Early in the scriptures, the Lord came to Abraham and made a promise. In Genesis 12:3 God promised to Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God confirmed this promise again in Genesis 22:18, “In your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” This promise is a central theme that is threaded throughout the pages of scripture. But there are many questions that came with this promise. What exactly is the blessing? How would God bless the whole world? Further, how would God bless the whole world through Abraham? Romans 4 looks to explain the answers to these questions so that we can appreciate and respond to what is available through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Blessing (Romans 4:6-8)
To help ground ourselves regarding what Paul is talking about, I want to begin our study in Romans 4:6-8 where Paul explains the blessing. Romans 4 is all about Abraham but here in verses 6-8 we see the apostle Paul using David as an example to support his message. So let’s look at the illustration first and then I believe we will have easier time understanding what Paul is talking about regarding justification. In verse 6 Paul looks back to David, the king of Israel, and wants us to consider what David taught about the blessing of being counted righteous apart from works (Romans 4:6). Now you might wonder where David spoke about the blessing of being counted righteous apart from works. Paul quotes David’s words from Psalm 32:1-2. Listen to the blessing:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” (Romans 4:7-8 ESV)
David gives us three pictures of this blessing. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven. Blessed are those whose sins are covered. Blessed are those that the Lord does not count their sins against them. We need to stop and consider what Paul is saying about the blessing of God because this is THE blessing that we can too easily overlook and too easily forget. God’s great blessing to you is that your lawless deeds are forgiven, your sins are covered, and your sins are not counted against you. There is no Christian who should ever wonder or ever say that he or she does not see the blessing of God in their lives. The blessing of God is not that we will live in comfort and ease. This is how we want to see God’s blessing. Friends, the blessing of God is that your sins are forgiven. Even if your whole life is full of turmoil, trials, and suffering, you have been blessed by God because your sins are forgiven. You are blessed by God because the Lord will not count your sins against you. We are looking at all the wrong things when we wonder about God’s blessings or question God’s blessings. You are blessed if your sins are covered by God. There is no greater blessing. This is the most important blessing. Our greatest concern must be that we would receive this blessing. The whole world is under sin (cf. Romans 3:9) and God’s blessing to the world through Abraham’s offspring would be that he would forgive their lawless deeds. Do not miss the great blessing of God that he has offered to every person. Do not miss the great blessing offered to you: the Lord will not count your sin against you.
The Blessing Is Not Transactional (Romans 4:1-5)
Now come back to the first five verses of Romans 4. These verses are continuation of what we looked at in Romans 3:27-31. We made an important point regarding the humility of the gospel. The gospel is not transactional. You will notice that Paul emphasizes this point in the life of Abraham. Notice in verse 2 that Abraham was not justified by works or else he would have something to boast about. Remember we noted in last week’s lesson that one of the keys of the gospel is to exclude boasting (cf. Romans 3:27). God chose the things that he chose so that no human being would be able to boast in his presence (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:28-29). Rather, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness (Romans 4:3). We will talk more about this belief in just a moment because Paul will explore this shortly. But for the moment the point that Paul wants to talk about is the blessing is not transactional.
Look at Romans 4:4. God does not want anyone to think that the blessing of forgiveness is transactional. No one is to look at their actions and think that forgiveness comes like wages due for work performed. Now we need to consider this because this is an important concept that many people still believe in today. When people think about their standing before God, what they want to look at are their works as a means of being forgiven. If you ask the typical person in the world, the reason they will believe that they are going to be in heaven with the Lord is because they are good person. This thinking is what Paul is trying to destroy. If you think you are going to be with God because you did more good things than bad things, then you are looking at salvation as wages that are due to for what you have done. This is why Romans 3 is so important. There is no one who is righteous, no not one (Romans 3:10). There is nothing in the scriptures that says if you are 51% good or just not as bad as other people you know that you will be saved. Salvation is not a wage that is due to you. I cannot tell you how many people who have not become disciples of Jesus pass away and at their funerals people stand up trying to recount the good things they did in their lives as if this is going to be the way they will be counted righteous before God. We are not counted righteous because we did more good things in this life or because we did some really notable good things. We are not paying for eternal life. We are not looking to our righteousness because our righteousness is insufficient.
Verse 5 tells us how we are to receive this blessing from God. It is not by doing enough good works. It is by believing in him who justifies the ungodly. Please let those who words hit your heart. God is telling us that we need to believe that he justifies ungodly people. I am afraid that we can easily miss this point. God does not justify the righteous or else no one would be justified before him. You cannot do enough good things so trigger God to pay you your wages of righteousness. Paul will later tell us that the wages of sin is death (cf. Romans 6:23). We do not want our wages for our actions. We must trust that God justifies the ungodly. God wants us to believe him when he says that he will forgive your lawless acts, cover your sins, and not charge your sins against you. Paul will talk about what this faith means in a moment. But before he does this, he wants to express who can receive this blessing.
The Blessing Is for All (Romans 4:9-12)
Paul asks in verse 9 if the blessing is only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised. What Paul is asking is if it is only physical Israel who has access to this blessing or is the blessing truly to the whole world. The reason this is important to Paul’s teaching is because the Jewish people in the first century appear to have thought that since they were circumcised, kept the food laws, and observed the feast days and Sabbaths that these were the transactional works needed to be forgiven. So Paul returns to the example of Abraham to show that this is not the case.
Notice the questions that Paul asks in verse 10. When was Abraham counted as righteous? Was he counted righteous before or after he was circumcised? Paul is point back to Genesis 15. In Genesis 15 the word of the Lord comes in a vision to Abraham in which God proclaims to Abraham that he does not need to fear. God will be his shield and his reward will be very great. But there is a problem and Abraham voices this concern to God. Abraham does not have a child and somehow it would be through his offspring that all the peoples of the earth will be blessed. God tells Abraham that his servant will not be the heir of his inheritance but you will have a son from your own body. Then God has Abraham look into the sky and tells him to count the stars, if you are able to number them. This is how many your offspring will be. What we are told next is that Abraham believed the Lord and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. The point Paul wants to make here is the timing of Abraham being counted as righteous. It was not after he was circumcised, but before. Paul wants us to see that circumcision was not the path to be counted as righteous. Circumcision, nor any of the works of the Law, would be the works by which forgiveness would be given as wages. This is the point made at the end of Romans 4:11. The purpose of this timing was to show that Abraham would be the father of all who believe without being circumcised. Righteousness would be counted to the whole world, not through circumcision, but through faith.
The Blessing Is Through Faith (Romans 4:12)
But we need to continue reading into verse 12 because Paul explains what this means for us and for the whole world. The blessing is not transactional. The blessing is not to the circumcised alone. The blessing is to the one who believes that justifies the ungodly. What does Paul mean by this? Look at verse 12. Those who belong to Abraham as their father are not those who are merely circumcised. Rather, those who belong to Abraham as their father and are recipients of this blessing are those who also “walk in the footsteps of faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.” I want to underscore this picture because it is a key to this teaching: walk in the footsteps of faith.
Faith and faithfulness cannot be separated. Abraham’s faith led him to walk by faith. Abraham’s faith led him to believe what God told him. Abraham believing what God said changed how he lived his life. This is how Paul and James reconcile. So many people have struggled with understanding how James could say that Abraham was justified by works and then quote Genesis 15:6 (cf. James 2:21-23) and Paul could say that Abraham was not justified by works and then quote Genesis 15:6 (cf. Romans 4:2-3). Paul is not disagreeing with James and James is not disagreeing with Paul. Notice that Paul makes his point very plain in verse 12. Abraham walked by faith and we must walk in the footsteps of faith that Abraham walked. Faith that does not act is not faith. This is the whole point James is making and Paul is not disputing that in any way.
Paul is destroying a transactional view of looking at our righteous acts as if these good works are enough to save us. Rather, believing that God justifies the ungodly then leads us to live by faith for Jesus who died for us. Paul described what this looked like when he wrote to the Galatians.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 ESV)
I live by faith in Jesus because he loved me and gave himself for me. This is the blessing of the gospel. The blessing of the gospel comes by walking in the footsteps of faith. There was a man named Charles Blondin. Charles was a famous French acrobat and tightrope walker. In 1858 at 34 years old he wanted to become the first person to tightrope walk across Niagara Falls. On the morning of June 30, 1859 Charles Blondin successfully traversed from the American side of the falls to the Canadian side with his balancing pole in hand while about 25,000 people watched. After 20 minutes of rest, Blondin came back across the tightrope to the American side. He immediately announced that he would do this again on July 4. On July 4 Blondin walked the tightrope again, but this time without the balancing pole. Halfway across he finished this feat by walking backward across the tightrope. Blondin announced more crossings, proclaiming each would be more dangerous than the last. On July 15 he went across the rope pushing a wheelbarrow. Two weeks later he somersaulted and backflipped his way across the rope. The next crossing he performed with his manager, Harry Colcord, hanging on his back. His most famous exploit was carrying a stove across and at the center of the cable cooked an omelet and lowered the breakfast to passengers on the deck of the Maid of the Mist. His biography in 1862 claims that he walked this rope 300 times. A famous part of Blondin’s wheelbarrow stunt was to ask the crowd if they believed if he could cross Niagara Falls with a person in it. Of course, everyone believed he could at this point. Then Blondin would ask for a volunteer to get in the wheelbarrow, which no one did. You see that you can think you have faith by saying that you believe something. But you really do not believe it unless you get in the wheelbarrow and do it. Belief does not merely say the words. True belief acts on that belief.
We will dig deeper into this concept of faith in the next lesson as the apostle Paul will explain Abraham’s faith in the rest of Romans 4. Abraham believed God when he left his homeland for a place unseen. Abraham believed God when he was promised that through his offspring all the nations would be blessed and lived his life according to that blessing. David said blessed is the person whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered, and whose sins the Lord will not count against him. If we truly believe that the greatest blessing is to have our sins forgiven and that God will not count our sins against us, then that faith will lead us to live as the apostle Paul proclaimed:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 ESV)