Romans 4:1-17
What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts 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.”
Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
The Book of Romans at this point is very concerned with trying to make sure we understand the faith of God, as it works in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, St. Paul writes his letter to a church that would have been divided between Jews and Gentiles. And he wants them to know that the faith is the same for both. And especially in this section, Romans chapter four, Paul is concerned that the Jewish Christians know that the promise is the same promise, it's always been. That the God of the Old Testament does not work differently in the New Testament, that the grace given to them before Jesus came is the same as the grace given to them, after the only difference is not how God works. But the cross, that God has now given the Son Jesus to die for us. Now, many of us we believe, or have been told or thought, that God of the Old Testament is very different from the God of the New Testament. Sometimes you will hear it summarize that the Old Testament is the God of wrath. And the New Testament is a God of love. The Old Testament is a covenant of works. The New Testament is a covenant of grace. This is kind of a Sunday School version of the Old Testament, we do that because a lot of the stories from the Old Testament sound kind of aggressive, right? When you read the stories of Moses and Egypt, God is bringing a lot of judgment on the Egyptians. When God sends Joshua into the promised land, he tells them to go out and kill everyone. That does not sound like a God of love to me, does it? Yikes. And then, when we look at the New Testament, we get that that Sunday School version of Jesus, which I think can be summarized with the paintings of Jesus with the lamb on his shoulders, right? We've got that like, sort of, oh, it's Jesus thing. He's got the lamb, it's fluffy, it's clean, it's bright, maybe his face is glowing, and he's looking down on you in love. These are not total, the total picture of Jesus and God in the Old Testament and the New Testament, of course. These are Sunday School understanding. What Paul wants us to know is that God worked exactly the same way in the Old Testament, as he does in the New Testament, that Abraham was saved by grace, through faith on account of Christ, just like we are. The difference is that between the two, Jesus came and died on the cross. So Abraham could look forward to the promise, and we look back. And so that's what he says. He says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Or, as David puts it, 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. This is different from the way many people tell the Sunday School version of the story of Abraham. We read it God, God went to Abram. And he called him he said, Get up and go to land I will show you and Abram got up and he left. And very often this is shown as as a way and an example for us to follow right? We preach it like this. Abram was comfortable in her on and then God broke into his life and said, leave everything behind. Leave your comfortable life and go far away to a new land and follow me. The storybooks often picture Abram and Sarai and a camel right there on their own, walking through the wilderness the 1000 miles to the new place, aren't they Brave, faithful. But that's not what the story is actually like. The story actually tells us that it wasn't as big a deal is that first they were all nomadic people. They were moving all the time. Second, they weren't alone. They brought the people they had acquired in Iran. Abram was ahead of the tribe. He brought lots of people, he had enough people in his group to actually make war against the king. But most of all, Abram didn't obey God. He said, leave your father's family and who did he take with him? Lot, his brother's son. You read a little bit earlier to you can see that this wasn't a big deal, or a change in plans for Abram. When the family moved to Iran, they were already on their way to Canaan. They just stopped there for a little bit. How do you know these things? Instead of reading the story that you you have in your mind, you actually read the words, and they will tell you. Abram wasn't chosen by God because He was awesome. He wasn't chosen by God because he was faithful. He was chosen by God because God chose him. And that's it. It was by grace. In fact, if you look at the rest of Abram story, it does not play him very well. Once he gets to the promised land, the first thing he does is he goes to Egypt, and sells his wife to the Pharaoh. That is, I think, is the example we should take from Abram, right? The moment you get in trouble, sell your wife. Kristen says, Thank you. So many times after that, Abram complains to God and says, Hey, God, where's this son? You promised me. In fact, He does it so often, that he eventually decides to take matters into his own hands. And he impregnates his wife's servant, and they have a child named Ishmael. That creates all sorts of problems. When they he finally does have the son of the promise, his wife gets so upset about Ishmael that Abram kicks Ishmael out into the wilderness with his mom, a death sentence. The story of Abraham is not the story of God choosing a good, holy, wonderful man. The story of Abram is the story of God, proving himself over and over and over and over again to a man who doesn't really trust him the way he should. And that God's grace and His promise stay with Abram, despite all of that, until he gets to the point where he realizes he can't deny it anymore. Which is what we see when Abram brings his son Isaac to the top of the mountain to sacrifice him, that he finally has to trust to know that even if he killed Isaac, God would raise him from the dead, and bring him back. That's the story, a story of God's grace to a sinful man. It's the same story that God gives us, right? You were chosen, you weren't chosen because you were faithful. You were chosen because God chose you. Because he sent his son Jesus to die for you, so that you can have life. And the promise of grace is the promise of God proving himself over and over and over again to you that every time you leave this place, you go out and you screw up. And he welcomes you back with forgiveness and love. And he says your mind, there's nothing you can do about what about the other Old Testament figures? Weren't they saved by their faithfulness? Weren't they put out there and they righteous, amazing people? Let's take a look at Jacob, great hero of the Old Testament. Do you know how he starts out his story? He tricks his dad into thinking that he's Esau pretends to get to be that guy so that he can get the blessing and then he has to flee from his brother for his life for his deceit. Good examples from the Old Testament.
What about Moses, we should be like Moses, right? He was awesome. He was a murderer, who started his life out in the palace of the Pharaoh and then killed someone because he saw him beating a Hebrew and he had to flee for his life. When Moses was called by the burning bush at 80 years old, he went up to God and God said go to my people. And Moses said, no, no thanks. anybody but me. I'm not the right guy to someone else, anyone else? But God wouldn't let him go. What about Gideon? Gideon was a mighty warrior, a hero he killed with 1000s of Midianites. When God sent an angel to him, Gideon was so afraid of the Midianite army that he was hiding in a in a a cistern threshing wheat so that nobody can see him. The angel shows up to this guy cowering in a corner and says, hail, mighty warrior, the Lord is with you. I bet he looked around like, who are even David, the great paragon of the faith, the example we're all supposed to follow. He was such a bad father. He let one of his his sons rape his daughter, and he did nothing. Those aren't stories they tell you in Sunday School Oh.
God saved them all by grace. He saved them by giving them the promise. When they trusted in him, the faith given to them by grace through faith on account of Christ is what brought them through. God was faithful to unfaithful people. But what about the rest of the church? Isn't the law, the law of Moses, the covenant? Isn't that a covenant of works? weren't the people of Israel then saved by their actions? No. It wasn't like that either. You see the Old Testament church, they also had Grace just like us. See, the covenant wasn't given as a condition for salvation. It first came to the people after they were pulled out of Egypt. The story goes, Moses goes to Egypt, the 10 plagues happen, then the Passover, they take the blood of the Lamb and they mark it on the doors. And then God calls them out of Egypt. Then they go through the Red Sea, then they get fed in the wilderness with manna quail, and they get water from the rock. And then finally there at the foot of Mount Sinai. God has already called them his people. He's already gathered them together. He's already made them his own. They've already had the salvation event of the Old Testament in the Passover. And then he says, Now this is how you live, people I have already saved. Is that not how it works for us to Jesus came and He died on a cross. He rose from the dead, He ascended into heaven, and he called you in baptism. And once you have been saved, then he says, Now this is how you live. But even that, that wasn't just the law. The Old Testament had ways and Sacraments just like we do. In the Old Testament, the sacrament of baptism is just like circumcision. Every boy eight years old was or eight days old, was brought into the covenant through circumcision. And we too, are brought into God's covenant of grace, by the gift of baptism, when God gave you the Holy Spirit and planted faith in your heart and called you his own. They have communion to it was called a fellowship offering. You bring an animal to the temple, you offer it as a sacrifice there, they would kill the animal put the best parts on the altar, and then they would cook the rest and everybody else would eat it. It was a meal with God called a fellowship offering. And we to have that fellowship offering to don't we, the sacrifice that was offered for us Jesus Christ on the cross comes to us in bread and wine and we eat his body and drink his blood. And we gather together in fellowship in communion with Christ. We have confession and absolution they had it to what's called a sin offering. You bring an animal to the temple, you kill it, and then you put it on the altar and you confess your sins and through it, you receive forgiveness. God worked the same way in the Old Testament as he works now. And so when we look at these figures, guys like Abraham, Isaac Jacob, Moses, David, we shouldn't look at them as, as heroes that are so high up there that we're supposed to be perfect like them. They are great examples of wicked people, that God loved anyway. That God came to save and choose, because he wanted.
In fact, I bet they were far worse than you will ever be. And yet God still loved him. He sent His Son to die for you, to give you life.
So the story of Abraham is really the story of a wicked man who needed God's love, who learned over the decades to finally trust him. Much like the story of many Christians, wicked people who receive God's grace over and over again because they need it so much like me and you. The God of the Old Testament is no different from the God of the new test. The only difference is the cross. We look back. They looked forward. And yet we're all saved by the same grace. In Jesus name, Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai