Justification by Faith – Abraham’s Story, part 2: 4:13-25

Welcome to Series 1 Episode 11. This is the last episode of Series 1. There are four series in the book of Romans. We are coming to the end of the first series and it has been quite a journey.

Recap and Background

We started with finding out about Paul, why he was writing to the Romans and what his plans were for the future. Paul’s intention at the beginning, was to lay out clearly what his gospel message actually was, and explain to people why it was so important. As I have said in many previous episodes, the key to Series 1 is Romans 1: 16 - 17, where he declares the foundation for the whole book:

“For I’m not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed - a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘the righteous will live by faith’”.

Romans 1:16-17, NIV

He proclaimed the gospel in these few simple words right at the beginning, but as soon as he had proclaimed it, he moved to answer the most fundamental question about the gospel which is: why do we need this Christian message? Why do we need Jesus Christ? Why do we need his death on the cross and his resurrection? Why do we need atonement? Why do we need forgiveness? In several episodes in Series 1, Paul has carefully argued that every human being, whatever their ethnic background, has failed to live up to, and respond to, the revelation that God has given us. He has given us revelation through the natural world: the beauty and the creative power showing us there must be a Creator behind it. He has given evidence of his existence through our conscience within us that tells us the difference between right and wrong. He has shown himself to the Jewish people in a very particular way, Paul says, by giving them the Law of Moses, the covenants, the prophecies and all the amazing experiences they have had of God. Paul’s argument came to a conclusion, in Romans 3: 9.

“What should we conclude then?” says Paul. “Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.”

Sin in Paul’s mind was much more than just individual actions; it was a spiritual power that controlled the human race. He is going to explain more about that in the early parts of his teaching in Series 2. Having explained the gospel at the beginning, he then came back to it in Romans 3: 21 - 26, with these wonderful statements about the power of God that summarise the gospel.

“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify.”

Romans 3:21, NIV

‘the righteousness of God’ - God put us right with him, changing our status so we become no longer enemies but loved - God’s friends, forgiven, and in his family.

In the last episode, we saw that he took the story of Abraham to explain to people more fully what he meant by ‘justification by faith’, justification by faith alone - being put right with God through saving faith. In Romans 4, he goes back into the Old Testament. This is partly for the benefit of his Jewish audience, who would be familiar with the story of Abraham, but partly because it is such a foundational story for the Christian faith.

We considered the extraordinary story of Abraham. The story of God’s salvation starts, in a human sense, with the person of Abraham. This is the person God chose to be the foundation, with his wife Sarah, of the Jewish people and it was to the Jewish people that God was going to give revelation and the Messiah was going to come to the Jewish people, many hundreds of years later. God had to start somewhere; he had to decide which ethnic group he was going to use and he literally formed a new nation from a man and his wife who were the most unlikely people because they couldn’t have children and they were getting old. Abraham and his family, and his father, were living in a country we might describe as Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, far to the east of the land of Israel, many hundreds of kilometres further to the east. God began to speak to Terah, and to Abraham, to call them to leave their country, leave everything they had and go to a place that God was going to show them, a place where they were going to settle.

This is recorded in Genesis 12: 1 - 3, which we have mentioned before. The Lord had said to Abraham,

“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I’ll make you into a great nation and I’ll bless you. I’ll make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Genesis 12:1-3, NIV

In these incredibly important words, God made three promises to Abraham: a name, a nation and a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. ‘a name’ meant that Abraham would have a family and in order to have a family he needed a son. This was a promise of an incredible miracle, ‘I’ll give you a name.’ Abraham’s name would have been forgotten if he had not had a son. There would never have been a family succeeding him; he would just have become a historical figure. But God said he was going to have a family, which would grow until it was a nation with a land, and through him, God was going to ‘bless all the nations of the world’. This is a reference to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, from that Jewish nation that Abraham formed. Amazingly Abraham, Sarah and their wider family, left their home and travelled about 1500 kilometres in different stages, stopping along the way, over many months, with all their possessions, to find a land that they had never been to before, and they didn’t know where it was. What an extraordinary thing to do!

Abraham was trusting that God would show him the place by a further revelation and that he would stop at that particular place, rather than carry on traveling. It was when he came to what we now call the land of Israel or Canaan, or the Promised Land, God spoke to him again. In Genesis 13:14 - 17 it says,

“The Lord said to Abraham after Lot had parted from him, ‘Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I’m giving it to you.’”

Genesis 13:14-17

So Abraham now knew that this was his new home - 1500 kilometres away from his original home. God said again, ‘You are going to have a son and your son is going to multiply until there are huge numbers of descendants’. He was an old man and his wife was also very old. They had never been able to have children. The years have passed and God makes this extraordinary promise to him. That was three years after the events of Genesis 12, the first promise. Another five years later in Genesis 15, came another encounter with God that we looked at last time, where God made more promises and confirmed his promises to Abraham again - he would have a natural son, have many descendants, descendants like the stars and he would inherit the land of Canaan. It is from this passage that Paul draws the words that become the basis for his explanation about ‘justification by faith.’ Genesis 15: 4 - 6.

“Then the word of the Lord came to him: ‘This man, one of the servants in his household, will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars - if indeed you can count them’, then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Abraham believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness.”

Genesis 15:4-6, NIV

At the moment God said something that was totally impossible - that he would have a son and that he would then have a whole nation - Abraham having looked up into the sky and seen the innumerable stars, heard the word of God, and deep down in his heart he trusted, he believed, he accepted the word of God. For Paul, this is the moment in the Old Testament that captures the essence of what ‘justification by faith’ means - the simple faith of Abraham, when God had shown him something very specific, is justification by faith. Paul argues, as we saw in the last episode, and as we will continue to see in this episode, that we Christians should be following the example of Abraham when it comes to the gospel, when it comes to seeing Christ crucified and trusting in Him and his sacrifice for us - his substitution - and his resurrection after he died. All that is asked of us is that we wholeheartedly say, ‘Yes, it happened. Yes, it offers me forgiveness. Yes, I am a sinner. Yes, I trust in God; I put my faith in him’. Paul says this is very similar to what Abraham was asked to do. God revealed something to him which seemed impossible and he was asked to trust. This trust wasn’t just for a moment, it was a lifetime of faith. That is what Paul means by ‘justification by faith’ - not just for a moment but for all our lives. We have this same confidence.

Justification by Faith Alone

“It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be the heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring - not only those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: ‘I’ve made you a father of many nations.’ He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed - the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that are not.”

Romans 4:13-17, NIV

Paul is talking about the Law of Moses and pointing out that Abraham lived before that time. The Law of Moses couldn’t have been the basis of his salvation because it didn’t even exist; Abraham lived in an era long before the time of Moses. Abraham was justified by faith rather than by fulfilling religious obligations and laws. This is one of Paul’s main themes and he comes back to it again and again. It is the natural position of humans who are religious to think that it is our own actions that cause us to find acceptance by God and ultimately to enter into eternal life with him. Paul says this is not true. There is only one basis for us to enter into eternal life and that is what Christ has done for us. Abraham is an example of someone who didn’t rely on any religious system; there wasn’t such a religious system developed in his day. His faith was simple. God spoke occasionally. All he had to do was follow the simple commands that God had given him and that is what he did. In particular, he believed that one day he would be the father of many nations. Not only would he be the father of the Jewish people but all those who come from many nations into the Church, by faith. Abraham becomes their spiritual father even though they are not connected to him by ethnicity or race.

A Miraculous Birth

Now, we take the story of Abraham further because in the story in Genesis, Isaac his son has still not been born. Abraham believed these incredible promises and he trusted in God but he was a very old man. His wife was in her 80s or 90s during the story; she was well past the age of childbearing. How will she have this son? Twenty-three years after God first spoke to Abraham in Genesis 12: 23, God spoke to him again as recorded in Genesis 17. God is clearer with Abraham about some details concerning the future birth of his son.

In Genesis 17:1 - 2 it says,

“When Abraham was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said ‘I am God Almighty, walk before me faithfully and be blameless then I make my covenant between me and you, and I will greatly increase your numbers’”.

Genesis 17:1-2, NIV

God promises a covenant relationship, a permanent unchanging commitment by God to fulfill his promises to Abraham. Later in Genesis 17, we find very specifically that his wife Sarah was going to give birth within a year. Bear in mind that Abraham was 99 years old and she was a similar age. Abraham had another son, not by Sarah but by one of the servant women in his household who he took as a wife, by the name of Hagar. They had a child called Ishmael, who was now 13 years old. Abraham had hoped that this would be the promised child but God said that the promised child would only come through Sarah. The remarkable promise was given to Abraham and Sarah that within one year she would have the son that they had been waiting for, for many years. This was twenty-three years since God had made the first promise in Genesis 12. He was in his 70s when the promise is first made and now he was nearly a hundred. The promise was virtually impossible twenty-three years ago and now was even more impossible, because Abraham and Sarah were approaching death and their years on this earth would be few. How could they possibly have a child at this late stage? But Abraham believed and God credited it to him as righteousness.

Abraham’s Test of Faith

Isaac was born but the story didn’t end there. When Isaac was about 13 years old, God spoke to Abraham again, and tested him most severely which is recorded in Genesis 22. Abraham was living in a place called Beersheba in the south of Israel, the Promised Land, and God spoke to him and told him to take Isaac to a place called Mount Moriah and unbelievably God told him to sacrifice his son - the son through whom all the promises were going to be fulfilled. Abraham, obediently trusted God and took a journey of three days - about 90 kilometres - walking with his son Isaac and two servants. Mount Mariah was probably near, or in, the modern day city of Jerusalem. Abraham told his servants to wait whilst he and his son went up the hill to make the sacrifice. He asked Isaac to carry the wood, whilst he carried in one hand the knife and in the other an oil lamp which had been lit with some fire. They carefully went up the mountain and made an altar on which they placed some of the wood. Isaac asked where the animal sacrifice was. Abraham laid his son on the altar, bound him and was just about to kill him as a sacrifice, when an angel spoke to him, ‘Abraham, Abraham’, and intervened at the last minute. He found a sheep caught in the bushes nearby which he sacrificed. God said to Abraham at that time, that because he trusted him in those extreme circumstances, all the promises of God would be fulfilled through him. Paul comments on this amazing story.

“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be’. Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead - since he was about a hundred years old - and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Romans 4:18-22, NIV

Paul comments on the incredible robustness of Abraham’s faith; he believed God through every different and difficult human circumstance - huge time delays, and a guidance that comes from God that is confusing when he was asked to sacrifice his son. Against all hope, he hoped in God. Paul comments here that our faith in Christ needs to be of the same quality of Abraham’s faith - a simple trust in what God has promised through every circumstance of life; a simple trust - all the obstacles, all the difficulties, all the problems that we face. Paul brings this teaching to an end in the final three verses,

“The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness - for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification.”

Romans 4:23-25, NIV

The story of Abraham is to inspire us; we should have a similar faith. All we have to do is to believe in the facts of the gospel that Paul has laid out so clearly in these chapters, and to trust in God, all the way through our lives.

Reflections

We remind ourselves that salvation cannot come by human effort. Abraham and Sarah couldn’t have a child by human effort because they had passed the age of childbearing. Likewise, we can’t be saved by our own efforts. We have to trust wholly in what Jesus has done for us.

The second thing is the fact that living faith is not what you feel just in the moment when you are excited by the Christian message for the first time; living faith is faith which perseveres all the way through our lives, just like Abraham persevered through many years of waiting and trusting and hoping in God. Abraham is our spiritual father. He is an ancestor to be respected by all of us as a forefather and an inspiration. We are part of his family of faith.

My final comment in this episode is about the passage of time. Have you noticed the huge amounts of time that passed before God’s promises are fulfilled in Abraham’s story? We always want things to happen quickly, or even immediately. A common cry that comes from modern people is, ‘God why haven’t you answered my prayer now?’ We notice that God tests us and develops our character through the passage of time. Trust is strengthened when we go on believing for miraculous things through long periods of time. That is what Abraham had to do, and what Paul had to do as he preached the gospel over many years to many different people.

In Series 1, Paul explains the gospel as clearly as he can. In series 2, Paul will now help us to understand more fully how to live this gospel and how to live by faith. He is going to call us to enter into that new world and to think about how we can live really effectively as Christians. I hope you will join us.