Romans 4
4
1 So then, what shall we say that Abraham had achieved, who is our father according to the flesh?
2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he would have glory, but not with God.
3 For what does Scripture say? "Abram believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice."
4 But for he who works, wages are not accounted according to grace, but according to debt.
5 Yet truly, for he who does not work, but who believes in him who justifies the impious, his faith is reputed unto justice, according to the purpose of the grace of God.
6 Similarly, David also declares the blessedness of a man, to whom God brings justice without works:
7 "Blessed are they whose iniquities have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered.
8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin."
9 Does this blessedness, then, remain only in the circumcised, or is it even in the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was reputed to Abraham unto justice.
10 But then how was it reputed? In circumcision or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
11 For he received the sign of circumcision as a symbol of the justice of that faith which exists apart from circumcision, so that he might be the father of all those who believe while uncircumcised, so that it might also be reputed to them unto justice,
12 and he might be the father of circumcision, not only for those who are of circumcision, but even for those who follow the footsteps of that faith which is in the uncircumcision of our father Abraham.
13 For the Promise to Abraham, and to his posterity, that he would inherit the world, was not through the law, but through the justice of faith.
14 For if those who are of the law are the heirs, then faith becomes empty and the Promise is abolished.
15 For the law works unto wrath. And where there is no law, there is no law-breaking.
16 Because of this, it is from faith according to grace that the Promise is ensured for all posterity, not only for those who are of the law, but also for those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all before God,
17 in whom he believed, who revives the dead and who calls those things that do not exist into existence. For it is written: "I have established you as the father of many nations."
18 And he believed, with a hope beyond hope, so that he might become the father of many nations, according to what was said to him: "Thus shall your posterity shall be."
19 And he was not weakened in faith, nor did he consider his own body to be dead (though he was then almost one hundred years old), nor the womb of Sarah to be dead.
20 And then, in the Promise of God, he did not hesitate out of distrust, but instead he was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God,
21 knowing most fully that whatever God has promised, he is also able to accomplish.
22 And for this reason, it was reputed to him unto justice.
23 Now this has been written, that it was reputed to him unto justice, not only for his sake,
24 but also for our sake. For the same shall be reputed to us, if we believe in him who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead,
25 who was handed over because of our offenses, and who rose again for our justification.
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Romans 4
4
Trusting God
1-3So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, “Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.”
4-5If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.
6-9David confirms this way of looking at it, saying that the one who trusts God to do the putting-everything-right without insisting on having a say in it is one fortunate man:
Fortunate those whose crimes are whisked away,
whose sins are wiped clean from the slate.
Fortunate the person against
whom the Lord does not keep score.
Do you think for a minute that this blessing is only pronounced over those of us who keep our religious ways and are circumcised? Or do you think it possible that the blessing could be given to those who never even heard of our ways, who were never brought up in the disciplines of God? We all agree, don’t we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God?
10-11Now think: Was that declaration made before or after he was marked by the covenant rite of circumcision? That’s right, before he was marked. That means that he underwent circumcision as evidence and confirmation of what God had done long before to bring him into this acceptable standing with himself, an act of God he had embraced with his whole life.
12And it means further that Abraham is father of all people who embrace what God does for them while they are still on the “outs” with God, as yet unidentified as God’s, in an “uncircumcised” condition. It is precisely these people in this condition who are called “set right by God and with God”! Abraham is also, of course, father of those who have undergone the religious rite of circumcision not just because of the ritual but because they were willing to live in the risky faith-embrace of God’s action for them, the way Abraham lived long before he was marked by circumcision.
13-15That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God’s promise at that—you can’t break it.
16This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father.
17-18We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!”
19-25Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.