“Freely Forgiven”: Romans 4:1-8

(Following is the text of my sermon at Penney Memorial Church, Penney Farms, Florida, November 13, 2022.)

Today I want to deal with the idea of justification, one of our faith’s foundational truths and a subject the Apostle Paul deals with repeatedly in his epistles.

Justification means simply that God declares a person to be righteous through faith, and not by his or her works or behavior. It is that act of God by which the sinner, who is responsible for his guilt and is under condemnation but believes in Christ, is pronounced just and righteous. “At the same time just and a sinner” is the way Martin Luther explained our justification or position in Christ.

Justification by faith has brought assurance to believers throughout the centuries of the church. But we need to recognize that declaring the guilty person innocent is not something the natural man usually wants to do. Rather, people tend to regard others who have lived decent, honest, moral lives as deserving of God’s favor—a Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi, for example—and people who have lived in sin as not deserving it.

There also are those who call it unfair for God to accept the sinner who makes a last-minute profession of faith. My own brother was a good example; he prayed with me to receive Christ in his VA hospital bed the day before he died nine years ago, as did my father-in-law just a few days before he passed.

Jesus dealt with the subject of last-minute professions of faith in the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in Matthew 20, ending the parable with the words “¹⁴ …I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵ Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?” He taught us that eternal life and the rewards we are promised are not measured by how long we have followed Him. They are the gifts of God to all who believe—to everyone who comes to Christ, whether early or late in life.

That’s a key aspect of justification. It comes through faith, not works, and at any stage of life. It motivates us to persistently pray for and witness to unsaved members of our families. Paul often reminds us that gaining God’s favor by self-righteousness is just not possible. He taught that God’s grace is not something we can earn and that no one can stand before God and claim to be holy and righteous on the basis of merit.

Yet, because God justifies His people, we can stand before God as righteous. Paul calls this “…the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe” in Romans three.

In our passage today, Romans 4:1-8, he further develops the doctrine, making the case for our being saved and justified before God by grace through faith citing the example of the lives of two historical men of faith to illustrate his point:

“¹ What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? ² If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. ³ What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ ⁴ Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. ⁵ However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. ⁶ David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: 7 ‘Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 8 Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.’”

Paul tells us first that the experience of Abraham shows us that justification is by faith, not works.

Prior to Romans chapter four, Paul writes about theology in the abstract, but starting here in chapter four, he turns to real-life examples to illustrate the doctrine that people cannot merit God’s favor by what they say and do. He uses the example of Abraham because most of the believers in the Roman church came from Jewish backgrounds, and Jewish teaching was that Abraham was perfectly righteous. Rabbis had taught for centuries in their oral laws and traditions that Abraham’s works—his sinless life—justified him before God, and they regarded their traditions as equal to the laws of Moses and the writings of the prophets.

Eventually, the rabbis put the traditions and oral laws into written form in a book called the Mishnah, which is part of the Talmud, the written record of historic rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, ethics, customs, legends and stories. Several centuries before the Mishnah, the Jews had produced a written work called The Book of Jubilees, which states that: “…Abraham was perfect in all his deeds with the Lord, and well-pleasing in righteousness all the days of his life.” In addition, a much later Jewish document, called The Prayer of Manasseh, taught that: “Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob…have not sinned against thee...” But that is not what the Bible tells us. Instead, Moses wrote in Genesis 15 merely that “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”

With this background in mind, Paul opens Romans chapter four with a question:  “¹ What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? ² If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God,” reminding us that Abraham was not made righteous by his works, but that God simply credited him as righteous through his faith.

Paul quotes Genesis 15:6 in v. 3, asking: “What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’” The word “…credited…” here is found in early secular Greek documents meaning “paid on my account” or “placed on deposit at the storehouse.” So Paul is telling us that God brought Abraham’s account up to date and judged him to be favorable in His sight.

Abraham is not an example of merit, but the example of faith, but to those in the church at Rome who came from Jewish backgrounds, what this was entirely new and contrary to their tradition.

The biblical truth is, God declares righteous anyone who puts their faith and trust in Christ. Paul emphasizes faith over works repeatedly:

To the Ephesians, he wrote: “…it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

To his helper Titus, he advised: “…He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5).

Later in this letter to Rome, he reminds us that God’s choice to save someone “…cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace” (11).

And he told the Galatians: “…a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus…since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified” (2:16) and that “The righteous man shall live by faith…” (3:11).

Paul also cites David to illustrate that righteousness is apart from works.

Through the Prophet Samuel, God called David “…a man after his own heart…” (1 Samuel 13:14). But we know that David made some terrible choices. The one we remember most is his sins involving a married woman, Bathsheba. The two committed adultery, and David arranged for her husband, Uriah the Hittite, to be killed in battle (1 Samuel 11-12).

According to the Law of Moses, David deserved the death penalty for that, but after the Prophet Nathan confronted him about his sin, David was stricken with remorse and repented of his sin. Psalm 51 is his prayer of confession: “1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love…16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”

In vv. 7-8, Paul quotes David from Psalm 32: “1 Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 2 …whose sin the Lord does not count against them…”

Finally, let me offer one other thought, which David gives us in Psalm 103: God “…does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities” (v. 10). Our righteous standing before God—our justification—is given to us as God’s gift, through our faith in Him.

In a letter written around 100 A.D., one of the early church fathers, the theologian and philosopher Clement of Alexandria, explained the doctrine of justification this way: “…having been called through his will in Christ Jesus, we are not justified of ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety, or works that we have done in holiness of heart, but through faith, by which the Almighty God has justified all who have existed from the beginning…”

Remember, it is because of our faith, not our works, that God sees us as justified and righteous.

Amen.