Romans 4:1-8

Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church iconCoram Deo Reformed Baptist Church

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We're starting Romans chapter 4 verses 1 through 8.
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I'll start in verse 1. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham our forefather according to the flesh?
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For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
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For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed
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God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.
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And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
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Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works.
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Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
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Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Paul in chapter 3 explained the gospel of Christ most wonderfully.
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And at the end of the chapter, Paul explains justification by faith alone and counters some common misconceptions that he dealt with at the time about this gospel and the teaching of it that the brethren, some of the brethren, had charged him with, such as antinomianism.
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Now in chapter 4, he is going to go into further explanation of justification by faith alone, and he will use example of the one that was most exalted by the
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Jewish community. As we read in verse 1, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh?
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For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
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According to the flesh, Abraham gained much by his deeds and could count and could most definitely boast before even kings.
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He's one of the most wealthiest men in all of the Old Testament. There are many great things that Abraham accomplished, and he is an example.
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He is a wonderful example of obedience. He is even a type of the one to come.
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Abraham could boast in many things of his material wealth, his wife, his son, his favor with God, but he could not boast of any of this to God.
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Just as a man today can work and build a family, multiply his businesses, and build a great grand house, and have many people that work and toil for him, he can be a great and benevolent man, but none of this counts before God.
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I want to point out a very similar passage from Scripture, Matthew 7, 21 and 23.
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Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my
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Father who is in heaven, on that day many will say to me,
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Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do many mighty works in your name?
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And then I will declare to them, depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of lawlessness.
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Right now that particular passage has to do with people who claim to believe in Christ, who claim
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Christianity, have done this, and have done that, and done all of these different things, and they get there, and Christ is like, who are you?
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I have no idea who you are, right? But what do they say?
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We've done this, we've done this, I've done this, I've done that, and you're not justified by anything that you do.
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But God saw exactly who Abraham was, despite all of the blessings, despite everything that Abraham had, and everything that he accomplished,
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God saw who Abraham was, and that he needed saving just like everyone else.
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God knew that he needed imputed righteousness to be justified, for what does the
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Scripture say? Now I'm gonna pause here for just a second, and I want to point something out.
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There are very few questions in the history of the church that are on the same level as the privilege of being able to ask that question.
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What does the Scripture say? We have the full written counsel of God to look to whenever we need something.
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Solomon couldn't boast of that. Neither could David, nor Abraham.
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We have an infallible Scripture that was written by 40 men over 1 ,500 years, 66 books that tell one inerrant truth about what happened in Genesis 1 -1 to Genesis 3 -19, and then what
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God did to bring to fruition the promise that he made in Genesis 3 -20.
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So from Genesis 3 -20 to Revelation 22 -21 is the fulfillment of that promise.
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The other thing I want to point out is that that is the question that we should be asking constantly, not just as a church, but as individual disciples of Christ.
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What does the Scripture say? Now if you remember from the 90s, there was a little quippy thing that went around that I'm not going to repeat because I'm not a huge fan of it.
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But don't ask this question as a quippy question. It's a very serious question.
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Many people go through their entire lives having nothing to look to at all.
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Worse more, many Christians go through their entire lives looking to other things to answer questions that they have about what they should do in their lives.
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So anytime that you need anything at all regarding your spiritual health or moral decisions that you should make, how you should do this, or how you should conduct yourself here, that is the question you should ask.
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What does the Scripture say? What does God tell me that I should do? Now, verse 3.
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For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
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Now the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.
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If someone works a full day at a job, the boss doesn't give him a gift at the end of the day and say thank you.
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That's not how that works. You get paid. You get your wages.
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You get what you are owed. Now if any man could accomplish the law in perfection,
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God would not be giving him a gift. He would be giving him his due, what he was owed.
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There's only one man who has ever been able to do that and he was truly man and truly
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God. So no one else is going to accomplish that work.
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So seeing as how it is made plain in Scripture that no one can do what
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Christ did, God owes no one anything ever.
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But Paul is in the beginning stages of an argument using the patriarchs.
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As I said, the patriarch that as I said before, the Jews exalted above all others.
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They all boast of being sons of Abraham, being his progeny. Now this would appear on the surface to be a contradiction of what
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James has to say and this is something that Luther struggled with.
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This is something that many people struggle with. How do you rectify what Paul is saying here and what
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James said in James 2? So let's look at James 2 real quick starting in verse 14.
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What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
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Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
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So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works.
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Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.
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You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe and shudder.
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Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
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Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
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You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works and the
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Scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he called and he was called a friend of God.
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You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone and in the same way was not also
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Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?
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For as the body apart from the Spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
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On the surface this sounds like a contradiction and this is something that the church has struggled with for a very long time.
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Luther himself struggled with the the seeming contradiction in between these two books to the point that at one point claimed that James should not be canon.
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He later repented of this remark, but upon further inspection of the
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Scriptures, we realize that James is talking. He's not talking about being justified by works.
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He's talking about a faith that produces works or a fruitful faith.
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It is a detail that is sadly overlooked today, but that we are told in Scripture that as saints we are to judge each other's spiritual wellness by.
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If you claim Christ and yet continue to live the same life that you lived before, you show no fruit.
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That is a dead faith and it either means that, one, you need a lot more discipleship or you need to be, well, if you're living the same life you must certainly need most certainly need to be put under church discipline and if the discipleship doesn't work and the church discipline doesn't work, then your faith is truly dead and you need to be treated like someone who does not have faith.
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The people are told to believe in Christ the Savior of the world, but never what he saves them from or how exactly he does this.
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Neither are they taught the signs of true redemptive faith or fruit.
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They're not taught that. Now Abraham, being the patriarch, is looked up to more than any other and this is what
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Paul is appealing to. This is what James is appealing to. James is saying that his faith was proven when he put
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Isaac on the altar. This is the fruit of his faith. So verse five, and to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
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It is our trust in Jesus, the seed of the woman, the offspring of Abraham.
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It is our trust in him and his righteousness for our salvation that saves us.
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This connection to him that we have through faith is how we are declared righteous by God, or as Sproul puts it a lot more elegantly than I possibly can, faith only lays hold of Christ.
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Faith is the instrument by which we are linked to Jesus. Only Christ's righteousness is the grounds for our justification.
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When he declares his judgment of our status in his sight, when he sees faith, he counts us righteous even when we are still sinners.
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This is simul justus et peccator, which means at once justified and a sinner.
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So it's not a justice. It's not anything that comes from us. It is imputed to us.
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This is why you will all constantly get the question, you will constantly get false teaching saying that, well, if you're a
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Christian, you don't sin. False. If you're a Christian, you most definitely will continue to sin.
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You will. Now because you're in dwelt with the Holy Spirit, when you do, you will show repentance, you will feel a godly sorrow for it, and in true repentance will do everything you can not to do it again until eventually, through sanctification, you can stop doing that particular sin and another sin and another sin.
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But you will sin until the day that you die. So if anyone ever tells you that you shouldn't be sinning if you're a
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Christian, they're lying to you. Now I want to show you something.
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This is the argument that Paul makes in Galatians, and there's a reason that I'm bringing it up because it is a wonderful argument that he makes in Galatians 3 that he doesn't use here.
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Now Galatians 3, starting in 15, he says, to give a human example, brothers, even with a man -made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.
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Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring.
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It does not say, and to offsprings, or in some translations, it says, now the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed.
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It does not say seeds, referring to many, but rather referring to one.
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And to your offspring, who is Christ? This is what
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I mean. The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.
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For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a argument here in Galatians that justification cannot come by the law.
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The example that he uses is that Abraham is justified 430 years before the law is given.
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So how does he keep it to be justified? He can't.
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He doesn't know it. This is a wonderful argument.
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We read in Genesis 15 6 where exactly he's talking about.
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And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir.
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And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven. The number and number the stars, if you are able to number them.
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Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the
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Lord, and it was counted to him as righteousness. So the first promise that is made for the land is in 13.
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He promises an heir in 15. Abraham believes him.
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This is where we're told that Abraham believes him, and it's counted to him as righteousness 430 years before he gets the law, or Moses brings the law down from the mountain.
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The moral law, the Ten Commandments and whatnot. This is the time of Leviticus before we, you know, the time of the book of Leviticus before we get the other law, and it's chapter 17 when we get the covenant of the circumcision.
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So that can't be it either, can it? Can't be justified by circumcision either.
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I just wanted to point that one out as well. But it's wonderful of an example and an argument that Paul makes with the
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Galatians. He doesn't do that here. Now what
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Paul does instead, he says this, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom
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God counts righteousness apart from words, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
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Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.
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This is the psalmist. This is David. If there were another patriarch that the
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Jews looked to, it is most definitely David.
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David writes this psalm in a very personal manner.
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This is Psalm 32, verses one and two, by the way. He's speaking here from experience.
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David did many things in his life, including murdering his friend
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Uriah so that he could take his wife, and it took
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Nathan to point it out to him exactly.
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You are the man. Yet here he is in the psalm.
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After this takes place, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
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Interesting word choices there, David, considering that he doesn't have any epistles to look to or any kind of language to copy.
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Covered. If we stand alone before God, he sees our deeds.
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He sees our thoughts. And because we are sinful creatures, everything that he looks upon is described as filthy rags.
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But those who are elected do not stand alone before the judgment seat.
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We are, in fact, as David said, covered by Christ's righteousness. By his righteousness, not ours.
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Not our righteousness because we believed. His righteousness because we believed.
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And that is what God sees. This is why it is called imputed righteousness.
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It is alien to us. And because of this, blessed is the man against whom the
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Lord will not count his sin. Because of this, our sin is not counted to us.
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Rather, it is given to Christ who became a curse for us and paid the penalty for that sin on the
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Calvary. And in this imputed righteousness, we are carried safely to glory.
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Our sin is removed as far from us, Scripture says, as the
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East is from the West. I'll leave you with the words from Luke 18 verses 9 through 14.
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He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
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Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
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The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
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I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get, but the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying,
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God be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.