‘blessed’ even at times when he does not feel very happy. Psalm 32, like Psalm 51 or Isaiah 53, uses three words for sin. ‘Transgression’ means that we break God’s Law. Sin means that we ‘miss the mark’. We aim to do what is right, perhaps, but we do not do it. ‘Iniquity’ is the third word. We sin because we are sinners. Our hearts are not straight. They are bent or twisted. (Psalm 66:18).

Now there are three words for sin in Psalm 32 but there are three other words, too. These other three words tell us how God’s grace gets rid of our sin. God takes away our transgressions. He forgives them. He ‘covers over’ our sins; remember Romans 3:25. God does not ‘count’ or ‘reckon’ our iniquity. It is the same in Psalm 51:1 and 2. God ‘blots out’ our transgression. He ‘washes away’ our iniquity. He ‘cleanses me’ from sin. You will find the same thing in Isaiah 53. We can look at our sin in different ways. God has as many ways to get rid of our sins. God will not count or ‘reckon’ our sins against us. He will count or ‘reckon’ our faith in our favour as righteousness.

Verses 9-17 Abraham and his children.

Once again in verse 9 Paul asks whether this is something special for Jews only. David was a Jew, and his parents would have ‘circumcised’ him when he was still a baby. Genesis 17:24-26 tells us that Abraham too ‘circumcised’ himself. Yet it was fourteen years before this that God honoured his faith. (verse 10) God did not wait until Abraham was ‘circumcised’ to bless him. Before that happened, God had accepted Abraham’s faith and counted it as ‘righteousness’.

In verse 11, ‘sign’ or ‘seal’ mean much the same thing. [4.3] God gave the sign to Abraham. That then was a sign of the grace of God. Abraham already had faith and he obeyed God. When he obeyed God, that did not make him righteous.

In the second part of the verse, Paul speaks again about Abraham as the father of the faithful. (See verses 1 and 17,18). He is the ‘father’ of all those people who have faith, whether they are Jews or not. God ‘counted’ Abraham’s faith as ‘righteousness. In the same way, God will ‘count’ the faith of all His people as ‘righteousness’. In verse 12, Paul says that the Jews have not lost anything. They must ‘join the ranks’ or walk in the way of Abraham’s faith.

In verse 13, Paul moves forward in his argument. He says these things:-

1. God gave Abraham a promise.
2. God gave this promise not only to Abraham, but also to those who could look back to him as their father. These are his ‘seed’, his ‘offspring’ or ‘descendants’.
3. God’s promise was not just that Abraham would own the land of Canaan. The promise was that Abraham and his ‘seed’ would own the world. Now the word ‘world’ is another word which can mean rather different things in the New Testament. [4.4]
When a father at death passes his wealth on to his son, his son ‘inherits’ it. Paul uses the word ‘inherit’ here, but really he means ‘to own’. We can see that now, the Lord Jesus Christ has a people in every nation in the world. In this age of God’s grace, this is how God has kept the promise which He gave to Abraham. God will keep His promise in a greater way in a future age of glory.
4. Then Paul tells us how God gave this promise to Abraham. It was not because he did everything that the law said he should do. It was ‘through the righteousness that comes by faith’. This is, of course, the righteousness that comes from God to man. The man who lives his life ‘by faith’ in Jesus Christ receives this righteousness.

The thought in verse 14 is rather like Chapter 3 :31. God’s law cannot be empty. We must not think that faith in God is empty either. Rather, faith is like an empty hand which a man stretches out to God. God fills that empty hand with His righteousness. In the same way, we may never think that a promise which God has given is empty, of no effect or ‘worthless’. [4.5] God has promised (verse 13) that Abraham and his children will be heirs of the world. Now many of the Jews live by law and trust in their works to save them. Yet God gives not only salvation but righteousness and glory. If any man can claim all this by law - works, there is no place left for faith.

In verse 15, Paul brings in another argument. Any law tells us how the judge will punish us if we break it. Hardly ever does a law tell us what reward we will get if we keep it. Paul says that the Law of God is like that. ‘The soul who sins shall die’. If we break the Law of God we must expect Him to punish us. ‘Law brings wrath’. Yet we cannot keep the Law of God well enough to gain a reward from Him.

Even so, the Law of God is good. See Romans 7:12 and 14 and 1 Timothy 1:8. The last part of verse 15 here sounds rather like a well-known saying. If there is no law, you cannot break it or ‘transgress’ it. At the time when God gave His promise to Abraham, He had not given the Law to him. That came much later. So Abraham might sin, but he could not break the Law or ‘trangress’. So when God gave the promise, it was an act of great grace to a sinner. The Law had nothing to do with it.

Paul begins verse 16:- ‘Therefore of faith in order that by grace for the promise to be firm’. We have to fill out Paul’s words. Paul still speaks about God’s promise and what it is that God has promised. This may be a case where ‘faith’ does not mean our faith in God. The meaning may rather be ‘God’s faithfulness to us ‘ here. So what God has promised to us, He does not give to us because of what we have done. It comes from God to us because He is faithful. If it came to us by law then it would not come to us by God’s grace.

We may feel that Paul’s argument does not move forward very fast. But now he does take a big step forward. God does not want us to doubt all the time. He wants us to be sure of His promise. Now if we had to work for God’s favour, we never could be sure that He had saved us. We would always feel the need to do more. We might give money, pray and do all sorts of good works. People who have that kind of religion are never sure. God wants us to be ‘secure’ or sure and firm.

So the promise comes to us by God’s grace. We take it by faith. It is not by God’s Law and our works. The Jews are the first of Abraham’s ‘seed’ or children and they are ‘of the Law’. Not all Christians are Jews. All Christians share the faith of Abraham, the man of faith. There is only one way by which we can be saved. See what the Jew, Peter, says in Acts 15:11. Notice ‘not only..........but also’ here. We often say:- ‘Either this is true, or that is true’. We cannot fix God like that. Often the Good News will say:- ‘Yes this is true. But that is true as well’.

In verse 17 Paul uses the words of Genesis 17:5. There God changed Abraham’s name. Before that time his name was ‘Abram’. That meant ‘High Father’. God changed his name to Abraham which meant ‘Father of many’. What God says must be true. So if Abraham had only been the ‘father’ of the Jews, he would only have been the ‘father’ of one people. God need not have changed his name. So Abraham is the ‘father’ of many people who have faith, whatever nation they may belong to. What God says always matters more than what men say. And the way that God sees things matters much more than the way that men see things. So Paul says that ‘in the sight of God’, Abraham is the ‘father of many nations’.

In the rest of verse 17, Paul says more about Abraham’s faith. In verses 3,9,11,12,13 and 16 Paul has already spoken about it. You may want to look back now over these verses. Verse 12 speaks about those who ‘follow the example of the faith which our father Abraham had’ (RSV). You will feel that what the other verses say is also very important.

Now Paul adds two more things about Abraham’s faith.

1. Abraham’s God is the God Who gives life to the dead. His faith was in that God.
2. He is the God Who speaks about things that are not yet there as though they were already there. (1 Corinthians 1:28). He is the God in Whom Abraham had faith.

So we should think a little more about the first part of the verse. We shall also find that Paul has much more to say about this from verse 18 onwards.

Abraham was already a very old man when God gave the promise to him (Genesis 17:5). He was 99 years old (Genesis 17:1). Abraham already had a son Ishmael (Genesis 16:1-11). In Genesis 17:18, Abraham prays to God. This is the first time that anyone in Scripture prays and asks God for something. God says:- ‘No’. We might think that did not really help Abraham to pray more! What God then promised was that Abraham’s aged wife Sarah would have a son. Through him, God would keep His promise. This son was Isaac (Genesis 21:1-7). Now this was why the promise of God to Abraham was so great and wonderful. It was also the reason why Abraham’s faith was so wonderful. Abraham was almost alone in his day in the worship of the true God. It is so much easier for us when we have friends with whom we can share our faith. He believed God’s promises when it was so unlikely that they could be true.

There is another part of the story in Genesis which is in Paul’s mind. In Genesis 22, which the Jews call ’the Binding of Isaac’, Abraham is ready to offer Isaac to God. See Hebrews 11:17-19. God stopped Abraham. Yet it was as though God had raised Isaac from death.

Verses 18-25 Abraham’s hope [4.6]

Faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 12:13) are the three great ’graces’ of the Christian life. We mostly think that faith and love matter much more than hope. In this we may be very wrong. Hope makes a Christian man or woman into a person that other people like and honour. There is something badly wrong if a Christian does not live a life of hope.

(Verse 18) We must have a reason to hope (1 Peter 3:15). We shall also have something that we hope for. Abraham hoped to have a son, through whom God would keep His promises. Yet Abraham had only one reason to hope. Everything else was against his hope. He was far too old to have a child; so was Sarah his wife. Abraham had hope only because of his faith in God and His promise. In Genesis 15:5, we read what God said to Abraham. Abraham looked up at the stars in the sky. No one can count them. God said that Abraham’s children would be like that. In verse 19, Paul says that Abraham’s faith did not grow weak. He did not worry until he was ill. He means of course that his faith was still strong and it grew stronger. Both Abraham and Sarah were so old that they were ‘as good as dead’. God will not turn us away if our faith is weak. But He will honour us if our faith is strong.

In verse 20, ‘waver’ may not be a strong enough word for what Paul says. The word could mean that Abraham did not decide against faith. ‘Waver’ rather would mean that at some time his faith won. At other times, unbelief won. This would not agree with the next verse. So there are three things which Paul says about Abraham.

a) ‘He grew strong in his faith’ (RSV) or ‘was strengthend in his faith’. No doubt is was God Who made Abraham’s faith strong. We can see why this was.

b) Abraham gave glory, praise and honour to God. When we do this, our faith will grow strong.

c) (Verse 21) Abraham was quite sure that God could do what He had promised. Nothing is too hard for God to do. It is only when we have God’s promise that He will do it, that we can have this faith. So in verse 22, Paul again adds the words of Genesis 15:6.

When we come to the last three verses of the chapter, there is an important change. Paul starts to talk about ‘us’. He has not done this since chapter 1:15. He does this to get ready for Chapter 5. He speaks now about himself and the Christians at Rome. He talks now about what they share with him.

So the grace of God is not just for Abraham and Paul (verses 23 and 24). It is not just for Jews. It is for men of all kinds and all races. It was God Who raised Jesus from death to new life. People at Rome who were not Jews had put their faith in God. They found that they could trust Him. So the good things which come with the Good News were for them. They are all for us too, if we have faith in God. In verse 25, Paul adds that because we had sinned, God handed Jesus, His dear Son, over to death. Then Jesus rose from the dead because now there is righteousness for us.

The Romans might have heard the Good News and found that they could not trust God. Then they might have said:- ‘Forgiveness of sins and life and glory are not for us’. This has not happened to anyone yet. It will never happen to anyone