GOD'S GREAT NEWS for MAN'S GREAT PROBLEM - Romans 1-8

The Cobbler's Faith

Once there was a king who ruled his small country with justice and love. Unknown to his subjects, the king would put on a disguise in the evenings and roam the streets of the towns, to understand life from the perspective of his people. One night as he walked incognito, the king was drawn to a humble cottage. The doors and windows of the house were thrown wide open, and inside a rather robust man was eating and singing with great volume. Knocking on the door, the king inquired, "Is a guest welcome here?" The man shouted, "A guest is a gift from God! Please enter and eat with me." The king sat down and began to eat the simple but substantial food resting on the table. The two men talked freely, enjoying the immediate bond between them. Finally the king asked the man's trade. "I am a cobbler," was the enthusiastic reply. "Each day I take my tool kit and wander about town fixing people's shoes. They give me some coins, and I put them in my pocket. When the day is over, I spend it all to buy my evening meal." The king was shocked. "You mean you spend all of your money each day? Don't you save for the future?," he asked incredulously. "Tomorrow is in the hands of God, my friend," laughed the cobbler. "He will provide, and I will praise Him day by day." Before the king left, he asked if he might return the next night. The cobbler warmly replied, "You are always welcome, my friend."

On the way back to his palace, the king developed a plan to test the cobbler. The next morning he issued a proclamation prohibiting the repair of shoes without a permit. When the disguised king returned to the cobbler's cottage that evening, he found the cobbler eating and drinking merrily. "What have you done today, dear friend?" asked the king, masking his surprise. "When I heard about the edict, I went to the well, drew some water, and carried it to the homes of people throughout the town. They gave me some coins, I put them in my pocket, and went out and spent it all on this food. Come, eat, there is plenty for all." The king again said, "You mean you spent it all? What if you cannot draw water tomorrow? Then what will you do?" The cobbler's eyes twinkled as he answered, "Tomorrow is in the hands of God. He will provide, and I, his simple servant, will praise Him day by day."

The next morning the king decided to test the cobbler yet again. Early that morning the king's heralds announced that all former cobblers must report immediately to the palace for service in the king's army. The cobbler obediently reported and was trained all day. When evening came, he was given no wages, but he was allowed to take his sword home. On the way home, he stopped at a pawn shop where he sold the blade. Then be bought his food, as usual. Returning to his house, he took a piece of wood, carved a wooden blade, attached it to the sword's hilt, and placed it in his sheath. When the king arrived that evening, the cobbler told him about the day's events. The king asked, "What happens tomorrow if there is a sword inspection?" The cobbler smiled and replied, "Tomorrow is in the hands of God. He will provide."

In the morning the officer in charge of the palace guard took the cobbler by the arm. "You are to act as executioner today. This man has been sentenced to death. Cut off his head." The cobbler protested: "I am a gentle man. I have never hurt another man in my life." "You will do as you are told!," roared the officer. "But I cannot kill this man ... please choose someone else," begged the cobbler. "You will kill him, unless your sword be made of wood, you imbecile!" shouted the officer. At this the cobbler's face brightened. He stood up and dramatically withdrew his wooden sword before the eyes of all the people. The officer was caught by his own words.

At that moment, the king, who had watched from a distance, ran to his friend and revealed his true identity. "From this day forward you will come and live with me. You will eat from my table. I will be the host and you will be the guest. What do you say to that?" The cobbler smiled from ear to ear. "What I say is, the Lord has provided, and you and I together will praise Him day by day."

I love that story: no matter what obstacle was thrown in his path, despite all that he could see, even when put to the test time and again, the cobbler's faith in the provision and goodness of his unseen God never wavered. His heart was lifted in praise of his God day in and day out, above and beyond his circumstances. I have often wondered if that cobbler's name was Abraham. His faith in an unseen God of promise and provision echoes the faith of our father Abraham, who believed in God's promise in the face of human impossibilities. In our study in the last half of Romans chapter four, we will discover the inner workings of saving faith, the faith that looks beyond the way things seem to our God the way He is. The logic of Rom. 4:16-25 is straightforward: Abraham's faith is defined in vs. 16 and 17, Abraham's faith is illustrated in vs. 18-22, and Abraham's faith is applied to us as a pattern of our saving faith today in vs. 23-25.

Abraham's Faith Defined: Belief in the God Who Gives Life to the Dead (4:16, 17)

To begin with, Abraham's faith is defined in summary terms in vs. 16, 17. The opening line in vs. 16 can only be understood in light of vs. 1-15. Verse 16 begins with "For this reason it is by faith, that it might be according to grace." Paul had definitively proven in vs. 1-15 that Abraham's righteousness was credited by God apart from works, before circumcision, and beyond the Law. Now he can turn to the positive side of the argument and speak plainly about how God's righteousness was infused into Abraham by faith according to grace. The "it" in verse 16 is referring to Abraham's "righteousness," which is "by faith ... according to grace."

Having identified in vs. 1-15 two opposite spheres, the works-circumcision-Law sphere and the faith-promise-righteousness sphere, Paul now proclaims that "grace" is associated with the faith-promise-righteousness side. Since "grace" is one of those crucial terms in the NT, let's look at what "grace" means. "Grace" means "the freely given gift of God." It is bestowed with no reference whatsoever to man's works, his heritage, or his achievements. He didn't enter into grace by his own efforts, nor can he exit grace by his own disobedience. In light of the contrasting spheres Paul defines for us in Rom. 4, it is helpful to see the sphere in which "grace" is placed. There are two mutually exclusive spheres: works-wages-circumcision-Law on the left side of the podium; and faith-grace-promise-the righteousness of God on the right side of the podium. Thus, "grace" means "the free gift of God, unrelated in any way to works or self-effort on the part of man."

So, we have just seen that "grace" is intimately linked to the idea of God's promise to Abraham and to his descendants, and to righteousness credited to the believer as a gift. But what does all this matter to us today? A great deal, as the next phrase tells us: righteousness is by faith, according to grace, "so that the promise shall be certain to ALL the descendants." Simply put, if the promise were rooted in anything else but God's grace, His freely given gift, there is no way the promise could be certain to all the descendants who followed Abraham's faith. If it were related in any way to anything Abraham had done for himself, or to Abraham's racial identity as a Jew of the chosen nation, then everyone following him would have to be a Jew like Abraham or do what Abraham did. Thus, the promise would be dependent on human genetics or human choice. If this were true, God could never guarantee the promise to be "certain to ALL" the descendants because of our free will: we would undoubtedly discover a wrench to throw into the works. As the Cambridge Greet Testament says: "Only if righteousness is the free gift of God could the promise be guaranteed to all the seed: other conditions would have imported an element of insecurity..." because man's choices lead him awry, not aright.

But the certainty of this promise down through the generations even right up to this moment is based on faith alone, according to God's grace, not human genetics nor human choice. So, if we are to inherit the promise and blessing of Abraham, we must follow his faith: "to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all." This makes Abraham's faith the supreme Biblical example of faith. To understand faith is to see faith defined, illustrated, and applied in the life of Abraham. But that makes me immediately ask: what did Abraham's faith look like? In what or whom did he believe, in order to be counted righteous?

That is exactly the question Paul brilliantly answers for us in vs. 17. In fact, I am not sure there is a better definition of the content of our faith found anywhere in the Bible. Nor is there a better summation of God's character found in the NT. Circle this verse and ponder it whenever you can, because it will open a whole new world of hope and certainty of which you may have been unaware.

Verse 17 begins with a recapitulation of the re-naming of Abram to Abraham in Gen. 17, from "father" to "father of many nations." This is relevant to what he is about to say, because Paul is defining for us the content, the heart, of Abraham's faith that resulted in righteousness for him. It is also this faith, when followed by anyone of any nation across time, that makes us true "spiritual sons" of Abraham and establishes the profound truth of Abraham's extended name. But what is the content of Abraham's faith? In what or whom does he believe?

Abraham believes in "God, the one bringing life to the dead and calling the things not being into being." Abraham believes in the God of the Bible, "the one bringing life to the dead and calling the things not being into being."

I will begin by considering the phrase "calling the things not being into being." This summarizes who our God is based on the creation account of Gen. 1. Beginning with a chaos that was empty and dark, our God stepped in by His word and repudiated the darkness by creating light, filling the emptiness with teeming life, and redeeming the chaos into a system of perfect order that boggles the greatest minds even today. God "called" each created item into being from nothingness, thus that which had no being suddenly was given being by His word. Genesis is a book all about God's creative beginnings: the beginning of creation, the beginning of a great promise, the beginning of a nation, the beginning of a chosen lineage. This "calling into being that which did not exist" is God's CREATION POWER.

Thus, Abraham believed in the God of Creation Power. If you really want to know the heart of our God, just turn to the first page of your Bible. That is where He introduces Himself, as a God who repudiates darkness with light, who fills emptiness with abundant life, and takes chaos and redeems it into order. So often, when someone comes to counsel with me, and they describe all the darkness of their circumstances, the chaos in their relationships, the emptiness of their lives, I will point them to my God of Genesis one, my Creator God. He is the One who uses chaos, emptiness and darkness as His ingredients in producing light, life and order by the magic of His word. As Abraham believed in the Creator God, so must we.

But Abraham also believed in God "the one bringing life to the dead." This can be seen in Abraham's life in two ways: during the birth of Isaac, Abraham had to choose to believe that God could make his old, "dead" body able to produce sperm, and the "dead" womb of Sarah able to conceive and carry a child years after menopause. And God did bring life out of deadness, his and her's. Then, when Isaac was a youth and God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham was willing to do so because he believed in the God who resurrects death into life, who could easily bring Isaac back to life.

This is what God does throughout the Scriptures: God took a dying nation, bereft of its sons by the massacre of Pharaoh in the time of Moses, and gave it new life through salvation from Egypt. God then took that same nation trapped in the jaws of death between Pharaoh's army and the Red Sea, and He brought them miraculously through the waters. God answered the prayer of a dying man named Jonah in the belly of a fish, and gave him new life. God gave Ezekiel the vision of the valley of dry bones, and how He resurrected them, as the defining vision of the nation's future. Then God brought life to the dead when He raised Jesus Christ on the third day. This "one bringing life to the dead" describes God's RESURRECTION POWER. Death is never the end for Him; it is the beginning of His most significant works. Death is for Him the raw material from which He produces life. Death does not scare Him the way it scares us; instead, He rolls up His sleeves and takes the dead lump of clay to begin to work life into it once again, just like Jesus did when He called to Lazarus, and just as the Father did when He raised Jesus. Our God is a God of resurrection. Abraham believed in the God of Resurrection Power.

THIS IS THE GLOROUS CONTENT OF ABRAHAM'S SAVING FAITH: BELIEF IN THE GOD WHO BRINGS LIFE TO THE DEAD AND WHO CALLS INTO BEING THAT WHICH HAD NO BEING -- BELIEF IN GOD THE CREATOR AND RESURRECTOR OF THE DEAD!!

Now, let's think about how faith in God the Creator and Resurrector of the dead is applied to us today. First we have to identify what "death" in our own lives God wants to make alive by His life, thereby making us a new creation in Christ. After studying Rom. 1-3, there is certainly a great spiritual death at work in our bodies, a terminal illness called sin that isolates us from God in our own self-centeredness and self-sufficiency. In fact, elsewhere Paul calls us "dead in our trespasses and sins" in Eph. 2:1. Thus, we are as dead as corpses spiritually speaking, before we come to God through faith in Christ.

But what other kinds of death are there in our lives? What about the deadness we feel from broken, chaotic relationships? The world of human relationships, from dysfunctional family relationships to odd friendships to broken marriages, is a realm of incomprehensible chaos. What about being in a marriage where the husband refuses to listen, or listens patronizingly without hearing the heart? Or what about being in a marriage where the wife belittles the husband, disrespecting him in thousands of little ways that make his life a weariness? What about when all our relationships are discolored by past sexual, emotional or physical abuse? What if some of us are sitting here today having never felt loved or wanted ... ever? Some of us may feel imprisoned in our own bodies and our own histories of painful relationships, and we cry out from the bottom of a dark pit, "is there anyone out there who cares?" That is a living death, the death from broken relationships.

What about the death we die inside when we realize our dreams are dying under the crushing realities of life? Maybe our dreams of being financially independent are being crushed under a mountain of debt? Maybe our dreams for our careers are not panning out, and we look on the horizon of our lives and see nothing but bleakness? Maybe some of us are nearing mid-life, and the panic has begun. All around us are women frantically marrying and trying to have one child before their biological clock ticks 40, and we can see men in crisis perming their hair and buying that hot sports car to find that young woman before it is too late and they die along with their dreams. We experience a form of death as our dreams pass away.

What about the death we experience when circumstances beyond our control crush us with hopelessness: sicknesses that put us on a roller-coaster of hope in new cures, and dashed expectations when the cures only seem to prolong the sickness; when business opportunities come and go without our capitalizing on them, so that you reflect over your life saying, "If only ..."; when depression, that frozen sea, congeals around us and convinces us nothing can be done, nothing at all.

I believe the various types of death we experience in this world have a language all their own. The language of regret and self-condemnation: "If only ..." or "I should have ..." And there is the language of hopeless resignation to the painful realities of our lives: sometimes I find myself facing an intractable problem with two sighing words, "Oh well ..."

Shudder! The scenes of death we experience chill the blood. The language of hopelessness haunts. It chills God's blood too, and makes Him weep like Jesus wept at the pain of Lazarus' death. BUT OUR GOD changes all this dramatically through faith, because HE IS THE GOD WHO BRINGS LIFE TO THE DEAD. Our God answers our sighing "Oh well" with a resounding "I am." When He says I am, my focus on death changes to a focus on His life, with its limitless resources, its beauties beyond imagining. When our gaze stretches away across a bleak horizon, He offers Himself as an alternative focal point. He loves to meet us when our dreams die, and tell us of His dreams for us. One verse He gives time and time again to the victims of abuse is Jer. 29:11: "I know the plans I have made for you, plans for welfare and not for evil, that you may have a future and a hope." He loves to come into our relationships and bring His life deeply into ours. He establishes us in eternal intimacy with Him, making that foundational relationship between us and our God the central hub of all our human relationships, so that when the hub is properly in place all other relationships come out of it in right proportions like spokes out of the hub of a wheel. And above all, through the cross of Christ and His resurrection, God takes those dead in trespasses and sins and makes them alive in Christ as we turn to Him in faith, thus taking our spiritual death and making us alive in complete new identification with our risen Christ. And that is eternal life indeed, a life of abundance which transcends time and overcomes death forever!! Truly, truly, we can all say together: our God is a Resurrecting God!!!

This week I had the privilege of introducing our new intern Joe to each person in this body. I included Joe in my time of praying for the body on Monday mornings, when my Lord and I talk together about each person, man, woman, boy and girl, even the unborn little ones we are about to meet, praying for God to reveal His spiritual gifts invested into each one believing in Him, praying for God to move each of us into ministries that will bless others and fulfill us, and praying for the struggles in each home. Joe and I prayed for almost two hours, because in each family, my own included, there are heavy issues weighing on our hearts. For some of us, the problems verge on overwhelming us every day. For others, many little things add up to make a heavy weight on our shoulders. As we prayed, the needs felt great. But as we prayed, our God loomed greater in every case, for every family. We have no option but to hold to Him, in the face of all the human impossibilities hemming us in. We hold to a God who looms larger than what we see. We focus not on things the way they seem, but on God the way He is. As Abraham's faith was, so shall our faith be in Christ.

So, the faith of Abraham rests on the righteous character of the only God the universe has ever seen or ever will see who brings life to the dead and calls into being that which previously did not exist! But how does that faith really work in a world of human impossibilities?

Abraham's Faith in Practice: Belief in Life from God vs. His Own Death (4:18-22)

In Rom. 4:18-22, we discover Paul's great illustration of Abraham's faith was lived out. In these verses the Holy Spirit unveiled the inner workings of Abraham's heart and mind, obscured in the Genesis narrative. Here in Rom. 4:18-22 we discover what occurred between Gen. 15:5, when "He took him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' And He said to him, 'So shall your seed be.'", and Gen. 15:6: "Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness."

The first phrase in vs. 18 is a powerful phrase: "In hope against hope he believed..." What on earth does this mean? How are faith and hope related? "In hope against hope he believed," is the idea that Abraham clung to hope and trust in the living God when all observable cause for hopefulness had vanished. This is so key for us to consider today as well: our faith must also be in the God of the resurrection, the God of the promise, because our circumstances so often appear to be beyond hope. The difference is when we see with the eyes of faith and trust our God in whom there is neverending hope: the hope of resurrection. Beyond the boundaries of human hope, we find "hope against hope" firmly rooted in a trustworthy God.

But what is hope? Seneca viewed hope as "an uncertain good," a definition which I think is remarkably close to the modern view of "hope." Our modern view of "hope" is expressed as a wish: "I hope there's a good movie to go see," which is entirely uncertain!! Or, we might say, "I hope the hurricane bypasses Charleston," but the path of a storm is highly uncertain. But in the NT conception of hope, the idea is much more definite. Colin Brown notes that the NT words for hope never indicate a vague or fearful anticipation, but always indicate the expectation of something good. Hope is always a confident, sure expectation of divine saving actions, certain because it rests on the certain word and character of God.

Three factors determine the essential meaning of "hope" in the NT: 1) Its content: it is never ego-centric, but always centered on Christ and on God. 2) Its basis: This hope does not rest on good works, but on the gracious work of God in Jesus Christ. He Himself is called our "hope" in Col. 1:27. 3) Its nature as a gift: Hope is a gift of the Father's grace, like faith is. In Rom. 4:18, Abraham's faith is presented as faith 'in hope against hope,' i.e. against what human judgment of the future declared to be impossible, he set the hope given him through God's promise. Faith and hope have in common the fact that their object is still invisible and unprovable. But, like faith, "NT hope carries unconditional certainty within itself." (Colin Brown, Vol. 2, pg. 242, 3). Unlike modern man for whom hope is a vague wish, Christians hope with unconditional certainty in the character of God Himself. If there is one idea you remember from this passage in Romans, remember this: YOU CAN BE CERTAIN. Our faith is resting on certainty: the certain character of our God, in whom there is no shadow of turning. There is no hint of uncertainty anywhere in this passage. Nothing is left to chance by our God.

One of my heroes of faith and hope is George Muller of Bristol, the praying saint who by prayer alone raised over 1 million English pounds to keep orphanages in operation, meeting the needs of street urchins and orphans. Here's how Cyril J. Davey described it: "By the 1880s [Muller's organization] had received more than one million pounds for its projects. ... Muller never made an appeal for money. The children never went hungry or ill-dressed. Never a debt went unpaid. Yet there was never any security -- except the faith that God knew and would provide. God did so, though often at the very last moment, when there was not a penny in the purse and no food on the tables. Muller's homes existed by a never-ending succession of miracles of faith. Their history is largely page after page of answered prayers." In Muller's life, faith and hope found voice and reality through prayer to a God who indeed knew and who indeed provided. But did this man of prayer ever have prayers go seemingly unanswered? Yes: he prayed for decades for three friends of his to come to faith in Jesus Christ. By the time he died in 1898, none of them had repented. But by 1900, all three had become Christians. Faith expressed in hope against hope brings new life, even beyond the punctuation of the grave.

The next idea in vs. 18 is that Abraham believed "in order that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, 'So shall your descendants be' (Gen. 15:5)." Abraham believed that he would indeed become "a father of many nations," because God promised him when they were talking about the stars that night that his offspring would be innumerable. Abraham seized on the promise made explicit that night, and believed in the One who promised that a new son would spring forth from his dead body and the dead body of his wife. Thus, it was belief BOTH in the content of the promise itself and in the character of the One who promised. As John Stott says, Abraham's faith is "trusting the trustworthy." That is the content of Abraham's faith in its purest form.

So, what we see in Abraham's faith is a degree of certainty which gave rise to a great hope against all odds, against all the observable realities. Does this mean that Abraham's faith was a blind faith, an unreasoning faith? Does one have to have "blind faith" to respond to Jesus Christ? That critical question, which keeps many away from Jesus Christ, is answered in detail in vs. 19-22.

Before we delve into vs. 19-22, consider the crescendo of faith and praise logged in them: first, he saw clearly his own body and its inability to produce children; then, he saw the promise of God in vs. 20 and did not waver in unbelief, but chose to believe the promise and was empowered in his faith; then he gave glory to God; then he became fully convinced that God was able to perform what He had promised. Then, in vs. 22, God reckons righteousness to Abraham. What a tale of the power of God released in us once we open the door of faith in Him!!

Now to observe the specifics in these verses. The first phrase tells us that "without becoming weak in faith, he saw clearly his own body having died, being about 100 years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb." The first shocking truth from this verse is that Abraham's faith never became sick or weak during this process of consideration and learning to "see clearly." Real, vibrant faith allows dialogue, it allows deep consideration of who God is and what He says that makes Him trustworthy. This deep consideration, this wrestling, does not represent "weak faith." What makes faith weak is when it is NOT thought through, when there is NOT deep consideration. What a helpful concept!! But what was happening in Abraham's mind while he was looking at all of this?

Paul tells us "he saw clearly his own body having died, being about 100 years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb." Now your Bible might say "he contemplated his own body," or "he considered his own body," but the verb here in this verse is that he "saw clearly." This is the exact opposite of a blind faith. Instead, Abraham looked very keenly and saw clearly his circumstances, the physical realities observable before him. And what did he see? His own "having died" body and the "deadness" of Sarah's womb. The participle describing Abraham's body emphasizes the completed state or condition, which in Abraham's case meant he had been physically unable to father a child for some time. Similarly, Sarah was well past menopause, the time beyond which no woman can physically give birth according to the observable laws of nature.

In vs. 20, we see what stood against all these observable impossibilities: "the promise of God." Abraham's eyes, which were seeing clearly, were presented with a critical choice: he could focus on either his absolutely impossible, hopeless circumstances, or he could trust in an absolutely trustworthy God who moves and acts beyond our circumstances. Circumstantially, all he could see was an old "dead" man and an old woman with a "dead" womb. Spiritually through the eyes of faith, he saw all of God's redemption history poured into those dead bodies, resurrecting them to make them alive, calling forth from them the little son of promise through whom the Messiah would come who would die on the cross to pay for the sins of the world. His choice was astounding: to see only death, or to envision God spreading eternal life to the world through His Son!!

The world tells us today we ought to "master the possibilities." But soon we are abruptly buried by impossibilities. Our choice is this: to focus on the impossibilities and remain buried, or to trust in the God who masters our impossibilities and resurrects us into newness of life. As Jesus said, "With God, all things are possible."

The process of choosing to believe in the unseen spiritual realities of God and the truth of His promises actually unleashes God's power in us, empowering us greatly. That is exactly what Paul says happened with Abraham in vs. 20. As Abraham chose to believe in God's promises rather than his circumstances and deadness, it says literally "he was empowered by faith." For Paul, faith and power work in synergy: one builds the other and vice versa. This differs from how "God's power" is seen today. There are whole new church movements which talk of God's signs and wonders, His "works of power," defined very narrowly as speaking in tongues, exorcisms, healings, etc. But the real power of God is unleashed in my life when I begin to exercise the muscle of faith. Ray Stedman once told a small group of us that exercising faith is just like training a muscle: the more faith is exercised, the stronger the "faith muscle" becomes. When we begin to envision by faith the enormity of His power and His authority over all things, our fears diminish, our hearts are immediately filled with an unquenchable hope, and we are truly empowered. Paul prayed that this would happen in Eph. 1:18-23. Oh, may our God open the eyes of our hearts to see His very real power, staying power for the long haul to live in quiet victory and joy in a loudly evil and joyless world.

As we choose to live by the certain promises of our unseen God, hoping in the absolutely certain, we find true and lasting power that becomes staying power for the long term. As this power burgeons us up and gives real and discernable strength to us, we then give glory to God. We know the strength and power comes not from ourselves, yet we also know it is very real and extremely helpful to us. And we know its source is God Himself. Thus, rather than bragging that we are strong, we praise God and talk of how He is making Himself evident in our lives (which is what His "glory" means, as we will see in Rom. 5:2) by empowering us greatly.

But as his faith was strengthened, the crux of the issue remained: Would God do this? This was a very real question to Abraham, especially if he considered the open ridicule he would suffer when he told his friends what he believed. If there was a National Enquirer in ancient Palestine, I'm sure Abraham could have imagined the headlines: "90 Year Old Woman Gives Birth to Baby Boy." He was going to be criticized for what he believed. Would God really do this?

The final stage in Abraham's faith is recounted in vs. 21: Abraham was "fully convinced that what He had promised, He was able also to perform." There is no double-mindedness whatsoever: he is fully convinced. Abraham started by considering his dead body and Sarah's dead womb in vs. 19. Then he weighed all that deadness against God's promise in vs. 20. And here in vs. 21 we see how Abraham becomes resolved and is fully convinced of God's mastery over the impossibilities. The fact was that God had promised him a son from his "already dead" body and the "deadness" of Sarah's womb. That is simply a combined miracle of resurrection and creation: taking death and making it able to create and sustain life. Abraham believed in his trustworthy God who promised a miracle. But it was a miracle which our God displays in creation every day and every season, through the rising of the sun out of cold darkness and the coming of spring out of the dead of winter, the bursting of Easter after Good Friday.

Paul closes off this section in vs. 22 with a simple recapitulation of his opening salvo in his whole argument about Abraham's faith and how it led to righteousness in God's sight. Just like Rom. 4:3, Paul quotes again from Gen. 15:6: "Therefore also 'It was reckoned to him as righteousness.'" What Paul has just done for us is given us an in-depth commentary and analysis of exactly what happened between Gen. 15:5 and Gen. 15:6. Here we have one of the best commentaries on one verse in the OT found anywhere in the NT. What we have seen is the content of Abraham's saving faith that led to God's infusion of His righteousness into Abraham.

But for us, the same final question remains: Will God do it? This reminds me of a story some friends of mine tell. They were some of the most godly folks I worked with during my years at PBC. They were married back in 1986, and when I met them in 1991, they had been trying for five years to have a baby. That October, the woman Lorna went in for surgery to remove the endometriosis that had disqualified her from bearing a child. The surgery was successful, but still no baby came. In the fall of 1994, as Tim was finishing his dissertation, they were preparing to move to Australia to take on a new job. Eight years into their marriage, and they were childless. A friend of their's gave them a gift of the Book of Virtues, by William Bennett, as a going away gift. On the inside cover the friend wrote, "To Tim and Lorna: This is a great book to read to your children. Hope you enjoy it as we have." Now that was a risky thing to write: what if they had no children? What if that inscription became a painful reminder? But those words were an inscription of faith in a God who masters impossibilities, turning them into blessings. I'm quite sure that faith came from God, because the man who wrote that inscription is often weak in faith. About a month after they received that book, they came over to that friend's home one evening and announced that they were pregnant, after eight years of waiting!! There was much rejoicing in that home that evening!

Abraham's Faith as a Pattern: Belief in the God Who Raised Jesus (4:23-25)

Now, lest we miss the message for our own lives, Paul applies all this to us in vs. 23-25. Verse 23 tells us "Now it was not written because of him only that it was reckoned to him." Paul wants us to be sure to grasp the timeless definition of this saving faith for all believers. It was not written just for the immediate description of Abraham as one unique man in history, but as a "type" depicting all believers, and how all true believers are reckoned righteous by God through faith.

Vs. 24 brings this application to Paul and his readers, including us in the 20th century. This verse begins with the phrase "But also because of us." Thus, that which was written describing Abraham was intended as a timeless description not only of Abraham but also of those whose faith was like his. But who is "us" in this verse? That is what Paul defines very clearly in the next two phrases: "to whom it is certain to be reckoned" and "as those who believe ...".

First, the "us" refers to all those "to whom it is certain to be reckoned." Now, your Bible may not be translated this way, and may read "to whom it will be reckoned, or to whom it is about to be reckoned." Neither of those translations are true to Paul's intent, because they seem to leave a note of uncertainty about when (and maybe if?) those who walk according to the faith of Abraham will also be reckoned righteous as Abraham was. More literally, this phrase means "to whom it is certain to be reckoned." But to whom is it certain that God will reckon righteousness?

Righteousness will certainly be reckoned "to the ones believing on the One having raised Jesus our Lord out of the dead, who was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised because of our righteousness." This is Paul's summary statement tying together all his arguments put forward in Rom. 4. Righteousness will certainly be reckoned "to the ones believing...", i.e. it is by faith alone. But not just heartfelt faith in some God somewhere, or a strong faith in a higher power however you define him, but belief in a very specific One, "in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification."

These summary verses are crucial in understanding what a saving faith is for us today, based on Abraham's faith. As Abraham believed in the promise of the One who did indeed bring the life of Isaac out of the sperm of Abraham and womb of Sarah, so we must believe in the One who brought Jesus out of the tomb and into life at the resurrection. Thus, the advent of the cross and resurrection, two sides of the same coin, must form the content of our faith. THIS is what we believe in: a LIVING Christ who died that our sins would be forgiven so that we might be made righteous. Our confidence is in the One who raised Him. It is faith in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the Father as Resurrector, His living Son resurrected from the death He died to save us from our sin, and the presence of His righteousness infused into us by His Spirit!!

In verse 25, Paul defines for us the single saving act of Christ: the cross is defined in the first clause and the resurrection is defined in the second clause. The clause "who was delivered up because of our transgressions," highlights the same verb Jesus often used Himself when referring to the cross: "delivered up." Jesus Christ died on the cross "because of our transgressions," i.e. it was our sins that made the cross necessary; it was because of those sins that payment had to be made on the cross. Simply put, it was for OUR SAKE that Jesus died on the cross. But, fortunately there is the next phrase which underpins forever the hope that is within us: He "was raised because of our righteousness." This is the phrase summarizing the resurrection, and what it accomplished. While the cross dealt with our sin, the resurrection ensured our righteousness because it was God's acceptance of the sacrifice and it meant that life would come out of Jesus' death, both for Him and for us believing in Him.

Thus, this is the next step in the unbeatable logic of God through the cross and resurrection of Christ. On the cross, God loved us the most when we were at our ugliest in sin. Since God loves us the most when we are at our worst, we simply can't outmaneuver His great love. Likewise, at the resurrection God took death and made life come from it. There is no death in our lives, either spiritual death, relational chaos, emotional deadness, or even physical death into which He cannot bring life. He makes a practice of taking our death and bringing His life into the middle of it, creating in us true life as it was meant to be lived. Our death can never in any way outstrip God's ability to take that very death and make it vibrantly alive with His life!!! At the cross, His love outstrips the raw ugliness of our sin; at the resurrection His life bursts forth through our death, taking our death and making us alive together with Christ forever!!

Conclusion: A Passage for our Church ... A Prayer for our Church

As we conclude, I want to note how this passage is a passage for our church at this time, in this way. One of the toughest things about being a pastor is that you spend the bulk of your time at prayer, study and work in an empty building made to house many people. Our auditorium during the week seems asleep in the dim blue light caused by the stained windows in the back of the room. When I pass through that silent blue room during the week, I feel like one lone man knocking around in a large empty building. It moves me to pray.

I pray because my God does not see an empty building when He sees this church. I pray because my God sees a community of believers infused with His righteousness. I pray because my God sees a company of stalwart souls who have been tried in the crucible of adversity, and the pure gold left shines with His authenticity. I pray because my God sees in this church a community of genuine faith, hope and love. I pray because my God looks at our hearts, not our size, not our budget, not what we pledge to do for Him. I pray because my God loves this church, He loves each one of us, and He has plans for welfare for each of us individually and for this church as a community. I pray because my God sees here a battalion of faithful prayer warriors, whose prayers have not and will not go unheeded. I pray because my God has established this church on this strategic hill in a constantly growing city because He has plans for it. I pray because my God is at work inside each of us and among us all together, and His works last forever. When I pray I see a diamond beyond price, a diamond I have the privilege of stewarding as a pastor-teacher. My heart is deeply moved by the beauty and value of this diamond, a rainbow of color expressing our Christ. What joy it is to me to praise our Jesus Christ together in this place!!!

I pray to see as He sees, not in the dim blue light of an empty auditorium, but in the full spectrum of His eternal love. Oh, that by faith we will know our God of resurrection, and anticipate in certain, sure expectation of hope all that God will do in raising us as a community to newness of life, day-by-day, week-by-week!!!

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