Session 11 – Romans; Romans 4: Mark Lanier, 06/22/25

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[Music] If I could get one toy, the toy that I think I'd get would be some kind of a time machine. I would just love to be able to go back in time in a real TARDIS or something. Can you imagine if you went back in time to the time where the church at Rome received Paul's letter and you were there for it? How cool would that be? Now, that's assuming you could find a church because if you went back in time, you could go back to Rome, but I'm not sure how easily you would find a church and how quickly you would. Remember, the cell phones aren't working. They don't even have telephone books. They don't really have crosses on the church. The cross hasn't become a symbol of the church yet. Your churches are likely meeting in homes. Some of the smaller homes would handle 10 people, maybe. Some of the larger homes upwards of 30. Christianity at the time is viewed by the Roman authorities and actually a good bit of the world as just a sect or a group within Judaism. You have your scribes, your Pharisees, your Sadducees, you have your Christians, but they're not even really called Christians. It's called the assembly ecclesia in Greek which is the common word for any assembly or meeting. It's an assembly of the way or of the Nazarene. And that is the buzzword that you'd want to hear. And how would you hear this buzzword? Well, you could go to the marketplace, and they had several marketplaces, but if you go to an a map of of Rome, Rome is known for having seven hills, and the seven hills of Rome are on the east side of the Tyber River. And so, the Tyber River dumps out at Oia, which is a port. And you've got seven hills. And on those hills, you've got the city of Rome. But right across the river is an eighth hill. And that's in this area right here. That eighth hill is not considered Rome proper. Although because that hill is a little bit higher than the hills of Rome. Early on, Caesar, I think it was Augustus, but Caesar built a wall that would include those. There was one wooden bridge that connected this area west of the Tyber River with the seven hills of Rome and its city proper. That area became the centerplace for Judaism in the first 50 75 years of this era and even before. And so you can go to it and you can see in the we call it today the trust very but it wasn't called that at the time but this area was one of marketplaces. We have synagogues, Jewish houses of worship. We have um uh ultimately in in history a Jewish ghetto was put there. But back at the time of Paul, it probably had the largest Jewish population outside of Judea that was going to be found anywhere. Antioch may have been close, but it looks like the biggest collection was Rome. And so we can imagine that the streets were filled with the sounds of the day and we might roam those streets and we would look for indicators that there might be some homes where Christians gathered together to worship. Now, Sunday was a work week in the Roman Empire up until 3:21 when Constantine declared it a a Christian holiday, a Christian uh holiday of sorts. But Sunday was a work day. Even in the Jewish community, they would take the Sabbath off. But the Romans back then kept two calendars. They had a calendar, it was kind of really weird. They had a calendar of seven day weeks, but then they also had an eight day week calendar. That was their work calendar because their work calendar was eight days a week. And so you've got a real mess trying to figure out. So you've got to work on that day and so did the slaves and the lowerass people. How are you even going to get to church? Church wasn't a Sunday morning affair. Church was something that probably happened in the evening. Now, there's another problem you've got because the streets of Rome were not safe at night. They were not lit. You would have robbers and thieves and vagabons and thugs and drunkards. And if you tried to get out, you did not go out on the streets at night in Rome alone. You went as groups. So, if you were going to go to church in Rome, you would be with other Christians and y'all would go as a group. And you would probably try to be close to the house church. You wouldn't want to just be roaming around all of those dark narrowed streets with the crevices where the people can hide and whale you. But you could probably hear within the Jewish community, if you could find the Jewish community, which would be easy to find, you could hear some people dropping words about the Nazarene or about the way and the little homes that might meet and discuss. And at those discussions, they would meet and have dinner. And that dinner would just seamlessly morph into what we today call the Lord's supper or the eukarist. And so this is what church might be like in Rome. And the reason we know that you might hear from the Jewish community about this is because they in 49 AD were having fights in the Jewish community over Jesus. it. This is during the reign of Emperor Claudius. And when we read the book of Acts, we read about this because Paul in Corenth bumps into Aquilla and Priscilla. And in Acts 18 it reads, "Paul found a Jew named Aquilla recently come from Italy from Rome with his wife Priscilla because Claudius the emperor had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome." Sutonius who wrote the biographies of the 12 Caesars. Sutonius would write later, "Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Crestus, which is a poor Latin spelling of Christ, he expelled the Jews." And so in 49 AD, Claudius kicks out all of the Jews. That lasts until Claudius dies and Nero becomes emperor. and then the Jews could come back. But remember, the Roman church started as a Jewish church and Gentiles were brought into the church and there were Gentiles in that community uh uh across the border from across the river from proper Rome. There were Gentiles there, but the Gentiles would have probably come even beyond that in the city of Rome proper as it crossed over. And so they would have to try to figure out how to meet. And I suspect that while the church started with Jews, and we know about that from Acts chapter 2, that there were visitors from Rome who became Christians when they returned back to Rome. They by definition took the church with them. Because of that, when their Gentiles are here, when the Jews are expelled, all of a sudden, many of the homes where these churches have been meeting since Pentecost are not open for meeting. So, the Gentiles are now trying to figure out where to worship, where to gather in heavens. Why on earth would you even want to go over here to the Jewish quarter which has been decimated by the the the expulsion order when you don't have to roam those dark streets at night. You can do something closer to home. So now you've got Gentiles who are setting up church in their own homes and in their own places. And all of a sudden, five years later, back come the Jews. And it sets up a very interesting set of problems because as the Jews come back, Paul's got to help this community put itself back together again because it's been broken apart. And you can imagine the troubles they must have faced. Then do we meet now in the gentile homes where you've been meeting for the last four or five years? What? Do we get our home back? Do we get back across the river? Where are the meetings going to be? When are they going to take place? Who's in charge? Who's leading the Bible studies? Isn't it true that we're Jews? And that as Jews, this is part of our faith. The Gentiles are welcome to come along for the ride, but it's our train they're riding on. And there there must have been a host of problems because people are people. And it's true today and it was true then. And not only are people people, but the church is full of them. And so you've got all of these people. So Paul writes the letter to the Romans. And this is a letter that's going to be passed around and it's going to be read in all of these little house churches and the people are going to have the the the teaching of Paul. When Paul writes Romans, in some ways it's unlike all his other letters. It's much much longer and it's written with ancient rhetorical elements. It's got a rhetoric's touch and we've talked about this and we continue to come back to it. But one of the key rhetorical elements that Paul included is the partitio in rhetoric as it would be called. A partitio is a short brief summary of what your argument or your persuasive message is all about. And Paul sets his up and it's Romans 1:16 and1 17. And I want us to look at it again because this is his partitio. It's his theme for the whole book. It's what the whole book's about. And we're going to see today parts of this theme being taught and explained by Paul. Paul gives the theme and says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel." You and Gelon for Paul remember gospel is a handy word he uses to express preaching the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. That is the gospel he preached. The good news, the good message was that Jesus Christ died for us, was buried, and resurrected unto a new life which we share. And so he says, "It doesn't shame me that Jesus died for my sins and was resurrected and I have his new life." Because the death of Christ, the death and re resurrection of Christ is God's power to save everyone. who believes. And the word believes here is the same. It's a verb form, but it is the word that we also translate faith when it's in a noun. It's pistuo in the verb form. Everyone who has faith to the Jew first and that's chronologically. They got it first and also to the Greek. For in it in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, the righteousness, the kaiosune in the Greek, the the the right standing of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it's written, the righteous will live by faith. And again, that word faith is just the noun form of believe. We read it differently in English, but in in in Greek, it's the same word. It's just the difference between it having a verb ending or a noun ending. And so, this is Paul's argument. And what we're going to do today is look at it in Romans 4 in three different lights. The first light is Paul's going to talk about the covenant that God had made with Abraham. And that covenant, Paul says, was one of righteousness or justification. Same word in the Greek. Righteousness or justification by faith or belief. Then we will uh go back. Righteousness. I didn't highlight righteousness. There it is. Righteousness. Same thing. Justification and righteousness, same word group. So, justification by faith. And then we'll shed the light on the law, the Old Testament law specifically, and how justification by faith is understood even in light of the Old Testament Mosaic law. And then we'll finish chapter four where Paul talks about grace and how grace exemplifies and also affirms justification by faith or righteousness through belief instead of actions. So that's what we need to cover and that's where we're going. We're going to start this story with uh time travel back even further. Let's go all the way back to father Abraham. Abraham's very name means father in Hebrew. And so we go back to Abraham. And in Abraham uh or in Genesis chapter 14:14, we have this verse that I've put up here. Let me give you the backstory before the verse. Lot, nephew of Abraham, lives in Sodom and Gomorrah. and some kings come down and plunder Sodom and Komorrah. And they take captive Lot and his family to enslave them. When Abraham hears about this, we're here. He's not yet called Abraham. He's just Aram at this point. When Avam heard that his kinsmen had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men born in his house, 318

of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. 318. Remember that number because it's going to be significant in a little bit. So he takes 318 men. He gets him. Uh afterwards he has the encounter with MelkiseDC where he tithes the plunder he got from defeating the kings. Um Lot goes back to Sodom and Gomorrah for a story to be featured later. Uh and and um uh Abraham goes back to his tents and his flocks lamenting the fact that he still doesn't have a son because God had promised him a son and a son is what he needs. He's having to go deal with stupid nephew Lot instead of his own son. And so he's very frustrated and he's very upset. And so it reads in Genesis 15 that after these things the word of the Lord came to Alra in a vision and said don't be afraid Av

set out. He brought him outside. God brought Abraham, Abram, Aram outside and said, "Look up at the heaven and count those puppies if you're able." Then he said, "That's the way your offspring's going to be." And Abraham believed. He had faith. He trusted the Lord. And the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. And when the Old Testament was translated into Greek several hundred years before Paul and Jesus, this was translated using the same words that Paul uses. And he believed which comes from the Greek verb puo. He believed the Lord and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. Deiosunain. And this is the fundamental principle that Paul is going to explore here in Romans 4. But it's all part of the propio that Paul put in the very beginning. In it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. The same words deioyosune and pistuo. This was the fundamental message that Paul had. And so after Paul has explained in Romans 2 and three that everybody's going to go to hell if we're just leaning on God's righteous judgment because God's righteous judgment sends you to hell if you're no good. And candidly, none of you are any good. Paul says, "But don't feel bad. Nobody is. There's no one who does a good deed. No one's any good. You might think you're good. If you think you're good, you're just not comparing yourself to God." Because if you compare yourself to God, you stink.

So Paul says, "What does the scripture say?" And he quotes that Genesis 15:5 passage. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. And it's exactly um uh Paul's putting it in his uh episten. And he believed God. It was counted to him as Daioyosunade. It's the exact same thing. So Paul quotes it and Paul says, "What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was accorded to him or counted to him as righteousness." So Abraham has justifi justification. He's righteous. He's justified all from the same word group. It's not until 30 years later that Abraham even gets circumcised.

That's Genesis 17:7 where God says, "You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it'll be a sign of the covenant between me and you." So Abraham gets a covenant entirely off of faith. It's not off of even circumcision, much less works of law. And Paul's going to make this point. So in Romans 4:10, Paul says, "How was his faith counted to him? Was it before or after he'd been circumcised?" Paul's quizzing the Romans. It was not after. It was before he was circumcised. He got justified by faith 30 years before he gets circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he already had by faith. He had it while he was still uncircumcised. Now remember, Paul's writing to a church that's trying to figure out how the circumcised and the uncircumcised fit back together again. And so when Paul appeals to Abraham, he's appealing to someone whose very justification, the deyiosune, his very justification is based upon faith 30 years before he is circumcised. And it the circumcision is just a sign that he got. It's a sign a seamon. The the word sign seamon is a distinguishing mark whereby something is known. Now, yesterday in the morning, I and two rogue lads I know decided to run the half marathon in Anchorage, Alaska. We got in at like 1 this morning or something by the time we got home. But that's Adam who ran it with me and Pastor Jared. That's us. Yeah. after we w ran. It's why I'm not walking very fast right now. And each step I'm thinking twice. But if you look carefully around our neck, you will see a medal that we got. Now, this medal, which candidly I probably ought to be wearing for the rest of my life. Now this metal is a seamon in the creek. It's a sign. It symbolizes the fact that we completed the half marathon. In fact, it even says on it, look at this. Uh Anchorage mayor half marathon. Half marathon. Can y'all read that word? I'm having trouble reading it. What does it say? It says what? Yeah, I think it does. I think it does. Yeah, I should be wearing this. And um

now I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Wait a minute. You three hyper competitive guys ran that race? Who won?" Well, scripturally I can honestly say if the first will be last and the last will be first than I did. But if we're looking at it from the world's perspective, Adam smoked us. They both smoked me. But hey, they're 20 years younger. Um 15 to 20. So, uh, uh, Paul says that Abram received his medal, circumcision as a seal. Okay? A seal, a sign of circumcision. Um, uh, as a seal of the righteousness by faith. Now, Paul's just quoting from Genesis 17. You'll be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin and it shall be a sign a Samuel. It's going to be a sign. And so that is a sign of the covenant in Genesis. Now that's an important thing. That's an important ad in Genesis because the Israelites and the offspring of Abraham were not going to be the only people circumcised. The Egyptians circumcised, Westmitics circumcised, Canaanites circumcised. Circumcision was very normal with certain groups of people. In fact, one of the earliest pictures we have, and I have kind of blurred some of it out because I don't know, I'm a Puritan from the West, but this is an engraving that dates from within a hundred years or so of Abraham. It's actually precedes Abraham probably. And it's a scene of circumcision from the tomb of Ankahor in ancient Egypt. And u you know this But but they would circumcise for other reasons. Uh scholars aren't sure of all of the reasons. They speculate uh for uh hygiene. They speculate for uh religious purity, um a sign of class. Lots of different theories on why, but it was very common to circumcise then. But when Abraham is circumcised, he's being circumcised specifically as a sign of the covenant. Now, that's going to raise a question. What covenant? Paul says he received the sign of circumcision as a seal and and the word seal here. Spragus is a mark of ownership like a king could put a seal or that which confirms or authenticates like a signate ring. It says this is authentic and that's what a seal is. So he received the sign of circumcision as a seal, an authentication of the righteousness that he had by faith when he was still uncircumcised.

Paul continues, "The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well." Paul says there was a purpose for this, a divine purpose. God didn't just do it because he was bored and wanted to see if Abraham would go through with it. God had a purpose behind this. And Paul says the divine purpose, the whole divine purpose behind circumcision for Abraham was to embrace Gentiles. Abraham has it before he's even um uh uh had faith beforehand, but he gets it as a sign of the covenant. And the covenant Paul's talking about is the covenant of being justified by faith that he had already received. Now, this was revolutionary.

See, Paul's contemporaries saw circumcision as a sign of the Mosaic covenant because the Mosaic covenant ordered circumcision as well. The Mosaic covenant has its emphasis on lawkeeping. Paul says, "No, circumcision is not a sign of the Mosaic covenant. It's a sign to the covenant of justification by faith."

There's a big diff there. There's a world of difference. is circumcision. That thing that the Jews thought set them apart in some way in that community. Paul's saying, don't see it as a confirmation of the Mosaic law that was revealed to you at Si. See it rather as a confirmation that God's bringing in the Gentiles. Abraham, after all, was told all the nations would be blessed through his offspring.

There's a very early writing that's not included in the New Testament. It is in our oldest complete Bible which dates from the 300s probably, Codex Sinaticus. It's put at the end uh uh the very end because it's it's a book that people read in the early church and valued and some may have thought scriptural even but it did not make the canon of scripture. It's called the epistle of Barnabas and it's written sometime after the fall of the temple and before the Baroobo rebellion. So it's between 70 and 135 AD. We don't really know anything further than that. But it uses some very interesting language and says something very interesting in chapter nine. It says,"Learn, therefore, children of love, concerning all things abundantly, that Abraham, who first appointed circumcision, looked forward in the spirit unto Jesus when he was circumcised, having received the ordinances of the three letters." Okay, that's kind of bizarre. He's saying and and the Barnabas who is allegedly the author of this letter and we don't know is the travel companion mission companion of of Paul. But uh I'm I'm always cynical if if it's outside of scripture to make such a uh affirmations. But it's fascinating what he says here. He takes it a step further and he says, "Abraham circumcised of his household 18 males and 300." That's the 318 that went to war with him. What was the knowledge he had? Understand ye that he saith the 18 first and then after an interval 300

in the 18. I stands for 10, H for 8. Here's let me do this in 21st century western speak. Um, an iota.

We can do better than this. Let's do it with this. An iota is the Greek I.

And in Greek that I stands for eight.

And then you have the Greek H. Do I have these backwards? Is Cape still in here? I may have these backwards. My Look, I'm My brain is on three hours sleep right now. But the ADA, which is the next letter or the H or long E, depending upon what you call it, is the letter 10. Um, now and I do have it backwards because ADA is earlier in the alphabet. So it's uh h is eight and that one's 10. So that's 18

300. What is 300? Well, we can go back and see the 300 and it

is the next letter which is um golly, my brain is just fried. Let me see if I can pull it up here. My brain is f look I don't remember what 300 is but it's the third letter. Okay, so it's the third letter is 300. Bottom line is is Those are the first two letters in the name Jesus in the Greek. And and maybe this is a kai. I'm not sure what this is, but he's got Jesus Christ here from these letters. If you It's gumatria is what it's called. If you take the numbers and make sense of what the numbers represent, I think that's a little bit spacious. I'm I'm not I'm not going with the Epistle of Barnabas on this, but the point and the reason I bring it up is it makes the point that what Paul was teaching here was taken even further in the next generation was taken even further. But it's understanding that Abraham was the father of all who believe and he's looking forward. So Barnabas epistle says to Jesus. Now Paul continues that God did this to make Abraham the father of the circumcised who aren't merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith. He'll call him circumcision by the heart in Galatians who walk in the footsteps of the faith that Abraham had before he was circumcised. Now, this is again a stunner for the audience, the the Jews that are reading this because the Jewish, even if you converted from Gentile to Judaism, the idea of calling God your father didn't work that way. The Jewish convert would not pray that Abraham Oh, the idea of Abraham being your father, excuse me, didn't work that way. The Jewish convert was not supposed to pray, "Oh God of our fathers." They would pray, "Oh God of our of the fathers of Israel," because Abraham is not a father to the Gentiles. That was another distinguishing mark. Father Abraham, we sang in Bible school growing up. Father Abraham had many sons, sir, and many sons had Father Abraham. And I'm one of them. And so are you. So let's just praise the Lord. Right arm and left arm and right leg. Oh

the uh um the Gentiles weren't allowed to sing that song in vacation Bible school because Father Abraham wasn't their father. Paul says, "Oh yes, he was. By faith, he's even their father. Paul is putting that community back together again. He is explaining that righteousness comes from faith, not action. That righteousness belongs to those who believe. That the covenant that God had with Abraham is a covenant. That righteousness comes by trusting in God, our faith. Now let's shift the light over and look at the law because Paul then asks this question or starts into this area. The promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the deiosunes pistuos the righteousness of faith. Same words he's been using this whole time. He's saying it was a promise to Abraham and it was 430 years before the law even came to Moses.

Paul says if the adherence of the law are the ones who are supposed to be the heirs, it said Abraham would be the heir 430 years before the law. If it's the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs, then faith is null. The promise is void.

Paul saw law and faith as mutually exclusive ways to God. If you want to get to God because you have earned your way there, you have just nullified and voided the idea of getting in front of God and being right with God by trusting him and the sacrifice of Christ. Paul says it uh in Galatians 3:18 in a very blunt fashion. Galatians 3:18.

He says, "To give a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant, no one enols it or adds to it once it's been ratified." Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. Doesn't say offsprings plural, referring to many, but referring to one, your offspring, who is Christ. That's what I mean. The law which came 430 years afterward does not anull a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. If the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise. But God gave it to Abraham by a promise. And that's what the scripture says. So Paul's saying the same thing. He says, "If it's to someone who's keeping the law, who's earning God's grace, if they're to be the errors, faith is null. The promise is void." Both of these verbs, by the way, are in an aspect in Greek called the perfect. And the perfect is emphasizing something that was completely done in the past. Um, that has a present consequence. And he's saying it's totally dull. I mean, it's just gone from the beginning. It there's no, it does not count. The the promise is void. It's empty. It's hollow. It's as if God's promised nothing. Paul says, "The law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there's no transgression." That reads weird in the English. What Paul's saying is the role of the law is to bring wrath. Now, when he says this, he says where there is no law, there is no transgression. He doesn't say sin. Parabosis is transgression. And transgression means um stepping over the line. Transgression is kind of uh uh deliberately doing something you've been told not to do. Think of it this way. Um let's see. Sin is a massive category. Sin means stuff that God would not do. Okay? Sin is massive. There's a bunch of stuff we do that God would not do. Among sin is this subgroup that we can call transgression.

And transgression

means we've sinned in something that was pointed out to be sin. It's not just, you know, let's say um it is a sin to um

to keep the change that's wrongly counted out at Kroger.

Now, that's a sin. God wouldn't keep that change. If nobody told you that that's a sin and you didn't know it, and you kept the change, you would still be a sinner.

If someone told you that it's a sin and you kept the change, you'd be a sinner, but you'd also be a transgressor because you crossed a line you knew you shouldn't cross. Make sense? Sort of. All right. So, Paul's saying if you don't have a law, you don't have transgression. You're not doing something that you were told not to do. By definition, if you don't have law, you hadn't been told not to do it. You still have sin, but you don't have transgression. And that's why it depends on faith. In order that, and this is heena in the Greek, it's a hea purpose clause. So the purpose of this, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring, not only to the adherence of the law, the ones who are following the law, but even the ones who share the faith. They may not have had the law. They may not be transgressors, but they're still sinners.

But if they share the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all,

we see God's purpose. God's purpose in order that his purpose is that the promise may rest on grace. That was God's purpose from the very beginning. This is why we understand grace was always God's plan A. It was never God's plan B from the very beginning. And that brings up an extremely important question. What is grace? And for that we'll shift light to the rest of the chapter. Grace. Paul says, "This is why it depends on faith in order that the promises may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all its offspring, not only to you." Go back to Paul's usage of the word grace in Ephesians 2:8, because it plugs in and earlier in Ephesians 2 as well, it plugs in something very important for us to understand. So in Ephesians 2, Paul says, "By grace you've been saved

through faith, not by works."

Now, that word grace is one of several Greek words for a gift, but it's a gift you don't earn or you don't deserve. It is a noun in the Greek. It is singular.

It is the idea that God gave you a present you didn't deserve. Now, what present did God give you as a Christian? What gift, what grace did he give you that you didn't deserve? It's a favor he did for you you did not merit. Some define grace as unmmerited favor. It is a favor he did for you. It's a gift he What was it? He died for you. He took your place. The grace by which you've been saved is the cross of Christ. By the way, that's the the letter Ah, my brain just returned.

The letter towel in the Greek is 300. Tao in the Greek. So here you've got Jesus and that's not Christ. This is Jesus in the Ih. and Tao is the shape of a cross.

And so that's how Epistle of Barnabas is saying that uh Abraham saw Jesus here. Um okay, forget that now. We might go long today. I'm starting starting to remember my class.

By grace you've been saved through faith, not by works. The grace of God, that singular noun, that gift, that favor he did for you is die for your sins. You couldn't get a better favor than that. There's nothing that you deserve less. I mean, or more that you you don't deserve it. Let me say it that way. And so, we have Paul saying that's that's Paul's idea off when he's using grace in this context. It depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ on your behalf. Be guaranteed to all his offspring, not only to the adherence of the law, even to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who's the father of us all. As it's written, I made you the father of many nations, in the presence of the God in whom he had his faith, who gives life to the dead. How does he do that? Through the cross of Christ. He calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope. Abraham believed against hope that he would become the father of many nations. As he'd been told, "So shall your offspring be." Looking up at the stars. Can you count them? Abraham didn't weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. He still believed that God would give him offspring. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. But he grew strong in his faith, his belief as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. And that is why his faith was counted to him as deiosune as righteousness. That's the whole principle at work here. So this is by grace. And he sums this up with a wonderful definition of grace or or explanation when he says the words that was counted to him weren't written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised Jesus from the dead. the resurrection of Jesus who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our dea deio sin here but uh same thing he's saying God the grace of God the death of Christ on our behalf delivered up for our trespasses raised for our righteousness we believe in that that's the grace of God expressed and delivered to us, Jesus Christ. Now, we could go back in a time machine and we might find this

if we got there. And if we did, I suspect the listeners would have not only understood that the distinction between gentile and Jew is really not even remotely important when it comes to the issue of how we stand before God. Because how we stand before God is based on whether or not we trust him for our righteousness or we try to think we're worthy on our own. If you think you're worthy on your own, then you got a couple of choices. You can either reduce the revelation of God down to something so pathetically low,

so pathetically low that you can do it.

In which event heaven help you if you believe you're that righteous or you if you think you're going to be righteous by keeping God's law, it is going to weigh down on you so heavy you're going to feel like the the the guiltiest person on earth because you just know you can't do it. And Paul says neither of those. That's not our reference. How we do is not our reference to whether or not we are righteous and justified before God. It is simply based on whether or not we trust him. And Abraham is an example not only for the Jews but for the Gentiles because that's what Abraham teaches us. That's the reason this was in place. First century Jews, a host of them thought Abraham was righteous because he kept the law. Even though it was 430 years before the law was handed out, you'll find over and over references from the ancient Jewish rabbis that Abraham knew not just the written law, but the oral law, and he kept it perfectly. and and and Paul's saying, "No, he never did." Which gives me our points for home. Everybody who embraces Jesus is God's plan. A God never left us to try to struggle to be good enough. God has sought from the very beginning, from before time, God knew that our righteousness and our relationship with him would always be dependent on him

and what he does, not us. Because only the grace of God can make us right before God.

We need to soak that in. We need to quit walking around guilty. We need to quit walking around holier than thou. We need to understand only by the grace of God do any of us stand and we stay in that. So we walk before the Lord in his mercy and in his grace, his death, burial, and resurrection. And that will transform us. Doesn't mean we don't care about how we behave. We care even more.

Doesn't mean we don't repent when we do wrong. We repent. It costs Jesus more than we can imagine.

We should try to live in a way worthy of the sacrifice of Christ, but it's not to make us right before God. Amen. Amen. So, let me bless you and tell you I'm going to miss you guys. I'll be tuning in. I'll keep doing video thoughts for the day. Um uh but uh um I'm gonna be gone the next five weeks while uh Pastor David, Pastor David David Capes, he's pastor, too. Mo Capes and and Fleming and uh Johnson uh all teach uh on Philippians. Then I'll come back in August, God willing, and we'll pick back up in Romans chapter 5. So, uh, Lord, in the name of Jesus, by the righteousness of Jesus, I pray you will move in our hearts, convict us, Lord, convict us to to trust and believe in the righteousness we have through our sacrificed Messiah as we join him in his death, burial, and resurrection through our faith and trust. trust in you and your promises. Thank you for the richness of your love and mercy we see in Jesus. Amen.