Romans
4:13-25
Rules,
rules, rules! – Why do we so often think that God is the great, stern rule
maker, and the way to please God is to be careful to obey every rule in the
book? Our Scripture about Abraham for
today assures us that it’s not like that at all. Instead, it is God who takes the initiative
to restore our relationship, who sets us right, and who blesses us. God made huge promises to Abraham before
Abraham had done anything; he certainly didn’t deserve any gift or blessing
from God; Abraham didn’t even have any rules from God to obey. All Abraham did was to believe God and live
in trusting reliance on the wonderful promises God had given him.
From
the beginning, from the origin of humanity’s disobedience and sin, God has
always had a grand, unchangeable plan to restore humanity, indeed, to restore
the whole world to what God intends, to set everything right, and to bring
great blessing for all people and for the whole creation. We first learn about God’s plan at the
beginning of Abraham’s story in Genesis, and Paul reviews it in Romans. It
starts with the promises to Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3):
“I will make of you a great
nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a
blessing…. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Some
years later, God made the promise more explicit. After Abraham questioned God about his
childlessness, God brought him outdoors and said to him (Gen. 15:5-6, ESV):
“Look toward heaven and count the
stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your
descendants be.” And he
believed the Lord; and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.
Since
Abraham and his wife Sarah were childless and elderly, they had no idea how
this promise could be fulfilled, but Abraham trusted God anyway. It
was even later (Genesis 17) when God made the promise into a covenant with
Abraham and instituted circumcision as the mark of this covenant. The actual law which Abraham’s descendants
were to obey wasn’t given until more than 400 years after that. So Paul in Romans 4 is on solid ground in
emphasizing that God’s great promise to Abraham was not based on any law, any
rule keeping, but only on Abraham’s faith, his simple trust that God was
reliable. Paul then importantly
emphasizes (Rom 4:15-17, ESV):
It depends on faith, in order
that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed … not only to the adherent
of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the
father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations.”
Thus Paul emphasizes that all of
us, Jews and Gentiles alike, are to regard Abraham as our father in faith. Today’s Scripture is only a taste of the
long, intense, and profound theological discourse Paul presents in Romans 1-11,
certainly one of the most profound theological discourses ever written down by
a human being. In today’s Scripture,
however, Paul concludes with a tiny preview (4:22-25) of where he is headed as
the discourse in Romans continues:
[Abraham’s]
faith was “counted to him as
righteousness. But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his
sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who
raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses
and raised for our justification.
Old and New Perspectives on Paul
In
reading Romans 4, you may notice that our discussion places more emphasis on
Abraham as the recipient of God’s unchanging promise and as the father of all
who share his faith than does the older, more traditional perspective, in which
Romans is seen as primarily explaining how an individual person can be justified
by believing in Christ. Indeed, following
the old tradition, the NRSV introduces Romans 4 with the title The Example of Abraham and places part
of vv. 16-17 in parentheses. Thus it downplays
the importance of the whole chapter, treating it (and especially the
parenthesized parts) as only an example, only an aside not essential to the
main stream of Paul’s reasoning.
This
older perspective on Pauline theology fits in with the kind of Bible study in
which the reader or student first poses the questions (of interest to the modern
reader but perhaps unimaginable in ancient times) and asks, “What does the
Bible tell me in answer to my questions?”
In regard to Romans, this older perspective dates back at least to the
Reformation, when Luther, distressed by sin and his guilty conscience and wanting assurance of salvation,
turned to Romans and discovered assurance and peace in the answers he found
there for his questions and doubts.
During
the past few decades, a growing number of New Testament scholars have adopted a
new perspective, in which they attempt to be more historically aware by first
asking what question(s) the original Bible author considered important and was
actually addressing (whether or not these questions are of concern to
present-day readers). Paul, Apostle to
the Gentiles, has one fundamental question he addresses over and over in his
epistles: How, on what basis, is God
reconciling Gentiles with Jews and building one united Church encompassing both
Jews and Gentiles?
Studying
the Pauline writings, especially Romans, from this new perspective yields
wonderful insight into what Paul actually intends to say. We still find a great deal giving us personal
reassurance about individual salvation, but we also discover a far grander
vision in Paul – the restoration and reconciliation in Christ of all people,
both Jews and Gentiles, and, even more exciting, the restoration of the whole
of God’s creation to operate in the way God has always intended. Our duty to care for creation is no add-on;
it has been an important part of God’s great plan always.
Among
the publications advancing this new perspective on Paul, I particularly like the
writings of N. T. Wright. Wright is the
retired Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and is now Research Professor
of New Testament and Early Christianity in the University of St. Andrews,
Scotland. He is one of the world’s most
prolific New Testament scholars, writing, for example, the magisterial book Paul and the Faithfulness of God, which,
in its 1660 pages, is perhaps the most comprehensive work on Paul ever
published.
At
the same time, Tom Wright is a first-class expositor who publishes much easier
books for ordinary readers like me. For
example, his book Justification: God’s
Plan & Paul’s Vision (279 pages) clearly explains the old and new
perspectives on Paul, surveys other relevant Pauline epistles, and finally
turns to Romans as the magnum opus. Wright comes to Romans with humility, even
trepidation, as he begins (p. 177):
Never mind the old and the
new: how do we keep Romans in any kind of perspective? It bestrides the narrow worlds of scholarship
and church like a colossus, and we petty exegetes walk under its huge legs and
peep about ….
Then
Wright emphasizes the importance of Romans:
All roads led to Rome in the ancient world,
and all roads in biblical exegesis lead to Romans sooner or later—especially
when it comes to justification.
Petty,
tiny creatures walking under the huge legs of a colossus—that’s a good picture
of the humility we all need as we approach Romans. And, as we study Paul’s writings (not an easy
task), we need to remember that all good theology culminates in praise to God. The doxology Paul puts at the end of his
greatest theological discourse is just the reminder we need, especially when we
find the going difficult (Romans 11:33-36):
Oh, the depth of the riches and
wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how
inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has
been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be
repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
– Robert
Kruse
