Romans chapter 4 is the chapter. Open your Bible, we're going to look at Romans 4 for a little bit tonight. There was a little girl who secretly and quietly had saved up enough money to buy her father a present for Father's Day. But when she had all her money collected, she was very concerned and so she went to her mother and said, “I can't be going down town every month to make payments. Mother, is there a store where they let you pay for the whole thing at once?”
That's the kind of question a child would ask. And it is also true that there are religions in the world, in fact all false religions believe that you buy your salvation on some kind of an installment plan. You pay a little bit as you go. Good works offered to God each month, each week, each day, but nothing could be further from the truth. Salvation doesn't come on the installment plan. The price was fully paid at once by Christ and the gift of salvation is given at once by Christ to the penitent and believing sinner.
This great reality is the message of the section we're in in the great epistle of Paul to the Romans. And in this fourth chapter, Paul explains that Abraham is the true example of salvation. Those of you who have been with us for our Sunday nights will remember back in chapter 3 we saw Paul lay out the sinfulness of man, the sinfulness of sin, the absolute and utter impossibility of a man to do anything about his own sin and its consequences. And then from verse 21 to 31 he laid out the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone in which God grants righteousness to the penitent sinner.
In that section of Romans, Paul gave us teaching on how to be right with God, how to establish a right relationship with God. Another way to say that is how to have a relationship with God that will take you to heaven rather than send you to hell. How to come out from under the judgment of God into the grace of God. That has already gone before in chapter 3.
The key to it, of course, is verse 24, “Being justified,” that is made right with God, declared to be right with God, “as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” So Paul as presented his case for justification by faith. He has given the theology of it, the theology of it. In so doing he shattered religious myths and lies, including Jewish ones, showing that the way to be right with God is by repentance and faith in Christ, not by works.
Now to prove his case, he goes from a theology of justification to an illustration of justification. And the illustration comes in chapter 4. He's going to illustrate the truth of justification by faith not works with a life, a life of a man, no less than the man Abraham.
Let's look at the opening eight verses. “What then shall we say that Abraham our forefather, according to the flesh has found? For 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 as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.”
He does refer to David as an aside in order to borrow the quote out of Psalm 32, but the main character here used as an illustration is none other than Abraham. And this is very important because he is arguing against the traditional Jewish view of salvation by works. And Abraham is the perfect model for salvation by faith because of how the view...the Jews viewed Abraham. Why does he select Abraham? Because Abraham transcends, if you will, the dispensations because Abraham is a sort of permanent illustration of the righteousness of God that comes by faith. First of all, he was an Old Testament character. That is very important. Not only was he an Old Testament character, but he was saved before the Law was given. So he transcends, if you will, the age of grace and the age of Law. He is therefore a kind of universal illustration. He is the supreme example in the Old Testament of faith. And so he is the ideal example to use for salvation by faith as being the consistent norm, in fact the only way of salvation.
It is also important to note that the Jews looked to Abraham as their model of righteousness. So Paul picks him not only because he transcends the ages, and not only because he is the supreme example of faith in the Old Testament record, but because he was the favorite illustration the Jews used to prove salvation by works. So he really overturns their model of salvation. The majority of rabbis held that Abraham was the only righteous man of his generation, that he was the only truly righteous man of is generation which remember now is pre-Israel since he is the father of Israel, pre-the giving of the Law to Moses. So he stands alone as the emblem of righteousness. And the Jews taught that is why God chose him to be the father of his people. He was such a righteous man that God selected him to be the father of the nation that would become the dispenser of divine revelation.
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Poster Comment:
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