Sola Fide

Romans 4:1-25

Preached 1/10/2021   (previous)

[audio]

 

INTRODUCTION

I have been going through the book of Romans bit by bit over the last few years.  Aside from a walk through chapter 8 back in October, I had gotten up to the end of chapter three in our run through the book. It was actually more than a year ago that I finished chapter three and since it has been quite a while, let’s do a quick review.

Remember that in the first 2 ½ chapters Paul lays out the universal need for salvation.  Paul lays out the fallenness of humankind, and gives the base motivation as a choice to worship and serve the creature rather than the creator.  A grand rebellion against God has occurred, for which God gave us over to our sin.  Paul then goes on to detail God’s gracious plan to save us.  This is complicated because it involves what seem on the surface to be conflicting attributes of God: his love and mercy versus his holiness and absolute justice.  His love makes Him want to display mercy, but justifying the ungodly by just ignoring our sin would hopelessly compromise his justice.  Paul then shows how the gospel allows God to be “just and the justifier of those who has faith in Jesus.”  It was only by the punishment of a willing substitute (who must be God Himself) in our place can he can atone for our sins, save us from his own wrath, and remain righteous.  Which is why Paul starts his gospel explanation with the statement about the gospel that

Romans 1:17a  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed …

Note that the gospel reveals many of God’s perfect attributes working in concert for his glory.  In chapter five, for instance, Paul says:

Rom 5:8  but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

But what is the gospel that Paul explains in chapter three?  It is all summed up in 2 ½ verses, which still remains one of the most simple and full encapsulations of the gospel of salvation ever written:

Romans 3:23-25a  ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

To this day when sharing the gospel we use Romans 2:23 as the proof verse that the need for salvation is universal.  The problem of sin and its subsequent judgment by God is one that every human being is heir to.  And the next two verses tell us that salvation is an undeserved gift from a loving God who would so much rather save than judge that He went through extraordinary means to do so, at his own expense. This is the capstone of Paul’s treatise on justification.  Through the substitutionary atonement of the Son of God for us God can declare us righteous in his sight without compromising his own righteousness.

In verse 27, then, Paul makes the application that is the starting point for our text today in chapter four.  He asks:

Romans 3:27a  “Then what becomes of our boasting?” (to which he gives the answer) “It is excluded.”

In the last five verses of chapter three Paul asserts that every member of the human race that receives the offer of salvation from the gospel will have one thing in common – they will have nothing to boast of before God.  NOTHING.  (This is the same thing Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9, of course.)

Now some would say that this whole idea is Paul’s invention, but Jesus himself told the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax collector.  The Pharisee boasted of his own righteousness before God and was NOT justified, while the Tax Collector begged for mercy he admitted that he did not deserve because he was a sinner and Jesus said that that man was justified before God.

But someone might argue that there are surely some great people that were good enough to be able to boast.  So Paul spends the next chapter addressing whether there some exceptions to the rule that there is not going to be any boasting among those who go to heaven. And what a better example than the very father of faith, father Abraham himself!

I. “No Boasting” Applies to Everybody (1-8)

Either all people are hopelessly unable to save themselves, or there are some people who are good enough to be able to claim their right to enter heaven themselves.  For those of us in biblical evangelicalism this might sound like a silly question.  We have learned to quote Romans 3:23 by rote and use it as the starting point of evangelism.  Nobody questions that, right?  We would say “everybody knows that”.  But that is actually a doctrine that many who call themselves Christian don’t really believe.  One major so-called Christian religion actually teaches that there are some people who generate so much merit through their own righteousness that they can donate the excess to the church for priests to give out to others when they do works of penance.  Also there are many people who call themselves Christians because that is their perception of the culture that they came from, but who still hold to the general view of humanity that “I am a pretty good person and God should reward me for that”.  Only the Holy Spirit can grant repentance to an individual, and only by confessing our need for God to save us can we be saved.

But in the early days of Christianity the church was made up mostly of Jewish believers.  When Paul wrote Romans the church was a mix of gentile and Jewish believers.  Each brought their own false ideas which had to be corrected to the truth.  One idea common to both was self-righteousness and the belief in their own inherent righteousness.  The Jews had an advantage (as Paul pointed out earlier in Romans) of having the law, but they had learned the wrong lesson.  So Paul addresses what might be the most difficult case in the Old Testament:

Romans 4:1  What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?

This question is an important one.  Abraham was looked up to by all Jews as the father of their race.  Many had been taught that being a child of Abraham meant that they would have free entrance into God’s eternal kingdom as a birthright.  That is why Jesus spent so much time in the Sermon on the Mount establishing that keeping the law outwardly did not prove you were righteous because the same sins existed in your heart which was always rebelling against God’s righteousness.  You can fool your neighbors but not the Spirit of God.  All need to repent.  John the Baptist attacked this idea head-on:

Luke 3:7-8  ⁷ He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

So it was clear that there are no “free rides” because of physical parentage.  But what does Paul’s question mean?  Basically he is asking “So Abraham is acknowledged to be a terrific example of a believer.  He is just about the most extreme case, and if there is any exception to what I said before it would be him.  So what did his righteous works get him?  Was he the one who disproved the rule of universal need for repentance and forgiveness?  Paul makes this question explicit in the next verse:

Romans 4:2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

So if Abraham earned his justification through his own righteousness, he could boast.  Paul has already told us this is impossible

Rom 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

So where do we go for an answer?  Paul directs his readers to the only correct place – the scriptures, which affirm SOLA FIDE:

Romans 4:3  For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness."

Paul quotes Genesis 15:6.  In that chapter God has reiterated his promises to Abraham that started with his calling of Abram back in chapter 12.  It is worth looking back there to see what God promised him:

Genesis 12:1-3  ¹ Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. ² And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

So Abram was living a presumably secure and happy pagan life in Ur of the Chaldeans when God called him to leave his family and home and travel to a faraway land.  Abram immediately obeyed and became a “stranger in a strange land”.  He was given a promise of many descendants, divine protection, and that somehow through him the entire earth would be blessed.  There were many problems with this, not the least of which was that he and his wife Sarai were not able to have children.  But Abram believed God. Abram had many adventures and at the end of Genesis 13 God repeats the promise of offspring.  Abram believed him but still he did not have any children.  In chapter 14 he is involved in an actual war, and then is blessed by Melchizedek. But still there were no children.  In chapter 15 God speaks again to Abram and Abram asks God how he will have descendants since he has no children.  At this point God tells him that he WILL have a son and that his descendants will be multiplied.  It is here that the bible says that his belief was counted to him as righteousness. 

It is not a coincidence that Paul goes to Genesis 15:6.  As James Montgomery Boice says: “From the viewpoint of the doctrine of salvation this is the single most important verse in the entire Bible.  This is because in Gen 15:6 the doctrine of justification by faith is set forth for the first time.  It is the first reference in the Bible to (1) faith, (2) righteousness, and (3) justification. This is the first time that any specific individual is said to have been justified.”

Getting back to Romans, Paul clarifies his argument by describing the difference between a free gift of grace and an earned credit:

Romans 4:4-5  ⁴ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. ⁵ And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,

So as Paul said in verse 2 (with different words): If Abraham had been righteous by his own deeds, salvation would not be a gift but something that God would owe him.  God would be a debtor to Abraham.  But Paul uses this verse to show that Abraham was counted righteous by God because of his trust in God’s promises.  This was not what the Jewish members of the church in Rome would have been taught by the scribes and rabbis of their youth.  In fact, the Jewish writings explicitly said the opposite.  R. Kent Hughes cites at least three sources – a statement from the Mishnah, a verse from the book of Jubilees (circa 100 bc) and a book called The Prayer of Manasses which together all conclude that Abraham was not in need of repentance.  In fact, they claimed

1. Abraham performed the whole Law before it was written,
2. he was perfect in all his deeds, and 
3. he had no need of repentance.

Now you don’t have to read very far in Genesis to refute these views since we see Abram lying to protect himself and trying to accomplish God’s promises by having a child with his wife’s maid.  So he was human like the rest of us and his trust of God was not absolute.  This is a relief to us but that, and Genesis 15:6 prove Paul’s point: even Abraham was justified by faith.

So the Jewish scribes had misunderstood this verse, but we also can interpret it incorrectly.  If you read “justified by faith” as meaning that God looked for something he could accept in the place of righteousness that would violate the Greek construction of Paul’s statements.  The word translated “by” is in a form that gives the meaning “by faith as a channel”.  As JM Boice puts it “to spend a twenty-dollar bill you have to have faith in its purchasing power.  But it is not your faith that is the basis of the purchase.  It is the value of the money.  So also spiritually.”  In other words, faith is the key but the power of salvation is the blood of Christ and his righteousness.  The faith is necessary, but it only unlocks “the power of God to salvation”.

And what does this salvation give us?  Paul again goes to another hero of the Old Testament – king David:

Romans 4:6-8  ⁶ just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ⁷ "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; ⁸ blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin."

Unlike Abraham, David’s sins were manifest and obvious.  His most famous sin involved adultery with the wife of one of his army commanders and then arranging the murder of the faithful soldier when the woman became pregnant.  God called him out for his sin through Nathan the prophet and David was devastated.  Unlike many evil people in scripture, David repented deeply and publically of his sin.  After being granted forgiveness by God (which did not remove all of the earthly consequences of his sin) David wrote the words of comfort above.  David had done nothing to deserve this absolution and he declares three times in these verses (from Psalm 32) that his deeds were lawless and sinful.  But his salvation is described in three ways:

1. His lawless deeds were forgiven,
2. His sins were covered, and
3. The Lord would not count his sins against him.

We know from the New Testament that Salvation has a twofold “reckoning”.  God accounted Jesus with our moral guilt on the cross while he accounted us with the righteousness of Christ.  This is how Abraham and David and every believer is saved, and this is the only way that God can save anybody and be true to his own righteousness.  Anything else is an insult to God.  If Abraham could not make God his debtor, could we do any better?

 
II. Faith Vs the Alternatives (9-15)  

In the next section Paul further clarifies the difference between faith and two mainstays of Jewish self-confidence in judgment, the sign of circumcision and the law.  Here is what he says about circumcision:

Romans 4:9-12  ⁹ Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. ¹⁰ 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. ¹¹ 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, ¹² 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.

One issue that constantly came up in the early church came from a group of Jewish Christians who believed that for gentile Christians to be part of the blessings of Abraham that they should be circumcised like they themselves were.  Paul dealt with this firmly in the book of Galatians because there were many proponents of this thinking and it showed a faulty interpretation of grace and the gospel.  The only requirement to receive the imputed righteousness of Christ was faith.  Any other works muddied the waters of grace.  Paul basically told the Galatians that if they trusted in circumcision that the Christ himself would be of no advantage because by extension they would be trusting the law and they would have to keep it entirely, which he had already pointed out that nobody had ever been able to do.

So to make his argument here he points out that Abraham was declared righteous long before he was circumcised!  In other words, even for Abraham circumcision was not part of his justification.  It was not required for his justification.  Then what was is for?  As Paul says, it was a sign which operated as “a seal of the righteousness he had by faith”.  It was a sign of what had already happened in his heart.  In the same way, baptism is the sign of our becoming a Christian by faith.  But (as Peter points out) the baptism that saves us is “an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” and not, as Peter puts it “a removal of dirt from the body”.  The physical act is a “sign” – a seal – indicating publically our receiving Christ as Savior.  It has no salvific value because salvation is by grace through faith.  SOLA FIDE.

Paul’s second example is Faith versus the Law:

Romans 4:13-15   ¹³ 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. ¹⁴ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵ For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

The purpose of the law is stated clearly in verse 15.  Without the law we are not specifically aware of the extent of our sin.  As Paul writes in a later chapter – until he read the commandment against coveting he thought he never coveted.  But after reading that commandment, he suddenly noticed how covetous his heart was.  As he puts it “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.”   In Galatians he writes these words:

Galatians 3:23-26   ²³ Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. ²⁴ So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, ²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.

There are two mistakes that Christians can make about the law.  One is to discount the law or say it is unrighteous.  But the other mistake is given here – that the law was given to give people a step-ladder to heaven that would be climbable through human effort.  And the example again is the righteous father Abraham.  But in reality the law is there to lead us to Christ and the gospel. 

But here in Romans 4 Paul makes a simpler argument – there is no way that Abraham was justified by keeping the law, because the law of Moses was actually given over 500 years later than Abraham’s being counted as righteous by God.

Abraham was saved through faith.  SOLA FIDE again!

III. What Saving Faith Looks Like (16-21)

So as we come to the end of the chapter, Paul returns to Abraham again and shows us a beautiful picture of his (saving) faith. If we emulate the faith of Abraham, he is truly our spiritual father and we participate in God’s covenant with him to bless every family of the earth:

Romans 4:16-17  ¹⁶ 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, ¹⁷ 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.

We see here why theology is so important to us.  Abraham is our example and we can share his faith.  And if we do, we have great assurance.  But that assurance can only come from faith.  If we trust in works, we enter doubt and are not trusting God in the same way as Abraham.  What did Abraham trust God for?  He trusted in his power to create and also to give life to the dead.  God is the source of all grace and power and without him we are lost, alone, and powerless to change our faith.  And as the author of the book of Hebrews writes, if we ignore the offer of forgiveness in the gospel and eschew the grace of God all that we are left with is “a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.” (Heb 10:27)

When did Abraham need to trust in God’s power of life and creation?

Romans 4:18-21  ¹⁸ In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, "So shall your offspring be." ¹⁹ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. ²⁰ No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹ fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

As an example for Abraham and for us, God tested his faith and as a result we have an example to encourage us to have the same faith.  It was not easy.  What Abraham trusted in was God’s honor and faithfulness as well as his power.  Think of how his faith was put on trial:

1. He was led from home and family to an inheritance that he never possessed but would be by his children 500 years later.
2. He was promises offspring numerous as the stars in the sky, but he waited until he and his wife were way beyond childbearing age with no fulfillment of the promise.  Even though God repeated the promise several times and even his wife laughed at the promise, Abraham continued to trust God.
3. When he was finally given the son of promise, God further tested him by commanding Abraham to sacrifice him.

Paul says that the only way that Abraham could trust God at that final point was that since God was so trustworthy, He must be planning to raise Isaac from the dead after I kill him.  Imagine that trust!  But that is what Paul points to.  Faith in the end is just a trust that God keeps his promises.  As Paul finishes the thought:

Romans 4:22  That is why his faith was "counted to him as righteousness."

So Abraham’s faith was a saving faith.  But it might be asked – “sure WE know the gospel after the life and death of Jesus Christ, but what about Old Testament believers?”  Well look at what Abraham had been promised:  He was promised a physical and spiritual progeny that included people from every family on earth.  He was promised a particular descendant through Whom this

Blessing would be given to them.  Jesus himself said that “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”  So we can say that it was not just a belief in God’s trustworthiness but a more broad understanding of some aspects of redemption.  We really don’t know more, but we know enough to understand that Abraham’s and David’s faith had a specific object.  It was not just “believe anything and that’s okay.  There had been promises of a redeemer back all the way to the days of Adam and Eve.  The law taught David the same lessons as it taught Paul.  The witness of conscience and creation that Paul speaks of in Romans 1-3 still leave us without excuse, and the Holy Spirit still quickened and convicted hearts of sin and drew helpless people to faith in God throughout human history. 

Throughout all time, it has always been SOLA FIDE

Conclusion: This Example is Personal  (22-25)

The final application of Romans 4 is for us. The example of Abraham is a personal gift from God for our assurance.

Romans 4:23-25  ²³ But the words "it was counted to him" were not written for his sake alone, ²⁴ but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, ²⁵ who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Like the song we have sung in kids clubs over the years:  “Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham…”  The song goes on to say “I am one of them, and so are you, so let’s just praise the Lord”.  But really if the song was based on Romans 4 we might phrase the second part as “am I one of them, or are you?”  If we are trying to climb the human ladder of ceremony or law-keeping we are not sons of Abraham.  We must have the faith of Abraham, and then God will extend to us his great salvation.  If you have trusted in Christ, then “let’s just praise the Lord!”

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