Romans 4:13-25 Commentary

In his May 21. 2026 blog on the Yale University Press blog, the philosopher James K.A. Smith wrote: “We are awash in knowledge and overwhelmed by a flood of information … Yet because our society is organized as an information economy, we are also vexed by mis- and dis-information.

“In an age of AI slop and digital duplicity, we can’t even believe our own eyes anymore. Hence a sad paradox: somehow, we know more than we have ever before and yet we feel less confident that we know what’s true. So despite astronomical amounts of information and knowledge, we trust one another less and less [italics added]. We are more suspicious than ever.”

Against that backdrop, preachers who choose to proclaim this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson make a radically counter-cultural claim: Abraham was “fully persuaded [plerophoretheis*] that God had the power [dynatos] to do what he had promised [epengeltai].” Or as The Message paraphrases this profession: Abraham “dared to trust God to do what only God could do.”

One might argue that Jesus’ 21^st century friends, to borrow Smith’s observation, “know more [about God] than we have ever before.” Of course, God hasn’t somehow added to the Scriptures. But the Spirit has equipped God’s dearly beloved people to learn more about God through our explorations and understanding of what God creates and cares for (cf. Belgic Confession Article 2).

Ironically, however, humans’ perceived barriers to trusting this God whom we know are at historical all-time highs. Wide swaths of North America and Europe have come to be deeply suspicious of any notion of a god, to say nothing of the God of heaven and earth. Many of our contemporaries have deduced no god would allow the misery and suffering about which we’ve come to know so much.

But here preachers can join Paul in pointing to Abraham’s circumstances that naturally proved to hinder his trust in God. A hindrance that, we might also candidly note, sometimes flared into Abraham’s distrust of God, especially when he was under some kind of duress.

Paul singles out the duress that was Abraham and Sarah’s infertility. In verse 19 the apostle notes, Abraham “faced the fact that his body was as good as dead [nenekromenon] – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead [nekrosin].”

Infertility is a painful reality for a number of preachers and our contemporaries. As a result, we want to remain pastorally sensitive to the real pain of our hearers who wish to have children but cannot because of infertility or an inability to find a suitable marriage partner.

In Abraham and Sarah’s day such infertility was not just painful; it was also a form of living death. In his description of their plight, Paul, in fact, uses two Greek words (nenekromenon and nekrosin) whose root nekros we generally translate as “dead.” To be infertile in Abrham and Sarah’s day was to be dead in the sense that it left married couples with no future.

In a time when even God’s most faithful people had only a hazy understanding of the afterlife, they assumed their future lay in their ability to have children and land. Those who had no children or land (as was the case with Abraham and Sarah) had no future and, so, were considered and considered themselves as good as dead.

While such hopelessness is no longer necessarily considered the property of people who are infertile and landless, preachers might ask ourselves and hearers what fuels such hopelessness today. We might wonder who may despair because they worry they have no future. They may be seriously physically or mentally ill. Their retirement may have stripped people of any sense of purpose. People who live in poverty or the shadow of perpetual violence or warfare may wonder if they have any kind of future.

Such hopelessness easily saps our trust in God and God’s good purposes. Perhaps that’s why Paul fills Romans 4 with such a deep sense of wonder. Abraham (and Sarah) refused to cave in to despair about their future. They remained fully convinced God would keep God’s promises to them.

“Against all hope [elpida],” Paul marvels in verse 18, “Abraham in hope [ep’ elpidi] believed [episteusen].” The NRSV vividly translates this as “Hoping against hope, he believed.” The Message lyrically paraphrases this profession as “When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway.”

Abraham and Sarah knew things seemed hopeless. They deduced they had no future. Yet they trusted God would somehow keep God’s promises anyway. Against all evidence to the contrast, they relied on God to remain faithful to God’s promises and them.

Paul underlines that trust with both verse 19 and 20’s assertions. Abraham, he marvels in verse 19a, did not “weaken [asthenesas] in his faith [pistei].” Nor did he, according to verse 20a, “waver [diekrithe] through unbelief [apistia] regarding the promise of God.”

These assertions offer pastorally sensitive preachers an opportunity to address the nature of faith that receives God’s amazing grace. While Paul notes Abraham and Sarah neither weakened nor wavered in their faith, their faith was far from perfect. Abraham had a hard time believing powerful people would keep their hands off Sarah. Abraham and Sarah, what’s more, turned to a “surrogate parent” by whom he fathered Ishmael when it seemed to them God wouldn’t keep God’s promise.

The Christian faith that receives God’s great grace doesn’t have to, in fact, can’t be flawless. The quality of God’s adopted children’s faith isn’t the key that unlocks God’s grace. Faith is not a kind of new “work” that earns God’s grace. Grace is not all about believers, but about God and God’s faithfulness.

In fact, Paul alludes to but doesn’t explicitly identify the power that lies behind such faith that receives God’s grace. In verses 20b-21 he writes, Abraham “was strengthened [enedynamothe] in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded [plerophoretheis] that God had the power to do what he had promised.”

The Greek verbs we translate as “strengthened” and “persuaded” are both in the passive tense. They suggest something or Someone acted on Abraham and Sarah in order to strengthen and persuade them of God’s reliability. Christians profess, but Paul leaves unstated here, that it’s the Spirit who strengthens and persuades us to trust God’s promises – sometimes against all hope and evidence.

Preachers may choose to use this as a reminder that the faith by which Jesus’ followers receive God’s grace isn’t something we muster or create on our own. The faith that receives God’s grace is no less of a gift from God than God’s amazing grace. While Christians do what we can to nurture and cultivate that trust, we never forget that God is both its creator and sustainer.

It’s that gift, Paul goes on to marvel, that God shares not just with Abraham and Sarah, but also with all those who receive God’s grace with our faith. In v.13 the apostle writes, “It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring [spermati] received the promise [epangelia] that he would be the heir [kleronomon] of the world, but through the righteousness [dikaiosynes] that comes by faith [pisteos].”

Since this may seem to apply only to Abraham’s biological spermati (“offspring”), preachers will want to clarify the identity of those whom Paul considers the patriarch’s descendants. So we want to refer hearers to verse 16 where the apostle calls “Abraham’s offspring not only … those who are of the law, but also … those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father [pater] of us all.”

These are radical assertions. They mean that Abraham and Sarah who were initially infertile didn’t just parent a lot of biological descendants. They also became the parents of the whole adopted family of God. Their family members figuratively outnumbered the numbers of stars in the sky and grains of sand along the seashore. That means God kept God’s promise beyond anything Abraham and Sarah could have dreamed of in their wildest imaginations.

But since Abraham and Sarah are the parents of God’s entire adopted family, Christians are also adopted siblings in the faith. When we treat Jesus’ friends as anything less than God’s image-bearers who are our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are acting like dysfunctional family members.

We never forget that for Jesus’ sake, when God deals with us, God views and treats us as God’s dearly beloved children and summons us to view and treat our fellow Christians as our family members. God graciously accepts us so that we can accept each other because, as Paul adds in verse 25, Jesus was “delivered over [paredothe] to death for our sins [paraptomata] and was raised to life [egerthe] for our justification [dikaiosin].”

Quite simply, Jesus’ friends can receive God’s grace by trusting God to keep God’s promises because God kept God’s promise to Jesus to raise him from the dead. We can, in fact, trust God’s promise to make us the heirs of the world in the glory of the new creation.

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

Illustration

In his book, Distorted Truth: What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Battle for the Mind, Richard J. Mouw addressed the issue of computers and trust. He wrote, “People are worried whether a computer could think we have created a human. [Then maybe computers would have to be paid and be given a social security number. Maybe they’d get letters from the IRS and catalogs from L. L. Bean. Maybe Jehovah’s Witnesses would try to convert them.]

“But, really, the only really amazing breakthrough in computer technology would be if it became relevant and necessary to say to a computer: ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.’ Trust – or the capacity to trust – is one essential ingredient of humanness. And the danger is that one might start to put his trust in his own insights.”