Pardon me. I think you know where we’re at this morning. We sent an email out yesterday. If you turn to Romans 4, we will read the first twelve verses.
The J. N. Darby Translation says, beginning in verse 1:
What shall we say then that Abraham, our father according to the flesh, has found?
For if Abraham had been justified on the principle of works, he has whereof to boast, but not before God.
For what does the Scripture say? And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
Now to him that works, the reward is not reckoned as of grace, but of debt.
But to him who does not work, but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.
Even as David also declares the blessedness of the man to whom God reckons righteousness without works:
Blessed they whose lawlessnesses have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered.
Blessed the man to whom the Lord shall not at all reckon sin.
Verse 9:
Does this blessedness then rest on the circumcision, or also on the uncircumcision? For we say that faith has been reckoned to Abraham as righteousness. How then has it been reckoned? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of righteousness of faith which he had, being in uncircumcision, that he might be the father of all them that believe, being in uncircumcision, that righteousness might be reckoned to them also; and the father of circumcision, not only to those who are of the circumcision, but to those also who walk in the steps of the faith during uncircumcision of our father Abraham.
Let us pray.
Lord, once again we come to You, and as we open Your Word and read Your Word, we request that You breathe on Your Word. Bring to our understanding those words that are spirit and life, that there would be a quickening in this room: a quickening for the speaker, a quickening for the hearers, and a quickening for those who will listen afterwards.
May something of Your Word that is eternal be spoken. May we see the Lord in a new and fresh way. May we be captured by Your beauty, as we sang together today. May we be so caught up with You that we understand things we have not previously understood.
So we commit this time to You. May Your will be done. May You bless the opening of Your Word and the sharing of Your Word, and may, above everything else, You be exalted. Amen.
Well, we are looking only at these first twelve verses in Romans 4. We are making a turn here in Romans 4. We have already looked at justification and righteousness in Romans 3:21-31; that was the subject. Now we are looking at the living illustration of justification by faith.
It is very important that we understand what this chapter is about. When I read this chapter, the title that came to me and has stuck with me is this single phrase: believing God.
I hope you see, as we go through this, that this was really the point the apostle Paul was trying to make regarding justification by faith. It is where it starts, where it ends, where it is made alive, and where it is made real. Believing God is essentially what this story of Abraham is about.
I mentioned before, when we were looking at chapter 3, that there cannot be a more important subject for Christians than justification by faith. You cannot begin the Christian life without understanding and experiencing this matter of justification by faith. You cannot live the Christian life if you do not enter into its reality. It is the gate through which we go, and our whole fellowship and relationship with God begin at this one thing.
We looked in the early chapters of Romans at man’s absolutely ruined condition. Now, I have mentioned this before, teasing you a little: I do not know whether you thought that Paul overdid it. I do not know whether you think he went too far, spending almost three chapters dealing with man’s totally corrupt condition. But it was absolutely important that he did that.
This is the Word of God. We are left without any excuse, and we are closed up to God for His divine solution to our corrupt condition. That is the lead-in to these chapters on justification by faith.
I am in the light, so I am going to back up, if you do not mind. I cannot see for the sunlight. I hope that does not trouble you too much.
After we see this condition, we discover God’s total, absolute, complete, and thorough resolution for man’s defection. Everything is addressed. Brothers and sisters, I hope you will discover, as we go through these twelve verses, that it is all of grace. It is nothing of ourselves.
How wonderful God’s solution is. It should cause every one of us to fall on our faces and worship Him.
Now, W. H. Griffith Thomas, whom I like so much, said something about the section we have just passed through. If you want to go more deeply into this study of Romans, I would recommend two books: W. H. Griffith Thomas’s commentary on Romans, and, if you want to go into a little more detail, William Newell’s book on Romans. Both are excellent resources.
There are others I could mention if you are interested, but above everything, read the Word, study the Word, meditate on the Word, and think about the Word until it becomes a living part of your experience. That is the issue I want to leave with you.
Griffith Thomas said, “The present section constitutes the very center of the apostle’s teaching.” That is how big—how enormous—this matter of justification by faith is. It is the center of the apostle’s teaching when it comes to the Book of Romans.
So now we come to chapter 4, and today, again, these first verses. Here is a fair question. It was my question. You may not think it is fair; it may not be your question. But at least it was my question: Why did the apostle Paul devote a whole chapter to Abraham?
When you read this chapter, it is all about Abraham. Why did he devote a whole chapter to Abraham? It is important that we can answer that, because when you can answer it, you see the key to justification by faith. It is not a small thing.
Paul did not go on a rabbit trail here—some exit off the freeway for a moment—and just spend a chapter talking about Abraham. It is of the utmost importance to understanding this matter of justification by faith.
Why is it? Abraham is the scriptural proof of justification by faith. Remember that. You might want to argue, but Abraham, in all the things that he did, was the scriptural proof of justification by faith.
Not only was he the scriptural proof; he was the living proof of justification by faith. And not only that, he is the test case of justification by faith.
Now, I will explain that. I told you that the whole context of the Book of Romans is the divine courtroom, with the just Judge sitting in court, looking at man, seeing his condition, and bringing him to a resolution for all his problems. That is the sense of it.
When you come to law in court, a test case is everything. They base present rulings, current rulings, and current judgments on precedent. That is the word. And so, when God deals with justification by faith, He looks back at Abraham and sees the test case—or the precedent—for justification by faith.
You can think of famous cases. You may not be a lawyer; I am certainly not a lawyer, and I do not play one on television. But consider Brown v. Board of Education. It was a famous ruling of the Supreme Court, one of the greatest civil-rights rulings that ever happened.
In that ruling, they declared that separate but equal facilities were not true equality. They declared that racial segregation was not constitutional. They might have been separate, but they were not equal. That case alone set the precedent upon which cases dealing with civil rights and education have continued to be discussed.
So Abraham is the test case. That is important for us to understand. He is the proof, the precedent, the guide, and the illustration—the living illustration. He is, in fact, the scriptural proof of what justification by faith means.
When you look at the Word of God, it shall never be deviated from. Be clear about that. That is why Paul, when he introduced this marvelous miracle of justification by faith, said, in effect, “Let me show you how it all began, and what it hinges upon.”
So today we are going to look at believing God. That is the most important thing. We are going to look at:
Let us talk about the first one: the basis of justification. Verse 1 sets the whole tone of this chapter by asking a very important question:
What shall we say then that Abraham, our father according to the flesh, has found?
It is a good question. In court, they are often asking questions, and the right answer is absolutely essential. The wrong answer can send you away for a very long time. So Paul is saying, “What is it that Abraham, our father, found?” This is Paul’s whole point: Abraham discovered something.
He discovered a secret. He discovered something about justification by faith with God that changed the whole understanding of the Bible and what lies ahead in our future. What do we think our father according to the flesh has found?
You also need to understand that it was not for Abraham alone. I will go ahead just a little bit, if you do not mind, to Romans 4:23-25, which we will deal with next time:
Now it was not written on his account alone that it was reckoned to him, but on ours also, to whom, believing on Him who has raised from among the dead Jesus our Lord, who has been delivered for our offenses and has been raised for our justification, it will be reckoned.
What that tells us is that this was not just for Abraham. This was for you and me. What happened to Abraham is something that needs to happen to everyone who believes God. God works with man, with all his issues, shortcomings, sin, and problems, through this very same way.
It is for your benefit. It is for your experience. It is for you to enter into. This is not merely a historical study of Abraham, where we go back and see what happened at different stages of his life. It was written so that we might experience the exact same thing that Abraham experienced.
That little word now in verse 23 is the emphasis of the apostle Paul. It was not written on Abraham’s account alone that it was reckoned to him, but on ours also. How important it is for us to understand this word of emphasis.
What Abraham found is for you to find. What he discovered is for you to discover. That is the key to these twelve verses.
This is the good news of the gospel. We heard about that this morning. I am so thankful for Prim’s opening. What good news that death has been abolished! But what good news that we can now come into full justification, just as Abraham came into full justification.
It was not just his experience; it is to be ours. A lot of people think that the gospel does not appear until the New Testament. But that is not exactly true. The gospel appeared to Abraham. When God spoke to him, appeared to him, revealed Himself to him, and justified him, that was the gospel in the Old Testament.
Paul realized the importance of that one event when God appeared to Abraham in Genesis 15 and said:
I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
The gospel did not first appear with Paul’s writing of Romans. It appeared in Abraham’s life.
Now, back to the question: What did Abraham find? What did he discover according to the flesh? He discovered one thing, and one thing alone: believing God is the most important thing in life.
The record of Abraham in Genesis 15 is simple: he believed God. That is the statement. If you look at Genesis 15:6, it says, “He believed God.” Brothers and sisters, that is what we are to discover. We are to believe God.
That is the solution for the whole Christian life. That is the beginning of the whole Christian life. That is the way through the whole Christian life. If we believe anything else, we will never make it through.
But Abraham—the test case, the precedent-setting case, the true Supreme Court case of the divine Supreme Court—shows us that the answer is believing God. This is the basis of justification by faith.
How we need to understand the importance of these three words: He believed God. It is his secret, and it has to be our secret.
I do not know if you remember the crowd who came to the Lord Jesus after the feeding of the five thousand. They asked Him an important question in John 6:28:
What must we do, that we may work the works of God?
That is a good question. I like questions. Questions often resolve into the real answers. So they came to the Lord: “What must we do, that we may work the works of God?”
Now, these were Jews. Think about the opportunity. If you have gotten to Luke 18 in our Friday-night fellowship, you remember the story of the rich young ruler. He said, “Good Teacher”—that was his first mistake, because the Lord corrected him—“what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
The Lord began to say, “Keep the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.” That was His answer to the rich young ruler.
What a golden opportunity here after the feeding of the five thousand. The Lord could have said, “Keep the commandments. Do all these things. That is how you work the works of God.” But He did not do that.
If you read the next verse, John 6:29, He said:
This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.
That was His answer. What an answer. Think about that. The answer to, “How do you work the works of God?” is simply this: believe on Him whom He has sent, meaning the Lord Jesus. God has sent the Lord Jesus, and when we believe on Him whom He has sent, that is the work of God.
That is what Abraham found. That is what Abraham discovered. When that revelation came and God told him to count the stars of heaven, Abraham had first said, it almost seems to me, “What are You going to do for me? I do not have an heir, and this servant of mine, Eliezer, will inherit everything I have.”
But God appeared to him in such a way and said:
He will not be your heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.
Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them: so shall thy seed be.
Then it says, “And he believed God.” Is that not tremendous? I do not know if you have ever thought much about those three words, but to me they are the key to Abraham’s life. They are the key to our life, the key to Christianity, and the key to everything we will face.
We have a choice. We can believe our feelings. We can believe our circumstances. We can believe all kinds of things. But we are not called to believe in those things. We are called, like Abraham, to believe God.
Is that not wonderful? People say, “Oh, the Bible is so complicated. I do not read the Bible because it is way too complicated.” Well, you should read the Bible first of all. But it is not that complicated. With Abraham, there was a simple and profound answer of utmost importance: Believe God.
This is Abraham’s story, and this is to be your secret. If you look at Romans 4:2, it makes clear what is not the key to justification by faith:
For if Abraham had been justified on the principle of works, he hath whereof to boast, but not before God.
You have two choices: you can believe God, or you can trust in your works. What choice will you make this day before God? Do you think your works are sufficient, so that somehow God will look at you when you cross that veil and say, “Well, he was a pretty good fellow. She was a pretty good lady. You have a pass”?
It all comes down to this matter of believing God. That was Abraham’s secret, and that is to be our secret.
In verse 3, Paul begins to reveal the great secret of justification with a second question:
For what does the Scripture say?
This is the second secret. The first secret—now, I am not going to leave this or sit down until you get it—is believing God. That is the gospel. The second part of the secret is: What does the Scripture say?
Brothers and sisters, how marvelous that is. How important the Scriptures are. How vital the Scriptures are. Often we say, “Well, you know, I just do not feel justified. I do not feel like I can approach the throne of God. I am so confused. I do not know what to do.”
But when you look at Abraham’s life, the key that was offered was this: What does the Scripture say? Is that not wonderful? I think it is absolutely wonderful.
You remember 2 Timothy 2:15. Paul was writing to his son in the faith, Timothy:
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Understand the context of 2 Timothy. It is among the very last instructions the apostle Paul ever wrote. He said, in effect, “This is what you need to do. You need to understand the Word of God. You need to search the Scriptures. You need to rightly divide the Word of God.”
Your hope needs to rest in the answer to this question: What does the Scripture say? That was the revelation in Romans 4.
In 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Paul says:
Every scripture is divinely inspired, and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness;
that the man of God may be complete, fully fitted to every good work.
The word that came to Abraham and the word that comes through the apostle Paul to us is: What does the Scripture say? Do not ever let that go.
You remember what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 24:35:
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.
Have you thought about the importance of that single verse? You may be investing in many things and spending your energy in many things, but, brothers and sisters, if you do not spend your energy in the Word of God, you can lose everything.
Heaven and earth will pass away. Can there be any worse destruction than that? But His Word shall never pass away. This is what it means: What does the Scripture say? It is of extreme importance.
The Bible says that Abraham’s secret was this:
Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
Abraham did no work at that moment—at that significant moment, that most significant moment in Genesis 15. He had not done a single work there. He only believed God. After he believed God, the Word of God records that God reckoned it to him for righteousness.
Is that not marvelous? When you believe God, something miraculous happens. God accounts it to you. That is what the word reckon means.
We talked about reckoning before. It occurs eighteen times in Romans. It is a Pauline word. It occurs only three other times in the Bible, but eighteen times here in Romans.
When God revealed Himself to Abraham, Abraham believed Him wholly and fully. He realized that God was his shield and his exceeding great reward. Then something else marvelous happened: God accounted that believing to him as righteousness.
It means God saw him as just. God saw him as justified because he believed in who God was. To me, that is a marvelous thing. That is the basis of justification.
Now, sometimes we put too much emphasis on Abraham’s faith. I want to turn that around a little bit so that you can understand what Paul was getting at. It is God’s revelation that is the beginning. Had God not appeared to Abraham, there would be no faith.
Faith in Abraham was a response to the appearing of God. Do you remember what Acts 7:2 says? “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.”
That is the whole secret. Brothers and sisters, our secret cannot be any different than Abraham’s secret. Somehow, the God of glory must appear to us.
I do not mean necessarily that you will be like the apostle Paul and get knocked off your steed by a light in the noonday sun. Something may speak to you in a verse and awaken you to the magnificence of who our God is. Something may speak to you in a message. Something may happen to you personally, and your whole life may be turned around in an instant—only because the God of glory appeared to you.
That is the story of Abraham. I read just yesterday—now, you may not accept this, and I do not know if it is true, but I appreciated it—about Matthew Perry, the Canadian actor. I have never watched an episode of Friends, so I cannot tell you anything about that.
But an article said that, in the last several years, he had an encounter with God. It turned him from a drunken drug addict with a wasted life, too much money, and far too much fame. It turned his life around.
He said, in his own words, written in a book, “I had an encounter with God.” And he believed God, and he became sober.
Is that not Abraham’s story? Is that your story? Did the God of glory appear to you? Did something happen to you, so that you saw the Lord in such a new way that you were forever changed and never the same?
This is what Abraham found. This is the basis of faith. Praise the Lord. I think this is so wonderful. I think this is so precious.
Faith is a response to God revealing Himself. Faith is not the instigator; faith is responding. When you respond, God acts and accepts you as righteous. That is justification.
You cannot reverse it. You never can reverse it. People say, “I chose God.” Well, if you read Ephesians, it says God chose you. You did not choose God. You may have responded to something God did.
He may have appeared to you in a word, in the testimony of another person, or in something you heard. You may have believed at that point, but it was all because of His appearing. That is Genesis 15. How we need the response of faith.
Now let us talk about the exclusion of works. This is really important. It is in Romans 4:4-8. Verse 2 is the precursor:
For if Abraham had been justified on the principle of works, he hath whereof to boast, but not before God.
Then verse 4 says:
Now to him that works, the reward is not reckoned as of grace, but of debt.
Do you understand that? If it had been based upon your works, it would have been payment of a debt owed. It would never have been grace. You worked for it. You labored for it. It was by the sweat of your brow, and what you labored for, you received.
I have been on both ends of this in business. For ten years, I was an employee. I was thankful every other week when my bosses paid me and I received a paycheck. But I never went to those bosses and said, “Pete, thank you for giving me a paycheck.”
He would have laughed at me. He would have said, “Who did I hire?” I worked for it. It was my labor, and the payment was the reward for my labor. It was his debt to me. Do you understand?
We never work for this justification by faith. It is all of grace.
On the other end of that spectrum, since 1984, I was a partner, and I had to pay those checks. You are always worried: “If I pay all these checks, is there anything left in the kitty for me?” I took a draw. I could go negative, and there were years when I did go negative. But because they worked for me, my employees always got the paycheck.
At the end of the year, the situation turned around. I was giving out bonuses, and they were most kind to me at the end of the year. That was when I was every employee’s friend, buddy, and pal. They all loved me—even the ladies. I did not tell them to; you would get in trouble with sexual harassment. But the ladies would hug me and say, “Oh, thank you, thank you for this bonus.”
We were giving very gracious bonuses. They did not earn them. We could have put that money in my bank account and the other five partners’ bank accounts, saying, “That is our profit. It is ours, not yours. You do not deserve it. You did not work for it. You got paid for every hour you worked.”
But we never did that. We felt compelled to show our appreciation and grace toward the employees. I am proud to say we gave rather large bonuses, and they were astounded. Then they would come to me, Pete, Nelson, and the other partners and say, “Thank you, thank you.”
I hope you understand: it is not a matter of works. Works are excluded. It is all a matter of grace.
When you look at this section on the exclusion of works, you see the word reckoning occurring repeatedly—in verses 4, 5, 6, and 8. How important that is: we are reckoned righteous without having done a single work.
The only “work,” if you want to use that word—and I would rather not use it—is the response of believing God. I hope you get that. I think that is absolutely important.
In Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul made it very clear:
For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is God’s gift;
not on the principle of works, that no one might boast.
This was the bedrock principle of the gospel: no one can boast. This is the point the apostle Paul proves through Abraham’s life.
How marvelous it is that righteousness is not reckoned to us based on works. It is all the grace of God. It is all the grace of God.
I love what Zechariah says about the temple. When the capstone is put in place, the shouts will be, “Grace, grace unto it.” Brothers and sisters, at the end of your life, when you are raised again and appear before the Lord of glory, you will not say, “Look what I did.”
You will bow the knee and fall down. You will say, as they did at the temple, “It was all of grace.” That is what Abraham found. That is the exclusion of works.
Paul reveals God’s way, the divine alternative, in Romans 4:5:
But to him who does not work, but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.
Notice that phrase: “who justifies the ungodly.” Is that not incredible? Think about it. God justified us when we were ungodly.
It was not as though God appeared to us and said, “Spend a few months or a few years, or go away into the desert for three years like the apostle Paul. Clean up your act. Then come back to Me, and perhaps, after I conduct a divine inspection of you and your works, I will say that you are justified.”
This is a miracle. This is one of the biggest miracles that has ever happened: God justifies the ungodly. This is what Abraham found.
To me, this is the gospel. How wonderfully clear it is. I want you to remember this: this is the only time that phrase, “God justifies the ungodly,” occurs in the Bible.
You can look at a similar phrase in Romans 5:6: “In due time Christ died for the ungodly.” But here it says something even more marvelous, more wonderful—above anything we could ask or think: He actually justifies the ungodly.
This was what Abraham found, to the exclusion of works.
You remember Psalm 103:12:
As far as the east is from the west,
So far hath He removed our transgressions from us.
How wonderful. Paul uses Psalm 32:1-2 and speaks about David’s experience. Romans 4:6-8 says:
Even as David also declares the blessedness of the man to whom God reckons righteousness without works:
Blessed they whose lawlessnesses have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered.
Blessed the man to whom the Lord shall not at all reckon sin.
The Lord shall not attribute sin, assign sin, or reckon sin to that person. So great is His justification, so great is His mercy toward us, and so marvelous and deep is His grace that He does not even reckon sin to us anymore.
When He looks at you, He sees you in Christ Jesus. When He looked at Abraham at that moment, He saw him as a new man because he believed God, and God reckoned him as righteous. This is the story of Abraham: God justifies the ungodly.
That is something you should be shouting about. That is something you should be delighting in, because it does not depend on what you do. It depends on your response of believing the One who says it. Then it is eternally true.
Thank God, when we look at the better covenant. In the old covenant, when David wrote this beautiful psalm, it talks about sins being covered. That is all it talks about, because under the old covenant there was not a sacrifice sufficient to take away our sins.
Annually, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest went in with the blood of the goat and offered that goat. Then the other one, the scapegoat, was sent away after hands were laid upon it, carrying the sins away into the wilderness.
But this blessedness comes to us under the better covenant, the new covenant. The best the old covenant could do was cover our sins, as our sins accumulated through the year.
Think about it: How many sins can you commit in a day? Imagine if the tally—the book—were written of all your sins in a year, and then they said, “Well, here they are again.” No sacrifice could take them away.
But under the better covenant, our Lord Jesus, once for all and never to be offered as a sacrifice again, bore away our sins forever. First, they came upon Him. He literally bore our sins, and then He carried them away forever. We are justified.
How marvelous this is. This is true blessedness.
The last thing I want us to think about is the universal application of blessedness. If you do not notice this word near the end of Romans 4, you will not understand what God has done for you.
What God has done for you is beyond any blessing we could even begin to imagine. Paul used the word purposely: blessedness. This is true blessedness.
So many Christians go around looking for blessing. “Oh, I went there, and I went here, and I asked God for this blessing, and I asked God for that blessing, and I proclaimed to God that He had to give me this blessing.”
Brothers and sisters, this is the height of blessedness: that He would justify the ungodly; that He would proclaim you righteous; that He would bear away your sins and take them away forever. This is blessedness. This is true blessedness.
Paul uses this word in this court of divine justice with surgical precision and says, “This is blessedness that exceeds everything you could ever imagine.” There is nothing like it. It is eternal blessedness.
When you look at the last verses, beginning at verse 9, you see this matter of blessedness. You see it in verse 6: “blessedness.” You see it in verse 7: “Blessed.” You see it in verse 8: “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not reckon sin.”
The universal application of this blessedness is important. The reason Paul is dealing with Abraham is because he understood something: at that point, Abraham was uncircumcised. That is very important.
This blessedness came to Abraham when he was uncircumcised, not when he was circumcised. People say, “Well, Abraham was circumcised,” and they push events together that were not together at all.
Abraham was not circumcised until fourteen years after the appearing in Genesis 15. God met him and blessed him as one who was uncircumcised.
Then, in response, what Abraham did fourteen years later was the seal of his believing. It was not the requirement for him to believe. It was the seal, not the basis, of his faith.
You remember Acts 15, the council in Jerusalem. The Judaizers thought that the Gentile believers needed to be circumcised. But the apostles had such wisdom from God. They said, “No, we will not put that upon them.”
To require them to be circumcised and keep the law was impossible. Their forefathers had never been able to do it. How could they impose it on any people?
So here comes to us the blessedness of the uncircumcised, and here comes to us the blessedness of the circumcised. This is the universal acceptance of everybody in Christ.
Paul makes a strong point at the end: Abraham is not merely the father of the circumcised, as some believed because he was circumcised. Paul makes the point that he is also the father of the uncircumcised. How marvelous. That is universal blessing.
Brothers and sisters, what God has done for us is so far beyond what we could even imagine. This is the testimony of Abraham. This is the precedent of the Old Testament. It happened before circumcision ever came upon the scene. This is to be our testimony.
Romans 4:11 says:
And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of righteousness of faith which he had, being in uncircumcision, that he might be the father of all them that believe, being in uncircumcision, that righteousness might be reckoned to them also.
Notice Paul’s words. They are surgically placed. Abraham already had this justification by faith while he was in uncircumcision, so that he might be the father of all who believe while in uncircumcision, and righteousness might be reckoned to them also.
This is universal blessedness. Do you understand it? Can you get hold of how much God has blessed you? Can you understand that this preceded the whole old covenant?
It is impossible for us to live according to the old covenant. It is impossible for us to fulfill the law. It is impossible for us to do what the rich young ruler said: “I have done all these since my youth.” Impossible.
But by God’s mercy and His grace, when He appears to you, when a moment of divine light comes to you, and you believe Him, that is blessedness. When He looks at you while you are still ungodly, yet justifies the ungodly, that is the ultimate blessedness.
When He looks beyond Israel and does not say merely, “These are My people; the nations are not My people,” He fulfills the covenant given to Abraham concerning nations. It was not merely one nation, Israel.
Dear brothers and sisters, because of what the Lord did in Abraham, this test case reveals to us what blessedness we have received in Christ.
This is Romans 4:1-12. Do you understand it? Do you understand the power of it? What did Abraham find? We discover what he found: ultimate blessedness.
Then we understand that God goes further than that: He blesses the ungodly. He even justifies the ungodly. Then He goes further still: all mankind is included in that blessedness who will accept Him and believe on Him.
Now, I do not for a moment believe in universal salvation. I want to say that before I leave here. I know there are those we know who believe in universal salvation, meaning that everybody will be saved regardless of what they ever did in their lives.
I think that is utter foolishness. I am not sure how you can read the Bible and come to the conclusion that, regardless of how you lived and what you did, you will ultimately be saved because Christ’s work was so marvelous.
I believe you have to believe to be saved. When you believe, it is a response to grace. When you respond to grace, you enter into the ultimate blessedness. That is what these verses, Romans 4:1-12, have to deal with.
Father, we thank You for Your Word. We ask You to open it to us. We want to find what Abraham found. We want to believe God.
Lord, would You show Yourself to us in such a way that we will respond by always believing You? Lord, would You show Yourself to us in such a way that we will respond by always believing what the Scripture says?
Regardless of our moments, our fears, and our failings, we will believe what the Word of God says. Lord, show us that we will believe that You justify us even when we are ungodly.
Lead us into the blessedness—the full blessedness—of this good news in Christ Jesus. All these things, Lord, we ask for Your name, for Your sake, and for Your glory. Amen.