04.10. LESSON 10

LESSON 10

After declaring in Romans 3:25 ("The Acropolis of the Christian Faith") that faith is the condition upon which Christ’s atoning blood is appropriated, Paul devotes the next chapter to an exposition of the nature of faith. This fourth chapter nobly proves from the life of Abraham, the grand, fundamental doctrine of the entire Bible, namely, that "the ungodly" are justified "by grace... through faith." It tells much about the faith of this remarkable man, who is the prototype of all believers since his day about 2000 B.C. The fact that his religious experience in considerable detail, the first such experience so recorded, is concluded before the middle of Genesis is reached emphasizes the truth that the elements of religion—God’s grace and man’s faith—remain unchanged throughout the Bible. This story in Genesis opens its mouth to proclaim once for all the manner in which a sinner becomes "the friend of God."

Romans 1:1-32, Romans 2:1-29, Romans 3:1-31, Romans 4:1-25, Romans 5:1-21 deals especially with the Gentiles. Although the truth involved in Romans 2:1-32, Romans 3:1-21, Romans 4:1-16 is universal, Paul is trying to show especially the Jews that their Sinaitic covenant was a divinely-necessary stage in the development of the older, larger, everlasting covenant of promise made to Abraham; and that their covenant of law, as God marched royally onward through the centuries, burying generation after generation of workmen, in order to fulfill his promise to Abraham, "In thy seed, which is Christ" (Galatians 3:16); "Shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 12:3), served its purpose and contributed its part to God’s ever-unfolding design until, according to his timetables, Christianity supplanted it. Surely the Jews, who have "in the law (only) the form of knowledge and of the truth," can be shown the folly of sitting longer by their burnt out crater. Paul’s meager success with them, however, warns all men of all races to tread softly and fear lest they too get but a shallow, partial, distorted view of God’s deep, vast, eternal whole.

"Heir of the World" In our latest "study" we found that Abraham was pronounced righteous on the ground of faith apart from works and rites (Romans 4:12). Now, we come to another great blessing which he obtained in like manner: "For not through the law was the promise to Abraham or to his seed that he should be heir of the world, but through the righteousness of faith" (Romans 4:13). Approximately two thousand years after God made this promise to Abraham, Christ repeated it to his disciples: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."

Paul’s argument for the next few verses consists of several points. Abraham could not inherit the world through law because the law in affording a better "knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20) deepens sin into transgression with its accompanying wrath and condemnation; hence, inheritance, a s well as justification, is out of the reach of law—law does not invest with heirship. Again, if the inheritance be through law, "faith is made void, and the promise is made of none effect." What is of desert cannot be of gift. Moreover, the promise is "of faith that it may be according to grace." Faith and grace are counterparts. Finally, the promise is "according to grace; to the end that it may be sure to all the seed," both Jews and Gentiles. "The gifts of God... are not repented of." This reasoning makes it crystal clear for all time that faith and grace are mutually dependent and work together to a common end. Was Naaman’s healing any the less by grace because his faith led him to the Jordan? And the argument is equally clear that faith and grace nullify law and works. Paul’s grand, twofold conclusion thus far in Romans 4:1-25, therefore, is that Abraham, the pattern man of faith, was both justified and made heir of the world by faith apart from law.

Note that Paul teaches the heirdom, because it is rooted in God’s promise instead of man’s merit, is sure. If it depended primarily upon man, how insecure it would be! He grows very emphatic about this surety in a parallel scripture: "God, being minded to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed with an oath; that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we have strong encouragement to lay hold of the hope set before us" (Hebrews 6:17-18). The God of Resurrection The rest of Romans 4:1-25 continues the exposition of the nature of faith by a further use of Abraham’s history. To Abraham, old and dead in parental faculty, God promised a son by aged Sarah, barren from maidenhood. With second causes against this preposterous promise, Abraham after some misgiving, finally, ceasing to hang in suspense, "waxed strong through faith." Then, years after the promise was made, Isaac, the promised child, was born. Abraham was not a thoughtless man; he weighed all the difficulties, yet believed "giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised he was able also to perform." Here is a simple and sublime description of both faith and omnipotence. But a harder test was to come. Years later, when it seemed that Isaac might naturally become the blessing to many, this fleshly hope was rudely shattered by God’s requiring him as a burnt-offering. This created greater perplexities than ever. Besides being against every sentiment of a father’s soul, the command made God self-contradictory: were Isaac offered, how could he become the blessing! All faith could do was to obey, "Accounting that God was able to raise up even from the dead" (Hebrews 11:19). By using his experience as a springboard, Abraham was able to see that the God who could give Isaac could perpetuate him, and dared leap by faith the hitherto uncrossed chasm to the Resurrection. Ever living at the growing edge of real, live faith, he ever found God, too, alive and real. Thus, Abraham lived his way progressively into new truth, and went on continuously with God, out and up. Pray what is faith but the mixing in human life of God’s faithfulness and man’s fidelity? When does faith cease to grow and produce fruit?

Abraham’s life is a supreme example of faith as a personal trust in the personal God. Paul wrote this passage "for our sake also" that we might know the simplicity, difficulty, opportunity, and blessedness of faith. To Abraham God was greater than nature. Will not such faith help us in our problems concerning prayer, God’s special providence, and the resurrection? The great truth in all such matters is that a personal God and Father lives, loves and works beyond and above nature, self, and all other second causes. May not our faith in nature and self sometimes be only so much disbelief in God himself?

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