Credited Faith - Romans 4:1-25
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
If you guys have been following along, you guys have been here in this, we are focusing on the book of Romans, which is a letter from Paul to the church in Rome, is all about the power of the gospel. This was almost the first letter that Paul wrote. It's not the first, but it is near the beginning of the emergence of the early church. So we come onto the scene. Jesus has been in Jerusalem three years. He's died on the cross, rose again, was around for a bit, and then ascended up into heaven. And then the early church, the disciples gathered, turned into the apostles, And then they started going about their business and being scattered to go start churches. And church after that, after that, after that, granddaughter, granddaughter, great daughter, great daughter, you get Spring Valley Church. This is where we come from. So we can trace all our lineage all the way back to this first early church movement here in the Roman Empire area, but specifically first this early church in the book of Rome or in Rome, the book of Romans. And so as a pastor, I get all sorts of questions. I get all the questions. You can think of the craziest questions and they get crazier after that. But I get all the questions. But one that I always get from time to time is how do I know that I am saved? How do I know for sure without a shadow of a doubt that this gospel, this salvation piece that Paul has been talking about and setting up this very lengthy, deep, iron clad, brick, solid rock proof of a lawyer's argument here for the power of the gospel. How can I know that this is true and specifically applied to me today?
At the end of chapter three, Paul walks through this idea about how Christ's righteousness becomes ours when we receive it by faith. Pastor Andre did a fantastic job last week, walking us through that and talking specifically about this idea of righteousness through faith. And if you missed it, you can go online, you can catch it. We're on our website. We've got the podcast rolling now. You can listen to it and you're cruising in the car. It's great stuff. I love it, it's fantastic. But you can listen on that. But Paul here, he, what? This idea, this idea of righteousness becoming ours when we receive it by faith, what does this exactly mean? I mean, these are some big words. I don't know, I know some of us in here are very highly educated in the room and some of us barely got through high school, praise Jesus, we made it, okay? Hallelujah. But sometimes we can get lost in these big words. But Paul here is like, how do we know that? How do we know that we know that we have it? And Paul here is gonna break down in this chapter, some incredible, a incredible example of faith. But if you asked Christians, and you probably surveyed us here in this room, what is faith? We get the whole range of answers. We'd probably get somewhere as faith is believing than something that you can't see like the wind that blows the trees. You can't see the wind, but you can see the effects of the wind. Maybe faith is just kind of this general sense that God is real. That there's something out there that put this universe together and in such an intricate way that it can't just be by happenstance. Or faith means just I am a proponent, exponentially pushing forward, religion. Or maybe it's something that has to, I'm serious about my faith. Jesus is something very special and meaningful to me in my life. Or maybe just faith is more of a general outlook in life. Or maybe you would say that faith is that time that some place, somewhere, sometime you prayed a prayer and you asked Jesus into your heart. Maybe that is what you would say is faith. But Paul here is gonna give us kind of an analysis of what faith is and how it really saves us and how we can know for sure that we have it. Paul kind of puts this faith on the table and kind of just opens it up for us. Maybe you could say it kind of dissects it for us in this chapter.
And it does it by looking at faith of one of the most important figures in the Bible, a guy by the name of Abraham. And this not only is important for us, but this is absolutely unbelievably the important person if you come from a Jewish background. And he is regarded as the father of faith. Anybody sing the song? ♪ Father Abraham ♪ And then he's, yeah, anybody? No, no, all right. But Paul here is saying that Abraham is the father of our faith. And so I want us today to kind of learn about what this faith is and how it saves and what it looks like in his life, because then Paul applies it to our lives as well. And Paul divides up this section and he has three questions for us, okay? The first question of which is how was Abraham saved? How was Abraham saved? And then he'll go into when was Abraham saved. We got a little timeline piece we're gonna break down. And then what were the components of Abraham's face? So here's where we're headed this morning. If you guys wanna know, here's our roadmap. We're all gonna go on a journey together. And it's all gonna start Romans chapter four, starting in verse one. We're gonna go through verse one to eight for this first section. So you can follow along, maybe bring out your old school Bible like me, or tap, click, wherever you want on your phone, and follow along, and it goes like this.
This is Romans chapter four. "What shall we say then that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, discovered in this manner?" Talking about faith. "If in fact Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. What does scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works wages, you're not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work, but trust God, who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing. When he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from the works. Verse seven, blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed are the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.
So Abraham here is a forefather of our faith, okay? And so this first question that Paul is gonna ask was, how was Abraham saved? How was Abraham saved? It says here that Abraham was saved, he was justified by faith. See this, Paul here is quoting directly from Genesis 15. All the way at the beginning of the Bible, the Old Testament, first book, Genesis 15, six says this, Abram believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness. So Paul here is talking about this idea that Abraham received salvation, was credited to him righteousness by his faith. See these verses here kind of show us this inner logic of faith. And faith is not something that tries to earn salvation, but instead receives it as a gift. The premise of every job that you have had in your life went like this, you do the work and you're paid for it. Right? That's how it works. You show up, you clock in, you put in your time. And at the end of the day, the boss hands you a check or the end of the week or the month or whatever, hands you a check and you go home with your money. I've never had a job. maybe I'm weird here, I've never had a job where a boss paid me money and I said, "Oh my goodness, thank you so much for your generosity. You are so incredibly giving." No, that's not how it works. I'm not talking bonuses or raises, I'm talking about the bare bones basis of your job. Why? Because the reality is your wage in that moment is what you are owed. You put the time in, you did the job, you checked the box, now you get paid. And see, in this, most people approach their relationship with God like this. They approach, they say this, "Hey, I do good things, and then God pays me with heaven." "or my rewards for good works are eternal life." And most religions around the world work off this premise, this idea of earning. I obey, therefore I will be accepted. They believe that God gives us acceptance as a reward or a wage for our obedience. Gospel doesn't work like this. Gospel works off a different premise. Acceptance is given as a gift. given as a gift to those who will receive it.
We see this specifically in verse five, because verse five here is probably one of the most important Bibles or verses in the Bible on salvation. Did you guys catch that? It says this in verse five, "However, to the one who does not work, but trusts," or it can also be understood as, "or believes God who justifies the ungodly, their faith, like Abraham's, is credited as righteousness. So what does Paul mean? Paul means this, he says, "To the one who does not work." What does that mean? Well, it means that you're not trying to earn God's salvation. You're not trying to earn his acceptance through good works. You're not trying to be good enough to get that entrance ticket into heaven. But instead, as verse five says, "You believe on him who declares the ungodly to be righteous." Is that you believe God's understanding and the promise that he has graciously gone through everything necessary to give us such a gift. To give us this gift. And that it was purchased as salvation when Jesus died on the cross for you and me, just like he said. And when you believe that, you will have acceptance as Christ's righteousness as it is credited to you.
This word credited is really interesting term. It's actually a banking term I found out. I was doing some research on this. And the Greek word here, for those who would love to delve into this, is logizomai. It's a fun word, logizomai. (congregation laughing) And it's a banking term. And it means this thing that is something that is put into your account. I love how Paul uses this. I remember as a kid, getting my first bank account or savings account, my parents helped me open it up. And I didn't have hardly no, I had no money. I was a kid, let's be honest. I had no money. And my parents, logizomai, credited me money and put it into my account. Now I wasn't allowed to touch it, but I could look at that shiny little paper statement and go, ha ha, there's my credit. It would be the same if I had for my kids. Like if I find myself in a place where I only have a week to live, and I would go and I would open a bank account for my kids. And I would tell the banker, hey, I need you to transfer all the money that I have. You'd look at my account and laugh, but I would say, I need to take all of this money that I have, and I need you to log in "O my, credit it to my children "so they can have it when I'm gone." This is what's happening right here. Paul here is explaining that this is what happens when Christ's righteousness of when you trust Him, when you call on Him as your sin bearer, your Savior, your Lord, you trust in Him as your substitute, your Savior, all of His righteousness, all of His favor with God, because he was perfect, he was blameless, he had done nothing wrong, he basically logizomai credits into our account salvation. That's what Paul's here saying. He's saying that all of this is logizomai to you. And this is how Abraham was saved, by faith.
Let's continue on, verse nine here in Romans. Is this blessedness only for the circumcised or for the uncircumcised. Okay, Paul here, real quick, a little translation piece. Paul here is using this term, circumcised, uncircumcised as the law. So for those who circumcised are following the law, uncircumcised, those who are not following law. Just a quick shorthand. So don't get caught up in all of this words here, okay? We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised or before? if that was not after, but before. And he received circumcision as a sign or a seal of that righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then he is a father of all who believe, but have not been circumcised. In order that righteousness, well, boom, the accredited, the father of the circumcised, to all who are circumcised, but also in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised." You guys follow along? Okay. Clear as mud. Beautiful. "It was not through the law," here we go, Paul, he fixes it for us so we can understand this. "It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be the heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." You guys following? "For if those who depend on the law are heirs, Faith means nothing and the promise is worthless because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression. 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 the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all, as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. He is our Father in the sight of God, in whom He believed, the God who gives faith to the dead and calls into being things that were not.
So Paul here, in this super lengthy argument in these verses, I don't know if you guys followed all of it, basically asked the question then, when was Abraham saved? He says in verse 10, under what circumstances was accredited? it after he was circumcised or before? See, remember Paul here is using this term "circumcised" as shorthand for all of the Jewish law. So Paul here is asking basically this. You guys ready? Basically asking this, "Was Abraham declared righteous before or after the Jewish law was given?" That's the premise here. That's the question that's being asked. Because if it was after, then maybe Maybe righteousness can be earned through law, through observing the law. But if it was before, well, that changes everything, right? So here, Paul answers his own question. I love it when he does this. He answers his question. He's like, "I'm gonna answer it in two verses." Verses 10 through 12. "It was not after, but before. And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that had been by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe, but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to him. And he is then also the father of the circumcised, not only are the circumcised, but also those who are the footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham, and before he was circumcised." That word is in there way too many times.
So here's the answer to Paul's question. It was not before or not while, not during, but it was still before Abraham received the law that he was credited faith and justification. So that proves here is basically Paul's, this whole big argument, Paul's basically trying to tell us that it proves that obedience to the law is not necessary for salvation. Why? Because we are already saved and because Abraham was declared righteous over 600 years before the law was given to the Israelite people. 600 years. It's crazy. So the logic here goes like this, all right? Here's a breakdown. God declared Abraham righteous in Genesis 15, six. Circumcision or the law wasn't introduced until way, way later. So before any of these religious laws or rituals were given, Abraham was already declared righteous. Already declared righteous. Therefore, you can't say that obeying the law is necessary for salvation. It's still necessary for stuff, but it's not at the core of salvation. The law isn't the means to salvation. and Abe was saved even before any of this stuff was around. The law had been sent for a different purpose to provide us of how to live our lives after we've received salvation. So Abraham was saved by faith and it was before the Jewish law he was saved.
This leads us to our final question. What were the components of Abraham saving faith? Paul is leading us always to this point where he's got something he wants us to take home, something he wants us to kind of put in our pocket and think on and wrestle with this whole week. And he says this, he says, "Two important things that emerge from this final section." Romans 18 through 25, it says this, "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, so shall your offspring be. Without wrecking, wakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old. And that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he said he had promised. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness. The words, it was credited to him, were written not for him alone. Here's where we come into it. But also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in him, who raised Jesus, our Lord from the dead. was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
Here's the first part of this. You see this faith's posture. What do I mean by faith's posture? Well, you see Abraham believed in a specific promise that God had given to him. And then Abraham adjusted, refocused, reprioritized everything in his life for that promise, specifically believing on that. What was that? Well, that was that there was going to be a kid that was gonna come from the nation of Abraham that was gonna have the savior that was gonna be the promised Messiah for the entire world. What was the problem with that? Here was the problem. Abraham and Sarah ain't having no kids. Abe's what, almost 90? Sarah's over 70 at this point. Even on the best day, there's only a slim chance that any of this is happening, okay? But Abraham believed, that's the awesome part. And what did Abraham do? Abraham started living his life in this promise. What do I mean by that? Abraham went off, he started buying stuff for a nursery. He started picking out names. Him and Sarah went into Target, got the little clicker guns and going around and registering. Abraham went and got the coffee mug, world's greatest dad. He got the T-shirt. He's out searching for a land for this nation. Like Abraham goes 100% in on this promise of God and nothing has yet to happen. Nothing has yet to happen to this point. A hundred years. Can you believe that? A hundred years and Abraham changes his whole life and shifts into this posture of faith and says, God promised it, I believe it. That's what he says. And it says, verse 21, "Being fully persuaded," or another translation would say, "Convinced that God had power to do what he had promised. And because of all this," verse 22, "this is why it was credited to him, logizomai, to him as righteousness." Just like Abraham believed that God could give him a son in his old age, just like he promised, we believe that Jesus paid for our sin and rose again, just like God had promised. That's where we come into the picture. And it's a little bit different, why? Because Abraham believed in something that was yet to happen. That's Abraham's faith. It's a forward-looking faith. Looking to the future going, "God, you promised it, I believe it. "I know it's gonna happen, I'm all in." Our faith is looking back to what Jesus did on the cross 2000 something years ago, saying, I believe it, I trust it. God said it, it's done, it's over, it's taken care of. I live in that faith. That's our faith. And Paul here is saying that we know we can be justified through that same faith that Abraham had, because it's the same God who was the same yesterday in Abraham's day, in Jesus's day, in yesterday, on Saturday afternoon, February, or March 25th, as he is on the 26th, as he's gonna be tomorrow on the 27th. That's that kind of faith that Abraham is talking about here and Paul is writing in this to say, this is the faith. And it's a kind of faith that you can go all in on, that you can fully lean into, that you can put all your faith into. It's a surrender kind of faith. And it's a posture that we have to take with God in believing this. And we know it is true.
The second piece of this is the faith boast, which is God's faithfulness. Did you guys catch that in verse 21? It said, "Yet we do not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded, fully convinced that God had power to do what he has promised. Because Abraham leaned into fully that God would provide him with the Son that would become the nation of Israel, that from the nation of Israel would come King David, who would come a descendant of David, would be the Messiah who was Christ our Savior that lived here on earth and went to the cross fully perfect for our substitution of death for our sins, conquered that death, rose again, and we're going to celebrate that in two weeks. Amen. That's what we're talking about here. And in this, God gets all the glory. God gets all the glory, right? Because we can't but give God the glory. Does that make sense? That's the only thing we do. 'Cause we can't get to heaven. And if there was any part that we had done, oh, we'd be walking around heaven like a boss, right? We'd be like, "Yeah, that was me. I'm the spiritual mega man. I was the one that did it. Temptation came my way and I said, no. I was the one that had the strength. I was the one that pushed the devil away. And I am here on my salvation. and I'm the one here to boast. Does it work like that? No. None of us are going to get that when we get, get to say that when we get to heaven. The only thing we're gonna get to say when we get to heaven is that we've been there 10,000 years, bright, shining like the sun and no less day to sing God's praise when it first begun. And in heaven, God's grace will be our boast because that is the only way that any of us will get there. I'm sorry to burst your bubble today. If you came in this morning trying to get that gold star, checking that Sunday off, getting to that 500th Sunday streak, I will give you a firm handshake and a bagel on the way out and tell you congratulations, but that's kind of as far as it's going, okay? I'm sorry, that's all you're gonna get from us today. It is only in God's that salvation is the sole object of our faith. He is our hope, He is our love. And He has to have the first place in our hearts. He has to have that first place because He is the one that's gonna get all the glory from our lives. And Abraham's faith was a trust kind of faith, a surrender completely kind of faith, fully go all in kind of faith.
And that is a question for us, do we have that faith? Do we have that same kind of faith that we are an all in kind of faith. A lot of us as Christ followers attempt to have this faith like Abraham, but we kind of end up of what I call a mutual fund kind of a faith. If anybody has invested any money in the stock market or tried to have any future dividends or retirement or anything, you guys know what a mutual fund is. A mutual fund is a stock that you invest with or with a company and they take all your money and they spread it across a ton of different companies. Some have four or five, some have thousands of companies. Why? Because the idea is that you hedge your bets. If this company goes down, hopefully a company over here rises up and you kind of balance out. And hopefully in the end, you still move ahead. We do that in our life. We build our portfolio and we wouldn't want to not have God in our portfolio, but God is just a portion of our portfolio. He's just a kind of piece over here. We got all these other kind of things going on and we think, okay, man, we have, I still kind of keep God over here and kind of put the, it's just gonna work out. Now that's probably a wise investment strategy as I've been told and invested in, but for our faith, it doesn't work like that. That's not kind of faith that God wants in our lives. God wants an all in, all for nothing, fully all in, everything you got, everything, everything, kind of a faith that God wants for us. And that's the kind of faith that Abraham had. And we can have that same faith when we trust in God and go all in on who he is and everything that is there, that's the faith that we can have. It's an all or nothing kind of a thing. That's the only way it works. I mean, you might go, well, you know, pastor, I'm like 90% in with God. That's awesome. Still not 100. I don't know any husband that could say, you know, I'm 90% committed. That's some scary stuff right there. Maybe you're less than 90, I don't know. But even that less than little pit, even if it's a bit, we would still call them an unfaithful husband. See, God loves us so much and he cares for who we are. He wants all of us. He doesn't want 90, he doesn't want 99.9999, he wants an all in everything kind of a faith in him.
And when we look back at who Abraham was and the place that he found himself in without a child, without a future, without a hope, without anything, God shows up in his life and makes a miracle happen and it changes the world. And it's that same God that we serve and we love who cares for us and has everything that he wants for our lives planned out in a way that is absolutely beautiful. We just have to go all in. So that's the question for us today. This is where Paul is leading us. And real quick, when I say fully surrendered, It doesn't mean we're never gonna sin again. I sin, I struggle through it, everybody's gonna struggle. It's not until we get face to face with Jesus and he makes us perfect, is that gonna be taken care of? But what I'm saying an all in kind of a faith is not you are intentionally choosing outside of what God wants for your life. That is this kind of all in. And do you have that type of surrender? We're gonna move into a time of communion this morning. I want us to focus in on that, to have this mindset and this heart of thinking about the all in that Jesus went all in for on the cross and gave that sacrifice for us. And because of that, we get to boast in who Jesus is. We get to boast in God's glory for our lives to then let that flow out of us to as we have our vision and mission here is to see our community saturated with the glory of God. That's that Abraham faith right there. That's that kind of faith that I am talking about this morning.