Romans 4

Romans 4:1-12

Section 2. (Romans 4:1-12.)Witness of the Old Testament to justification by faith. The apostle, not satisfied with this, turns round upon the Jew, and asks, Has he read carefully those precious books which God has given him? Of whose history ought he to know more than that of Abraham his father? With whose writings ought he to be more familiar than with those of David, Israel’s sweet psalmist? Yet God has given His testimony as to that principle of faith to which he demurs, right there where the eyes of His people would be most constantly directed! What a reproof of legality, coming from such a quarter! For us also, what a warning as to truths which nay be under our eyes in the pages of Scripture, which yet we have never seen there! not because they are not plainly to be read, but because our eyes have been dimmed by unbelief and worldly prejudice and pride of heart, as Israel’s were!

May we seek to have all films of this sort purged away. Were every veil removed, how would the glory of Scripture break upon us!

1. The first witness which the apostle brings from the Old Testament books is complete in itself: it is in fact that of God Himself, and in connection with him whom they all acknowledged as under God the head of blessing for them. Were they to be blessed in another way than Abraham? Forefather he was according to the flesh, and the claim they had to him in this way they pressed to its full extent. Be it so: to them then, above all, should the lessons of his history have significance. How then was Abraham justified before God?

They might plead perhaps his separation of himself from all that had natural claim upon him, in order to walk as a stranger in a land which, though God had promised it to him, he never got in possession. Was he then justified by works whose merit the rabbinical teachers so constantly brought forward? It is in fact just here that God had interposed with a remarkable and precise statement. If Abraham were indeed justified by works, then plainly he has something in which to glory; but, adds the apostle, “not before God.” He has told us already that “by works of law shall no flesh be justified before Him;” Abraham cannot therefore be an exception: but in his case Scripture itself can be appealed to; the head of the people to whom the law was given was in the wisdom of God chosen to have a specific testimony, not merely of his being righteous before God, but also as to the ground of it: it is distinctly declared that “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.” This then was his justification; but it was not work of any kind that was reckoned to him for this: it was his faith; the principle of his justification is distinctly recorded for us in the Word to have been faith, not works. This is the only example explicitly announced in the Old Testament of a person justified by faith; but here it takes precedence, as the apostle reminds us in Galatians, of any legal announcement whatever. Faith being reckoned for righteousness is clearly the same as being justified (or declared righteous) by faith. Faith is the ground upon which he is reckoned righteous. There being no actual righteousness to be found among men, God declares what he can accept as putting one among the righteous. He does not and cannot say that it is actual righteousness; which yet He must have indeed, but which man cannot furnish. For this He must look elsewhere, and we know, thank God, where He has found it.

But here He simply declares what on man’s part He can take as evincing that. How beautiful an announcement it is, at so early a time, and in relation to such a person! How completely is law set aside in this, although it is not a general announcement as yet, but only as to an individual. Still how easy for one realizing his need, one might think, to make the inference. For those to whom Abraham was to be a covenant head of promise, how striking a figure should he be! But the apostle goes on to enforce still further the contrast between the principles which he has been comparing: “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned as of grace, but as of debt.” And the greatness of the reward does not alter the principle involved: if you buy heaven cheap, still you buy it. “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him who justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” Here the meaning of grace is brought out in the clearest way: God justifieth the ungodly; if it be through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus -through the Cross -then it is plain that the Cross is penalty for sin; it is not even for the comparatively righteous. But if God justifieth the ungodly, what work have I to do to be “ungodly?” And further, if I believe that He justifieth the ungodly, it will be part of the evidence that I believe this, that I drop all working to find justification at His hands. Here is the man whose faith is reckoned for righteousness. There can be no possible mixture of contradictory things. The character and the quantity of work are not at all in question. “Worketh not” suits exactly, and only suits, a justification of the ungodly. And here also the grace of God acquires its power to subdue the soul to God, and win the feet from every evil way. It is faith that is the true worker for God, as it is grace that breaks the dominion of sin. To modify grace is to destroy its power; to balance faith with works is to make men workers for themselves instead of God, and thus destroy that very fruitfulness of faith which it is desired to secure. The law-gospel is neither law nor gospel. 2. The apostle passes for the moment from Abraham to David. David also speaks of “the blessedness of him to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works;” and Paul quotes as to this what is significantly the first “maskil” psalm or “psalm of instruction.” The blessedness is of them whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered, to whom the Lord will in no wise reckon sin. This is indeed the beginning of instruction when we have learned this lesson. And the psalmist gives it us as the personal experience which we know it was for him: while he kept silence, his bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long; he confessed his sin to God, and did not bide his iniquities; nay, but said, “I will confess my transgression to the Lord;” and divine grace anticipated even the confession (Psalms 32:1-11, see notes). This is not all; for presently we find that this is no exceptional mercy to a David; nor again is there any who has no need of such a confession, and such mercy as is here shown. Nay, for “for this cause shall every one that is godly pray unto Thee in a time when Thou mayest be found.” He therefore who has never known this way of drawing near to God is not the godly but the ungodly! such is the need of grace on the part of all! 3. The apostle turns back again to Abraham, to raise another question very important to the Jew. This blessedness then, which is of grace and to sinners, can circumcision give a claim to it which the uncircumcised have not? Well, look once more at the history: faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness; when was it reckoned then? in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? How overwhelming an answer in the simple fact to all the high and exclusive claims made by the Jew! His own father Abraham was an uncircumcised man when he possessed the faith by which he was justified, and of that faith circumcision, the sign of God’s covenant with him, was the seal!

As to Abraham none could deny that circumcision could not contribute to that righteousness which was his before it, and that to get his argument, the Jew must invert the facts of history. Standing as they do, Abraham appears as the father of all that believe, although uncircumcised, that God may consistently reckon righteousness to them also, and the father of circumcision (the one in whom began that separation to God implied in it) to those who not merely had the mark in the flesh, but who also walked in the steps of that faith of their father Abraham which he had while yet uncircumcised.

Romans 4:13-25

Section 3. (Romans 4:13-25.)This faith in One who manifests Himself in resurrection. How plainly then has God made the history to speak to him who has ears to hear! But there is more yet to be drawn from it, which if not so plain upon the surface, all the more convincingly declares the purpose of God toward which all history moves. Abraham is here to bear witness to another principle which in the time to come was to be more fully unfolded, and to attain a deeper significance. We have seen already that Paul’s gospel begins with a risen Christ, from whom he himself learned it; but he would show us now that resurrection was always in God’s mind as the way of blessing, and that Abraham had to learn this also; no doubt in a different way from that in which the gospel declares it, and yet with the same wrapped up in the germ as is now unfolded for us in the developed fruitage. We believe in the God of resurrection: well, so did Abraham; and in spite of an immense difference in the application, the identity of principle is as apparent as it is important.

1. To Abraham and to his seed was the promise made which constituted him heir of the world spiritually. The apostle reminds us that this promise was not given by law, which therefore could not burden it with conditions that in fact would nullify it. For the law (as the Jew so little realized) only brought in wrath: where no law is there is no transgression. If sin were, as is so generally asserted from a false rendering of a familiar passage, “the transgression of the law,”* the apostle’s words would be wholly unintelligible, and perfect moral confusion would result. Then the law would be chargeable for all the sin in the world; and the law must have existed from the beginning: a conclusion which many frankly accept, but which would utterly destroy the apostle’s argument here as it is expanded in the epistle to the Galatians.

There he builds upon the fact that the promise was 430 years before the law, which could not be therefore added as a condition to a covenant made so long before it (Galatians 3:15-17). This would of course be necessarily set aside if it were proved that the law was antecedent to the covenant, instead of following it at so long an interval. But there was yet “no law,” says the apostle, to make the promise void -no condition attached to it to be violated, no line drawn to be overstepped: which is exactly what transgression means, the overstepping of a line drawn. Sin is a deeper thing: it is the lawlessness, the spirit of independence and revolt, which underlies, of course, every transgression, but which may and does exist apart from any law given to overstep; but this we shall come to later.
The promise then was entirely apart from law or condition: it was God speaking out of His own abundant goodness, -a covenant with one party to it only, and that One who cannot fail: He who accredited to Abraham righteousness by faith, in the same way gave him the promise also. For what is faith but the confession of having and being nothing, so that we turn to God of necessity for all? Righteousness came thus to him who consciously had none; and the promise to him who on his own part could promise nothing. Grace after this manner made it sure to all the seed; and those of the law could not deprive those of it who have the faith of Abraham, nor claim it, save as of faith themselves. “A father of many nations” went out certainly beyond Israel; and for all alike must He who spake be Quickener of the dead. Here the true condition of man is reached, and the principle comes out in full reality upon which God must be with him to be with him at all. The dead, and things that are not! how thoroughly does this set aside the legal principle, and enthrone God in the supremacy of resources which are His alone! Man in himself is heir only to the penalty which attaches to the failed old creation; God must come in beyond the failure in the plenitude of a power which is no less grace to bring up into a life which, being His own redemptive gift, cannot again be forfeited, so as to make the failure His. Resurrection out of death is the bringing into life subject henceforth to none. 2. Here Abraham again helps us, made to learn in his body the lesson of the divine ways such as undoubtedly in those primitive days men were quicker to read in nature than we are today. With few books or none, the book of nature was more naturally their resource than ours; not certainly in this leaving us the gainers whatever we have gained besides. For God met them there with living parables of precious meaning, and the material world became, who can doubt? more like the friend it should be than the slave that we have made it. So Abraham was made to face in his own body the impracticability of natural effort as night by night those pendant lamps of heaven shone down over his whitening head, and the word of promise whispered in the stillness, “So shall thy seed be.” Faith though he had had, he too, with us all, had thought that that promise was not quite unconditioned, as Hagar and Ishmael were witness; and Sarah had had fully her part in that which had introduced the bondmaid as heir to her mistress. Did we ever try to help God but to our own shame? So Abraham had at last to walk before an Almighty God with a body now dead, which he could reckon upon no more, and there learn in experience what, having learned, we wonder we could be so slow in learning, that faith in ourselves is only so much unbelief in Him, a hindrance to the blessing He would give us. God leaves him till his case is hopeless enough for Him to be glorified aright in meeting it, and for us to see, as else we could not, the glory of His power. Man then is put in His place, and God in His; God is glorified and man is blessed; his ruin is owned and his redemption found: and the faith that brings us there can suitably be reckoned therefore for righteousness; it is a faith that makes God all, man nothing; “wherefore also it was reckoned to him for righteousness.” 3. The principle applies still for us: the faith is, of course, in its characteristics essentially the same. In its object it is here quite different. “It was not written for his sake only that it was reckoned unto him, but for ours also, to whom it shall be reckoned, if we believe on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from among the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. God is indeed in the faith of Abraham as given here and in our own the same God, the Almighty God of resurrection; but His power is now seen as displayed for us, and not in us. Yet it is displayed in regard to Another who is in the most wonderful manner identified with us, so that what has been done to Him has indeed been done to us in the best and most precious sense. It is Christ seen as our Substitute who was delivered. for our offences, and whose resurrection therefore testifies the acceptance of that which has removed them from the sight of God. It is therefore for our justification: that is, it is, in a true and simple sense, our justification itself. The meritorious cause is, of course, His blood, and so it is stated a little later that we are justified by His blood. But the resurrection is the justifying sentence -the act of God on our behalf, as the Lord’s work on the cross was what was presented to Him, -the work of the Saviour. And thus it is that we believe on Him who raised up Jesus: God in this showing Himself now upon our side in righteousness through the work accomplished, so that we know Him as toward us, and always so. There are thus three ways in which justification is spoken of here. We are justified by His blood: the penalty that was upon us having been borne for us. We are justified by His resurrection, as the sentence in our favor which assures of the value of His blood, and its acceptance in our behalf. Finally, we are justified by faith, as that which puts us among the number of those whose Representative Christ was, and is. So that, while for the sentence and the cause we look back through the centuries to the work long since done, yet we are not actually justified till we have believed on Christ. The hyper-calvinistic thought of men justified before they are born is a dangerous fantasy, which is as unscriptural as it is hurtful.