Romans 4:13-17

13 It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. 14 For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, 15 because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.

16 Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. 17 As it is written: "I have made you a father of many nations." [c] He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.


Dig Deeper
Not too long ago I was driving to an event and was trying to follow some directions that my wife had written out for me. I was not very familiar with the route that I was taking so I found myself quite at the mercy of these old-fashioned hand-written directions with no GPS or any other such system. I went down a road that I was very familiar with but the directions called for me to go farther on that road than I normally do. They then called for me to look for highway 15, so I kept my eyes open and began heading down this new road. I drove and drove and kept on driving but had a sinking feeling that was growing that I had gone too far and missed my turn. So, after going down nearly twenty miles, I turned around and headed back, thinking that I must have missed the exit. I carefully examined each turn and exit on my way back, only to make it all the way back to the familiar part of the road without finding highway 15. Now I was a bit frustrated so I pulled out the directions again to see if I had made some sort of mistake. As I looked closer at the directions I was just sickened to see my error. The directions had not said highway 15, but highway 75. It was clear that no matter how long I looked for highway 15, I was never going to get where I was going because there was no highway 15 that would get me there. Once I realized that I needed highway 75, I found my way rather quickly and arrived at my destination.

In a sense, this is the point that Paul is making regarding the works of the law. If I had insisted on arriving at my location using highway 15, I would have never made it because there was no such connection. If the Jews insisted on believing that the works of the law would bring them justification, serving as the evidence of their status as the covenant people of God, then they were in a mess of trouble because that was not and never had been the purpose of the law. In fact, while I was looking for highway 15, I had relegated highway 75 unimportant. Actually, from one perspective, if I could have arrived at my destination from highway 15 then I wouldn’t have needed highway 75 at all (of course this is not a perfect analogy if pressed too far, but it makes the point). Paul’s point is that the Jews were driving up and down the road of the covenant looking to arrive at justification via the law but the law would never get them there. They needed to go back to the original instructions and see that what they should have been looking for all along was faith.

The TNIV cuts out the word “for” at the beginning of verse 13 which is an important word signaling that what Paul says here is an explanation of his previous comments regarding Abraham being the father of both the circumcised and uncircumcised rather than being an entirely new topic. Abraham received the covenant promise from God that the whole world would be blessed through him and his descendants and that he would be the father of many nations. This promise, this covenant, did not come through the law because the law was not given for over 400 years after the promise was made to Abraham. Abraham acted in believing obedience to God’s promises and that is what served as the channel through which Abraham was credited as being righteous, or faithful to the covenant. Paul says that Abraham’s covenant faith was in the specific promise that he would inherit the whole world. This brings up a question, though, because Genesis tells us that God promised Abraham specifically the promised land of Canaan between the Nile and the Euphrates (Gen. 15:8). But Paul says that Abraham’s descendants will receive the whole world. Paul seems to pick up the expansion of that promise that would come through Abraham’s descendant, the Messiah, that is clearly conveyed in Psalm 2:8: “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” Paul has clearly expanded the promise made to Abraham concerning the land of Canaan into the Messianic fulfillment of inheriting the whole earth in the age to come, a thought that he will clearly spell out in Romans 8. It seems clear, then, that God’s purpose was to give the whole world to Abraham’s descendants all along and the possession of the holy land simply pointed ahead to that future reality.

Does justification have to come through faith, though? Could one theoretically be justified by the law? Paul definitively says “no”. If one could be considered part of the seed (offspring) of Abraham by observing the law then faith becomes worthless. The covenant can be encountered only through faith because that is how it worked all along. If it could be encountered through the law, then there would be two families, one of faith, and one by the law. But that cannot be, says Paul. The purpose of the law was never to bring justification. The purpose of the law was to keep Israel from the sin of the pagan world around them but it also caused Israel to be guilty of transgressing the law. A transgression is different than sin. Paul is not talking of the general condition of sin but the more specific situation that occurs when someone is given a clearly defined law and transgresses it. His point is that violating the law transforms sin into a more serious transgression of the law, meaning that God gave the law to the Jews, they transgressed the law, and thus, the law brought God’s wrath to the Jews. If we combine what Paul says here with what he stated in 3:19-20, we see that Paul’s argument is that the law reveals transgression within ethnic Israel. This transgression brings about God’s wrath, and therefore, if the inheritance were confined to those who kept the law, then no one would have any inheritance. The law simply cannot effect the inheritance promised to Abraham because that was not its purpose. As theologian Tom Wright puts it, “If there is to be a renewed people of God, there must be (in that sense) a law-free zone for them to live and flourish within.”

In verse 16, Paul finally and unambiguously answers the question he brought up in verse 1. In what way is Abraham the father of those in the covenant family? Is it through faith or according to ethnic means? Paul’s answer here confirms the assertion that he is speaking in terms of covenant and family rather than the assumption that he is speaking of being saved by faith or through our own merit. The promise comes through faith and the grace of God alone. This means that the covenant family is available to all who have the faith of Abraham in the God who resurrects the dead. If the promise came through the law, it would, in effect, only be available to Jews but this is not the case with faith. Those who have faith can enter into the life of the Messiah and become the spiritual descendants of Abraham. Abraham is the father of both the circumcised and the uncircumcised because his paternity is based on faith in the covenant promises of God rather than in ethnicity.

This is all the way it was supposed to be all along, asserts Paul in verse 17 which begins with a quote from Genesis 17:5: “No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.” This truth is captured in the fact that Abram means “exalted father” while Abraham means something along the lines of “father of many.” The family of Abraham of which we are now a part was always meant to include all nations, all peoples. That means that a church in South Africa that is comprised of British South Africans, and Afrikaaners, Zulus, and Xhosa should not be the exception but the rule. The church that sits in the suburbs of some large American city and fills itself each Sunday with 99% white people is a church that stands in direct opposition to God’s plan for his one true family built on the faith of Abraham, the father of faith. This also means that the idea that we can justify modern Judaism and Islam as legitimate true religions and alternative paths to Christianity because of their descent from Abraham is patently false. The plan was always one family of all types of people that would enter into and be summed up in the Messiah.

Abraham is our common spiritual father because of his faith and our faith in, as Paul declares, “the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” Paul’s statement here seems to carry echoes from the common Jewish daily prayers during Paul’s, the Shemoneh Esreh, or 18 Benedictions which speak of the God who gives life to the dead. It is this common resurrection faith as Paul will state directly in the end of chapter 4 that is so vital. Our faith is placed in the God who raises the dead and brings things into existence out of nothing. It seems that Paul has in mind here a bit of a dual meaning, pointing to both God’s power to resurrect and create but also perhaps alluding to the gospel’s power to resurrect life out of death through the covenantal renewal made available to the Jewish people through Christ. But he also has created something out of nothing, or as Peter declared to Gentile Christians, “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God” (1 Pet. 2:10).” In other words, Paul is perhaps symbolically declaring that God has resurrected the covenant status of the Jews and has created one for the Gentiles.

What we have seen, thus far, then, is that Paul has deftly reinterpreted Abrahamic paternity, possession of the promised land, and covenantal justification through his belief that God’s resurrection power has already been revealed in the Messiah and in the family which has gathered into his life. This multi-ethnic family built on faith in the resurrection of Christ was an important and central theme in New Testament Christianity. It is high time that we dust this theme off and put it back in its proper place within 21st century Christianity.


Devotional Thought
Have you considered the importance of God’s people being integrated rather than segregated? The statement has been made that Sunday is the most segregated day of the week in the Untied States, which is a direct commentary on the state of churches today. How does this condition stand in stark contrast with the true effect that the gospel should have? What does this tell us about many churches in our world today?