Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 Commentary

There are no “only children” in God’s adopted family. Since, as Paul insists in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, Abraham is our father, we don’t just have a second (and third — in God) father. We also have countless siblings with whom we now and in the future will share an enormous inheritance. So preachers might listen for the Spirit’s promptings as we build a message around the enormity of God’s family.

Romans 5 is not, of course, mainly about the size of Jesus’ friends’ adoptive family. It’s first about what God did in Christ in order to make us part of God’s family. But preachers who feel the Spirit tugging us in a slightly “different” direction from an exploration of our justification might choose to explore the size, scope and diversity of the family into which God has graciously adopted us.

Because Abraham gets so much attention in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, it’s always at least somewhat tempting to pay most messages’ attention on it to him. That’s why it’s good for preachers to remind ourselves that this text is first of all theocentric. While Paul mentions Abraham’s name more often than God’s, we always aim to focus our attention on God’s amazing grace.

Who is this gracious God? The God of Romans 5 is a God who “justifies” [edikaiothe*] (2). This is, obviously, a Greek legal term for a judge’s declaration of someone as innocent. In using that term Paul is announcing that God’s adopted children are innocent in God’s eyes. Though we are naturally and persistently guilty of sinning against God and our neighbor, God views and treats us as innocent.

The God of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is also, however, a God who “credits” [elogisthe] (3) or [logizetai] (4). This is a financial term that denotes the way God credits to Jesus’ friends Jesus’ righteousness. When God looks on God’s naturally unrighteous people, God sees us as people who are as righteous as Jesus was. We might even say it’s as if God’s transfers funds from God’s storehouse to our spiritual account.

Yet fundamental to Romans 5’s argument is why this happens. Why does God justify and credit righteousness to God’s dearly beloved people? Is it a reward for our own righteousness? Or someone else’s? Or Someone Else’s?

Paul, of course, mentions Abraham, one of Israel’s righteous heroes. The apostle quickly dismisses the possibility of this patriarch’s righteousness being good enough for God or somehow credited to us. In verse 2 he writes, “If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works [ex ergon], he had something to boast about [kauchema] – but not before God.” Abraham was, in fact, somewhat noteworthy for his obedience. But not noteworthy enough for God. Abraham was good. But, to put it bluntly, not good enough in himself for God.

This makes verse 2 a good Lenten reminder for the many saintly people who preach and listen to those who preach. Jesus’ friends may be good. We may even be better than most people. But none of us are good enough to make ourselves righteous enough for our holy and righteous God.

So how did Abraham and how do his descendants receive the grace that is God’s righteous view of us? In verses 3 and 5 Paul offers his resounding answer: “Abraham believed [episteusen] God, and it was credited [elogisthe] to him as righteousness [dikaiosynen] … To the one who does not work [me ergazomeno] but trusts [pisteuonti] God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.”

This is, of course, more legal and transactional language. That’s a reason preachers want to let the Spirit help us find ways to make that language accessible, lest we think of our relationship to God as largely transactional. It’s also a reason why some scholars see in the language of justification the idea of acceptability. Those God justifies God accepts as God’s dearly beloved people. To put things bluntly, Christians aren’t God’s business partners. We’re God’s adopted children.

But preachers may want to point out the danger of thinking of our faithful reception of God’s amazing grace as a kind of good work. It’s tempting for Christians to assume we make ourselves acceptable to God by believing in Jesus Christ. Faith is not a good work. It is simply the means by which Jesus’ followers receive our acceptance by God. Faith earns nothing. It simply gladly receives the gift that is God’s amazing grace.

Here is the heart of the gospel which even preachers who wish to think about the size of God’s family may not bypass. God makes us members of God’s family by God’s grace alone that we receive with our faith.

But the Spirit may prompt preachers to remind God’s people that we’re not alone in that. When God adopts us into God’s gigantic family, God gives us almost countless brothers and sisters. Verse 13 introduces the idea of Abraham’s “offspring” [spermati] for the first time in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. There Paul professes, “It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring [to spermati autou] received the promise [epangelia] that he would be heir [kleronomon] of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.”

It’s not just to Abraham that God promised untold blessings. It’s also to his spermati (“offspring”). God is so lavish and generous with God’s blessings that they, in one sense, are passed down from Abraham to what The Message paraphrases as his “children.” Not just Abraham but also his descendants will, God promises, somehow inherit the earth.

But preachers might note this raises a couple of questions of interpretation. First, just who are Abraham’s “offspring”? It’s in some ways regrettable that this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson omits the Romans 4:11-12 that provides the answer to that question. Abraham’s children include “all who believe but have not been circumcised” (11) as well as those who not only have been circumcised but also “walk in the footsteps of the faith that … Abraham had” (12). Abraham’s descendants, in other words, are all who have with faith received the grace of the living God.

The second question verse 13 poses is just what Paul means when he says that God’s adopted children would be “heirs of the world.” This seems to draw our attention back to God’s promises to Abraham. God promised him countless offspring, as well as the blessing of the world through his offspring and him. Preachers can admit God’s promise to make us the world’s heirs remains mysterious. Yet we can at least point God’s dearly beloved people ahead when Christ returns to make his friends co-rulers of the new creation.

This promise comes by faith, adds Paul in verse 16, “to all Abraham’s offspring [panti to spermati] – not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all [pater panton hemon].” This is a breathtaking affirmation of the multi-ethnic character of Abraham – and, thus, God’s – family.

It include gentiles as well as Jews who have received God’s grace with their faith. It means that Christians are, by God’s amazing grace, part of the fulfillment of the lavish promises God made to Abraham way back in Genesis 11 and following.

Preachers might, under the promptings of the Spirit, take this occasion to riff a bit on the character of Abraham and, more importantly, God’s family. This is a family whose creation stretches as far back as the mind can see. It’s a family that began in the dead end that was Abram and Sarai’s infertility but was created by God’s ability to raise the dead to life. God has graciously made Jesus’ followers part of a family that began in hopelessness but lives on in hope.

God has, what’s more, graced God’s adopted children with membership in a family that just keeps growing. Some families reach a dead end through the death of the last surviving heir. This will, by God’s amazing grace, never happen with God and Abraham’s family. It will simply keep growing until Christ returns to usher his adopted siblings into the glory of the new earth and heaven.

God’s family, on top of that, stretches both as far back as Abraham and as wide as the creation. Christians have family members in places as diverse as Afghanistan and Zambia. Our family ranges all the way from the Arctic Circle to the Cape of Good Hope. By God’s amazing grace Abraham’s descendants include people who speak nearly every language on earth and have nearly every skin color imaginable. God’s family even includes people who have a very wide range of political opinions.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his March, 1985 Reformed Journal article entitled, “The Paradox of Lincoln’s Faith,” Mark Noll notes, “Like the Puritans [Lincoln] believed that God had chosen America to be the scene of his further revelations to the world. Lincoln even went beyond the Puritans to locate that manifestation in human documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

“Here is the irony and paradox: this compound faith inspired Lincoln, as it had the Puritans, to public actions of a profoundly Christian character. And it moved him, as it had moved them, to the clearest perception in our history of the moral dimension of public life.”