Romans Chapter 4

ABRAHAM WAS JUSTIFIED BY FAITH

 

We now come to the fourth chapter of Romans. Some have called the epistle of Romans the Magna Carta of the Christian faith; the great statement of Christian doctrine. All religious thinking and instruction must be measured by the book of Romans, which details God’s truth in terms of His plan for redeeming (to free from the consequences of sin) the human race. The whole chapter is really the story of Abraham. If you are asking yourself how the story of a guy who lived almost 4,000 years ago could affect your life today, just listen up.

Paul uses Abraham as an illustration that salvation is by faith, not works, and that will apply to all human beings throughout history, and yes that would include anyone who lived before Abraham as well. Christ paid the full price for salvation at the cross. Salvation is a paid for gift from God through Jesus. Basically that is the message Paul begins to deliver in Romans 3:21, which we have just studied, and it continues all the way into chapter 8.

There is a very important reason for Paul using Abraham as the illustration here. Without using Abraham as the illustration, Paul’s message would be unacceptable to the Jews. Let us look at some reasons why:

1) As an Old Testament figure, Abraham would confirm the eternal truth of righteousness by grace through faith. By using Abraham, Paul is saying this concept is not something new. The fact of the matter is that it is very old because it has always existed. In fact Abraham lived about 500 years prior to Moses and the formation of the Jewish nation. Abraham was born in 2166 B.C. and died in 1991 B.C. Moses was born in 1526 B.C. and led the Exodus from Egypt in 1446 B.C. Abraham preceded (lived before) the formation of the nation of Israel. So if Paul can establish that a person was saved by grace through faith and not works way back before the establishment of Israel as a nation, he is then giving his audience a timeless truth.

2) Abraham was the supreme example of faith in the Old Testament as Paul confirms in Galatians 3:1-9 NLT:

1 Oh, foolish Galatians! What magician has cast an evil spell on you? For you used to see the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death as clearly as though I had shown you a signboard with a picture of Christ dying on the cross.
2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by keeping the law? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon you only after you believed the message you heard about Christ.
3 Have you lost your senses? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?
4 You have suffered so much for the Good News. Surely it was not in vain, was it? Are you now going to just throw it all away?
5 I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law of Moses? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.
6 In the same way, “Abraham believed God, so God declared him righteous because of his faith.”
7 The real children of Abraham, then, are all those who put their faith in God.
8 What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would accept the Gentiles, too, on the basis of their faith. God promised this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations will be blessed through you.”

In a very real sense all who come to God by faith are children of Abraham, a man who set the standard for faith by believing God in an incredible way. Paul’s teaching about Abraham was in conflict with the teaching of the rabbis of Paul’s time who believed that Abraham was made right with God, was saved, was forgiven of his sin, and chosen by God for salvation because of his perfect character. The Jews of Paul’s time thought that Abraham had been the best man in the world and was therefore chosen by God to be the father of His people, the nation of Israel. They believed Abraham was a righteous man and that is why God chose him. This is also what the majority of the orthodox rabbis believe even today.

Now at this point we could raise the question, how could a man keep God’s righteous standard when it had not yet been given? Remember that Abraham lived 500 years before God issued His Law. The Rabbis would answer by speculating such things as: Abraham kept the Law of God by anticipation of what it would be, he kept it intuitively. But no matter what the reason,  the Rabbis believed God chose Abraham because of his self-righteousness.

3) A third reason that Paul chose Abraham was that through the first three chapters of Romans everything has been theological theory and truth. It was time to put some flesh on that theological theory and truth. Paul goes from the abstract to the concrete. He gives it flesh and the flesh is Abraham. So for these three reasons Paul chooses Abraham as his example.

In verses 1-8 of Romans 4 we will deal with the fact that Abraham was justified, or made right with God, by faith and not works. We need to remember as we look at these verses that in presenting this position, Paul is storming the fortress of Judaism. He is trying to break down the walls of their strongest arsenal. Because if Paul can prove that Abraham was not justified because of his good works, then no one can be justified by their good works, because the Jews said Abraham was the most righteous man of all. It would then logically follow that if the man they considered to be the most righteous of all time could not be justified by his works, then no one else could be justified by their works.

Before we begin looking at the text let us give the Jews a fair hearing on this issue to see what needs to be overcome for Paul to prove his point. The Jews believed what they believed because of certain passages in the scripture of the Old Testament. One of which is Genesis 26:1-5, where God is speaking to Isaac, Abraham’s son:

1 Now a severe famine struck the land, as had happened before in Abraham’s time. So Isaac moved to Gerar, where Abimelech, king of the Philistines, lived.
2 The Lord appeared to him there and said, “Do not go to Egypt.
3 Do as I say, and stay here in this land. If you do, I will be with you and bless you. I will give all this land to you and your descendants, just as I solemnly promised Abraham, your father.
4 I will cause your descendants to become as numerous as the stars, and I will give them all these lands. And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed.
5 I will do this because Abraham listened to me and obeyed all my requirements, commands, regulations, and laws.” (NLT)

The Jews maintain that God blessed Abraham because he did all these things. But they do not get the order quite straight. They neglect to say that Abraham did such things because God had already saved him and made him righteous. You see the rabbis actually taught that Abraham as well as his son, Isaac, and grandson, Jacob never sinned. You would have to read through the book of Genesis eliminating a whole lot of verses to come to that conclusion.

The Rabbis taught that because Abraham was perfect, because he was righteous, because he was not a sinner, God chose him and made him the head of the Jewish nation. They also declared that Abraham was the standard for everyone else to follow. If anyone wants to be righteous, to be right with God, to have their sin forgiven, to be saved and brought into the kingdom, then you have to attain to the level that Abraham had attained. You need to climb to the top of the ladder. You have to become righteous based on your own good works. You have to keep the Law.

And as a point of clarification, some of you might be a little confused by the term Law. What exactly does Law mean? There are a number of different aspects to the Law. But for our purposes here, it will suffice to consider the Law to be The Ten commandments.

The Rabbis loved this theory about Abraham being perfect in God’s eyes, and I have little doubt that their primary reason for loving it was that it fed their pride. Because, you see, they could claim that they received their positions as Rabbis by being righteous and obeying God’s laws just as Abraham had done.

Let us begin by reading the first three verses, Romans 4:1-3 NLT:

1 Abraham was, humanly speaking, the founder of our Jewish nation. What were his experiences concerning this question of being saved by faith?
2 Was it because of his good deeds that God accepted him? If so, he would have had something to boast about. But from God’s point of view Abraham had no basis at all for pride.

6 In the same way, “Abraham believed God, so God declared him righteous because of his faith.”
7 The real children of Abraham, then, are all those who put their faith in God.
8 What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would accept the Gentiles, too, on the basis of their faith. God promised this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations (all people)[fn] will be blessed through you.”
9 And so it is: All who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith. (NLT)

You might be wondering how it was that Abraham exercised this faith in God. We can find one occasion in Hebrews 11:8 NLT:

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going.

That is what I call faith. Abraham lived in a city called Ur, in the land of the Chaldeans, a thousand miles from the land to which God wanted him to go. Abraham’s family, possessions, reputation, business, his entire life was centered there. God called Abraham to go and Abraham went. This demonstrated great faith. In affect God said, “I want you to go somewhere else and I am not going to tell you where. I want you to abandon everything and leave.” So Abraham abandoned his present security for a future hope. That is faith. Why was Abraham willing to do that? Because he believed God. He believed God would fulfill His promise, that God would take him to a good place and bless his life. He believed God and that is all that God asks.

Let us now look at verses 4 and 5 of Romans chapter 4:

4 When people work, their wages are not a gift. Workers earn what they receive.
5 But people are declared righteous because of their faith, not because of their work. (NLT)

When you believe by faith, you are made righteous. Now there is a false faith and a true faith. Let us turn for a moment to John 8:30-32 NLT:

30 Then many who heard him say these things believed in him.
31 Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you keep obeying my teachings.
32 And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

A faith that is not real is a temporary faith, whereas true faith continues in obedience to the Word of God. Faith is false if it does not bear fruit and continue in the Word. It is a total commitment that is made when you hear the truth of the Gospel message. You internalize it in your mind and heart and that motivates you to act in obedience. It is essential to understand that the faith we are talking about is a faith in what Jesus accomplished on the cross, not just a belief in God. Since Jesus’ death on the cross, the truth of His sacrifice is available to us and our faith must be in what He did on that cross.

People seek the answer but they do not always want the answer they get. The Jews asked, “What shall we do?” When they heard the answer they turned around and walked away. Most of the people who heard John the Baptist were not interested when he gave them the answer. Many who asked Jesus, “What should we do?” turned and walked away when they heard the answer. So we learn a basic truth about people. They seek to be right with God, but they do not always respond when they hear what it requires. People are either walking toward Jesus or away from Him. There is no standing still or middle ground. Which direction are you heading? If you feel you are heading toward Him but need some further information before making that commitment, you are welcome to connect to the Village Church website and ask your question.[fn] If you feel you are heading away from Jesus, perhaps you have read something here that may give you cause to stop and turn toward Him.

Before continuing let us review those verses and get a little background on the subject of this chapter. Remember the apostle Paul is writing this letter to the Jews who are living in Rome with the hopes of their understanding and accepting the Gospel (message) of Jesus Christ. Romans 4:1-5 NLT:

1 Abraham was, humanly speaking, the founder of our Jewish nation. What were his experiences concerning this question of being saved by faith?
2 Was it because of his good deeds that God accepted him? If so, he would have had something to boast about. But from God’s point of view Abraham had no basis at all for pride.
3 For the Scriptures tell us, “Abraham believed God, so God declared him to be righteous.”
4 When people work, their wages are not a gift. Workers earn what they receive.
5 But people are declared righteous because of their faith, not because of their work.

The purpose of this chapter is to show the Roman Jews, as well as all others who read this letter throughout history, that people are saved by faith in the work of Jesus Christ and not by the good things they do. No one was ever capable of obeying the requirements of God 100 % of the time. So if anyone wants to be considered right before God, they are going to need a good lawyer, one who can stand before the throne of God and convince God that they are not guilty. The Bible tells us that the only attorney with a perfect record for winning such cases before the Judge, God, is Jesus Christ. The Bible calls Jesus an advocate and we read that in 1 John 2:1 (NRSV):

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Can we afford such a high powered attorney? What if we are homeless and do not have any money? What if we have been convicted of many crimes and been sent to jail multiple times? Would any attorney in his or her right mind take on a client with such a hopeless record? Those are the questions Paul is addressing in chapter 4. He begins by using as an example the most respected man in all of Jewish history, Abraham. The Jews considered Abraham to be the father of the Jewish nation and the example that every Jew should pattern their lives after. Paul is constructing his presentation to show without a doubt that Abraham was saved and made right with God because of his faith in God, not because he lived a life of sinless perfection, which the Jews believed.

To the contrary the Jews believed that because Abraham was perfect, everyone else had to be perfect and keep God’s laws and rules in order to be saved. This belief continues today in the hearts of many people in all different denominations both Catholic and Protestant. Who is right? Well, the Romans, and you too, are about to find out.

We saw that one of the ways Abraham demonstrated his faith in God could be found in Hebrews 11:8 NLT:

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going.

But the greatest test of Abraham’s faith in God is found in Hebrews 11:17-19 NLT:

17 It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac,
18 though God had promised him, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.”
19 Abraham assumed that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead.

You can read the entire account of this event in Genesis 22. I know a lot of people who will read this chapter and say, “How could God be so sick as to ask a person to kill their own child in order to prove their allegiance to Him.” This story will be put in that very large file they carry around which is labeled, “How Could a Good God Do Such Horrible Things?” They unfortunately miss the point entirely. You see God had already promised Abraham that his son would father kings and leaders of many nations, Genesis 17:15-21 NLT:

15 Then God added, “Regarding Sarai, your wife—her name will no longer be Sarai; from now on you will call her Sarah.
16 And I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings will be among her descendants!”
17 Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief. “How could I become a father at the age of one hundred?” he wondered. “Besides, Sarah is ninety; how could she have a baby?”
18 And Abraham said to God, “Yes, may Ishmael enjoy your special blessing!”
19 But God replied, “Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. You will name him Isaac, and I will confirm my everlasting covenant with him and his descendants.
20 As for Ishmael (a son born to Abraham and one of his wife‘s servant girls, Hagar, I will bless him also, just as you have asked. I will cause him to multiply and become a great nation. Twelve princes will be among his descendants.
21 But my covenant is with Isaac, who will be born to you and Sarah about this time next year.”

How could Abraham be willing kill his son in order to please God? Simple. Abraham knew that if he did sacrifice Isaac, God could and would bring him back to life again. God would raise Isaac from the dead. Abraham knew that God had promised him that he would create many nations through Abraham and his son, Isaac. Abraham further realized that he could trust God completely because God always keeps His promises. What great faith. God knew that He wanted Abraham to be the first of many believers and to establish the nation of Israel.

God told Abraham to go to a land he had never seen; have a child he could not have; and then sacrifice that only child. And Abraham was willing to do it all. Let us look at Romans 4:3 again:

3 For the Scriptures tell us, “Abraham believed God, so God declared him to be righteous.”  (NLT)

Now what does the Scripture say way back in Genesis 15:1-6 NLT:

1 Afterward the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.”
2 But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since I don’t have a son, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth.
3 You have given me no children, so one of my servants will have to be my heir.”
4 Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own to inherit everything I am giving you.”
5 Then the Lord brought Abram outside beneath the night sky and told him, “Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!”

That is what salvation is all about. Salvation comes when you believe God, God’s Word and God’s promises. That is when God takes the righteousness you do not have and places it in your heavenly bank account. It is as if you were penniless and homeless and someone who had the winning lottery ticket, cashed it in and put the money in your very own bank account. We are given a righteousness we could never have through our own efforts, and we get it by nothing more than faith in God and the work of Jesus Christ. This is the foundation of the Gospel message. And if you refuse to believe it, your eternity will be an unending nightmare. It is your choice.

How can God declare someone who is sinful to be righteous? Isaiah 53:4 tells us:

4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins!

Why should an innocent man such as Jesus Christ die such a terrible death on the cross? This verse begins to explain why and we suggest you read the rest of Isaiah 53 as Isaiah prophecies about the coming of Jesus hundreds of years later.  Jesus was taking the place of sinners and bearing their judgment for them. (1 Peter 2:24 and 2 Corinthians 5:21). Note the price that he paid: (1) Jesus was wounded, or pierced, referring to His death on the cross, pierced by nails (John 19:37, Zechariah 12:10);  (2) Jesus was bruised, which means crushed as under a burden, the weight of sin which was laid on Him; (3) chastised, or punished as though He had broken the law, in this case with stripes from the scourging.[fn]

It was Jesus’ payment for sin through His death on the cross that made it possible for Abraham to be declared righteous just as it allows those of us who believe today to be declared righteous. The key element to being declared righteous, to being saved, to being declared not guilty is to believe and trust in all that God promises. Before Christ came that involved believing God’s Word in the Old Testament that God gave to His prophets to pass on to the people.

7 I once thought all these things were so very important (Paul is referring here to the things he did to try and be made right with God)[fn], but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.
8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ
9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own goodness or my ability to obey God’s law, but I trust Christ to save me. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.

What a thrill, what joy this should bring to people who are convinced they are condemned because they have been disobedient towards God. What relief one can experience to know they do not have to earn their way in because their sin has been completely covered.

Before going any further we need to clarify exactly what is meant by saving faith. There are many people walking around in churches who think they have saving faith but they really do not. There are five elements that will help you to understand saving faith:

 

1) Saving Faith Includes Facts

When we say that we believe, it is not that we just believe that God exists or that Jesus was a real person. That is nice but it does not do a bit of good. You can believe in religion, you can believe in going to church, but the real issue is what facts do you believe about Jesus. Satan believes in God and in Jesus and we all know where he is going to spend eternity. Saving faith begins with facts. It is not a blind leap. A lot of people say they believe in God and they are not sure what they actually believe. They believe and think in generalities about God, Jesus, and the Bible. Such belief is not saving faith. Saving faith is based on facts. Let us look at a passage from 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 NLT:

1 Now let me remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and still do now, for your faith is built on this wonderful message.
2 And it is this Good News that saves you if you firmly believe it—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place.
3 I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me—that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said.
4 He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures said.
5 He was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles.
6 After that, he was seen by more than five hundred of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now.
7 Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles.
8 Last of all, I saw him, too, long after the others.

Christ died a substitutionary death for our sins in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies (predictions). He was buried and He was raised. He appeared in His resurrected body to hundreds of witnesses and that fact is substantiated even by secular historians of the time. These are the facts:

 

These are the facts one needs to know and accept in order to have saving faith. John gives us the following in 2 John 9-11 NLT:

9 Anyone who wanders away from this teaching has no relationship with God. But anyone who remains in the teaching of Christ has a relationship with both the Father and the Son.
10 If anyone comes to your meeting and does not teach the truth about Christ, don’t invite that person into your home or give any kind of encouragement.
11 Anyone who encourages such people becomes a partner in their evil work.

 

2) Saving Faith Includes Agreement

It is one thing to know the facts, it is something else to believe the facts. Having been exposed to and understanding the facts, you then need to believe the facts are the facts.

3) Saving Faith Includes Internalization
First you need to know the facts. That is why churches need to teach the entire Bible as a literal, historical book. Those are the facts. Then the church tries to help people believe those facts, which brings us to internalization, which is the desire to make that belief personal. Jesus said in John 8:31 NLT:

“You are truly my disciples if you keep obeying my teachings.

 

4) Saving Faith Requires Trust

This means we affirm the lordship of Jesus. It means we repent of our sins, turn away from them, and place our lives in His care. We trust Him with our lives. Listen to Jesus’ own words in Matthew 13:44-46 NLT:

44 “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field—and to get the treasure, too!
45 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl merchant on the lookout for choice pearls.
46 When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!

The hidden treasure and the pearl both represent the reality of salvation. In both cases, when the person came to purchase the treasure or the pearl, the person gave all he had. When you come to saving faith, you exchange all that you are for all that Jesus is. You exchange all that you possess for all that He possesses. That is called trust. We like the way Peter puts it in 1 Peter 2:25 NLT:

Once you were wandering like lost sheep. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the Guardian of your souls.

Peter is saying that salvation means that you turn from your sin to God. It does not mean just adding God to the rest of your activities. Listen to the words Jesus spoke to Paul when He appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus from Acts 26:16-18 NLT:

16 Now stand up! For I have appeared to you to appoint you as my servant and my witness. You are to tell the world about this experience and about other times I will appear to you.
17 And I will protect you from both your own people and the Gentiles. Yes, I am going to send you to the Gentiles,[fn]
18 to open their eyes so they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God. Then they will receive forgiveness for their sins and be given a place among God’s people, who are set apart by faith in me.

When you accept Christ as your savior, there is a turning from sin to God, a turning from the past to move toward God. That is trust. You drop all you possess and receive all that He has to give you, which brings us to our fifth and last element of faith.

5) Saving Faith Requires Hope

Facts + Agreement + Internalization + Trust + Hope = FAITH

Hope is a very important concept because when you are saved you are saved in hope.
You have not yet seen the Savior who provided your salvation. You believe that you are going to Heaven, but you have not seen Heaven. You believe that you will live in the presence of God, but you have not seen God yet. You believe that you will also live in the presence of Jesus, but you have not seen Him yet either. You believe that when you get to Heaven you will be perfect both physically and emotionally and that you will lose your human frailties and your tendency to sin, but that has not happened yet as well. But you believe these things and consequently you are saved in hope.

So true salvation is not just some momentary escapism or satisfaction. It is the placing of our eternal destiny under God’s control which will be completely fulfilled in future glory.
Listen to what Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17 NLT:

13 As for us, we always thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. We are thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation, a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and by your belief in the truth.
14 He called you to salvation when we told you the Good News; now you can share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15 With all these things in mind, dear brothers and sisters, stand firm and keep a strong grip on everything we taught you both in person and by letter.
16 May our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, who loved us and in his special favor gave us everlasting comfort and good hope,
17 comfort your hearts and give you strength in every good thing you do and say.

Paul also writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 NLT:

But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

                                              F acts
                                              A greement
                                              I nternalization
                                              T rust
                                              H ope

The saving faith that we have just described is the kind of faith Abraham had. Now it is time to ask yourself a question. Do you believe? If so, is it the right kind of faith? Or is it the kind of faith that is there one moment and gone the next? Is it a shallow faith that really does not completely accept the facts or fully trust the work of Jesus? Examine your heart knowing that faith saves, and that saving faith makes you eternally right with God and will regenerate and transform your life. All you have to do and you can do it right now, is to reach out an empty hand and take the gift.

Now after using Abraham as the cornerstone for his message to the Romans, Paul is going to use their other great hero, David. Let us read Romans 4:6-8 NLT:

King David spoke of this, describing the happiness of an undeserving sinner who is declared to be righteous:
7 “Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight.
8 Yes, what joy for those whose sin is no longer counted against them by the Lord.”

The truly blessed person is the one who is forgiven of their sin. The verses we have just read are grounded in Psalm 32:1,2 NLT:

A psalm of David. Oh, what joy for those whose rebellion is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight!
2 Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin, whose lives are lived in complete honesty!

We learned earlier that Abraham lived about 500 years before God gave the Law to Moses. David lived about 500 years after God gave the Law to Moses. David shows us that God redeems people in the same way as He did with Abraham, by faith. Nothing has changed in that regard from Abraham to David, nor did it change when Christ came, and it has not changed from then until now. Always, at all times, redemption is a matter of faith resulting in imputed righteousness.

1 How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty.
2 I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God.
3 Even the sparrow finds a home there, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young— at a place near your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God!
4 How happy are those who can live in your house, always singing your praises.

You might find this Psalm a little confusing without understanding some Old Testament cultural background. Here we see a person who seeks fellowship with God, experiences intimacy with God, and who is known by God and who knows God. A person who has entered into relationship and made things right with God, and paints a marvelous picture of that in these verses.

What is the meaning here? It is much easier to comprehend when you know that a sparrow is the biblical symbol of worthlessness. You could buy sparrows very cheaply. But in a right relationship with God, the one who is worthless becomes worthy, eternally valuable. The sparrow has found a house.

The swallow is the symbol of restlessness, but here we see that the swallow has found a nest in the presence of God. The worthless become eternally valuable and the restless find rest. God looks at the sinner and the ungodly, and when they reach out in faith to embrace the redeemer, Jesus Christ, knowing that in Him alone is their hope for salvation, God accepts them as believers, declares them righteous, and erases the record of their sin. That sin is transferred to Jesus who bore the penalty for that sin on the cross.

The Bible says that our sins, if not forgiven, will be the cause of our going to Hell forever and will be the cause of tremendous anxiety while we are here on this earth. Psychologists’ offices are kept busy with people who struggle with guilt. People who cannot find release from the things they have either done or think they have done in the past, and who may also be worried about the judgment which awaits them for what they have done.

For the believer, however, all your sins are forgiven; every single one of them is erased from your heavenly account. Just like the ledger below shows:

“Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Ron’s Ledger Without Jesus	Ron’s Ledger With Jesus
Sin 1	R
Sin 2	I
Sin 3	G
Sin 4	H
Sin 5	T
Sin 6	E
………….	O
…………	U
Sin 965	S
Sin 4,322
Total Sins:    TOO MANY	Total Sins:         NONE
Destination:       HELL	Destination:       HEAVEN

 

So Romans 4:7 assures us that our sins are erased or put out of sight of God. Just how far does He send them away? Psalm 103:12 tells us: “He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west.” Do you remember what John the Baptist said when he saw Jesus coming to be baptized? “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world “ (John 1:29).

As we move on to Romans 4:9, we begin to see what the Jewish people considered a very big issue regarding this concept of “justification by faith alone.” Let usread Romans 4:9-12 NLT:

9 Now then, is this blessing only for the Jews, or is it for Gentiles, too? Well, what about Abraham? We have been saying he was declared righteous by God because of his faith.
10 But how did his faith help him? Was he declared righteous only after he had been circumcised, or was it before he was circumcised? The answer is that God accepted him first, and then he was circumcised later!
11 The circumcision ceremony was a sign that Abraham already had faith and that God had already accepted him and declared him to be righteous—even before he was circumcised. So Abraham is the spiritual father of those who have faith but have not been circumcised. They are made right with God by faith.
12 And Abraham is also the spiritual father of those who have been circumcised, but only if they have the same kind of faith Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Circumcision was a sign of identity to the Jew. The Jews are asking Paul, “What part do religious rites and ceremonies play in salvation?” So the big issue beginning in verse 9 is now circumcision. Basically the Jews are asking, “Look, if you’re saved by faith, then why did God tell us to be circumcised? What’s the meaning of circumcision? What’s the point if it doesn’t guarantee entrance into Heaven?” Many people in the Church today feel exactly the same way about baptism. They think that if you have been baptized, you are going to Heaven. That is just not so, and if you have been paying attention, you already know why. Neither circumcision nor baptism were ever intended as a free ticket to Heaven. Each was intended to be an outward sign of an inner commitment. But it would probably be helpful for you to know where they got the idea of salvation by surgery. They got it from Genesis 17:1-14 NLT:

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.
2 I will make a covenant with you, by which I will guarantee to make you into a mighty nation.”
3 At this, Abram fell face down in the dust. Then God said to him,
4 “This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of not just one nation, but a multitude of nations!
5 What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram; now you will be known as Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations.
6 I will give you millions of descendants who will represent many nations. Kings will be among them!

10 This is the covenant that you and your descendants must keep: Each male among you must be circumcised;
11 the flesh of his foreskin must be cut off. This will be a sign that you and they have accepted this covenant.
12 Every male child must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. This applies not only to members of your family, but also to the servants born in your household and the foreign-born servants whom you have purchased.

14 Anyone who refuses to be circumcised will be cut off from the covenant family for violating the covenant.”

1 So Christ has really set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.
2 Listen! I, Paul, tell you this: If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ cannot help you.
3 I’ll say it again. If you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey all of the regulations in the whole law of Moses.
4 For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace.
5 But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive everything promised to us who are right with God through faith.

7 You were getting along so well. Who has interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth?
8 It certainly isn’t God, for he is the one who called you to freedom.
9 But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others—a little yeast spreads quickly through the whole batch of dough!

Also we want to read with you all of Galatians 6 from the Message, a contemporary translation that we recommend using very selectively as a supplement to your other translations. In this case we found the translation of the entire chapter very meaningful and would like to share it with you:

Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived. Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life. Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience. Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life. So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith. Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you. These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible! For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. cannot you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them! Quite frankly, I don’t want to be bothered anymore by these disputes. I have far more important things to do—the serious living of this faith. I bear in my body scars from my service to Jesus. May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friends. Oh, yes!

The issue in these churches is not a person’s heart but the ritual of the act of the sacrament. For those who may not be familiar with the Catholic sacraments and their meaning, let us briefly touch on each of them:

 

1) Infant Baptism

By being baptized as a baby, you are saved and given the guarantee of eternal life. According to the Catholic Church, baptism is essential for salvation.

 

2) The Eucharist or Mass

This involves participating in the ceremony of eating bread and drinking from the cup. Many churches call this ceremony communion. The benefit of this ceremony, according to the Catholic Church, is a union of the person with Christ. In other words, when you eat the bread and drink the wine, they believe you are joined with Christ and your sin removed. It is also stated that this ceremony is essential for salvation.

 

3) Confirmation

The sacrament of confirmation completes the sacrament of baptism. If baptism is the sacrament of re-birth to a new and supernatural life, confirmation is the sacrament of maturity and coming of age.‍ Whereas the priest administers baptism, the bishop administers confirmation by laying his hands on the head of the person. In this act the person is said to receive the Holy Spirit, strengthening him/her to live up to his/her profession and tell what he/she believes.[fn]

 

4) Confession or Penance

Roman Catholicism teaches that Christ forgives sins through the priest at confession or penance. The outward sign that the confessor has been forgiven is the statement of absolution by the priest. He has the authority through Christ’s statement in John 20:23. In this the priest has the power to forgive or not forgive sins.‍[fn]

John 20:23 (NAS):
“If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”

The Catholic Church took a great deal of liberty in misrepresenting the meaning of this verse. Forgiveness of sins is one of the major benefits of the death of Jesus. It is the essence of the New Covenant. The forgiveness of sins is the prominent feature of the preaching in the Book of Acts. Jesus was giving the apostles (and by extension, the Church) the privilege of announcing Heaven’s terms regarding how a person can receive forgiveness. If one believes in Jesus, then you can confidently say that the person has been forgiven. If a person rejects Jesus’ sacrifice, then you can confidently advise them  that they are not forgiven.[fn]

 

5) Holy Orders

The sacrament of holy orders involves ordination to the offices of bishop, priest, or deacon, conferring “on a man the spiritual power and grace to sanctify (free from sin) others.”‍ The Sacrament of Holy Orders confers upon the soul of the man ordained a special indelible mark or character of Jesus Christ which will remain for all eternity.”[fn]

 

6) Marriage

 The sacrament of marriage is a sign of the union between Christ and the Church. The Council of Florence declared in 1439: “A triple good attaches to matrimony. The first is the begetting of children and their education to the worship of God. The second is the faithfulness which each spouse owes to the other. The third is the indissolubility of marriage because it represents the indissoluble union of Christ and the Church.”‍[fn] The Roman Catholic Church emphasizes the permanence of marriage; divorce is forbidden. It also rejects abortion or artificial birth control. Vatican II emphasized the necessity of developing love in marriage and that marriage does not exist solely for procreation.‍[fn] I find this doctrine to be very sound.

 

7) Extreme Unction

“One becomes by extreme unction like the risen Christ because it is given to the dying as a sign of the glory to come” ...the holy anointing makes the man or woman who stands at the threshold of eternity and loyally cooperates with the grace of the sacrament ready to enter directly into Heaven.‍[fn]

Now then, is this blessing only for the Jews, or is it for Gentiles, too? Well, what about Abraham? We have been saying he was declared righteous by God because of his faith. (NLT)
Remember that this blessing is the blessing referred to in Romans 4:6-8. Who is this blessedness for? The Jew would claim that it was only for the circumcised Jew and that no uncircumcised person could ever share in salvation. But verse 9 tells us that Abraham was declared righteous because of his faith. If God blesses those who believe, as He did Abraham, is this blessing then applicable to everybody who believes? Based on the first 8 verses of Romans 4, there is no other conclusion that could be reached. But the Jew would say, “Even if I concede that a person is saved by faith, it could only be a person who was circumcised. No uncircumcised person could ever receive God’s salvation.”
Such thinking is typical of many Protestant churches as well as the Roman Catholic Church.. Some of you who may come from one of these backgrounds might have been taught that salvation is based on baptism, confirmation, or the Eucharist. Paul’s answer to the question raised in verse 9 is masterful, and we find it in Romans 4:10:
But how did his faith help him (that is, Abraham)?[fn] Was he declared righteous only after he had been circumcised, or was it before he was circumcised? The answer is that God accepted him first, and then he was circumcised later!
Were you looking for some good news today? Well, there it is. Abraham was uncircumcised when God declared him righteous. Abraham was uncircumcised when God granted him salvation and eternal life. This is the same as saying he was unbaptised; it is the same as saying Abraham was unceremonialized. Now you are asking, “How do you know that?” Let us turn back to Genesis 17:23-27 for clarification:

23 On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and every other male in his household and circumcised them, cutting off their foreskins, exactly as God had told him.
24 Abraham was ninety-nine years old at that time,
25 and Ishmael his son was thirteen.
26 Both were circumcised the same day,
27 along with all the other men and boys of the household, whether they were born there or bought as servants. (NLT)
Just as a point of information, Abraham’s son, Ishmael, was born to Abraham’s wife’s servant, Hagar, because his wife, Sarah, was unable to conceive. This occurred before the miracle child, Isaac, was born to Abraham and Sarah, the child that God had promised. Now, Ishmael was 13 years old when all this happened. When God made His covenant with Abraham and God declared Abraham righteous, Ishmael had not yet been born. So Abraham would not have been circumcised for another fourteen years after being declared righteous by God. This can be confirmed by turning back a few pages to
Genesis 15:1-6 NLT:
1 Afterward the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.”
2 But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since I don’t have a son, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth.
3 You have given me no children, so one of my servants will have to be my heir.”
4 Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own to inherit everything I am giving you.”
5 Then the Lord brought Abram outside beneath the night sky and told him, “Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!”
6 And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord declared him righteous because of his faith.

What then is the purpose of circumcision? Why was that necessary? Paul answers in Romans 4:11 NLT:

Circumcision was a sign and a seal of the righteousness provided by God. there is a difference between a sign and the real thing. If you are driving to Chicago and see a sign that says “Chicago” along with an arrow, you do not pull over next to the sign and say, “We’re here.” A sign points you to something. Circumcision was a sign that pointed to something. What was that something?

1) Circumcision was a physical mark to identify God’s people, the Jews. In fact, in the sixteenth chapter of Acts, Paul had Timothy circumcised because it would give him access in his mission to the Jews. They would accept him because he was one of them.

How did the Jews in the Old Testament times know this? Because God told them through His prophets. Deuteronomy 30:6 (NRSV):

Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live.

Here it is in the Jews own Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible) because that was the way God always wanted it to be, and every circumcised child was to be a reminder of that.

Psalm 51:6 NKJV:
6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.

Jeremiah 4:3,4 NRSV:
For thus says the Lord to the people of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns.
4 Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, remove the foreskin of your hearts, O people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, or else my wrath will go forth like fire, and burn with no one to quench it, because of the evil of your doings.

Did the Jews know what God expected of them? You bet they did. Every child was a testimony that the heart needed to be circumcised. What about today? When we take communion, when we come to the Lord’s table, does that save us? No, but do you know what it does do? It is a sign that points (Þ) to the death of Jesus and that God wants to save us and is ready to save us. When we participate in the act of communion, we are symbolizing Christ’s act of redemption, and that without Christ one cannot be saved. That is why Scripture warns people who are not saved not to participate in communion. God does not look favorably on people who do that. If you think that by taking communion, you are automatically saved, then you are doing exactly the same thing that many of the Jews did with circumcision, and you are seriously mistaken. In fact you are walking the path that leads to eternal Hell.

Baptism is in the same category. When you dunk somebody in the water and they come up out of the water, that is a sign that points to a union between that person and Christ in both His death and resurrection. You die to sin and rise to new a new life filled with the Holy Spirit. Let us go back for just a moment to Romans 2:28,29 NRSV:

For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical.
29 Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God.

So based on the second part of Romans 4:11, Abraham is not just the father of the Jews who believe but also of all those who are not Jews who believe. Abraham is the father of everyone who believes. We all have the same kind of salvation Abraham had if we believe. The model for everyone’s salvation is Abraham. If you do not believe God and Jesus Christ, you can be circumcised, baptized, communion-ized, confirmed-ized, Eucharist-ized, penance-ized, and extreme unction-ized, and it will not do you a bit of good. And if you have not gone through any of those ceremonies but believe in God and Jesus Christ‘s death on the cross for your sins, that is all you need to do to be declared righteous by God and receive salvation from God. Look at Philippians 3: 1-9 NLT:

Whatever happens, dear brothers and sisters, may the Lord give you joy. I never get tired of telling you this. I am doing this for your own good.
2 Watch out for those dogs, those wicked men and their evil deeds, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved.
3 For we who worship God in the Spirit are the only ones who are truly circumcised. We put no confidence in human effort. Instead, we boast about what Christ Jesus has done for us.
4 Yet I could have confidence in myself if anyone could. If others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!
5 For I was circumcised when I was eight days old, having been born into a pure-blooded Jewish family that is a branch of the tribe of Benjamin. So I am a real Jew if there ever was one! What’s more, I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.
6 And zealous? Yes, in fact, I harshly persecuted the church. And I obeyed the Jewish law so carefully that I was never accused of any fault.
7 I once thought all these things were so very important, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.

Let us turn now to Romans 4:13-18 NLT:

 

4 If God’s promise is only for those who obey the law, then faith is not necessary and the promise is pointless.
15 For the law always brings punishment on those who try to obey it. (The only way to avoid breaking the law is to have no law to break!)
16 So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham’s. For Abraham is the father of all who believe.
17 That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, “I have made you the father of many nations.” This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing.
18 Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping—believing that he would become the father of many nations. For God had said to him, “that is how many descendants you will have!”

There are probably billions of people in this world who believe in a variety of religions that are built around the idea that you can save yourself, have your sins washed away, and gain Heaven by going through a bunch of ceremonies, religious rites or rituals. For example during the celebration of the Kumbha Mela, a religious event in India among Hindus, people sit on beds of nails, walk across broken glass, sit on hot coals, pierce their tongues with knives, stare at the sun until blinded, shave and count every hair from their bodies to throw into the Ganges River (each hair represents a million years they will get in Heaven), and commit suicide in a spiritual offering in order to appease their gods and get in good standing with them.[fn]

In His day Jesus faced a very sophisticated type of religion that was in effect no different than the kind of Hinduism we just described. It was the religion of the Jewish Pharisees who believed that by external rights like circumcision and other religious works, they could earn their way into Heaven and have their sins forgiven. You see there are only two kinds of religion in the whole world:

1) The religion of divine accomplishment, Christianity. The accomplishment being
Christ’s death on the cross.

2) The religion of human achievement.

Those two categories cover every religion that exists.

You might ask, “Well, aren’t an awful lot of those people sincere about the good things they do?” The answer to that question would be a resounding, “yes.” They are probably very sincere about what they do but that will not change the fact that without faith, they are on their way to Hell because they are also sincerely wrong about what it takes to get to Heaven. You simply cannot earn your way in on your own. In this section we will be looking at the fact that the Jews believed they were saved first by circumcision and also by keeping the Law of God.

Before getting into this let us just take a quick overview of where we have been. First of all you may remember that Abraham was not made right with God by circumcision because he was not circumcised when God declared Abraham to be righteous. In fact, Abraham was not circumcised for another fourteen years after being declared righteous. Secondly, Abraham could not have been declared righteous by keeping the Law of God because the Law of God was not given to Moses until 430 years after Abraham died. And yet these are the two things the Pharisees maintained would provide a person with salvation. How is it that Abraham was declared righteous and saved? Look back to verse 13 that we just read. Abraham simply believed God. He was justified and made righteous by believing God’s promise (Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-6), which makes it a gift from God by His grace (an undeserved favor or blessing).

It is no different than when God comes to you and says, “Here’s my promise. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and His work, I’ll give you eternal life.” If you say, “By faith I accept that gift,” then you are saved.

Now I would like to place before you for your consideration something that I find fascinating and believe to be verified by various passages in the Bible. When God was making His promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, He says in verse 3: “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” What does this mean exactly and did Abraham understand the meaning? I believe Abraham somehow knew that this promise from God involved the coming of a messiah, a savior, a redeemer, which would eventually be Jesus.
Why do I think that? Look at John 8:56 NLT:

Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced as he looked forward to my coming. He saw it and was glad.”

Abraham understood that there would be a future time when the Redeemer would come. That Redeemer would be a direct descendant of Abraham who would redeem all nations, tongues, tribes, and people by faith; and all those sons and daughters of faith would be the descendants of Abraham. Further evidence can be found in Galatians 3:16 NLT:

God gave the promise to Abraham and his child. And notice that it doesn’t say the promise was to his children, as if it meant many descendants. But the promise was to his child—and that, of course, means Christ.

So when God made the promise to Abraham the promise was for the eventual coming of Jesus Christ, and it is in Christ that all people are blessed. Paul writes in Galatians 3:29:

Now the promise that all the world would be blessed through one of Abraham’s descendants back in Genesis 12:3, could only come true because Jesus was a direct descendant of Abraham, and all who put their faith in Jesus become one with Him and therefore Paul can say in Galatians 3:8,9:

What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would accept the Gentiles, too, on the basis of their faith. God promised this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations will be blessed through you.”
9 And so it is: All who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.

Therefore, we should now see clearly that because of the promise made to Abraham of the coming of Christ, anyone who believed God and the saving work that would be done through the coming Christ, either before or after His coming, would be saved because of faith.

We will wait until we get to Romans chapter 8 before we get into the detail of our being fellow heirs with Christ in all that God gives Christ. But we want to let you know right now it means that all believers inherit the world and will one day rule over it with Christ.

Now before moving on I just want to make a couple of comments about God’s Law. So let us take a look at Romans 4:15 NAS:

for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation.

This is the reason a person cannot be saved by keeping the Law. The main purpose of the Law is to show you that there is no way for you to measure up to God’s standard for behavior on your own. You cannot know that you are doing something wrong if you do not have some standard to measure yourself against. If you have any doubts about not being able to keep the Law on your own, just read through it very carefully and that should wipe away those doubts. You see, if there are not any rules, you can not break any rules, right? But when God reveals one of His laws, it just reveals the evil in the human heart. We will look at this in more depth in chapter 7.

16 So that is why faith is the key! God’s promise is given to us as a free gift. And we are certain to receive it, whether or not we follow Jewish customs, if we have faith like Abraham’s. For Abraham is the father of all who believe.
17 That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, “I have made you the father of many nations.” This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who brings into existence what did not exist before.
18 When God promised Abraham that he would become the father of many nations, Abraham believed him. God had also said, “Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars,” even though such a promise seemed utterly impossible!
19 And Abraham’s faith did not weaken, even though he knew that he was too old to be a father at the age of one hundred and that Sarah, his wife, had never been able to have children.
20 Abraham never wavered in believing God’s promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God.
21 He was absolutely convinced that God was able to do anything he promised.
22 And because of Abraham’s faith, God declared him to be righteous.
23 Now this wonderful truth—that God declared him to be righteous—was not just for Abraham’s benefit.

 

 

Isaiah

John

Romans

1 Peter


© Ron Teed - Used by permission. All rights Reserved.