Text: Romans 4:13-17
Title:The Promise of God to Abraham
Truth:God’s Promises come to us by grace through faith, not through the Law.
Date/Location: May 26, 2013 at FBC
Introduction
There are many great themes that run from end to end in the Bible. One of those is justification. From the earliest times of world history, it came:
(1) Without works. Instead, it was a grace gift, the opposite of a wage-debt.
(2) As a standing before God of extreme blessing. David knew this by personal experience.
(3) Without circumcision. Paul argues from chronology that God delayed circumcision for just this reason, that Gentiles could lay claim to God too, apart from circumcision.
(4) In the verses we are studying today, we learn that justification came without another thing:the Law of Moses.
I. God’s Promises Come Through Faith, Not “Doing,” Verses 13-15
A. Method of Paul’s Argument
1. Paul could have used another chronological argument to show that Abraham’s justification did not come by Law because the Law came about 600 years after Isaac was born, which was itself about 25 years after Abraham exercised saving faith in God.
2. But instead of using a chronological argument, Paul points out the character of the Law as his proof that Abraham was not, indeed could not, receive the promise of God through Law. He had to receive it only through faith, because that is the only mechanism there was operative at the time.
B. The Promise
1. The nature of the promise to Abraham was more than just salvation by faith. It was that he would be heir of the world.
2. This is a unique way of explaining the Abrahamic covenant.The stipulations of that covenant were things like “so shall your descendants be” (Gen. 15:5) and “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3) and “you shall be a father of many nations (Gen. 17:4). I understand this to mean that Abraham would have such an offspring who would have the world as their possession that he could be said to inherit the world through them.
C. Reception of the Promise
1. Not through law. The traditionalist Jew would bristle at this notion.
2. Through righteousness. The kind of righteousness has to be the “accounted kind of righteousness” that we have been talking about from 3:21, 3:26, 4:2, 4:3, 4:5, and 4:11.
3. Through righteousness obtained by faith.
D. Reasons it had to be this way
1. If the promise came through Law, faith would be made useless and the promise would be worthless. In other words, if you insist the promise of world inheritance and even saving righteousness is through Law, you would be saying that Abraham couldn’t have those things because he didn’t have the Mosaic Law. You would be saying his faith is emptied of value, and the promise could not have been realized. OUCH! No Jew would really believe that Abraham was out of luck, but such is the logical outcome of a law-centered theology.
2. If the promise came through Law, the promise would never be realized because the Law can only bring wrath. Here is another killer to the law-centered theology. We saw it in Romans 3:20 already – by the law is the knowledge of sin. The Law can do nothing more than that—no power to cleanse, no power to make righteous, no power to give life.
3. A key principle is taught to us in the end of verse 15: if there is no law, there is no transgression. This could be confusing. But what it means is that if there is no “thou shalt not” then there is no boundary for you to cross (transgress). It doesn’t mean that if there is no law there is no SIN. There is just no clear crossing of a known boundary. There was still plenty of sin before the Law came. But if you believe that the Law was the be-all-and-end-all of things, you would have to admit that since there was no Law 600 years before the Law, there was no transgression in Abraham, and then there must be no need of faith and the promise would not require faith. BUT THE BIBLE SAYS THAT ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD. So we know that faith is not useless!
E. How This Truth Applies
1. For Abraham. What we talked about above is directly about Abraham’s experience with the promise of God and how he received that promise.
2. For us, God’s promise is rescue from eternal condemnation and life through salvation in Christ. It come through faith alone. Nothing else. But notice that, like Abraham, the promise of life to us is through the righteousness of faith. It is not faith life directly, but rather faith imputed righteousness life. Life does not come through faith directly with no righteousness. Rather, God always provides righteousness “first,” and then blesses imputed-righteous-people with the promises.
II.God’s Promises Come Through Faith, to be Gracious and Guaranteed, Verses 16-17
The Law cannot bring fulfillment to God’s promises, so therefore God’s program is worked through faith. Now Paul gives two purposes for this:
1. So that the promise might be according to grace. Remember, grace and law are principles that are always at war with one another. Either God’s promise is by works/wages/debt or it is by faith/grace/gift. The Bible directs us very plainly to the rightway.
2. So that the promise might be guaranteed. This is a fascinating truth. The Bible points out that the promise of God is sure to all the seed of Abraham, Jewish and Gentile, who have the faith of Abraham. But how is it sure? How can we be certain that it will come to fulfillment? The answer is that the promise is from faith, not from law-keeping.
a. You cannot have certainty if the promise comes by law, because law-keeping would be a condition, and even worse, it would be a condition that we could not meet. We could not meet it because we cannot perfectly keep the law. We will always fail.
b. You cannot have certainty of God’s promises under any arrangement other than faith alone. Have you noticed how all world religions proclaim that no one can really have certainty of their state before God? They are full of uncertainty because salvation is based on their performance, their “law keeping” if you will. But the Christian doesn’t have that problem because salvation is based on faith in a God who keeps His promises! This principle sets true Biblical Christianity apart from all the world religions.
c. The guarantee arises out of the character and power of God. Notice verse 17 says that God gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.
i. God’s character and power are described as “life giving.” Abraham was “dead” in terms of procreation; Jesus was dead in the grave; and we were dead in sins. God is the life-giving God, as we can see from all those situations. This is the God we believe in!
ii. Furthermore, God calls or “summons” things into reality, so that when God considers something yet future that is not now, it is as good as already done. Isaac, for instance, was not yet born, and the human possibility for his birth was slim to none (and slim was out of town).Isaac did not exist. But God was as sure of Isaac’s birth as if it had already happened, so He could speak promises to Abraham as if they were already accomplished.
Conclusion
Imagine how this idea of “no-law” justification would deal a severe blow to the traditionalist who says, “The Law is how it has always been. It cannot be any other way. I was born a Jew and I will always be a Jew!” Any traditionalist of another religion could say the same thing. “I was born a _____ and I will always be a _____!”
Paul would say, “You were born a sinner, and you will always be a sinner…but if you are born again, you will be saved and you will always be saved!”
Paul hasnow dealt with every major incorrect doctrine that the Jews had taught themselves over the centuries. To the Jewish mind, Law, works, and circumcision were considered as essential works to obtain salvation. Paul has shot down each possibility in Romans 4 and championed the teaching that faith has always been the channel through which God’s blessing comes.
Salvation never required law—during Abraham’s day, even during the reign of Mosaic Law, and today. Genuine trust in God through Christ is all that is required of you.
MAP
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