The example of Abraham
4
📚What then shall we 📖 say that Abraham our father has found, as pertaining to the flesh? 2 📚For if Abraham was justified by works, he has reason to boast; but not in the presence of God. 3 📚For what does the Scripture say?4:3 Gen 15:6. See note there. By this one reference Paul proves his point. “What does the Scripture (the Bible) say?” is the important question when we want the truth.⚜
Abraham believed God, and it was put to his account as righteousness.
4 📚Now to him who works his wage is not reckoned as grace, but as something owed.
4:4 If God saved men because of their religious works, this would mean they earned salvation, and they would be able to boast.⚜
5 📚But to him who does not work 📖 but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, that faith is put to his account as righteousness. 6 📚Even as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
7 📚Blessed are those whose
transgressions are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered.
8 📚Blessed is the man whose sin
the Lord will not count against him.
4:6-8 David, Israel’s greatest king, agreed with what was said about Abraham. See Ps 32:1-2. God forgives people because He is gracious, and He wants to give them that gift, not because they are good and have earned it (Ps 86:5; Micah 7:18-19; Matt 9:5-7; 12:31; Acts 13:38; Eph 1:7).
See here what justification means – from then on God will not count the sins of the justified against them (Rom 8:33-34). This is because even their future sins have been taken away by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and they are united to Him forever. They have Christ’s perfect righteousness imputed to them, so that theirs and His is exactly the same righteousness. There is no blot or stain on His righteousness and there never can be. So there can be no blot or stain on the righteousness they have in Him, not now, not ever. As long as the Head (Eph 1:22-23) remains righteous, so will His body, made up of all true believers.
Notice the words “will not count against him”. The Greek translated “not” could also be translated “never”. This is the wonderful position believers are in before God. For them there can be no condemnation to eternal death (the wages of sin) and hell. (Of course, as their Father He will deal with them when they do wrong and chastise and discipline them – Heb 12:5-11.) But if God does not count the believer’s sins against him, will this not encourage him to sin? No. It encourages him to love God and to live for God. See notes on chapter 6 where Paul takes up this subject and shows some of the results of God’s grace shown to believing sinners.⚜
9 📚Does this blessedness come only on the circumcised 📖, or on the uncircumcised 📖 also? For we say that faith was put to Abraham’s account as righteousness. 10 📚How was it put to his account? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. 11 📚And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith he had while he was still uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all those who believe, even though they are not circumcised, that righteousness might be put to their account also; 12 📚and the father of the circumcised, that is, of those who are not only the circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had when he was still uncircumcised.
4:10-12 Here was a good Scriptural blow at Jewish pride. God counted Abraham righteous before he was circumcised – that is, while he was still a Gentile! God justified Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. But Abraham received circumcision in chapter 17, some time after he was justified. God arranged things in this way to show that the ceremony of circumcision had nothing to do with Abraham’s salvation. Abraham was justified by faith alone, and all who follow Abraham, whether Jew or Gentile, must be justified in the same way.
He is the “father” of all who trust in the one true God. This means that in him God first showed how He gives righteousness to people. Circumcision was only a sign and seal of something Abraham already had. (The same may be said for baptism today. It is only a sign and is worthless to anyone who does not have the righteousness and salvation God gives through faith.)⚜
13 📚 For the promise that he would be the heir of the world, did not come to Abraham, or to his offspring, through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.
4:13 God promised Abraham the land of Canaan (Gen 15:7, 18). This was because Abraham believed God. The promise was given long before God gave the law. He promised also that all the world would be blessed through Abraham – Gen 12:1-3. This blessing was to come through a descendant of Abraham called the Messiah (Christ. See Ps 2; 72:5-11; Matt 1:1). The Messiah (and with Him all who believe in Him) is the heir of the whole world (Rom 8:17; Heb 1:2).⚜
14 📚For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect,
4:14 If people can become God’s heirs by keeping God’s law, then faith in God’s promises and the promises themselves are completely unnecessary. But people cannot keep God's law and so this whole idea of salvation by works is absurd.⚜
15 📚because the Law produces wrath. For where there is no Law, there is no transgression.
4:13-15 Paul shows further that God counted Abraham righteous apart from the law He gave through Moses (and which the Jews taught people had to keep to be saved). God did not give the law until hundreds of years after He justified Abraham (Gal 3:16-18).⚜
4:15 Those who try to be righteous by keeping God’s law bring more of God’s anger on themselves. Because instead of keeping the law they break it, and this transgression of the law adds to their guilt (compare Rom 5:20; 7:7-11; Gal 3:10). If it was necessary to keep the law of Moses to be saved, then no one would ever be saved. The Jews did not keep the law, and the Gentiles did not even have it.⚜
16 📚Therefore, it is by faith that it might be by grace, so that the promise would be certain to all of Abraham’s offspring, not only to those who are of the Law but to those also who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all
4:16 Since the promise of salvation (and the inheritance that goes with it) has nothing to do with trying to keep God’s law, but only requires faith, it is for all peoples, Jews and Gentiles alike. Observe in this verse the reason why God has appointed faith as the way of salvation – He had determined to give salvation as a gift and not as a payment for work.⚜
17 📚(as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations), in the sight of him whom he believed, that is, God, who makes the dead alive 📖, and calls things which are not as though they were.
4:17 Gen 17:5. Abraham is the spiritual “father” of all who believe (v 11). In the last part of this verse Paul begins to show the nature of Abraham’s faith. His faith was in the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe – the God who can do anything and who can reveal in advance what He will do.⚜
18 📚Abraham, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, in accordance with what was said to him, “So shall your offspring be”. 19 📚And he was not weak in faith; he did not consider his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, nor yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb. 20 📚He did not stagger at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, 21 📚and was fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform.
4:18-21 What was Abraham’s faith like? He believed God when, humanly speaking, there was no hope of the fulfillment of God’s promise (v 18; Gen 15:4-5). He believed God even though God had promised what seemed an impossible thing (v 19). Abraham’s age was nearly a hundred years and Sarah’s was about ninety when God said she would bear Abraham a son – Gen 17:1, 15, 16. He believed God and not his own ability. He believed God simply because God had made the promise, and he was sure that God could do and would do what He said. God gave Abraham no proof, no evidence that He would do what He said, just His bare word. And Abraham believed it (vs 20,21) because He really believed in God and that God was a God of truth. This was the nature of Abraham’s faith and of all true faith.⚜
22 📚And therefore it was put to his account as righteousness.
4:22 Verse 3.⚜
23 📚Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was put to his account, 24 📚but also for us, to whose account it shall be put, if we believe in him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.
4:23-24 To obtain salvation and become an heir of the world (v 13), our faith must be like Abraham’s. It is not enough to believe in just any God or god that people think exists. We must believe in the God who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead (v 24; Rom 10:9), for He is the only God there is. And it is not enough to believe there is this one God and that He is powerful (see Jam 2:19). We must believe His promises to us, we must put our trust in Him and His Word (Heb 11:6. Consider some of the promises He has given through His Son – John 3:16; 4:14; 5:24; 6:37; 7:38; 11:25-26; Rev 3:20; Matt 11:28). When we believe Him He counts us righteous, just as He did Abraham.⚜
25 📚He was delivered up for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.
4:25 The salvation of believers rests on this one foundation – the death and resurrection of Christ (1 Cor 15:1-4). Christ was in the place of sinners, dying the death they deserved to die because of their sins. His resurrection is proof that God accepted Christ’s sacrifice, that our sins are gone, forgiven, blotted out forever. We believers can see and should see that we are made right with God, counted righteous and free of sin, because Christ has risen from the dead. He is our justification before God – 1 Cor 1:30-31.⚜