Abraham Justified

Scripture Reading

Will you please turn in your Bibles with me to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 4. If you're using the New King James, Red Pew Bibles provided for you, you'll find that on page 1002. Romans chapter 4, and today we'll be reading verses 1 through 15 for context, but the sermon will be specifically coming from verses 9 through 12. Brothers and sisters, hear now God's perfect word. Romans chapter 4, 1 through 15. What then shall we say?

That Abraham, our father, was found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. Does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised also?

For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. How then was it accounted? While he was circumcised or uncircumcised? while he was not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also. and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of the faith, which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised.

For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect, because the law brings about wrath. For where there is no law, there is no transgression."

Prayer for Illumination

In the reading of God's word there, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. It is a rich woven tapestry. Father, we pray that we might see the threads and the big picture, the main pattern. Lord, we pray that Your Spirit might take these words on a page and make them living in our hearts. Turn us to You, God. Make us alive. Conform us to Your image. Give us hope. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Who are Abraham's children? Who are Abraham's children? Are you one of Abraham's children?

Sermon

How do you know? How do you know? Well, that's what Paul is answering for us here in Romans chapter 4. What does it mean to be one of God's covenant people? What does it mean to be a recipient of God's blessing? And for some of you, you're walking in here for the first time, you're visiting, I'm sorry, you're at a debt, because we've already gone through Romans 1, 2, and 3, and in the first quarter of 4, and so you're stuck with going to have to read some of that beforehand.

But Paul's thesis statement in the book of Romans is Romans chapter 1 verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel. That's the good news. I am not ashamed of the good news of God. For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

And in Romans chapter 1, he talked about all these sins of the Gentile people. And God's wrath that's made manifest, giving them over to these passions and sinfulness. And in Romans chapter 2 and in Romans chapter 3, there was a lot about Jewish people. People who had the law, and yet still sinned. And then you get the summary of all this in Romans chapter 3.

There is none righteous, no, not one. Whether you're Jew or you're Greek, all are under sin and the condemnation of sin. So what's the only answer? If the wages of sin are death, thanks be to God for Jesus Christ. It's Jesus who redeems us. It's Jesus who saves us. It's Jesus who is righteous.

And so we do not We do not find ourselves right with God by the deeds of the law. Right? Romans chapter 3 verse 20. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. So how did God's righteousness come? This is what Paul's whole point is. What I'm going to say about your righteousness found, isn't something new.

He says let's go look all the way back at Abraham. And so as Paul does this in Romans chapter 4, he wants to look at Abraham as this prototype of the faith. So he says Abraham was not justified according to the works, that's Romans chapter 4 verse 2. Because then he'd be able to boast about it, he'd be able to brag about it. But that's not how Abraham was justified.

Actually, if you were paying attention to Genesis chapter 16, you might have gotten a little bit squeamish there. God promises Abraham that he's going to have a child, and Sarai's old, Abraham's 86. How's that going to happen? Well, here, why don't you sleep with my maid? Yeah, that's a good, righteous plan. No, it's not.

Abraham wasn't righteous. He tried to accomplish the promises of God by works. And it failed with Hagar and Ishmael. Paul's actually going to pick that up in the book of Galatians and say, if you want to go by works, that's the slavery of Hagar and Ishmael. Doesn't ever work out. So how was Abraham righteous then?

That's what we're getting at in verses 9 through 12. Abraham is justified by his faith. That's what happened in Genesis 15. God makes promises to Abraham. I am your shield and your very great reward. And Abraham believes and God accounts it to him for righteousness. He didn't have enough perfect good works to be righteous in and of himself. God justifies him freely as a gift. And so he's blessed. He's blessed.

And so the question is in verse nine, does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised also, right? Here's Paul's question. Okay, so if Abraham was justified by his faith, if he was declared righteous by his faith, Is that only for his physical descendants? Only for those who are also circumcised? Again, the echoes of Romans chapter 2 should be in our ears. He says, no. Paul's answer to that is, no. For we say, verse 9, the second half, for we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. How then, second question, so question one was about is the blessedness only upon the circumcised or also upon the uncircumcised? His answer is no, it's by faith accounted to Abraham. But it still kind of leaves it fuzzy there. So the next question he has is in verse 10.

How then was it accounted? How was the righteousness accounted? So you have question two. How was that righteousness accounted? How is it, by the way, this is, the accounted is literally accounting language. It's legal bookkeeping language. Maybe you've seen a double ledger before, on one side you have all this red writing, it's all your debts, it's all the stuff you owe, and on the other side is the black, all the receipts, all the money that comes in. How was Abraham given the black? How was he given righteousness when his ledger was full of red? full of debts. How was this righteousness accounted to him? He leaves that one hanging for a second to ask another question. Look at verse 10, there's a second question. This accounting, when did the accounting happen? Did the accounting happen while Abraham was circumcised or uncircumcised?

Right, well this is the issue, is we have to know the chronology of Abraham's life. Abraham's a pagan, he's on the other side of the river, Joshua 24 tells us that, worshiping other gods. God calls him, brings him out of the land of the Chaldeans, brings him into the promised land, and God makes promises to Abraham, and he believes. And it's accounted to him for righteousness. And it's not for another two chapters, Genesis 17, years later, that Abraham is circumcised. So do you see, Genesis chapter 15, Abraham's probably like 85 years old or something. He believes and God accounts it to him for righteousness.

And then years later, years and years and years and years and years later, When he's almost a hundred, he's circumcised. What happened first? He believed and was justified, and then years later he's circumcised. This is important for the chronology here, for the timeline here, and Paul's questioning, because he says in the second half of verse 10, not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised.

That's just stating a historical fact. Okay, you got the timeline of Abraham in your brain here? God calls him out of a pagan land. All right, got that. God makes promises to him. Promises aren't fulfilled for a while. God redoubles down on those promises. Abraham believes and is justified, declared righteous. God accounts it to him for righteousness. Abraham is not perfectly righteous in his life. We're gonna still see blunders in Abraham's life. But God counts it to him for righteousness.

Years later, he circumcised. Now, why that matters, verse 11. And he received the sign of circumcision. What was that sign of circumcision? It was a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised. Abraham was not circumcised so that we could say, oh, well, you're circumcised so thus you are perfectly righteous with God. No. No. Circumcision is an outward sign of faith.

But faith is an inward thing. It's something deep down in the heart. Now, later on next week at Chalk and Talk, I'm going to get into how this directly goes into our confession and catechisms with baptism and things like that. So if you want to stick around next Lord's Day afternoon, we can talk about why we think this ties into baptism. But I'll leave that hanging there. Abraham receives this sign of circumcision. And it is a seal. This is pointing to an inward reality of the work of the Holy Spirit in his heart. A seal of the righteousness of the faith.

What was Abraham's faith? Abraham's faith was not that he was perfect. Abraham's faith was not that he was good enough. Abraham's faith was not in himself. Abraham's faith was not in him being able to boast about stuff. His only boast was in the Lord. His only hope was in his God. That was Abraham's faith.

A faith that even though he could not see how he would ever possibly become a father of many nations, yet he still believed the impossible. That God would do it. And God gave him this blessing of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had even while he was still uncircumcised. Do you see? He believed even before the seal happened. But why did God do that?

Well, that's the second part of verse 11. Look at me there, second part of verse 11. that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised. How do you know if you're a child of Abraham and who are the children of Abraham?

Not those who are circumcised. Yes, there are many of those who were circumcised who believed they were the children. But this is exactly why Paul in Romans chapter 2 said, circumcision means nothing if you don't have faith. You might have the seal, you might have the sign, you might think that somehow it's placed upon you and so okay, I'm good. Right, if you were a Jewish person you might think, I got this.

That's exactly what Jesus confronted the Pharisees about. When they said, well we have Abraham as our father and Jesus said, guys get it together. God can raise up stones to worship Him. Don't say, we have Abraham as our father, Abraham as our father.

No, that wasn't ever the point. The point was, are you children of faith? Did they believe in the person and work that Jesus himself was doing in front of them? So my question for you is, What are you resting in to think that you are a child of Abram?

He's the one through whom the blessings come, through the covenant comes. So how do you get into being part of that blessing? It's by believing in the seed that would come in Jesus himself. It's that same faith that Abraham had. This is why this last part of verse 11 matters. That he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also.

How Do you become righteous before a judge who will not stand unrighteousness before him? God is going to judge the living and the dead. He judges the secret things of the heart. He knows the sinful things that you've thought and the hurtful words that you've said. Even the idle small ones that were just passing and you didn't even think about it. He knows the good things that you should have done and didn't do them, and He knows the transgressions where you've crossed over the line and violated His law, and areas where you've just missed the mark. So when you stand before a holy and righteous God, why in the world would He allow you to be in His presence?

As a judge of all the earth, what are you going to brag about? What are you going to boast in? What confidence do you have? We don't have a boast. Each one of us is just like Abram and Sarai. We're sinful people. We don't have perfect religion and we definitely don't have perfect actions. We have faith. We believe. And God gives us a righteousness, accounts to us a righteousness that's not ours. He gives us the righteousness of Jesus.

See, because Jesus, who was a person, a human, see, there was a reason why Jesus had to be born, to truly be a full human being. Yes, he was the God-man, but make no doubt about it, Jesus was hungry, and he got tired. He really was tempted in the wilderness. And yet, though he was tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin. Jesus had what theologians call a perfect active righteousness.

And by the same type of faith, the same faith Abraham had, and it was accounted to him as righteous. When we believe in God's promises, when we believe in His Son, and as we're joined to His Son by faith, we also are accounted righteous. That is how Abraham is made the father of all those who believe. Though we may be those who are uncircumcised, See, it's not the question of, well, is Abraham the father of the circumcised or is Abraham the father of the uncircumcised?

The answer is both. Both, right? Physically, Abraham is the father of those who are born of his own blood, who are born of his own lineage. who received that sign of the covenant, and every time a Jewish person receives a sign of that covenant, it is pointing them to that same faith that Abraham had.

So I don't know, maybe some of you have Jewish blood in yourself. Maybe you have that in your heritage, in your background. Your heritage is telling you to believe in Jesus, the same way Abraham believed. And for those of us who are not of the circumcision, who do not have any link or lineage to Jewish people. We're wild, as Paul will say later, we are wild olive branches engrafted in. We have the same faith. It's that faith that unites us. And so in verse 12, Paul is getting at this the centrality of faith. And the father of, this is Abraham, and Abraham the father of circumcision to those not only are of the circumcision, but who walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised.

What is Paul telling to all these Jewish people in the Roman church? Remember, the history of the Roman church is a hard one. There was one emperor who came and he kicked out all the Jewish people out of Rome. Exiled all of them. So the gospel comes to the city of Rome, the church is established, there's Jewish people and Gentiles in the church, and then the Jewish people are kicked out. kicked out by the emperor for years, and then Nero, Emperor Nero comes to power, and the Jewish people are allowed to move back into, they're allowed back into the capital city, and now you have a church that was started by Jewish-Gentile mix, and then existed for about a decade with just Gentiles, and now Jewish people are back, and the question is, so how Jewish do you have to be?

Who's the gospel for? How does all this heritage with Abraham mix into here? And Paul is saying, in every way. Because the same gospel that the Jewish people are believing is the same gospel that the Gentiles are believing. We'll go on in Ephesians chapter 1 and 2 and talk about Jesus tearing down those dividing walls between Jews and Gentiles. Because it's by those who are walking in the steps of faith, which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised.

So how do you know? When I say if you're a child of Abraham, I'm saying to you essentially, how do you know that you are a child of God? How do you know that any of God's promises apply to you? How do you know when you might start getting kind of self-righteous? That maybe it was your good works that made God happy with you. How do you know that you have any right standing before God? How do you know that you are one of the blessed ones that verses 6 through 9 talked about?

Do you have faith? Do you believe that God did indeed so love you, a sinner, for nothing good in and of yourself, but just because He is good? Do you believe that He saved you, that He purchased you from the punishment of sin and death, redeeming you at the blood of His own Son, freeing you from the slavery of sin? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your only hope? Do you see in Jesus the goodness of God poured out for you?

That's the footsteps of faith that Abraham walked in. And if that's your hope, then you can indeed look at this passage and go, whether you're Jewish or not Jewish, you can look at this and go, I'm a son of Abraham. I'm a daughter of Abraham, because the same spirit that was at work in him is the same spirit that's at work in me, and I believe. I believe.

I'm not perfect, but I have a perfect Savior. And so when your heart may condemn you, when you wrestle because, man, if you're a person who takes seriously confession of sin, you might sometimes wonder how in the world Am I possibly a child of God? I thank the Lord for chapters like Genesis 16. Major blunder.

And yet he was still accounted as righteous because of his faith. There will be times in your life that your faith shines like a beacon of light to everyone around you. And there'll be times where your faith is the only thing you're clinging to. You're hoping in Jesus because your life you know is a wreck. And you've made choices and decisions that you know even yourself and your neighbors and your family just shake their heads and go, why did he do that? Why did she say that? Your salvation was never by your works. It will never be by your works. Do you walk in the faith of Abraham? Are you walking in his footsteps?

We live in a messy life. Thanks be to God. He's not waiting for us to be perfect, for us to be his children. but he's made us his children. He's declared us righteous. He's given us the righteousness of Jesus that we might grow, have a heart of love, and then walk in righteousness, continuing to learn to be like Jesus.

Closing Prayer

So Christian, walk in faith. Have your heart filled with the love of God which surpasses all understanding. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith. For if you walk by the faith of Abraham, you are the children of Abraham. Walk by faith. Trust in Christ. Have peace. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that there is a blessing to be had from you in Jesus. We thank you for the righteousness that we have, that is accounted to us, not because of our righteousness, but you have given us a gift. Fill our hearts with thankfulness. Thank you that you do not count our transgressions against us, but you have covered over our lawless deeds, forgiven our sins. Lord, we pray that you would please Please, God, stir up in us a love for You that we might continue to walk in faith. You truly are good. Thank You. Thank You, God, for the gift of Your Son and for giving us new hearts to believe. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.