In Romans 4:13-25, Paul begins a discussion of promise, faith, and hope. Paul is continuing his argument concerning the centrality of faith by pointing to the example of Abraham. He is showing that his teaching is a fulfillment of the Old Testament at its basic level, going behind the Torah to Abraham. The promise comes only to the people of faith. He now shifts to the part in Genesis 15 where it refers to the belief in God. The emphasis of Paul on humble trust is in line with the best elements of Judaism. The point of the passage before us is that Abraham was right with God because of his faith, not the Law or circumcision. Thus, it is faith that justifies, and therefore, when God promises that he will be a father, it means his descendants are through faith not circumcision or Law. Finally, he shows that Christ is the revelation of this plan, or shall we say the clear setting forth of the plan, and it is through him that we are justified. Such considerations might lead us toward a practical application. Whenever people suppose themselves conscious of the emotion of nearness to God, whenever they speak and write of divine things, whenever sermon making and temple-building are thought of as an ultimate human occupation, whenever people are aware of divine appointment and of being entrusted with a divine mission, sin abounds. Being an heir of the promise, then, must depend on faith, so that the promise rests on grace toward those who share the faith of Abraham, who is father of us all, even as the promise finds its fulfillment.[1]
In Romans 4: 13-17, Paul sets forth the priority of promise and grace over Law, works, and merit. 13 For the promise (ἐπαγγελία) that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the Mosaic law but (ἀλλὰ forceful use of the adversative conjunction) through the righteousness of faith. Paul is implicitly assailing the Jewish view that all blessings came to Abraham because of his merit in keeping the Law, which he was supposed to have known in advance. For Paul the heirs of the promise of inheriting the world are not the observers of the Mosaic Law, but the people of faith. 14 If it is the adherents of the Mosaic law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise (ἐπαγγελία) is void. The Law succeeds only in producing sin. Paul creates a dichotomy: promise, faith, and grace opposed to law, transgression, and wrath. 15 For the Mosaic law brings wrath (Romans 1:18-3:20); but (δὲ forceful use of the adversative conjunction) where there is no law, neither is there violation. Law means transgression of the law. Where one has no Law, one has no condemnation. Where most of his Jewish contemporaries would prefer to say, “The law brings about righteousness,” Paul has argued resolutely that righteousness comes about through faith. The role of the Law shifts to the production of wrath. The Law has more to do with the situation described in 1:18-3:20 than with its solution in 3:21ff. The Law is more a tool of the wrath of God than of righteousness. Verses 16-17 underscore what Paul has been saying about the gracious divine initiative and the faithful response of Abraham. 16 For this reason (Διὰ τοῦτο),which can also have the translation of “therefore,” “on this account,” and “for this cause.” The phrase signifies that what follows will address the underlying cause or reason something is or ought to be, is done or ought to be done. The promise depends on faith, in order that the promise (ἐπαγγελίαν) may rest on grace (χάριν). Faith is trust in the gracious purpose of God, not trust in our own capacity to accrue divine benevolence by being obedient. The promise does not rest on some quid quo pro arrangement that has God owing Abraham for being dutiful. God will guarantee the promise to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but (ἀλλὰ forceful use of the adversative conjunction) also to those who share the faith of Abraham. The promise of God to Abraham is a complete act of grace, which means openly extending kindness and mercy to those who do not deserve it. Grace is no longer grace when earning it appears. Abraham does not earn the promise of God for descendants. God grants this promise and Abraham receives it through trusting — having faith — that God will do what God promises. Paul then offers his biblical support by reminding his readers (for he is the father of all of us, 17 as it stands written in Genesis 17:5, “I have made you the father of many nations.” Abraham could believe the promise because he was in the presence of the God in whom he believed. Abraham knew that this God gives life to the dead, referring to the childlessness of Sarah, and calls into existence the things that do not exist, connecting childlessness with creation. In the second of the Eighteen Benedictions, Paul would have prayed something like “Remember us unto life, O king, who delights in life. Who resembles You, O King, who orders death and restores life, and causes salvation (Yeshua) to spring forth? You are faithful to revive the dead. Blessed art thou, O L-rd, who revives the dead.” When we think theologically here, in a sense, the essence of God is not available to us apart from this revelation, that God raised Jesus from the dead. We again see the significance of the moment or event in Christian teaching. Here is an area in which neither individuals nor communities can co-operate. Giving life to the dead is an act of God alone.[2] Paul puts the resurrection of the dead alongside creation out of nothing. Paul is suggesting that the Easter event and the resurrection on which sets Christian hope is limitless as creation. Only the Creator can awaken the dead, and resurrection from the dead shows what it means to be Creator. The act of creation finds consummation in the resurrection. Resurrection is the supreme enactment of the will of the Creator that wills the existence of creatures. Indeed, by using this imagery, Paul makes a connection between God overcoming the childlessness of Abraham and Sarah (“gives life to the dead”) with creation (“calls into existence the things that do not exist”).[3] The dynamic of God’s grace and Abraham’s faith operating in 4:16-17 helps substantiate what goes before in the passage. In simplest terms, Paul is telling his audience that when it comes to the promises of God, it is not what we do to earn them, but what God does graciously to bestow them.
18 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become, as said in Genesis 17:5, “the father of many nations,”according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.” Thus, contrary to all human expectation, he expressed his faith with hope. Although Abraham had many motives for despairing of ever having posterity, he believed, confident about what the divine promise inspired in him. Thus, Abraham became the model of human believing. Abraham believed in something impossible. Hope always leaves room for the gracious activity of God in our lives, families, communities, and nations. Dante envisioned a journey through hell with an angel who showed him what it was like. He found these words written over its gates: ""Abandon Hope, You who enter." Reading the news could lead one to abandon hope right here, on earth. Paul is encouraging us to have the hope that Abraham had. In a church at Staunton Harold in Leicestershire, we find the following words.
In the yeare 1653
When all things sacred
were throughout ye nation
Either demonisht or profaned
Sir Robert Shirley, Barronet,
Founded this church;
Whose singular praise it is,
to haue done the best things
in ye worst time,
and hoped them in the most callamitous.
Thus, Abraham 19did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but rather, he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God. Abraham 21 was fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised. Confession of Jesus as Lord gives hope of deliverance in connection with belief in the apostolic proclamation that God has raised him from the dead, and by this faith, we are righteous before God. This implies on a personal relation of individuals to Jesus Christ, as well as membership in the church founded by the apostolic missionary proclamation and adherence to its common confession of the apostolic faith.[4] 22 Therefore, in Genesis 15:6, God “reckoned (Ἐλογίσθη, credited) his faith to him as righteousness (δικαιοσύνην).” Paul concludes his midrash by reverting to its staring point. The conclusion is self-evident. It was just this faith that God looked for and accepted in reckoning Abraham righteous, a faith exercised prior to and independently of any work, especially circumcision. 23Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also, uniting Paul with his readers. Paul now addresses the readers and identifies them with himself as Christians, using the first personal plural in doing so. He has cited the story of Abraham to apply it to himself and his readers. He thus employs a feature of midrashic interpretation, modernizing the Old Testament story to apply it to a new situation. God will reckon or credit (λογίζεσθαι) us who believe, uniting Paul and his readers in this moment, in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. There could be some justification for connecting the life God brought to the dead body of Abraham and the faith of the Christian community in the one who raised Jesus from the dead. Verse 25 offers a typically Pauline doctrinal summary. It reflects the language and imagery of the "Suffering Servant" portions in Isaiah 52:13-53:12, while its poetic parallelism may also be evidence of its use as an early church hymn or creed. Therefore, he further identifies Jesus as the one whom the Father 25 handed over to death for our trespasses, the death of Christ reminding him of our sin. Paul suggests expiation. Some of us will find it difficult to think that our lives are such that the just consequence of the outcome of our lives is divine judgment. In expiation, the doers are released from the damaging consequences of their acts. No one would want act and consequence removed from human interactions. If we act in an irresponsible way, certain consequences ought to follow. Life does not always work that way, but most of us are glad it does sometimes. Most of us will also have a generous view of ourselves in thinking the good of our lives far outweighs the bad, and thus, we deserve good consequences from God at the end of our lives. We will need to ponder all of this. Paul stresses that the Father giving up the Son reminds us that in the death of Jesus, God the Father acted to reconcile the world. God the Father was at work in this event according to divine providential directing of the course of history. The sending of the Son by the Father aims at the vicarious expiatory death on the cross.[5] The love and grace of God show themselves in the event of the righteous and faithful course of the life of Jesus, but especially in his death and resurrection. Further, in saying that the one whom the Father raised for (διὰ) our justification (δικαίωσιν), If a printer justifies the margins it means placing each line in right relation to the page. Justification in the religious sense brings one into right relation with God.[6] Here is where we need to seriously consider whether you and I need the expiatory character of the death of Christ and the resulting justification from God. Humanity is broken. We live out the course of life journey by mending the brokenness. Grace is the glue to that holds it together.[7] We see our brokenness in the way we handle our faults. We tend to exaggerate our depth of character while treating leniently our flaws. We are hypocrites. We put forward a better image of ourselves than what we really are. Outward character and our inner world.[8] Many people, even most of us, want people to think we are better than we are. We want to receive honors we do not deserve. We have a problem with authenticity. Here is another area in which humanity experiences its brokenness. Humanity needs healing. Paul shows that the resurrection reminds him of our forgiveness. The Greek Fathers understood the resurrection of Christ as the cause of justification. Many Latin Fathers attempted to integrate the two ideas, death and resurrection, but this attempt unfortunately minimized the causality of the resurrection, for they actually started looking upon the resurrection only as an appendage or even as an exemplary confirmation of the death of Jesus, which they considered to be the real cause of the forgiveness of sins and justification.
The writings of Paul keep coming back to the resurrection.
First, it is conclusive proof of Christs’ divinity.
(Romans 1:4)
and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,
(I Corinthians 15:14-15)
14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
Second, it is proof of the atoning value of his death.
I Corinthians 15:17
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
Third, it is proof of the efficacy of his death, that it was accepted by God, which mean Christ took the place of the sinner, thus ending the wrath of God against him (Romans 3:25-26; 6:7-10).
Fourth, it guarantee of the resurrection of the Christian
I Corinthians 15:20-23
20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. 21 For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
II Corinthians 4:14
because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence.
Romans 8:11
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Colossians 1:18
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
Fifth, it proves our resurrection is also moral and spiritual, thus here and now, calling on the Christian to repeat the redeeming acts of Christ in himself (Romans 6:1-11).
If our lives were ending, we will bring one thing into the presence of God it will not be good works, religious laws, our legacy, our denominational affiliation, our doctrine, or anything else we can name and in which we might take pride. We will take only our faith in Christ. Luther stated, "faith grasps hold of Christ." Faith does not claim merit. It does not self-justify through good works. For Luther, we grasp Christ, yes, but truly, Christ is grasping us. As a strong arm extended over the cliff edge to one precariously clinging to his endangered life, we grasp at Christ who has grasped and pulled us out of our sin condition and into a new standing in himself.
The only difference between hope and believing trust in the God who promises is that the relation to the self that is implicit in this trust in God becomes a theme in the case of hope. It is oriented to the content of the promise as the future of salvation that concerns believers themselves. Based on faith it is essential that this should happen, for faith itself depends on the promise of God and becomes saving faith only as believers accept the promise as pertaining to themselves. In the act of faith, we first see this relation to the self as the expression of the promise as the word of God addressing and reaching us, and then it becomes a theme in hope as hope looks to the saving blessing that God promises. Hence, Christian hope rests on faith. Further, the example of Abraham points to an important aspect of hope. The promise of God to him for a son corresponds to the desire he had for a long time. His example shows that the divine promise is not always contrary to human desire. The promise of God runs contrary to the hopes that we set on life here. The promise carries our human tendency, which is open and has no definite goal, beyond the incomplete present to the future actualization. The promise of God, who from the very first is our Creator, actualizes the tendency and gives precision to its object, reorienting it but not outdating our nullifying it. An appeal to the promises of God would deprive them of any meaning if they did not respond to our deepest wants and needs. Yet, we cannot accomplish on our own and by our own action our salvation, the wholeness and fulfillment of our existence, its identity with its destiny to be truly itself. No more can we rationally expect the changes and chances of life to do this for us. The hope of fulfillment, of salvation, transcends all that is possible by what we do or in the ordinary course of things. To that extent, we have here a hope against all hope that normal who gives to life to the dead and being to what is not. Paul found this promise expressed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, for the significance of this event puts the situation the situation of all of us in a new light. In contrast, one could establish the promises in what is attainable in the course of things and by human action.[9]
I think most of us have a tenuous hold on faith and hope. I share just a few examples.
There will always be people who say it cannot be done. When the first trains were being built critics said that suffocation lay in wait for anyone who reached the awful speed of 30 miles per hour. A distinguished witness who in 1878 had made a study of Edison's plan to work on an incandescent lamp, reported to the British Parliament: "Edison's ideas were good enough for our trans-Atlantic friends but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific people." A Methodist Bishop named Wright declared that humans would never fly. He had two sons, Orville and Wilbur.
Abraham believed in something impossible. Hope leaves room for the gracious work of God in our lives today in conception of our destiny. It leaves room for hope in our friends, neighbors, church, and world.
Yet, we can acknowledge that hope is not easy. Dante envisioned a journey through hell with an angel who showed him what it was like. These words would be written over its gates: ""Abandon Hope, You who enter." Reading the news could lead one to abandon hope right here, on earth. Think of the times we could have read in the paper of the people who might have hoped for something far better, while their dreams were put to death. Someone says, "We had hoped ... that the tests would prove negative." Still another says, "We had hoped ... that he would stop drinking." Another says about the church, "We had hoped ... that in this church there wouldn't be any hypocrites." Every time we enter the world, there are many temptations to abandon hope. Will you?
Michael Weisser, the cantor for the synagogue in Lincoln, Nebraska, became the object of terror by the local Klan Grand Dragon, Larry Trapp. Trapp harassed, intimidated, and threatened Weisser with the goal of driving him out of town. Yet, his response was not hate or fear, but hope. He began calling Trapp, getting only the answering machine. Since Trapp was confined to a wheelchair, he offered to take him to the grocery story. For weeks, Weisser kept at it, leaving recorded messages of offered help for this Grand Dragon. Finally, Trapp called, wondering why Weisser was harassing him! It was not long until Trapp called and confessed, "I want to get out of this and I don't know how." Weisser immediately responded with an invitation to dinner and a talk. His wife brought over the peace offering. When they met for the first time, Trapp burst into tears. Trapp eventually moved in with the Weisser's, as his health steadily declined until his death.[10]
Living with faith and hope recognizes that we live in a world with plenty of darkness to go around, but they also recognize that we live with the responsibility to bring light.
[1] Barth, Romans, 136.
[2] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 130.
[3] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume I, 417.
[4] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume III, 232.
[5] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 418, 438.
[6] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (Harper & Row, 1973), 48.
[7] Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue. --Eugene O'Neill, The Great God Brown.
[8] C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 173-74, 176-77.
[10] (Time, Feb 2, 1992)
[11] (It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It).
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