Pentecost 3 June 13 1999

Grace Credits Righteousness

Romans 4:18-25

We are continuing our series on GRACE. Last week we talked about how Grace is Amazing because Grace is Free. I gave an ACROSTIC of the word GRACE that is meant to help you remember what Grace is all about. Grace, G.R.A.C.E. is God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. In other words, we have all the riches of God given to us at the expense of the life of Jesus. There is simply no better way to explain this than to call it what it is: God’s Amazing Grace.

Today we will talk more about how this amazing grace gets to be ours, and what that means for us. Using Abraham, the Father of many nations, as the example, we will see how Grace Credits Righteousness, true righteousness, to us.

The age-old question of how a person is saved and becomes righteous in the eyes of the holy God is answered in this text. Verse 21 and 22, speaking of Abraham, say it most clearly: “being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why ‘It was credited to him as righteousness.’” Faith is being fully persuaded, by God’s word, that He can and will do what he said. And we know what he has said through the prophets and apostles. It is through them that God has given us his word.

So, when Hosea says, “Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears,” we know that he is speaking to us. These words require great faith to receive. For who among us wants to admit that our love for God, and each other, is so fleeting and unstable as a morning dew? Yet, in our acknowledgement that God is just when he judges and right when He condemns human hearts, our heart, He immediately comes to us with a promise, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.” In other words, he desires to be merciful also to us who least deserve His mercy. He does not want our sacrificial offerings that are meant to atone for our sin. You see, He has already provided Himself with the ultimate sacrifice for sin, His One-and-Only Son, Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus says, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Out of divine mercy and justice God’s amazing grace now touches our lives and cleanses us from all sin, because of the blood that Jesus shed for us. Yes, Abraham believed the unbelievable. His hope in the promise God had given to him, was far beyond any hope based on human will or ability or desire. It was based on what God Himself said He would do. Believing that is the very thing that glorifies God.

Now, the example we can understand. Is there anyone here who is over 70 years old? How about 80? Is anyone here over 90? If you were told today that you would have a child from a woman who had never been able to have children, and was just ten years younger than you, what would you think? What would you do? It seems so ridiculously hopeless that anyone could have a child at such an advanced stage of life, it’s laughable. But, that is exactly what Abraham and his barren wife Sarah were told. And their response was very typically human. Scripture says, “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed.” Isaac, which means laughter, is the son through whom the promise of God is carried forth to many nations. The point of this short history lesson is this: God promised to do for Abraham what was impossible. He promised him a son from Sarah, his aged wife. This is the promise Abraham took hold of by faith, even though it did not make any earthly sense. And the miraculous events came about just as God had said.

Now, I seriously doubt that God is going to repeat this history in the lives of anyone today. It would have no purpose. But, what He does do is call us to faith in the same promise given to Abraham in this way: He has given His word of promise that our sins are forgiven for the sake of Jesus Christ, the son and heir of Abraham. He has given His word that in Jesus we are righteous before the holy God. This is what the word of our text means when it says: “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

It might be said that Abraham apprehended the promise of God through faith. It is the same for us. We apprehend the promise of God through faith. And, just like it was for Abraham, that same faith is credited to us for righteousness. You see, it’s not something we do that makes us right before the holy God. It is something He has done that makes us righteous and holy. Paul says it this way in 2 Corinthians: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

And that is the point. God’s Grace is Amazing because Grace Credits Righteousness, God’s own righteousness, to us. That’s the promise God has made to all people, in Jesus Christ. It’s simply amazing what the grace of God does.

It is simply amazing that even now we receive this grace through His word and sacraments. It’s like a divine pipeline channeling all the love and goodness of God right into our very selves. Through the ear, we hear it. Through the eye, we see it. Through the mouth, we taste it. Through the heart, we believe it. And, through us it is passed on to the next generation, and the next. All of this because Grace has credited Righteousness to you and me. Amen.