The key to the understanding of Romans 4 is found in the opening verse of chapter 5. "Therefore being( or.....having been) justified by faith....". In chapter 3 we discovered that the main focus was on the Divine side, justification by grace, now we focus on the human side, justification by faith. This aspect is stated in chapter 3 and now here it is expanded. Here now we learn the true meaning of faith, what it is not, and what it is. Paul is keen to establish a true understanding of faith, because of the deep-rooted instinct within to "do our own thing", he was concerned to avoid the error of thinking that faith was a human attribute contributing to salvation. This chapter is a definition of what it means to be "justified by faith".
This portion can be divided into five sections under the heading JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
a) NOT OF WORKS-only by grace. Romans 4v1-8.
ttwo prime examples Abraham and David.
b) NOT BY CIRCUMCISION and all it represents. Romans 4v9-12
c) NOT BY LAW only by faith. Romans 4v13-15
d) WHAT FAITH IS. Romans 4v16-22
e) HOW FAITH COMES TODAY. Romans 4v23-25
Because of the possibility of spurious faith, the true meaning of faith is put under the microscope. The tendency of the human mind to turn pure biblical doctrines into something perverse is anticipated here. Paul begins here, by going back as far as Abraham, we could go even further back to Eden, where the ploy of the devil to deceive human beings was intimated "hath God said?", thus casting doubt on the word of God. He is still doing it today, successfully, are you deceived?
a) Justification is by faith not of works: the cases of Abraham and David.
In the annals of human history, spiritually speaking, there are no more influential people than these two. Abraham was described as "the friend of God", and David as "a man after God's heart". To Abraham was given the Divine covenant concerning THE SEED and THE LAND, to David was given the covenant of the KINGDOM. To put this into a modern perspective, none of these covenants have been fully realised, and are YET TO BE SEEN!, because when God makes a covenant it will happen, no matter the passage of time. Also these two names figure prominently in the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1, where He is described as "SON OF DAVID, SON OF ABRAHAM" Matthew 1v1.
The point of this. is that, if this is true of the best of men, it will certainly be true of the rest of us! So what was true of these men? They were both sinners, needing the grace of God. You see the language of these verses 1-8, Abraham is described as "ungodly" v5 and David is said to be "a sinner, a transgressor, and iniquitous" v7.
You may say, hold on a minute, we are talking of Abraham, the man who left his country at the call of God, the man who took on and defeated four northern kings to save his nephew, the man who is the father of the Jewish nation, one of the greatest men who ever lived. Yes, all of that is true, yet in declaring Abraham righteous, God says here "he was justifying the ungodly"; and what of David ? the greatest king in Israel, the king who in the mighty power of God never lost a battle in the field to defend his nation, the great warrior king who also excelled in music and has the major part of the Psalms attributed to him. Surely he has some merit in the sight of God?; not so according to these verses, because by David's own admission, quoting Psalm 32, he says in effect in the sight of God I am just a sinner. In modern parlance these are icons on the stage of human history, yet between them they had not one iota of merit in the presence of God, and they both are righteous, only by the grace of God, and by faith in God's word.
Tomorrow d.v. the history of Abraham.
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