Exposition of Romans 4:13-25

Welcome

Good morning everyone,

I hope you have all enjoyed this week as Winter gives way to Spring

I want to thank everyone who participated in building our garden-beds

They look great and I’m excited to see how God will use this work

I’m really excited to see how God will use your faith and labor of love

We want to start thinking about how to connect this garden to our community

So if you have any ideas, please send your suggestions to us!

Move very FAST > > >

I spoke with the Sojourners this week and things are really shaping up:

They will be here for two weeks from August 15th to 25th

They will do our Wednesday class and Sunday services

One of their wives wants to do a special ladies class that I think sounds very exciting

On the second week they will do a revival-style meeting from Sunday through Wednesday

They are bringing in a special speaker to hold the revival meeting named Calvin Warpula

His wife’s name is Judy

He is a retired preacher from Texas

He preached for over 50 years

He has proven quite effective in his gospel meetings

And I was excited to learn the Sojourners are personally connected with the H2H ministry

My goal is to bring the H2H ministry here in 2023 to kickstart our evangelism efforts and then have the Sojourners come back in August to conclude these efforts, but H2H has to be booked well in advance because they fill up fast, so I’m trying to get us on their list.

H2H gives full-system support, including on-going training and curriculum including up to a full years curriculum if you want (I believe this is free).

Special Announcement

Many of you may already know because I’m pretty sure Naomi let this slip, which is okay, because usually I’m the one who can’t keep this secret, but Mary is pregnant. She is about 10-weeks along. So she is due sometime in November.

Assignments

Read Romans 5:1-8:39.

Move FAST

You will remember that one feature of this series is that we have four discourse sermons that survey the major themes of the four main discourses that compose Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. One of the reasons for this is because it’s easy to zoom in so closely to the text that we get lost in the dense arguments that Paul uses and forget where we are going. So these discourse sermons help us resurface, take a breath of fresh air, so that we can dive back into the text without losing our orientation.

So your reading assignments are somewhat longer this week.

Challenge

Create friendship prayer list: pray over this list every week.

You may benefit from giving one page to each name

Write down specific prayers and keep track of how they have been answered

Your faith in God’s power will grow if you will be faithful and consistent in this ministry

God’s Promise According to Grace

Today’s lesson brings us into the part of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome that deals with how we access God’s promises through faith. We will understand how these promises stand on the assurances of God’s grace rather than our own strengths, and therefore, are realized through our faith in the One who raised Jesus up for our justification.

What needs to stand out here is that this means these promises do not fail because of our own weaknesses or shortcomings. They are assured by God’s own faithfulness. Instead, we simply enter in and realize these promises in our life through faith, or, as is sometimes the case, we never enter into them or realize God’s promises in our life because we do walk by faith.

Exegesis

Quickly I want to make some exegetical observations that impact how we understand what is being said here.

First, you’ll notice that we’re encountering Paul’s “logical formula” again. We haven’t seen these “for” (i.e. “gar”) statements in quite some time because Paul was using a case-study on Abraham and David to illustrate his argument. So now that his illustrations are made, he is going to give us the reasons why these things are true, which means that we’re going to see more “for”, “now”, “because”, and “therefore” statements. So we want to pay attention to how he builds his points.

Move QUICKLY

Second, verses 13 to 21 are bound together by the “therefore” in verse 22, and so we really want to keep these thoughts together. We want to hear God’s complete thought. Complete Scriptural thoughts are important because they tell us what the individual parts mean together. Some people call this “context”. The idea here is that the meaning of the Bible is bound up together so that you need to draw your interpretation of God’s word from God’s word. And by God’s grace, so we will do.

With these points in mind, let’s get into our text.

Romans 4:13 CSB

13 For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.

“For” (“γὰρ”) (v. 13): By now we’re very well acquainted with this logical formula; it’s Paul’s preferred way to give the logical reasons for his preceding propositions. When Paul makes an argument, he likes to explain the reasons that validate the underpinnings of his prior claims.

“The promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law” (v. 13): Sometimes we’re tempted to think Paul is a little bit redundant in his writings. Afterall, Paul has either directly or indirectly made this point four times in the previous twelve verses. But he’s not being redundant, he’s constructing clear logical arguments to ensure we can understand him. And, of course, if he didn’t do this, we might object as people do elsewhere and say that “that’s just one verse”.

So to understand the significance of this logical argument, it is necessary to connect it to the idea he is justifying:

Romans 4:9 CSB

9 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.

Romans 4:11–12 CSB

11 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. 12 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.

The Law came after and followed the promises that Abraham received by faith. So to those who look to Abraham and the promises that God made to their forefathers, Paul is arguing that they should follow in Abraham’s footsteps, which are the footsteps of faith.

“But through the righteousness that comes by faith” (v. 13): One of the ways that we miss the significance of Biblical teaching is through our familiarity with them. Sometimes we become so familiar with something that we don’t stop to recognize its significance. We are so accustomed to hearing “righteousness comes by faith” that we don’t stop to think about those words. We short-hand them. And in short-handing them, we erase much of their meaning.

I really like the Common English Bible’s rendering of this verse:

Romans 4:13 CEB

13 The promise to Abraham and to his descendants, that he would inherit the world, didn’t come through the Law but through the righteousness that comes from faith.

You see, for Paul, faith is the mechanism through which righteousness comes. Far from being passive, inactive, and even permissive, faith is the means by which we live out our right-standing with God. Faith is the means by which we access the fullness of life that God is restoring to the world through Jesus Christ.

In other words, the trust I place in God by which I am assured of his promises is how I realize the substance of the life he has promised us in Jesus Christ.

So to the person who understands the lessons taught by the law, that God is righteous, holy, and just, and that we are sinners rightfully deserving God’s punishment, we observe in the life of Abraham how the only way to truly be made right with God is to entrust our whole lives to him and cast ourselves before his mercy. Only God’s manifold grace can set things right again.

Romans 4:14–15 CSB

14 If those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise nullified, 15 because the law produces wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression.

“If those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise nullified” (v. 14): Again Paul turns his attention to refuting those who think they can be right with God through the paradigm of the Law. And we don’t want to miss how this connects to the prior three arguments that Paul has made, namely that the promises that God made to Abraham, which were received when he believed God, are not the promises made by the Law.

Take a moment to imagine a scenario that we are all very well familiar with in the modern world:

You come home on Friday afternoon after work, change into comfortable clothes, and tell the family you’re going shopping. Your work has paid off and you have some money to spend. So the family piles into the car, and you go to your favorite store. You’ve had your eye on something there for a long time, but you know it’s well out of your range, so you have in mind some other things that will do for now.

You get to the store and decide to take the family the long way round to the department you want so that you can pass by and take a look at what you’ve been eyeing for so long. And as you are passing by, you notice something different: there’s an offer! You’re naturally skeptical of such offers, but you slow down enough to glance and you can’t believe your eyes: they’ve given incredible financing, and not only that, but with all the rebates, the final price has been slashed in half! In disbelief you ask the store rep if you understand this offer right, that if you take this offer, you get all this financing and rebates? He says “yes”, smiles, and helps you sign up. You practically float out of the store, and your family is beaming because they know you are so happy.

After several months of living your dream, you get a notification. A new bill is due. You can’t believe the sum-total. This is not what you expected. But you assure yourself that there’s some kind of misunderstanding. So you call the finance department, finally push all the numbers to reach a human being, and they inform you that you failed to meet some of the conditions necessary to qualify for their special financing. You protest that you weren’t aware of these conditions, but they explain how the letter they sent you the week after you walked out of the store was their official financing offer and clearly stated the terms of the agreement; what you signed at the store was merely their pre-approval offer pending your final approval. And since you tossed that scammy-looking letter in the trash, thinking it was just some kind of marketing, you’re now on the hook for the whole price. And there are no returns. So you hang up the phone and sit there in total despair.

You see, this is what those who want to use the paradigm of the law as their means to righteousness are doing. They are adding conditions to God’s offer that came after the fact. Paul wants to be clear that this is not God’s design. The kind of righteousness that God is looking for is not the kind that the law gives, but the kind that comes from trusting him for the grace and mercy you need to be finally set right.

“Because the law produces wrath” (v. 14): Paul gives the reason why the law nullifies the promises of God to Abraham, by explaining that, just like the financing agreement that followed the store’s great financing offer ultimately upended that offer by adding terms that invalidated its benefits, the law ultimately produces wrath because its terms are so strict that all of us violate them.

On one level this point has been established by Paul’s first two arguments:

Expound Briefly > > >

Romans 2:22 CSB

22 You who say, “You must not commit adultery”—do you commit adultery? You who detest idols, do you rob temples?

Romans 10:5 CSB

5 since Moses writes about the righteousness that is from the law: The one who does these things will live by them.

However, at a deeper level, Paul is referring to what is often called the “Blessings and Curses of the Law” from Deuteronomy (I encourage you to explore them in greater depth by reading chapters 27-28).

The blessings God promised for their obedience to the Law went something like this:

Deuteronomy 28:1 CSB

1 “Now if you faithfully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all his commands I am giving you today, the Lord your God will put you far above all the nations of the earth.

Deuteronomy 28:4–7 CSB

4 Your offspring will be blessed, and your land’s produce, and the offspring of your livestock, including the young of your herds and the newborn of your flocks. 5 Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed. 6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. 7 “The Lord will cause the enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will march out against you from one direction but flee from you in seven directions.

But the curses for disobedience went something like this:

Deuteronomy 28:15–23 CSB

15 “But if you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all his commands and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you: 16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. 17 Your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed. 18 Your offspring will be cursed, and your land’s produce, the young of your herds, and the newborn of your flocks. 19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. 20 The Lord will send against you curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything you do until you are destroyed and quickly perish, because of the wickedness of your actions in abandoning me. 21 The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until he has exterminated you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The Lord will afflict you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, burning heat, drought, blight, and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish. 23 The sky above you will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron.

So you can see how someone who is focusing just on the blessings might be inclined to favor the righteousness that comes from the law. Afterall, these matched the desires of their heart. They wanted to rich and prosperous nation with powerful political influence. But Paul has already charged that “all are sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God”.

What is the point of the law, then? Has God pulled a clever switcherue on us, promising blessings but nullifying them with certain preconditions? No. Instead, the law of God was given to us in order to expose our sinfulness and teach us humility so that we could understand our need for God’s mercy and readily accept his grace.

“And where there is no law, there is no transgression” (v. 15): We want to be very careful to understand how this features in Paul’s argument. Paul has already charged that the gentiles have the law of God written on their hearts (2:14-15). Paul has already charged that gentiles who don’t possess the law of Moses render moral judgments based on their consciences (2:3), thereby constructing their own moral code by which they are accountable for their own actions (2:6) before God based on what they know to be right (2:15).

So we must be very clear that Paul is not attempting to establish some kind of antinomianism (i.e. “lawless salvation”), as he is sometimes accused of doing. He is not suggesting that the means of salvation is simply to remove the law, as if the law was some kind of divine-blunder to be atoned for by God’s own self-sacrifice. Everyone has some sense of right and wrong.

Instead, he is suggesting that the moral laws we possess, whether of Moses or Conscience, are sufficient themselves to humble the honest person and lead us to faith. And faith satisfies the requirements of our moral law through the grace of God:

Romans 3:27 CSB

27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By one of works? No, on the contrary, by a law of faith.

Romans 3:31 CSB

31 Do we then nullify the law through faith? Absolutely not! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

So we have been transferred from the moral law of Moses (or Conscience), which brings wrath, to the law of faith, which brings righteousness by the grace of God. And what does the law of faith require? “Believe God”. And Abraham’s life is a case-study on what it means to believe God.

Before we move on I have two important observations that I must make here:

First, one of the chief marks of the paradigm of law is condemnation. You can tell when someone is using this paradigm to gain righteousness because it always produces wrath. Unfortunately, most people are blind to their own transgressions and only see the faults of others when they use this paradigm to judge, so they are usually very proud people who look down on and criticize the failures of others.

So Christians must keep Jesus’ words in mind:

Matthew 7:2 CSB

2 For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use.

Second, some Christians - myself included in times past - have made the critical mistake of transposing the ethical teachings of the New Testament into some kind of moral law by which they are made righteous through their works. This fundamentally misunderstands the covenant of Christ and misses the substance of our faith.

Look at what Paul said about his moral purity:

1 Corinthians 4:4–5 CSB

4 For I am not conscious of anything against myself, but I am not justified by this. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 So don’t judge anything prematurely, before the Lord comes, who will both bring to light what is hidden in darkness and reveal the intentions of the hearts. And then praise will come to each one from God.

Far from thinking that he was free to live however he wanted because of God’s grace, Paul realized the very substance of the righteousness that comes from faith to such an extent that he was not consciously aware of any charge against him. Yet he placed no hope or confidence in any of this for his own justification before God.

Christians do not keep Jesus’ ethical teachings because we think we derive some value from them that will set us right with God or make us better than others, we keep these teachings because we believe God and have been so captivated by the beauty of his holiness, that our love for him compels us to follow his way of life.

Romans 4:16–17 CSB

16 This is why the promise is by faith, so that it may be according to grace, to guarantee it to all the descendants—not only to the one who is of the law but also to the one who is of Abraham’s faith. He is the father of us all. 17 As it is written: I have made you the father of many nations— in the presence of the God in whom he believed, the one who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist.

“This is why the promise is by faith” (v. 16): God enclosed his promises within this paradigm of faith by the wisdom of his foresight. He knew that if he put moral preconditions on the promises themselves, then those preconditions would exclude all fallen and broken people from receiving their salvation. He understands how broken we are even when we ourselves don’t recognize our own brokenness. And he crafted the means of our salvation in wisdom to allow for hurting, lost, and broken people to be made whole and reconciled to their father by his faithful love.

Next we’re going to take advantage of a key grammatical function that allows us to remove the parenthetical statement and read the main clause together before deal with the parenthetical statement on its own.

Point out the parenthetical statement from the previous slide

“So that it may be according to grace, to guarantee it to all the descendants — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, the one who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist” (v. 16-17): God enclosed salvation under faith in this way so that our deliverance would not depend on our own strength, which he knows is unreliable, but upon his grace, which is steadfast and immovable. He knows that we cannot call forth what we do not have. Since we are spiritually dead, how can we call forward moral rectitude and spiritual life to save us?

So the promises are according to his grace in order to guarantee them to all the descendants of faith in the presence of the God in whom they have believed. For it is God who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist. God acts in those who are dead to raise them from the dead to new life and call from them the fruit of righteousness that they once did not have in themselves.

So this is key because it introduces one of the key themes that will consume chapters 6-8, which is the moral and spiritual formation of Christian life. And this theme, in turn, will be the basis of how we are meant to understand chapters 12-15, which are the moral and spiritual applications of Christian life.

You see? We do not have these things. We are dead and don’t possess the abilities of righteousness. So God acts within us to give us life and call out from us the things that did not previously exist.

That is why we call these things “the fruit of the Holy Spirit”:

Galatians 5:22–23 CSB

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.

Now lets go deal with the parenthetical statement.

“ — Not only to the one who is of the law but also to the one who is of Abraham’s faith. He is the father of us all. As it is written: I have made you the father of many nations — ” (v. 16-17): God’s grace that acts upon us while we are still dead to raise us to new life and create in us what was not there does not act solely upon those who have the law, or who don’t have the law, but acts instead upon all who walk in Abraham’s footsteps of faith.

This statement refers back to verses eleven and twelve:

Romans 4:11 CSB

11 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.

Romans 4:12 CSB

12 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.

So both those who learn humility, either from the law of Moses or from their consciences, become one family when they join together and walk in Abraham’s footsteps of faith, and in this way become the many nations promised to Abraham by God.

Romans 4:18 CSB

18 He believed, hoping against hope, so that he became the father of many nations according to what had been spoken: So will your descendants be.

“He believed” (v. 18): We have one last opportunity in this verse to deal with the kind of faith that Abraham had before Paul moves on to his next argument. So what kind of faith did Abraham have?

Suppose someone comes to us and says the stock-market is crashing so we need to buy gold. Let’s say this person is a guest speaker at our church. And he makes a persuasive case so everyone says they believe him. You, me, everyone. In fact, we all go home and get on our social media and light them up with doomsday predictions of an impending collapse. Or we call all our friends and tell them what we learned. But none of us bought any gold.

Is this the kind of belief that Paul is saying Abraham possessed? Are Christians called into an intellectual acknowledgment of God’s existence that does not impact or change their life in any tangible way? No. In fact, quite the opposite, I can say that if you go home and keep on living the way the world does, you don’t believe the message of Jesus. Your faith is invalidated by your actions.

James 2:14 CSB

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him?

James 2:22–23 CSB

22 You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was made complete, 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God’s friend.

Titus 1:16 CSB

16 They claim to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work.

You see? All these passages are developing precisely the same theology of faith that Paul is establishing here in Romans. They are not, as some have supposed, in conflict with the doctrine of faith. It simply boils down to what kind of faith what thinks Paul is describing: an intellectual faith or a living faith.

“Hoping against Hope” (v. 18): Paul calls to our mind how God’s promises to Abraham were given against all reasonable hope. God’s promises to Abraham were beyond the natural reach of both Abraham and his wife. And sometimes God’s calling in our lives forces us to follow Abraham’s footsteps of faith in hoping against all hope that what God promises will be done.

“So that he became the father of many nations according to what had been spoken: So will your descendants be” (v. 18): But it was this faith that acted upon a hope that was set against all reasonable hopes that produced the substance of God’s promises and led to Abraham becoming the father of many nations.

And I want to make Paul’s point clear: the substance of God’s promise to Abraham is well beyond the many nations that trace their physical lineage through Abraham, but includes and is ultimately realized by the many nations that become God’s children through faith, which will one day include every tongue, tribe, and nation on earth. And in this way, Abraham’s faith is the father of us all.

In other words, God has done far more than anyone had ever previously expected in fulfilling his promises to Abraham.

God is faithful.

Romans 4:19–21 CSB

19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old) and also the deadness of Sarah’s womb. 20 He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 because he was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do.

“He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old) and also the deadness of Sarah’s womb” (v. 19): Now Paul draws two short illustrations from Abraham’s case study that illustrate this “hope against hope”: the first of which is the frailty of his own body, and the second is the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.

Sometimes I’ve heard preaching on Abraham’s story that minimizes these two points. We like to say that “because people lived longer in Abraham’s time, his 90’s were really only the equivalent of his late 50’s or 60’s. Afterall, he lived to be 175 years old (Genesis 25:7-8). But I think this is an example of missing Scripture’s point by trying to answer questions Scripture doesn’t ask. Does the Bible ever say that people’s youthfulness lasted longer? Perhaps people simply lived longer and healthier lives. Regardless of such speculation, Paul makes the point here that his physical condition in his 90’s would have been a reasonable cause for doubt to most people.

The point made is that both of these conditions called Abraham to believe in things that were beyond his natural abilities and therefore unreasonable. Yet he believed. And so was rewarded by God and credited with righteousness because he trusted God even when there was no reason to do so (thus rectifying Adams sin through faith).

“He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God” (v. 20): Now in answering the question that we posed to verse 18 that said “he believed”, we clearly see the kind of faith Abraham possessed that Paul is teaching brings the righteousness of God. And that is the kind of faith that does not waver even when God’s promises seem astronomically far beyond our reach, but is strengthened all the more because of the one who made the promise, and gives all the more glory to God.

“Because he was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do” (v. 21): And why does this kind of faith give all the more glory to God? Because it is fully convinced by the nature of God himself that he alone is able to do what he says he will do.

The kind of faith that sets us right with God is the kind of faith that is convinced of God’s faithfulness. The whole measure of this kind of faith’s hope, then, is placed, not on the strength of the one who possess this faith, but on the faithfulness of the one in whom the faith is placed!

He Was Raised For Our Justification

Romans 4:22–25 CSB

22 Therefore, it was credited to him for righteousness. 23 Now it was credited to him was not written for Abraham alone, 24 but also for us. It will be credited to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

“Therefore” (“διὸ”) (v. 22): Here is one of Paul’s logical formulas that he uses to summarize his arguments. What’s important to note here is that he is not just summarizing verses 17-21, which began with the promise “I have made you the father of many nations”, but is summarizing the entire point from verse 3, which was expanded in verse 9 and explained in verses 13-21.

So Paul is giving us some final conclusions to the principle of faith that precedes the law given to Moses.

“It was credited to him for righteousness” (v. 22): Paul restates the proposition that he has been developing so that we know he is returning to verse 3, 9, and 13-21. He’s going to give us conclusions based on the exchange by which God set Abraham right through faith.

“Now” (“δὲ”) (v. 23): We’ve seen this logical formulas many times, which Paul uses to extend his previous thought.

“‘It was credited to him’ was not written for Abraham alone, but also for us” (v. 23-24): This twist could be quite unexpected for anyone who was familiar with Abraham’s story. To my knowledge, it was not a common rabbinic tradition to see ourselves in Abraham’s place like this. For it is one thing to see ourselves as benefiting from God’s promises to Abraham, and quite another thing to see those promises as being for us as well.

What immediately came to my mind when I read this was how Jesus walked with the apostles and opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He showed them how to see his good news in everything that came before them so that they could understand God’s redemptive work.

And I see this as an insight that comes from having one’s mind opened to the good news of Jesus as seen in the redemptive story of Israel.

“It will be credited to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (v. 24): So we too, as we hope against all hope in God’s promise to raise us from the dead, are given this same credit when we believe God in the same way that Abraham believed him. In essence, we are to see ourselves walking in Abraham’s footsteps of faith.

But here we must inquire, search, and test our faith to see that we have the kind of living faith Abraham possessed. Have we looked at the promises of God and seen how they are beyond any reasonable expectation for us, and concluded that we must resign ourselves to failure? Or have we looked at the one who has promised us the Kingdom of God and sought to lay hold of these promises through faith?

“He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (v. 25): Here is the bedrock of the Christian faith, which I believe Paul expects to generate the kind of faith that would cause all of us to live every day by the kind of faith that hopes against all hope.

Jesus descended - or condescended - to take upon himself the indignities of human mortality. He surrendered himself into the hands of wicked men for our sake in order to be judged as a criminal even though he was the spotless lamb of God. And he was executed in our place, taking upon himself the death that we deserved, in order to prove and establish the unfailing love of God in which you and I stand before his throne of grace. All of this would have been enough to marvel at, but then God raised Jesus from the dead in order to prove that he is the one who will justify us in the Lord’s name when he returns to judged both the living and the dead.

By this singularly unique act, he established our confidence in his love and announced the grace by which humanity is to be set right with God. All our sins will be completely forgiven and covered by God’s love, which was poured out for the whole world when Jesus shed his blood upon the cross. All our guilt is removed as far as the east is from the west when Jesus rose from the tomb and conquered the grave that you and I surely could never have conquered. By these acts Jesus proved the faithful promises of God to us in an act that far exceeds that which was given to Abraham when God passed between the sacrifices on the altar. And so Jesus established our faith so that our confidence can be fixed upon him. Now, in hope against all hope, you and I stand in God’s promises being assured of their guarantee according to his unfailing grace.