Abraham – Justified By Faith - Introduction

Romans 4:1-8

1 What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” 4 Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. 5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, 6 just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; 8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”

(Introduction) - If there is any doctrine that the chief enemy of man and of God desires to undercut and distort, it is the doctrine of salvation. If Satan can cause confusion and error in regard to that doctrine, and in regard to any chief part of that doctrine, he has succeeded in keeping men in their sin and under divine judgment and condemnation, which the unredeemed will one day share with Satan and his demonic angels in the eternal torment of hell.

Every false religion of the world - whether a heretical branch of Christianity, a highly developed pagan religion, or primitive animism - is founded on some form of salvation by works. Without exception, they teach that, by one means or another, man can become right with deity by attaining righteousness in his own power.

The entire fourth chapter of Romans is devoted to Abraham, whom Paul uses as an illustration of the central biblical truth that man can become right with God only by faith in response to His grace, and never by works. Verses 6-8 pertain to David, but Paul is simply using David as an illustration to substantiate what he is teaching about Abraham.

We can assume several reasons for Paul’s choosing Abraham as the supreme example of salvation by faith. First, Abraham lived about 2,000 years before Paul wrote this letter, demonstrating that the principle of salvation by faith rather than by works was not new in Judaism. Abraham was the first and foremost Hebrew patriarch. He lived more than six hundred years before the Old Covenant was established through Moses. He therefore lived long before the law was given and obviously could not have been saved by obedience to it.  If there is someone whom all Jews looked to and would accept as authoritative in regard to faith, it was Abraham.

Second, Paul used Abraham as an example of salvation by faith simply because he was a human being. Until this point in Romans, Paul has been speaking primarily about theological truths in the abstract. In Abraham he gives a flesh and blood illustration of justification by faith.  It is important that we see that these doctrines are not just abstract ideas that theologians argue over, but that they are specific and vital ideas that affect real people in real circumstances.

The third, and doubtless most important, reason Paul used Abraham as the example of justification by faith was that, although rabbinical teaching and popular Jewish belief were contrary to Scripture as far as the basis of Abraham’s righteousness was concerned, they agreed that Abraham was the Old Testament’s supreme example of a godly, righteous man who is acceptable to the Lord. He is the biblical model of genuine faith and godliness.

The majority of Jews in Paul’s day believed that Abraham was made right with God because of his own righteous character. They believed God chose Abraham to be the father of His people Israel because Abraham was the most righteous man on earth during his time. Like many cults today, they took certain scriptural passages and twisted or interpreted them out of context in order to support their preconceived ideas.

The rabbis, for example, pointed out that the Lord told Isaac, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws” (Gen. 26:4-5). They pointed out that the Lord called Abraham “My friend” (Isa. 41:8). Habakkuk 2:4 was often rendered, “The just shall live by his faithfulness,” rather than “by his faith.” Instead of understanding faithfulness as being a fruit of faith, they had the notion that justification could be earned through one’s efforts to be faithful. In the same way, the rabbis interpreted Genesis 15:6 as referring to Abraham’s faithfulness rather than to his faith.

Several Jewish apocryphal books taught that Abraham was justified by keeping God’s law. In Ecclesiasticus (also known as The Wisdom of Sirach), Abraham is said to have become right with God because of his obedience (44:19-21). The Prayer of Manasseh even asserted Abraham’s sinlessness: “Therefore thou, O Lord, God of the righteous, hast not appointed repentance for the righteous, for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who did not sin against thee” (v. 8). In The Book of Jubilees the writer says, “Abraham was perfect in all his deeds with the Lord, and well-pleasing in righteousness all the days of his life” (23:10). Some rabbinical writings claimed that Abraham was so inherently good that he began serving God when he was three years old and that he was one of seven righteous men who had the privilege of bringing back the Shekinah glory to the Tabernacle.

By using Abraham as the supreme scriptural example of justification, or salvation, by faith alone, Paul was storming the very citadel of traditional Judaism. By demonstrating that Abraham was not justified by works, the apostle demolished the foundation of rabbinical teaching—that man is made right with God by keeping the law, that is, on the basis of his own religious efforts and works. If Abraham was not and could not have been justified by keeping the law then no one could be. Conversely, if Abraham was justified solely on the basis of his faith in God, then everyone else must be justified in the same way, since Abraham is the biblical standard of a righteous man.