About Romans 4

I had to write this for one of my seminary classes and thought that I would share.

Romans chapter 4 begins by showing us that we cannot be justified by our works; Paul offers three lines of reason why this is so. He begins with Abraham; Abraham was justified before God because of his faith. Although Abraham did many great things for God, he could not be justified by those works because he would have had something to brag about. The Bible tells us that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. In summary, Abraham’s faith cause him to work for God, He was not working to earn his justification before God. Second, Abraham reminds us that if we worked for our righteousness God would owe us something’ but God owes no man anything except for the judgment that we have earned through our sin. Finally, Paul points us to the words of David, “Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, 7 Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. 8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” David was a man who understood that sinful men deserve nothing but God’s wrath, but God through his grace imputes His righteousness on those who trust in Him instead of placing on us our sin and the punishment carried by our sin.

                Paul continues in Romans 4:9-15 that man cannot be saved by their religiousness. God bestowed an amazing amount of love on us when He offered mercy through His grace to us instead of the judgment that we deserved. Paul again uses the father of the Jewish nation and a man of great faith to demonstrate to us the inadequacy of religious ceremony. Paul begins by establishing that righteousness was reckoned to Abraham before the ceremony of circumcision. To understand the word recon it is best to picture a bank statement with a huge negative balance, to recon would be to place money from a different account into the negative account erasing the debt; it is not earned it is simply moved from one account to the other. As sinful humans we had a huge negative balance of righteousness in our account because of our sin, the debt was so large that it could never be repaid but Christ, who owed nothing, died on the cross making it possible for His righteousness to be imputed on our account thus bringing us into good standing with God.  As a result of Abraham’s faith in God, God’s righteousness was imputed to him and circumcision was given as an outward sign of Abraham’s inward faith (much like believer’s baptism today).

                Paul concludes the chapter by showing us the true path to righteousness: faith in God. Abraham was given some seemingly impossible promises from God, but Abraham had faith that if God could make a promise that God could also keep those promises. Surely Abraham knew the weakness of his body and the age of his wife, yet he had faith in God. God gave us the account of Abraham, not as an account of one saved by works or religion, but as a shining example of one who has been saved by faith. Today we can look at our sinful bodies and we are tempted to try to work ourselves clean through religion or good works, but just as with Abraham, all that is required is an unwavering faith in God and a confidence in the promise of forgiveness offered through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Truly it is by grace we are saved through faith.