Romans 4:13

Romans 4:13

Welcome to the study of the Bible, the greatest and most important book in the world. Romans 4:13 says "For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith." Abraham is held forth as our example. He is our example in regards to faith. According to the book of Hebrews, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

There are many characteristics of human life. If you were to describe human life, you would include many things that are common to most people. Descriptions of human beings would include things such as eating and sleeping, thinking and working, loving and laughing, creating and communicating. Most descriptions of human life that you might find are probably primarily physical and material in nature. But God has established one other activity and one other principle that should be a major part of human life, and that is the principle of faith. You do not know what life is or what it was meant to be unless you are learning to live by faith. The reason that the life of Abraham is recorded in scripture is so that we can learn some important things about faith from his example.

The most important thing that we learn about the faith of Abraham is what we have already been told in Romans Chapter 4, that Abraham was justified by faith and not by works; and that Abraham was declared righteous because of faith and not because of works. Romans 4:14-16 continues with this theme and says, "For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect; Because the law works wrath; for where no law is, there is no transgression. Therefore, it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the offspring; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all."

In verse 13 Paul said that the promise made by God to Abraham was that Abraham would be the heir of the world. In other words, the world would inherit something from Abraham. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness, and the promise was given that in the lineage of Abraham all of the nations of the earth would be blessed. That promise has been fulfilled in two ways. By believing the promises of Christ in the same way that Abraham believed the promises, then we also can be counted as righteous, not because we earn it, but because we have the same faith as faithful Abraham. Secondly, through the earthly lineage of Abraham came the Messiah, and it is only because of the sacrificial death of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, that we have the opportunity to know the blessing of justification by faith.

Abraham is called our father in verse 12, and he is our father in a spiritual sense, because he had the faith before we did, and when we come into the faith, we become related to God on the same basis that Abraham was related to Him. In our world today both the Jews and the Arabs like to claim their relationship to Abraham through the physical lineage that they have to him, but that is not the relationship that is important, and so Romans 4:14 says, "For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect." This directly relates to the Jewish people. God’s blessing is either based upon law or it is based upon promise. The one excludes the other. And since the blessing was based upon a promise and faith in that promise, then it cannot be based in any way upon law or the keeping of law.

Romans 4:15 says, "Because the law works wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression." To transgress means to break the law or to violate the law of God. The more that we know the law and are familiar with the law, the more that we will know and realize the greatness of our own transgressions. If righteousness came by the law, then only those who knew the law perfectly would have a chance of becoming righteous, but there would be no hope for those who did not know the law. But Romans 4:16 says, "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to those only who are of the law, but to those also who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all."

Paul quotes the book of Genesis again in Romans 4:17 and says, "As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations, before him whom he believed, even God, who brings the dead to life, and calls those things which be not as though they were." We know that the great example of Abraham was his faith, and we know that the faith of Abraham was based upon a promise. And now in this verse we are reminded of why Abraham had every reason to believe the promise. He could believe the promise because it was given by God. God is able to keep any promise because He is all powerful.

Romans 4:17 says that God gives life to the dead. This is the greatest issue of all. What happens to the dead? What hope is there after death? What is the fate of each person after they die? Jesus said, "What shall it profit a man, should he gain the whole world and lose his own soul; or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" Death will always be the last great enemy of man. If we find a cure for cancer and every other disease that plague our life on earth, still we would face the slow deterioration of our bodies due to aging and the ultimate death that is the fate of each of us. Whoever can promise life after death, is making the most important promise of all. Only God can make that promise, because only He is capable of fulfilling it.

The promise that God made to Abraham was symbolic of the promise of life after death. God promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the blessings of God. But Abraham was an old man, 99 years old when the promise was made, and his wife was old. She was 89 years old and had never had a child. In a way you could say that their childbearing capacity was dead because of age. It was behind them. To believe God’s promise about their descendants when they were 99 and 89 years old and had no children is equated by Paul here in the book of Romans as us believing that Jesus died for our sins and then was raised by God from the dead.

And so Romans 4:22-25 says, "And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus from the dead; Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification."

God has made exceeding great and precious promises. He has promised life after death to those that believe. If we believe in life after death through Christ, then death should take on a new meaning for us. Life is precious and we should value it and live it to the fullest until God takes it away, but we should not live any longer under the fear of death, the way that those of the world do who have no hope in Christ. We should not be tormented by the loss of someone who has gone before us, as is done by some in the world who have no hope in life after death through Christ.

Not only is there a very specific promise about victory over our greatest enemy which is death and the grave, there is also a more general statement about the assurance that God will keep His promises. It says about God at the end of Romans 4:17 that He "calls those things which are not as though they were." In the case of Abraham, an old man with an old wife and no children, God made a promise of children. In the case of you and me, people without our own righteousness, God has made a promise of righteousness through Christ. God turns the tables. Those who think that they are righteous by their own works will be found to be unrighteous, but sinners will be turned into saints. God turns the tables. Those who go about to grab the riches of the world will find themselves poor one day. Jesus said; "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." When He returns, He will turn the tables, because He calls those things that are not as though they were.

There is nothing that is impossible to God. Those who aspire to live by faith must always hold that idea in reserve. Jesus said to the disciples, "With God all things are possible." God is supernatural, which means that He does things above and beyond the natural order. When there appears to be no hope, there is still hope for those who believe in Christ. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: he said, "God provides a way out of no way." If anyone ever says to you, “This is a hopeless situation”, then you will know that they do not have the faith of Abraham. Jesus told the disciples that with faith, they would be able to remove mountains.

From a human standpoint, it would be easy to say that Abraham was in a hopeless situation in regards to having children. But notice what it says about Abraham in Romans 4:18-21: "Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall your descendents be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb; He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to perform."

Justification by faith works on the same principle. Forgiveness of sins has been offered to all through Jesus Christ. The scripture says, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." And Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die." Anyone who realizes their own desperate sin situation, and reaches out in faith to Christ, becomes justified through the means of the faith that they put in Christ.

The principle of a life of faith works the same way. Some people do not understand what it means to live by faith. You do not have to work in a charitable organization nor do you have to take a vow of poverty to live by faith. Every believer has the opportunity and the challenge to live by faith. If you do not live by faith, then you will live by sight. You will either overcome your circumstances through faith in the promises of God, or you will be overcome by impossible-looking circumstances. You might also be reduced to living the way that the unbelievers live in this world: reacting to the trials and troubles of life as if there were no God who cared for you.

It happens to people all the time. "Without a vision, the people perish." Life has crushed many a soul, especially those who depend only upon their physical and material circumstances. If you live at the mercy of your circumstances in this changing world, you are standing on thin ice. Once things start going wrong, your hopes and dreams might vanish also. There is no more miserable human being upon earth than the person who is without hope. I lived in France once for several years, and in passing out gospel pamphlets in the Red Light district of Toulon, France; I noticed that the prostitutes who stood in the shadows had a forlornness, an emptiness, and a gloom about them that depressed the very atmosphere. They were not the happy-go-lucky creatures so falsely portrayed by Hollywood. What a dreaded darkness and hopelessness had become their lives. If someone has no hope, they have nothing at all. On the other hand, some people hope in the wrong things, but they have the same destiny as those who have no hope. There is no better source of hope than the promises of God, because God cannot lie, and He can do anything. Though the world crumble about you, you can stand strong and secure, knowing that Christ is with you, holding you in His everlasting arms. Jesus promised those who believe in Him, "I am with you always, even to the end of the world."

Many people live with a tremendous amount of stress and insecurity, fearing that they may lose their means of livelihood. Because of such fears, humans have been motivated to commit many sins: hatred and backbiting and jealousy, lying and stealing and cheating. All that they had to do to avoid such sins and the negative consequences that came with them was to believe the promises of God. Jesus promised about material things, "Seek you first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you."

There is one other circumstance about the promise made to Abraham that is a direct correlation to many of the other promises that God has made. We must understand how the life of faith works, if we are going to live by faith and survive. Our circumstances will sometimes be the enemy of our faith. This we have already seen by the example of Abraham’s unlikely circumstances. Living by faith is a battle, a battle between your apparent circumstances and the promises of God. You must train your mind to remember and to trust in the promises of God when things look bad and when things go wrong. You might call this the trial of your faith, and it will happen all of your life. Some people are believers, but they are weak in faith. The battles and sorrows of life have beaten them down and weakened their faith in the promises of God. Notice that it says in Romans 4:20 that Abraham was "strong in faith."

We must notice about the promise made to Abraham that for the most part it was not immediately fulfilled. God promised that in the descendants of Abraham would all the nations of the earth be blessed. But this promise was not completely fulfilled until centuries after the death of Abraham when Jesus died for the sins of the world. But it was fulfilled. God is not on the schedule that we are on. He keeps His promises, but He keeps them according to His schedule. If we are going to keep faith the way that Abraham did, sometimes we will have to hope against hope. We will have to believe the Word when the world around us is crumbling. We can do that because Jesus said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."

This has been a great chapter of the Bible. Some wonderful words were used: faith, grace, justification, hope, and promise. These words are intertwined. We can have justification through faith in Christ by the grace of God. And it is by the grace of God that we can have hope even when there is nothing around us to base it on: nothing except the Word of God. We can be the descendants of Abraham by having the same faith that he had, and thereby we also can become heirs of the promises of God.

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