No images? Click here ABRAHAM'S GLORYRomans 4:1-8 AUGUST 14, 2022 Thus far, in our study of Paul’s letter to the Romans, we have seen Paul introduce himself as “a servant of Christ Jesus, called by God to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.” (Romans 1:1). He proclaims that he is “not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." (Romans 1:16-17)
Paul further clarifies that the gospel of God that he preaches was “promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son;” (Romans 1:1) The gospel that Paul proclaimed is not something new! The way of salvation was right there, before their eyes: “the righteous shall live by his faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4) And, even before Habakkuk, the Jews understood that Abraham was declared righteous because he believed God. (Genesis 15:6)
In verse eighteen of chapter one, Paul begins to reveal the wrath of God and the only way for it to be averted. Because man failed to thank God and acknowledge Him as his sovereign head, man began to engage in the most egregious forms of debauched behaviors.
Then in chapter two, Paul’s accusations move from being directed to the heathen to his very readers. He says that they, too, are under the wrath of God, storing up wrath for the day of judgment. Paul points out that the Jews’ trust in their heritage, their self-righteousness, their possession of the law and the sacraments actually increases their condemnation. He says that they are storing up God’s wrath for the day of judgment, and God is not partial. It must have shocked the Jews when Paul said that their circumcision was of no value if they broke the law. (Romans 2:25) Paul knew that the well-educated, sophisticated, prideful Romans would need more that a brief picture of the human heart for them to understand their sin and prepare them for the gospel to which he was building.
In chapter three, Paul further levels the playing field when he states that all men, Jews and Gentiles, are sinners and fall short of God’s glory. He asks the rhetorical question: Do Jews have an advantage over Gentiles? The answer is both yes and no. It is YES in the sense that Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God; they had the very words of God which describe Him in part and which tell us how we are to live before Him. Also, they had the written record of the many miracles that God had brought about for them. The answer is NO in the sense that all “are under sin.” (Romans 3:9) Paul quotes Psalm 14:3, which is repeated in Psalm 53:3, “there is none who does good, not even one”. It doesn’t matter whether you are Jew or Gentile; if any man is relying on good works for salvation, he is doomed. Though we are created FOR good works (Ephesians 2:10), we are not saved BY good works. Paul’s goal was to help the Romans see their depraved nature so that they would be ready to receive the grace of God.
In the second half of chapter three Paul begins to draw down on what we see as the heart of the gospel – justification. Paul identifies three major sections of justification: 1) justification is by faith alone (3:21-26), 2) justification is by the obedience and humility of Christ (3:27-31), and 3) in chapter four, justification is not by works (4:1-8), justification is by grace (4:9-17) and justification is by God’s divine power (4:18-25).
In the first eight verses of chapter four, Paul moves from the greater to the lesser. Since Abraham was justified by faith, and David was justified similarly, then how much more are we justified by faith? Paul will tell us in chapter five that we are justified by faith and then begin to share the benefits of being justified before God.
Scripture is clear that Abraham was justified by faith, but we might ask: Where does Scripture say that David was justified by faith? It can be seen in Psalm 32:5 where David said, “I acknowledged my sin to you…and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” The Spirit in David led him to believe what the Apostle John would later write in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Confession is an essential part of justification.
We might also ask: Why does justification matter so much? How will an understanding of justification help me in the real world? We also need to ask why Paul spent so much time on justification. The reason is that we need to understand justification so that we can understand the gospel, proclaim it to ourselves and to others. If we don’t understand justification correctly, we cannot explain the gospel correctly and no one can be saved. Justification is a central tenant of the gospel!
The things that have happened to the church over the past few decades have been tragic. This is especially heartbreaking for those who have children who have walked away from the faith and have already experienced some of the consequences of their sin: addiction, divorce, anger, alienation, etc. In the late 1990s and early 2000s a de-churching movement began. A sociologist from Notre Dame, Christian Smith, studied why people were leaving the church and concluded it is because churches were no longer preaching the gospel of justification by faith. There were, instead, preaching a moralistic, therapeutic deism. Moralistic, meaning that everyone should just be good and do good. Therapeutic, meaning that sermons should make you feel good about yourself and be happy. Deism, meaning that we acknowledge that God exists and that He is there to serve us; anyone who does good will go to heaven when they die.
At the end of this movement, we see the deconstruction movement, a movement where people began to disassemble the Christian faith by teaching that truth is subjective. People began to knock down the six pillars of the faith: the Bible, the wrath of God, the atonement, suffering, more wrath (when God destroyed the world by a flood), and the church. To the intelligentsia, these pillars don’t make sense; they are not scientific. For many today, their god is science, though not having even a vague understanding of the scientific method.
This deconstruction movement is the system that people use to lure people out of the church. The people most susceptible to this are those who have experiences church hurt, or who have experienced failure, or who have experienced the effect of sin in their life. To such persons, suffering doesn’t make sense, so they begin to deconstruct the things in which they have trusted. Not only does this happen to the laity but also to pastors, authors, worship leaders, etc. The doctrine being rejected in the deconstruction movement as well as in the moralistic, therapeutic deism movement is the atonement of Christ. The doctrine that is missing from the church is justification by faith alone. Satan is behind both of these movements and his desire is to rip away the idea of justification, rip away Christ’s death, rip away the way that God redeems people, and rip away the atonement.
We see the effects of the gospel not being clearly preached in churches. People experience the realities of life: difficulty of paying their bills, disappointment, mistreatment, lack of fairness, rejection, suffering from ill health, abuse, effects of the sin or others or of their own sin, etc. They may look back and remember their baptism or when they believed in Jesus and wonder why life hasn’t afforded them all the blessing they expected. They may have tried to live the godly life that the Bible teaches but they see their sin ever present before them. They recognize that their thoughts, words, and actions are not pleasing to God, and they just cannot overcome the sin that so easily besets them. They may wonder how God could love someone such as themselves, or they may conclude that God doesn’t love them at all. Or they may even question God’s very existence.
At this point they may decide that if God is real and treats them like this, then they will find another god. People who espouse moralistic, therapeutic deism asks themselves: Why can’t we just live a good, moral life? Why can’t we just get along? Why is justification by faith so important? It doesn’t make sense! They may conclude that they are not good enough and never will be, so they jettison the Christian faith.
Many pastors have concluded that preaching sermons on doctrine are not commensurate with church growth. After all, doctrine divides. Some find doctrine offensive or overly complicated. Most sermons are based on things that make the congregation feel good: God loves you just the way you are; be nice to me and I will be nice to you; show me grace and I will show you grace; don’t judge me and I won’t judge you, etc. There is a kernel of truth in such sermons, but the key components are missing: you are a sinner in desperate need of justification, and a saving faith in Jesus Christ is the only way you can be justified.
John Piper wrote about a discussion with his six-year-old granddaughter. He knew that without justification, she was not going to be in the kingdom of heaven. In this book, he asked: “What do you say to a six-year-old? Do you say, ‘There are more important things to talk about? So just trust Jesus and try to be a good girl’? Or do you say, ‘It is very complex and even adults aren’t able to understand it fully, so just wait and deal with it whenever you are older’? Or do we say, ‘It simply means that Jesus died in our place so that all our sins might be forgiven?’” He says, “All of these questions are inadequate, all of them, and this is the issue with our churches today. We compromise because we think doctrine like justification is not important.”
In turn, we simplify the gospel to make it easier for people to understand, and this is how we have come to the place where the church is today. We hear sermons, over and over, that proclaim: God loves you; He wants you to be happy; invite Him into your heart and your life will be better. If this is the message we hear, then later in life we begin to question God and deconstruct our faith.
Mankind is made in the image of God and endowed with a glory not experienced by anything else in creation. It is also important to recognize that we are powerless to change our nature. God knows our heart; He knows that we are destitute and far off from Him (Ephesians 2:13,17) and destined to face His wrath. Yet, as Paul writes in Ephesians 2:4-5, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved.” God takes the righteousness of Christ and places it on us who believe, and He takes our sin and places it on Christ, who lived a perfect life. (See 2 Corinthians 5:21) We have someone who is innocent, but declared guilty, and someone who is guilty, but declared innocent. This just doesn’t make sense to the world! Can’t we just say that Jesus loves you? The doctrine of atonement doesn’t make sense to the world, but it is the truth of the gospel.
Paul loved this doctrine because he understood that, without this doctrine, none of the people in Rome would be saved. As he begins to explain the doctrine of justification, he reminds them that this is not a new doctrine. Though in different dispensations of time, the covenant of grace is the same in the Old Testament and the New Testament. God’s plan of salvation has not changed. All are saved by grace alone, through faith alone by Christ alone. These statements are three of the recognized five solas of the Reformation: sola Scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide, sola Christos, sola de la gloria. Thus, all are saved by Scripture alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone for the glory of God alone.
Albert Barnes, American theologian of the nineteenth century wrote, “The reason why the apostle was so anxious to show that his doctrine coincided with the Old Testament was because the church at Rome was made up in part of Jews. He wished to show them, and the remainder of his countrymen, that the Christian religion was built on the foundation of their prophets, and their acknowledged writings.”
As we move into Chapter Four, we see that Abraham discovered what everyone must discover in order to be saved: salvation is a gift from God, through faith, and it is not of our works. (See Ephesians 2:8-9) We can’t work it out on our own.
In our outline today we see what Abraham found, what Abraham believed, and what David declared.
I. What Abraham found (vv. 1-3)
The church at Rome, was probably founded by Jews who were converted in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost (John MacArthur’s introduction to Romans). As it consisted of both Jews and Gentiles, Paul needs to level the playing field. The church leaders were, at this time, almost certainly of Jewish heritage, and Abraham was recognized as their spiritual father.
Although Moses made it clear that Abraham was justified because he believed God (Genesis 15:6), the traditional Jewish view of Abraham’s justification was that God foresaw Abraham’s obedience and considered him righteous. If Abraham could boast in his obedience, so could the Romans. It is easy to understand why the prideful Jews might have thought this. James addressed this issue in his epistle when he asks: “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?” (James 1:21) James was emphasizing that works will necessarily accompany true, saving faith. He probably had 1 Samuel 16:7 in mind: “man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." We can only see the outworking of faith, not the heart attitude. This is what James meant.
God sought out Abraham and preached the gospel to him. John 8:56 tells us that, “Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad." Abraham was converted from a polytheistic idol worshipped to a monotheistic worshipper of Yahweh, the one true God. (See Joshua 24:2) Abraham needed the gospel, just like we need the gospel. Ur of the Chaldeans, where Abraham lived prior to be led to Haran by his father, was a city of highly educated people, skilled in mathematics, agriculture, engraving, and astronomy. But they worshipped many idols. God then called Abraham to leave Haran and go to a land that He would show him. God initiated the gospel with Abraham and when Abraham believed God it was credited to him as righteousness. (Verse 3) God’s righteousness was posted to Abraham’s account (accounting terminology). God’s favor was granted to Abraham on the basis of his faith, not on the basis of anything that he had done. So, what did Abraham find? He found grace.
II. What Abraham Believed (vv. 4-5)
We may say we believe we can do nothing to add to our salvation, but we sometimes live in a way that suggests we believe otherwise. We may devote significant amounts of time to prayer and Bible study, or we may serve the church or community in meaningful ways, or we may give generously of our financial resources then think to ourselves, God is pleased with me now. If we believe that we contribute to our salvation, then this is a work and payment is due. This is what the Jews believed, and this is the essence of Paul’s point in verse four; wages are due to a worker. However, he had already declared in Romans 3:28 that “one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
In Ephesians 2:8-9, it is expressly stated that grace and faith are gifts from God, so that no one can boast. Gifts are not earned; they are given freely as an expression of love. Paul wants the Romans to understand that:
Paul is making it clear to the Jews that salvation is a free gift from God, and it is for His glory. It is obvious that if salvation is based on works, the ungodly could never be justified. However, in the second part of verse five, he points out that God justifies the ungodly.
III. What David Declared (vv. 6-8)
Paul reminded the Romans that David spoke of the blessings experienced by those to whom God credits righteousness apart from works, "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin."
The Jews did not see righteousness as a blessing but believed and taught that man had to earn his salvation. The idea of forgiveness in verse seven is that the burden of sin is lifted up and carried away. Jesus said something similar in Matthew 11:30, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The blessings described in verses seven and eight mean that the burden of sin is no longer credited to our account. These two verses are essentially a summary of the gospel.
Why did the Jew struggle with faith and works? Why do we struggle with faith and works? We struggle because we are afraid that our faith is not strong enough to withstand the doubts resulting from the sin in our life. We wonder if God could really love someone like us. Our faith is weak, and we begin to question everything. A clear understanding of the doctrine of justification will allow us to overcome our weak faith.
Though Abraham showed great faith when he obeyed God and left Haran, having no idea where God was taking him (Genesis 12:1-4), when he rescued Lot (Genesis 19), and when he was prepared to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22). However, he also demonstrated weak faith several times throughout his life. Though not instructed by God, he took Lot with him (Genesis 12:5). Because he feared for his life, on two occasions he lied about Sarah being his sister. (Genesis 12:13 & 20:2) He believed God’s promise that he would have a son, but then took matters into his own hands and had a son by Haggar. (Genesis 16) This son, Ishmael, has been a thorn in the side of the Jews ever since. Abraham’s faith wasn’t perfect, but it was real. Abraham knew that he would be justified by the Messiah, that his sins would be atoned for. When God grants us faith, it is a genuine faith, and we will persevere because God will preserve us.
We can actually rejoice in our weak faith because, like Abraham, like David, like Peter, it draws us back to God. Our weakness forces us to run to Christ. It is a great source of assurance and comfort to realize that our faith was given by God, and it is preserved by God; we can never lose it. Our weak faith cannot stop God from drawing us closer to Him, granting you forgiveness, sanctifying you, granting you the Spirit’s power to overcome sin, your adoption, your inheritance or your justification.
How do we battle a weak faith?
These four steps are the pattern that David laid out in Psalm 32 after he was restored from his adultery with Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband. This is the method that David used to deal with his weak faith. David had confessed his sin and pleaded for cleansing in Psalm 51, and in Psalm 32, he describes the blessings of forgiveness from confessed sin. Abraham found grace when he believed God; David affirmed that justification was a blessing from God; and we can use the promise of justification to battle our weak faith. God issues an invitation today: believe in Jesus, confess your sin, and rejoice in the God of your salvation.
Selah:
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