Romans 4: 1 – 8 NLT
“Abraham was, humanly speaking, the founder of our Jewish nation. What did he discover about being made right with God? 2 If his good deeds had made him acceptable to God, he would have had something to boast about. But that was not God’s way. 3 For the Scriptures tell us, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” (Genesis 15:6)
4 When people work, their wages are not a gift, but something they have earned. 5 But people are counted as righteous, not because of their work, but because of their faith in God who forgives sinners.6 David also spoke of this when he described the happiness of those who are declared righteous without working for it:
7 “Oh, what joy for those
whose disobedience is forgiven,
whose sins are put out of sight.
8 Yes, what joy for those
whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.” (Psalm 32: 1-2)
Paul is dealing with a national/religious faith which had focused on keeping laws for hundreds of years. The idea of simply believing something was completely foreign to most of them. When they thought about pleasing God, they thought about attending temple gatherings, offering animals on an altar, a priest who entered the Holy of Holies once a year to plead with God to accept them, a restricted diet, along with many other rules about how to live on a daily basis. So as they heard Paul’s messages about faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection, they argued that wasn’t part of their religious beliefs at all.
In chapter 4, Paul tells them that faith was the beginning of the Jewish nation /religion, and is still the most important part. To back up what he said, Paul tells the story of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation and makes reference to David, a king that Jews held in high esteem.
Paul goes back to Genesis 15: 5 – 6: “Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!” 6 And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.” And Genesis 17: 5: “What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations.”
These were God’s promises to Abraham given in a vision. Abraham believed God, and he acted on what God said. He left his home in Chaldea and moved to the place that God instructed. Was Abraham a perfect, righteous person? At one point, he doubted what God had told him, and had a son with one of Sarah’s maids since it didn’t look like Sarah was able to get pregnant. Haggar and her son, Ishmael, ended up being driven out when Isaac was born – that part of the story certainly confirmed that Abraham wasn’t promised anything based on his good deeds. But when Abraham began to think he must have been mistaken to believe God (he was a 100 years old, and Sarah was well past child-bearing age), God came again and repeated His promise, and Isaac was born. This is an incredible story of a hoped-for birth and the beginning of a nation born and chosen by God. Abraham believed and acted on what God had said; God kept His promise, and a miracle happened along the way.
Paul also refers to David, and many of the Psalms – like the one quoted by Paul – talk about David’s thankfulness for God’s forgiveness. Now if anyone could be accused of breaking the Law, David sure could. He coveted another man’s wife, committed adultery, and then murder. Yet David could say, “Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight. Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.”
So Paul is reassuring the Jews that God is still a God of faith. And now we have the miracle of God in human flesh dying for us and coming back from the dead. If this is what we believe, then we are forgiven and accepted by God.
What does that mean for us in 2022? It means we can be reassured that we are accepted by God. It’s so easy to feel guilty and question whether God loves us. We see the stupid things we’ve done, maybe even nasty things we’ve done, and wonder how we can make up for those things. Maybe our marriage is falling apart, and we feel like we must be failures in God’s eyes. Maybe we compare ourselves to others around us, and think we don’t measure up to them.
But that’s not what God is looking at. He’s telling us that He took care of all that. It’s almost like a legal transaction. He will take away the bad things from the column titled, My Life, and put in the holiness and perfection of His Son. How does that miracle happen? It happens when I say that I believe that God has done that for me, and accept the new life He wants to give me.
That’s faith.
Our song for today is Great is Thy Faithfulness by William M. Runyan.