By Faith - Romans 4:1–12

Romans 4:1–12 CSB

What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about—but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness. Now to the one who works, pay is not credited as a gift, but as something owed. But to the one who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited for righteousness. Likewise, David also speaks of the blessing of the person to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the person the Lord will never charge with sin. Is this blessing only for the circumcised, then? Or is it also for the uncircumcised? For we say, Faith was credited to Abraham for righteousness. In what way, then, was it credited—while he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? It was not while he was circumcised, but uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while still uncircumcised. This was to make him the father of all who believe but are not circumcised, so that righteousness may be credited to them also. And he became the father of the circumcised, who are not only circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith our father Abraham had while he was still uncircumcised.

What is the best gift you have ever gotten?

I don’t know if I have a greatest gift ever but I have a few top ones. One is a really just a note. When our middle son Marcus was in elementary school he had to write a about his hero. It was just a few short lines on someone he admires and wants to be like. He chose to write it about me. Now, I get it as a dad this should be one of those things that makes the top of the list. But Marcus is not mine by birth. He has a dad who loves him very much. I have known him since he was in kindergarten and his mom and I have been together for twenty something years. But at the time it was only about five years or so. So for him to give me this was and is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

A gift can change you. A gift can change a relationship. It can be a note from someone, a car, a house, money, a card, a shirt, or anything in between. A gift can change you.

What we read about in this section of Romans is a gift that was given. Really it is two gifts.

The First gift is faith itself.

Romans 12:3 CSB

For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.

Each person that has faith has a gift from God. The faith to trust God in the first place is a gift.

We trust God because He gives us faith in the first place. We do not just wake up in the morning one morning and say today I chose to trust Jesus because He is so nice. That is more like the moral influence theory of atonement. It is this idea that we can love God all on our own because He has given us such a good example to follow. That is wrong.

God gives us the gift of faith and then gives us the opportunity to trust Him. We use the gift He gives us to receive the second gift.

It is like if someone gives you a car so you can get a job. There are two gifts given. The first is the car. You are given the gift of the car so you can then go do something else. So if someone says here is a car and you can use this car to go to this job I am giving you. One gift makes the second possible.

God Counted Abraham as Righteous Because of his Faith.

God said, I see you using the faith I gave you. I see that you placed it in me and that you trust me so I am giving you another gift. The gift is that you are now right with me. But why is this a big deal in the first place. Shouldn’t Abraham have believed God anyway? Didn’t he read his Bible and know that this was right? God gave Abraham righteousness because of his faith but why is this a big deal?

We need to back way up in the story to understand why this is so amazing.

Genesis 11:31–12:1 CSB

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran’s son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran. The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.

Abraham, or Abram as he was then known lived in a land called Ur and then moved to Haran. This is moving from Southern Iraq to Southwest Turkey and it was about 650 miles. It is like going from here to Galveston.

Then from there God calls Abraham to Canaan which was about another 550 miles. Again a long walk but a great distance in that everything changed.

Customs in each place were different. Each land had its own rulers, customs, laws, and most importantly gods.

Each land had their own gods and that god ruled the place. Generally speaking gods did not travel.

1 Kings 20:23 CSB

Now the king of Aram’s servants said to him, “Their gods are gods of the hill country. That’s why they were stronger than we were. Instead, we should fight with them on the plain; then we will certainly be stronger than they are.

This is much later but it helps us understand that the gods of a land pretty much stayed where they were in power.

So Abraham had gods he knew in Ur and Haran because they were both in Mesopotamia but you cross that line into Canaan and things start to get different. Not only that but before Abraham crossed that line God, the true God crossed the line to come to Abraham.

Abraham was not just trusting in God he was trusting in a different God. This was something new.

This is the context of the call of Abraham. Abraham had his own gods and idols but he chose to listen to this new God. He chose to place trust and faith into someone new. Some argue that maybe he was called earlier and the call was being reiterated. Either way Abraham was listening.

What makes this call amazing is four things. Some commentaries will say three but I say four.

God spoke to Abraham and he listened to this new God speaking to him. Everything else is predicated from this.

leave your land

leave your relatives

leave your fathers house

Abraham is called to leave the things that give him identity. He is called to leave what he knows and trust that Yahweh will lead him to something new. He does not tell him where he is going, but He calls him to trust.

He calls Abraham to leave what he knows because what he knows can only take him where he knows.

Sometimes we are called to leave what we know because they can only bring us so far. When God is doing something new it requires different things.

Sometimes we have been doing the same thing for so long and getting the same results for so long that we are trapped in that thinking.

We need a new way of thinking. 

Matthew 9:16–17 CSB

No one patches an old garment with unshrunk cloth, because the patch pulls away from the garment and makes the tear worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. No, they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

When God is doing a new thing it requires new wineskins. We are sometimes so attached to the old that we cannot see what God is doing. We want the old, we want the familiar, we want what we know. God might be calling you to something new and to walk into that new thing takes faith.

That is what Abraham was doing. He was showing us and exercising faith.

Faith makes it so that we can walk into the new thing God is doing.

Hebrews 11:8 CSB

By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out for a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out, even though he did not know where he was going.

We must have faith like Abraham. We must have faith that if God is calling then God is leading. It might require that you leave your land, your relatives, and your father. But faith that God is calling and leading is worth it as we learn from Abraham. Sometime we have to leave behind what we know to walk into God’s promises that are unknown.

It can be scary, it can be costly, it can be hard, but it is always worth it.

The promise is not that it will all work out the way we want or expect, the promise is that God will be with us. We get righteousness from God like Abraham.

The gift is rightness with God and rightness with God means we get God with us. That is the second gift. It is faith and righteousness by faith.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking. The book of James talks about faith and works. He says,

James 2:24 CSB

You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

What do we do with this? How do we reconcile these two things? Paul says,

Galatians 3:24 CSB

The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith.

What do we do with this? Do we throw out one in favor of the other? No! We understand what James is saying and see that they are building on each other.

Our works are evidence of our faith.

James 2:18 CSB

But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works.

Our works are done from and in love because of our faith that God gives us.

We have said it before and we say it again, love is our motivation. We love God and it causes us to see Him.

For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

Søren Kierkegaard

When we love God and think about Him by the faith He gives us it causes us to see Him. When see Him we are changed.

Like in a relationship we don’t earn our connection every day once we have it but we continue to do things from a place of love.

We serve in love, we act in love, we give in love, we work in love. The relationship is a gift we do not earn it but we do things because we have it.

When we get this twisted we end up with two great errors.

Error Number 1 is Transactional Christianity

This is the idea that if I do certain things then God owes me. We think because we tithe, or serve in kids, or volunteer at a homeless shelter, or foster kids in need that God now owes us. We have done a good thing and now God needs to give back.

Sometimes we want a lot and sometimes we just want a little something for the effort, either way we think God owes us. We figure good has to come my way because I did good. So when we get sick, or a loved one dies, or we loose our job, or whenever anything bad happens we get upset with God because;

“How could God do this to me. I do what I am supposed to. I am a good one”

The problem is two things. One we are not owed anything, and two we are short sighted.

There is a man and a son who have a farm. They have a horse and one day the horse runs off. The son tells the father we are ruined. We lost the horse. This is the worst thing ever.

The father replies, maybe its bad maybe its good no one can tell.

The next week the horse comes back with a dozen other horses. The son tells the father, this is greatest thing ever.

The father replies, maybe its bad maybe its good no one can tell.

A week later one of the horses kicks the son in the leg shattering his leg. He cannot work and is laid up in bed. The son says, this is the worst thing ever.

The father replies, maybe its bad maybe its good no one can tell.

A few days go by and the local warlord comes to town with his men and demand the son come and fight with them. The father tells them I would give you my son but he is broken and cannot fight.

We have this idea that everything that happens is either good or bad and when bad things happen to us when we think we are good people we get mad at God but sometimes, many times, most times, God is doing things we have no idea of.

Error Number 2 is a Works Based Mindset

This is so closely tied to number 1. Here we think that we have to do things to make God love us. We have to earn His love. If we mess up then God will love us less. We think that the relationship is up to us. We are the captain of the ship.

The problem is we only work our of love because of the relationship we have. God is for us. We cannot make Him love us anymore than He does. On our best day and on our worst day God loves us the same. This does not mean we go on sinning and living however we want. We submit to Him and to His love but we cannot make Him love us.

1 John 4:19 CSB

We love because he first loved us.

It is all because He has given us the gifts He has given us.

We have faith that God is calling us to something and then we act on that faith. God gives us the gift of faith. Then He gives us the gift of being right with Him when we act on it or use the gift He gave.

Abraham is our father in the faith when we respond like he did.

He loves us and we respond.