Abraham‑Justified by Grace, Part 1

Romans 4:9‑12

Let's look at our Bibles at this time. We are thrilled tonight to open the pages of Paul's great epistle to the Romans. We are in the midst of the great section on salvation, looking particularly at Romans chapter 4 verses 1 through 25, the faith of Abraham.

Now, just to introduce our thinking tonight, I want you to back up, if you will, to chapter 3 and I just want to read verses 21 to the first Dart of verse 25.

But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a satisfaction through faith in His blood.

Now, that great statement which we have studied in past weeks tells us that a man or a woman is made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ not through works. Christ satisfied God. He offered to God the redemption in His blood that satisfied the demand of God's justice and when we by faith receive Christ, accepting His person and His work, God grants to us His righteousness. It says simply that when a person places genuine faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, righteousness is then imputed to him or put to his account.

Now, as you come to chapter 4, Paul uses Abraham as an illustration of that, He is an illustration of justification by faith. He is an illustration that men and women come into a right relationship to God through believing in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we've been learning that justification then, or God imputing to us His righteousness, God putting His righteousness to our account must be seen in two ways. First of all, it is a forensic declaration, that is a statement of God relative to judicial reality. By that I mean God says, in fact, we are legally righteous. The legal payment has been paid, the wages of sin is death, Christ died the death. If we are granted the appropriation of that death through faith then legally we are right with God, Payment has been made. That is what forensic means. It is a legal declaration. And so, we are legally pronounced just.

I heard recently that a preacher said when we are saved it is only a legal ‑pronouncement, there's no change in us at all, it is simply that God declares us righteous, contrary to the real fact but based on the death of Jesus Christ. That is not true. There is a declaration, there is a legal statement but there is a second aspect and theologians would call this the ontology of justification, or the reality of it and it is this‑‑that God not only declares us to be righteous based on the satisfying work of Christ, but in Christ Fe makes us righteous. We are made righteous. He imputes to us His own righteousness. We are created in Christ Jesus. We are regenerated. We are born again. We are given a new nature. We become possessors of the divine nature which is incorruptible and eternal.

And so, you must see then in justification by faith both of those elements. That which is declared about us that we are from now on right with God can only be declared because in fact it is true that we have been recreated in His image. That is why Hebrews 2:11 says Jesus is not ashamed to call us...what? ... brothers, because in a very real sense we bear the same family markings, the same family nature and that's a really monumental thought ... but it is the fact of the Word of God.

Now, let me see if I can illustrate to you both of these in one story. Look in your Bible to the fifteenth chapter of Luke and I want to use this as an illustration. A familiar story that our Lord told about the ‑prodigal son. Beginning in Luke 15:11, "And He said, A certain man had two sons," it's a story by the way not about one son but about two sons, the first one gets most of the press. "The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living and not many days after that the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; he began to be in want. He went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, sent him into the fields to feed swine." Hardly imaginable for a Jewish boy to do that.

"He would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat but no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself he said. How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough to spare and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father and I will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father and when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, had compassion, ran, fell on his neck and kissed him, And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry, for this is my son was dead and/alive again, he was lost and is found; and they began to be merry.

"Now his elder son was in the field and as he came and drew near to the house he heard music and dancing and called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother has come and thy father has killed the fatted calf because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry and would not go in. Therefore came his father out and entreated him, and he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any tire thy commandment and yet thou never gavest me a kid that I night make merry with my friends, but as soon as this thy son was come who hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine, it was fitting that we should make merry and be glad for this thy brother was dead and is alive again and was lost and is found."

Now, that is one of the great, great teaching passages on the significance of true salvation and repentance. And I don't want to take the time to develop all of the thoughts here, but let me just pull one out. The father could not have the prodigal son at his table in the rags of the far country even though he had forgiven him. And there is a‑marvelous imagery here. When the father goes out to‑meet the son, he forgives the son. But before the son can come to the father's table the father puts new clothing on him, he robes him in a new robe and puts a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. And may I suggest to you that going out to meet him and forgiving him and justifying him is the equivalent of that forensic element of redemption that we see in Romans chapter 3 and 4. But robing him in the robe to prepare him to sit at the father's table is equivalent to that onological or that reality of a changed life. And so, there must be both ... bring forth the best robe and put it on him... so that you have grace on the one hand and righteousness on the other hand meeting in the act of redemption. And it's as if the son cannot receive all the blessedness of the father's table until he is robed in the right robe.

And so, there is more than just a declaration involved there is a declaration and a reality involved. Now the other son didn't really ever recognize that he too had ‑rags on. He never really saw his sinfulness for what it was, it was equally heinous to God, it was not the sin of riotous living, it was the sin of hypocrisy and self‑righteousness. And he never was willing to confess to his father the rags of his own self‑righteousness and so never received the robe of righteousness.

And so, we are reminded by this marvelous parable that there must be a stated fact about our made righteous with God but there also must be a reality behind that because God doesn't say things about us that aren't in fact true.

Now, let's return to Romans chapter 4. And that was really for you who have been here, for the rest of you you're probably saying ‑ Let me out of here, Alice, I don't have a clue what's going on. That was just a footnote to several weeks.

Now, we remember that in chapter 4 verse 5 a very great statement is made that God justifies the ungodly. God only saves the ungodly. God only saves the people, who come back and cry out "I have sinned," who realize they are in rags, who realize they have no resources. He only saves number one son, not number two in that story because the number two son never recognized his ungodliness. Now having established then that righteousness comes both as a declaration and as a reality, as you approach chapter 4 you come to Abraham as the classic illustration. He is a marvelous illustration of the fact that God justifies the ungodly, that God redeems men not by their works but by their faith. And this is a hard lesson for people to learn.

I'll never forget being in Mexico on one occasion and being at the Shrine of Guadeloupe and watching these people crawl for a quarter of a mile on their bare knees which by the time they were a third of the way to this tilted cathedral that is sinking gradually because most of the central part of Mexico is sinking with it, and it was lopsided and cockeyed to look at and here they were believing that this was the edifice to which Mary herself had appeared in one of her supposed appearances and they believed they could gain some entrance into God's heaven by crawling on their knees for a quarter of a mile or more until they were bloody beyond belief, women with children and all kinds of people moving in that foray and then entering such a place to light myriad upon myriad of candles to try to help the people out of purgatory who didn't crawl far enough. It's very difficult for man to understand that he does not redeem himself by his own works.

And so, Paul belabors the point in chapter 4 by postulating an illustration from the life of Abraham. He is the classic model of salvation by grace through faith. And we suggested to you that there are three sort of emphases in the chapter. They are very overlapping and they're not clear cut. But in the first eight verses he seems to emphasize that Abraham was saved by faith not works, from verse 9 to 17 he was justified by grace not law, and then from verse 18 to 25 by divine power not human effort. And so he's really criss‑crossing himself in saying the same things from different angles and widening our understanding all the while.

Now, we've already looked at the first 8 verses and we emphasized to you over the last few weeks that Abraham was justified by faith not works. And the key to that is that God justifies the ungodly and that's the only kind that He justifies because that's the only kind of ‑people there are. Unless a man faces the ungodliness of his life he never comes to a Savior. So, God is in the business of justifying only the ungodly,

Now, as we come to verse 9, we come to the second section in the chapter in which Paul tells us that Abraham was justified by grace not law. And as I said, these are interwoven and overlapping. But verse 16 sort of keys the passage so look at it even though we won't get anywhere near it tonight. He says in verse 16, "Therefore it is of faith (that is salvation) that it‑might be by grace." And you can stop at that point.

     That sort of wraps up his thinking from verses 9 through 16 and 17. It is by faith that it might be by grace. God saves us to exalt His grace and that is the general thrust of this text. It's exactly what he said to the Ephesians when he said "For by grace are you saved through faith and it's not of yourselves, it is the gift of God not of works lest any man should boast."' And God has always saved people by grace. Clear back in Genesis 6:8 it says Noah found grace. Back into verse 3 of chapter 4, Abraham believed God and righteousness was put to his account, even though he was unworthy on the basis of his faith. God did that as he responded in faith. So, God is a God of great grace and He saves on the basis of His own free favor to undeserving sinners, that's what grace us‑‑free favor to undeserving sinners. And so we're saved that way. It's very much like Hosea and Gomer. Hosea going out to woo back his adulterous wife, finally buying her like a piece of meat in the marketplace where she was being hocked, naked as a prostitute, and forgiving her everything and taking her back to himself. It is God's great grace. It is what bothered Jonah when Jonah was sent by God to Nineveh and the whole city repented, he said,‑‑"That's why I didn't want to come, God. Because I knew you were a God of grace, and You'd forgive all those Gentiles." God is a God of grace.

So, salvation is a matter of God's grace, not a matter of men keeping certain ordinances and laws and earning righteousness.

Now, Abraham becomes for us an excellent illustration of this. You might sort of sum, it up by saying this. If the greatest man in the old dispensation (in the Jewish mind it would be Abraham) if the greatest man in the old dispensation had to deny all works, had to deny all law-keeping as a way to be right with God, and the greatest man in the old dispensation had to be saved by grace as an ungodly sinner, then justification by law-keeping must for all other lesser men be impossible. And no Jew would think himself the equal or greater to Abraham. If Abraham had to be saved as an ungodly sinner by God's free favor, then that's the way every other man must be saved as well.

And so we saw then in the first eight verses that men are not saved by their works, not at all. They're saved by faith and here we learn it's by God's grace reaching out to them. Now this concept that Abraham was not saved by works leaves a very important question in the Jewish mind. Look back at chapter 3 verse 1 and you'll see that question first introduced. "What advantage then hath the Jew?" Chanter 2, Paul condemns everybody really whether Jew or Gentile, chapter 1 he sort of wipes out the whole pagan world, chapter 2 he deals with the Jews and he says whether you have the law or don't have the law you're all in the same basic boat, And so in chapter 3 verse 1 he says what advantage then hath the Jew. And then this question, "Or what profit is there in circumcision?"

Now, they introduced this because believe me, folks, this historically was the major issue with these people‑circumcision. That was the ‑point of their identification. And they're really asking the question, here it comes, what part‑‑very important theological question‑‑what part do religious rites and ceremonies play in salvation? Very important point. That's really the question. And so, circumcision becomes the issue then in verses 9 and following because Paul has to deal with it. It's their question. They're going to say ‑ Look, if you say you're saved by works then why did God tell us to be circumcised? I mean if you're saved by faith why did God tell us to be circumcised? What is the meaning, of circumcision. What validity does it have? What is its point if it doesn't guarantee us entrance into the covenant of God? Now you see, they believed that when a male child was circumcised that placed him into the covenant. They believed, actually believed, that men were made right with God by circumcision, by their Jewishness, that surgical act on an 8‑day‑old male child secured that child's righteousness. In fact, in the Book of Jubilees there's a very interesting passage, that's a non‑canonical or non‑biblical book but gives us good insight into their viewpoint ... historically. It says this. "This law is for all generations forever and there is no circumcision of the time and no ‑passing over one day out of the eight days, for it is an eternal ordinance ordained and written on the heavenly tables." In other words, you can't change it, it's the eighth day and there's no way to substitute a day for any reason, to add a day or whatever.

"And everyone that is born, the flesh of whose foreskin is not circumcised on the eighth day belongs not to the children of the covenant which the Lord‑made with Abraham for he belongs to the children of destruction, nor is there moreover any sign of him that he is the Lord's but he is destined to be destroyed and slain from the earth, be rooted out of the earth for he has broken the covenant of the Lord our God and now I will announce unto thee that the children of Israel will not keep true to this ordinance and they will not circumcise their sons according to all this law. For in the flesh of their circumcision they will omit this circumcision of their sons and all of them sons of Belial (or Satan) will have their sons uncircumcised as they were born and there shall be great wrath from the Lord against the children of Israel because they have forsaken 'His covenant, turned away from. His word, provoked and blasphemed according as they have not observed the ordinance of this law, for they treat their members like the Gentiles so that they may be removed and rooted out of the land. And there will be no pardon, no forgiveness for them so that there should be pardon and release from all the sin of this error forever."

In other words, if you do this‑‑you are in. If you don't‑forever you are outside salvation. That's basically reflective of what they taught. In fact, an Israelite who practiced idolatry in his life had to have, they said, his circumcision removed‑‑however you do that‑‑before he could enter into Gehenna so that a circumcised idolatrous Israelite was decircumcised by an act of God before he entered into hell. See, they believed that circumcision was the way into the covenant. Salvation was imparted in that act of obedience. Indicated, by the way, it's in Genesis 17:9 to 14, God said "Ye take those male children on the eighth day and you circumcise them," and they believed that in that very fact came salvation.

For example, in reading several Jewish sources I found these statements:

"Our rabbis have said that no circumcised‑man will ever see hell."

Another rabbit taught "Circumcision saves from hell." In the Midrash it says, "God swore to Abraham that no one who was circumcised should ever be sent to hell." In Akkadoth Jizahock‑‑another one of their areas of teaching‑it says that Abraham sits before the gate of hell and does not allow any circumcised Israelite to enter there.

In other words, if you're circumcised‑‑that's it. You're prevented from hell, you've got it made.

Now, when you come to the New Testament, this was a big issue. Look at Acts 15 for a moment, and Paul confronted this quite frequently, this circumcision issue. In Acts 15 verse 1, the Jerusalem council convenes, the first church council, to try to solve this problem because it's a major issue. "Certain men who care down from Judea taught the brethren," in other words, they're coming down into these Christian areas, "and they said to them, Except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses you cannot be saved." Now does that sun. it up for you? They believed in salvation by surgery‑‑salvation by circumcision, And it got to be such an issue that here the early church was going around preaching salvation by grace through faith and there was a trail of what became known as Judaizers coming along and trying to impose on these people who had already come to Christ that they could never be saved unless they had been circumcised. You see, they believed that it was the first meritorious act of obedience to the law by which a man was saved in the works system.

Now, the Apostle Paul came out of that background. There was a time when he boasted in that. Philippians 3:4, "If anybody has any right to boast in the flesh I do," he says, "I was circumcised the eighth day," and then he goes on through the other things. I mean, he had his credentials. He had his circumcision. He felt for years of his life that that was a securing reality. But in the same chapter verse 2 he says this, "Beware of the concision," beware of the people going around saying you can't be saved unless you're circumcised. Judaizers, who claim to be Christians even, constantly hounded Paul and the early church trying to force Gentile Christians to be circumcised saying you can't just be saved you have to be circumcised or you can't enter God's Kingdom.

Now, Paul warns about this in Galatians chapter 5 so let's look at it for a moment. And we're going to build all of this, go back to Romans and it will all land in front of you and you'll see where I'm going. Galatians chapter 5. And in verse 1 we have one of the great statements in the New Testament, you're familiar with it, I trust you'll know now a little more of where it's coming from and where its context is. It says, and I'll read you the proper rendering, I think NAS has it best here, New American Standard, "For freedom Christ has set us free, therefore stand fast and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." In other words, you've been liberated in Christ; don't go back to the legal system.

What do you mean, Paul? Verse 2, "I Paul say unto you that if you be ... what? ... circumcised," you see, that was the mark of the legal system. If you do that, you know what will happen? First, "Christ shall profit you... what?...nothing." Listen, if you can be saved by circumcision then what good is Christ, right? If you can be saved by surgery you don't need Him. Verse 3, "For I testify again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law." Okay, here's a second result.

Result number one, if you go get circumcised and you believe you're saved by circumcision, by that works system; you've nullified the work of Christ. Number two, here's what else you've done, you've put yourself under the law and if you're going to justify yourself by the law, how much of it do you have to keep? All of it. So, you've just become a debtor to the whole law.

Verse 4, "Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law and ye are fallen from grace." Now what does he mean by tha