The Justification of Abraham (Rom. 4:1-3)

Romans is, I think, one of the most important books of the most important Book, the Bible.  It is the longest systematic treatment of the gospel.  It is the theological capstone of the Scriptures.  The OT promised and pointed to the gospel.  The Four Gospels give us the life and work of Jesus Christ which is the basis of the good news we preach.  But the epistles explain in detail the significance and meaning of who Jesus was and what he did.  God spoke to the fathers by the prophets, yes, but in these last days he has spoken to us climatically and finally in the person of Christ.  And nowhere does he speak more clearly than through his apostles.  And nowhere is the gospel most clearly and fully explained than in the book of Romans.  But in all the book of Romans, we have the heart of the gospel right here in chapters 3-4.

That Paul’s letter to the Romans is about the gospel can be seen from the thesis statement of this letter which, let me remind you, is found in Rom. 1:16-17.  These verses state: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”  He then goes on first of all to show why we need the righteousness of God to be saved.  The reason is that we are unrighteous, and therefore under the wrath of God.  The apostle demonstrates this reality for every corner of society in 1:18-3:20.  Then, in 3:21-31, we have the heart of the gospel message, how God saves us by the redemption that Jesus accomplished on the cross.  And we noted how Paul explains our salvation in terms of justification before God, the act by which God declares us righteous in his sight, and that this change in our relationship with God is not accomplished by good works that we do, but received by faith alone on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done for us to save us.

We now come to chapter 4.  And what we see is that this chapter is a continuation of the previous chapter.  What we will see is that in this chapter, Paul not only continues to explain the gospel, but he also is defending the gospel by anchoring it in the Old Testament.  In particular, he uses the example of Abraham along with corroborating evidence from King David in Psalm 32 to show that what he is preaching is actually nothing new at all.

So there are two things I want us to consider as we begin by looking carefully at the first three verses.  First, I want us to ask the question, “Why is Abraham so important?  Why does Paul spend so much time on the example of Abraham?”  And then, we want to look more carefully at what example of Abraham has to say about this whole issue of justification and especially how it is given to faith rather than to works.

The Importance of Abraham

Why then is Abraham so important?  And the answer is that he is important for Paul’s audience (and us) because the Christian message is rooted in the Old Testament, and its validity rests upon its connection to all the Old Testament promises.  Perhaps one of the greatest promises in OT is that to Abraham: “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:1-3).  This really does contain the promise of the gospel, which Paul himself refers to in Rom. 4:13, 18.  Jesus is the one in whom all the families of the earth will be blessed.  In fact, in Gal. 3:16, Paul refers the seed of Abraham specifically to Jesus.  The gospel is true because it is the culmination and fulfillment of all God’s promises throughout the OT.  

But Abraham is also important because he was such a man of obedience to God, and it was easy for people to forget that it was not Abraham’s obedience but God’s grace that gave Abraham this promise in the first place.  It is the apostle’s intention in these verses to prove that.  And he is going to show that the example of Abraham (along with King David) shows us that people have always been saved by grace, not by works, but through faith in the saving promise of God in Christ.

At the same time, this shows us how utterly important the OT as a whole is for an understanding of the gospel.  I come back to this again because this is an incredibly important point for us to realize, especially today.  Abraham is, in some sense, one of central characters in all the OT.  To reject the importance of Abraham is to reject the OT and vice versa.  However, it is sometimes said that Christians don’t need the Old Testament anymore.  A popular so-called evangelical preacher has argued that Christians can and should unhitch their faith from the Old Testament.  He even claims that the apostle Paul did this.  But that simply is not possible while remaining true to Christ or to his apostles.  For here is Paul’s confession of faith: “But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets” (Acts 24:14).  “The law and the prophets” is Paul’s way of referring to the Old Testament.  He believed everything written in it.  I’d say that pretty much amounts to a belief in the plenary inspiration and verbal inerrancy of the OT.  And this was not just a secondary or tertiary issue for him, for this was at the heart of the way he worshiped the God of his fathers.  Far be it for any Christian to reject what is true.  And for that reason we cannot reject any part of the OT, no matter how unpalatable it is to modern man.

Now some do in fact argue that we shouldn’t insist on believing the OT, because if we do so we are simply throwing an unnecessary stumbling block in the way of believing the gospel.  They will say if we insist, for example, on the historicity of Genesis 1-11, the Ten Plagues, the Law of Moses being the Law of God, and the Conquest of Canaan along with the overthrow of the Canaanites as decreed by God, we are making it too hard for people to come to faith because these things are just too unpalatable and difficult for modern man to believe.  But apparently, a person can reject all of that and still believe that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead for our sins, and on that basis be a Christian.  I want to challenge that mindset, because it needs to be and must be challenged.

When people claim to believe the gospel when they can’t embrace the OT, we need to ask: what are they really believing?  If, for example, you say you believe in Jesus while rejecting a literal Adam and Eve and the Biblical description of the Fall of man, you are in some sense believing the gospel while destroying the very basis for the gospel.  Paul himself in Romans 5 will argue that Christ saves us from condemnation and death brought about by Adam.  Indeed, if you reject any part of the Bible, you really have to reject the authority of Christ who also embraced all the OT, who said, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Mt. 5:18), and who said, “the scripture [i.e. the OT] cannot be broken” (Jn. 10:35).  

Now I’m not saying that people can’t disagree over interpretations of this or that part of the Bible.  There are some difficult passages that faithful, Bible-believing Christians can disagree over.  But what I am talking about is the rejection of this or that part of the Bible as authoritative for our lives because we don’t like what it says.  That is dangerous.  For the apostle John wrote, “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” (1 Jn. 4:6).  John is saying that if you are of God, if you are born again, you will hear the words of his apostles, and those who are not of God won’t.  The words of the apostles which those who are born of God believe is not to be limited to one or two miracles, but to all their writings.  Those who reject any part of the Biblical message, for whatever reason, are not demonstrating that this or that part of the Bible is the stumbling block for them, but rather that their hearts are still not right before God.  To trim the Scriptures to suit their taste is not good evangelism; it is the fastest way to make false Christians who think they are saved but aren’t.

You don’t get anything closer to the statement of the gospel, either, than you do here in Romans 3-4.  And yet, as we see, the apostle Paul, having given us this magnificent statement of the gospel in chapter 3, now goes on to defend, illustrate, and apply the gospel in terms of the Old Testament, especially in terms of the witness of two of the greatest of the OT patriarchs, Father Abraham and King David.  Actually, Paul has already repeatedly pointed back to the OT roots of the gospel, hasn’t he? (see 1:2; 3:21).  Friend, you cannot understand the gospel apart from the OT.  That is why I would reply to these folks with a edited Bible that their gospel is not the true gospel and the Christ they say they believe in is not the Christ of the Scriptures.  When you encourage people to embrace a truncated Bible, you shouldn’t be surprised if they end up with a truncated Christ and a truncated, powerless gospel that cannot save.

Do we see the importance of the OT?  I think one test for us is how often we read it!  A very practical application of the importance of the OT for the Christian is that this ought to make us want to know our Old Testaments better.  Read the OT!  It is as much our Scripture as the NT.  We are to hear God’s voice in Genesis to Malachi as much as we are to hear it in Matthew through Revelation.  And preachers like me need to preach more of it as well, something I confess that I need to work on.

Another important implication of this is that there has only been one way that people have been saved throughout history.  The Bible comes to us in Old and New Covenants, but it is really about one salvation.  It is a unified book in the most fundamental sense, and Paul’s words here demonstrate this.  An older version of dispensationalism actually argued that people were saved by obedience to the law before the coming of Christ, but that since then we are saved by faith alone.  But what the apostle shows here, in grounding his understanding of justification by faith in the OT, and specifically in the experience of Abraham and David, is that people have always been justified by faith in the saving promise of God.  In particular, our Lord himself proved this when he said, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (Jn. 8:56).  And then the apostle Paul seals the case when he writes, “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed” (Gal. 3:8).  God preached the gospel to Abraham!  Though it is true that Abraham didn’t have the clarity that we do today, yet it is equally true that he heard the gospel, believed it, and was justified before God.  And that is the apostle’s argument here.

The Example of Abraham

And that brings us to our next main point.  You see Paul’s main point in this text right here in the first two verses: “What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God” (Rom. 4:1-2).  The importance of Abraham is in his example – but not at all in what he did but in what he believed.  

Paul begins here by asking if Abraham did in fact gain anything by doing and achieving something in the power of self-effort.  I think that’s the meaning of the question of verse 1. I don’t think this phrase, “pertaining to the flesh,” is a reference to Abraham as the physical father (note the words “our father”) of the audience.  After all, many of Paul’s audience are Gentiles, and he still seems to be addressing everyone in his audience at this point.  Rather, I think Paul is using the word “flesh” here as he does elsewhere (see esp. chapter 8), to refer to what we are and do as unredeemed and unregenerate people, apart from the grace of God.  

Paul uses the word in this sense, for example, in his letter to the Philippians, when we writes, “For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (Phil. 3:3-7).  Paul says he had confidence in the flesh as a Pharisee.  And you see what he had confidence in: they were all the things that he was and that he did apart from Christ and his grace which he thought recommended him to God.  It was in that sense that he thought these things were gain to him.  They were gain in the sense that he thought these things were righteousness – his righteousness – that justified him before God.

This is confirmed by looking at what apostle goes on to write: “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (8-9).  Paul the Christian rejected “having mine own righteousness” in order to gain “the righteousness which is of God by faith.”  He rejected the flesh for Christ, counting the former as loss and the latter as gain.  Confidence in the flesh here is parallel to confidence in one’s own righteousness.

So when Paul opens Romans 4 by saying, “What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found,” he is asking: what did Abraham gain (find) by the flesh?  What did Abraham gain by self-effort when it came to becoming righteous before God?  Did he gain anything?  Then Paul states, “For if Abraham were justified by works,” that is, if Abraham gained justification by works, by confidence in the flesh, then “he hath whereof to glory” – he has a ground of boasting before God.  If a man is justified by self-effort, by doing good and being good, then that man can legitimately say that it was his goodness and his effort that saved him.  Was that true of Abraham?

Paul’s answer, as you see it at the end of verse 2, is a categorical no: “but not before God.”  This is a very terse statement, but it is just Paul’s denial that any of this is true.  If Abraham were justified by works, he has a ground of boasting.  For the apostle, that is simply unthinkable – “but not before God,” he says.  On the other hand, it is the glory of the gospel that it excludes boasting (3:27).  Paul cannot imagine any scheme of salvation that gives a person bragging rights in the presence of God.  We shouldn’t be able to imagine it, either.  What are we before God?  We are condemned sinners: “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (3:19).  In our flesh, that is, in our unredeemed selves, we have nothing to boast in.  Apart from Christ, we are just guilty sinners before God.  

But consider of whom this is being said.  Paul is not talking about some common Joe here; he is talking about Abraham.  He was considered the prime example of godliness and faithfulness among the Jews.  His obedience to God was exemplary, especially when you consider the sacrifice of Isaac. But even this man, says the apostle, cannot boast in his goodness before God.  (In fact, he will say something even stronger in a moment.)  Now if he can’t, how can anyone?  The answer is that we can’t.

There are people who need to hear that God saves the chief of sinners.  They feel the weight of sin upon them, and they have become convinced that they are so bad God would never save someone like them.  They need to hear about the grace of God.  But there are others who need to hear what Paul is saying here, namely, that even the very best person you can imagine (and maybe that’s you!) has no ground of boasting before God.  Mark well what that implies: it means that there is nothing that you have done that can save you and justify you before God, even potentially.  If you think that you don’t need to change anything about you, that you don’t need Christ because you are a good enough person, the reality is that you think you have a ground of boasting before God.  But the apostle Paul here says that you don’t have a ground of boasting.  On the contrary, he has already told us that everyone who appears before God thinking they will be able to make a case for themselves will only find their mouths shut before the God who will convince them that they are indeed guilty and without any ground to glory in his presence.

The fact is that we are all on grounds analogous to that of Abraham.  When God came to him with this magnificent promise, Abraham was seventy-five years old with a barren wife.  How in the world could Abraham expect to have this promise of a family whose numbers would be like that of the stars?  It was impossible of course.  There was nothing that Abraham could do that could make this promise happen.  And the same thing is true of us.  When the gospel confronts us with the promise of the righteousness of God in Christ, we are meant to see that there is nothing in us that can make us worthy of it.  We have nothing to give but our own sins and failures.  Salvation is a gift of grace in Christ by faith.  Just like Abraham, we aren’t justified by trying but by trusting.

This is where Gen. 15:6 comes in, which Paul quotes in verse 3.  By the way, this is in the context of the renewal of the covenant that God made with Abraham, when God passes through the pieces of the slain animals to say, “If I break this covenant, let what happened to these animals happen to me.”  Of course that can never happen, but this was a very visible way of God telling Abraham that he – and he alone, for Abraham did not pass through the sacrifice, only God – was going to keep this promise and bring it to its fulfillment in Jesus. 

It is in that context that Scripture records that “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Rom. 4:3).  This is one of those texts that Paul quotes again and again.  The point is that Abraham was not counted by God as righteous, he was not justified by God, because he was personally righteous.  Rather, he was counted by God as righteous simply when he believed God and the gospel that he preached to him.  This verse says very succinctly that Abraham was not justified by works, but by faith.

It is so vitally important then that we understand what this verse means.  But you will notice that the apostle introduces a new term and a new expression here.  It is the word “counted” which is also translated by the words “impute” and “reckon” in the KJV.  He uses the term 11 times in this chapter.  It is obviously important to Paul as he explains the doctrine in terms of the example of Abraham.  But what does he mean by this exactly?  This has caused actually quite a lot of confusion, and so it’s worthwhile pausing for a bit to inspect this more carefully.

We do know one thing.  To have one’s faith counted (imputed/reckoned) unto righteousness is clearly another way of saying that one is justified by faith.  The connection with the previous chapter demands this.  Paul had there given that clear and wonderful statement of the doctrine.  Now he defends it from the OT from the fact that Abraham’s faith was counted to him for righteousness.  This argument does not make any sense unless counting faith for righteousness and justification by faith are basically the same thing.

However, some have tried to make the case that when Paul says that faith is imputed as righteousness, he is equating faith with the righteousness.  So then what Paul is saying is that our faith is what makes us righteous.  That is not the correct interpretation.  Rather, what Paul means when he says that faith is counted as righteousness is that when a person trusts in Jesus as Lord and Savior, God looks at that person as also being righteous because of what Christ has done for them.  When we say that God imputes righteousness, what we mean is that God puts it to the believer’s account (the terms carries both legal and monetary connotations), so that he considers the believer in Christ as possessing the righteousness of God.  That he counts faith as righteousness simply means that this transfer happens when we believe in Jesus.

Let me give you four reasons why I believe this is the correct interpretation over against the idea that faith itself is the righteousness.

First of all, the instrumental role of faith in our justification demands it.  We have already noted that this chapter is an extension of the argument begun in chapter 3 and that Paul is now defending what he had previously defined.  In chapter 3, Paul says that we are justified by faith, that we become partakers of the righteousness of God by faith.  In that passage faith is obviously instrumental.  It is through (not on account of) faith as a means that we become right before God (see 3:22, 25).

Second, the righteousness that is imputed, counted, and reckoned to us is specifically called the righteousness of God (3:21,22).  How you can say that the faith of man is the righteousness of God is beyond me.  So when the apostle says that faith is counted as righteousness he must mean not that faith is the righteousness but that it is the means by which this righteousness is appropriated.

Note what Paul says in 10:10: “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (KJV).  The righteousness is the same as that mentioned in verse 6, “the righteousness of faith” (KJV) which is also the same righteousness in verse 3, “the righteousness of God.”  So, in some sense, righteousness which is imputed is both a faith-righteousness and a God-righteousness.  But it is not a faith-righteousness in the same sense that it is a God-righteousness.  For, as Paul says, man believes unto righteousness; similarly, man confesses unto salvation.  Just as confession is not salvation, but is a necessary concomitant of it, even so faith is not righteousness but is the instrument of it.  The righteousness of justification is the righteousness of God in the sense that God is the origin of it; it is the righteousness of faith in the sense that it is through faith in Christ that we become the possessors of it. 

Third, if faith were our righteousness, this would make a work out of faith.  For then we would be able to boast in our faith as the reason for which we were saved.  But this makes nonsense out of all the texts that contrast faith and works and say that we are saved by grace.  On the other hand, if faith is simply the hand by which we receive God’s righteousness, then faith is no longer a ground of boasting.

Fourth, though Paul never explicitly says it, I think we are justified in saying that the righteousness of God which we receive is not our righteousness but the righteousness of Christ.  As John Stott argues, “on at least three occasions Paul comes so close to this picture [being clothed in Christ’s righteousness] that I for one believe it is biblically permissible to use it.”   He then goes on to point to 2 Cor. 5:21, 1 Cor. 1:30, and Phil. 3:9.  In 2 Cor. 5:21, the apostle says that God made Christ to be sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.  In 1 Cor. 1:30 he says that Christ is made for us (among other things) righteousness.  And in Phil. 3:9, Paul writes that he wants to be found in Christ, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”  It is a righteousness that comes to us, not one that emanates from us.  And it comes to us in a way that it is inextricably tied to Christ and what he has done for us, and therefore is justly called the righteousness of Christ.

To recap, when Paul says that faith is counted as righteousness, he means that when God imputes faith as righteousness, he means that we are justified by faith in Christ and that it is on the basis of what Christ has done for us that we receive, not our own, but the righteousness of God.

I think a good illustration of this is found in Paul’s letter to Philemon.  Remember Onesimus, the slave of Philemon?  He had run away from his master, evidently after having stolen some money from him, and had come to Rome.  But as God’s providence would have it, he met Paul and became a converted man.  Paul sent him back to Philemon with a letter and in it Paul asks him to forgive Onesimus.  In the course of the letter, Paul brings up the matter of stolen property and writes on the behalf of Onesimus, “If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account;  I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it” (Philem. 18-19).  This is what we mean by imputation.  It means God putting the righteousness of God to your account when you believe because Jesus has already paid the price with his blood.  And that is what Paul means here.  When we put our trust in Christ as Lord and Savior, God freely puts the righteousness of Christ to our account, and on the basis of that righteousness we are declared to be righteous, justified before God.

And this is what Paul says is being taught all the way back in Genesis 15.  Abraham was not justified by works.  Righteousness was not counted to him on account of his goodness; it was given simply through faith in contrast with works.

Well, let’s not lose sight of the main point of the passage as we draw to a close.  At the end of this chapter, Paul will say, “Now it was not written for his [Abraham’s] sake alone, that it [righteousness] was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:23-25).  The point is this: Abraham is our example; we are to imitate him; we are to walk in the footsteps of his faith.  We are not justified before God, made right with God, forgiven and accepted with God, on any other footing or basis than he was.  He was justified by faith alone in Christ alone, and so are we.  Do you want to be right with God?  The only way is through Christ, to find peace with God through faith in Christ, by resting in his finished work for us.  There is no other way.  Oh my friend, you need God more than you need anything else.  And he is embraced along with his righteousness by faith.  Trust in him, come to him, rest in him!