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§11 Faith That Defies Defeat (Rom. 4:13–25)

Paul hacked his way through a thicket of works, circumcision, and pride in 4:1–12 in order to create a clearing where faith might grow. The second half of the chapter continues with the example of Abraham but furthers the discussion by showing how faith is anchored to the promise of God. One scholar puts it this way, “In the preceding verses we learned that Abraham is our father in the faith. In these verses we learn how he is our father” (Achtemeier, Romans, p. 81). Paul develops his argument in three stages. He first argues that God’s promise to Abraham was independent of the law (vv. 13–16). He then argues that Abraham’s faith was analogous to believing in the resurrection from the dead (vv. 17–22). Finally, he concludes that Abraham’s faith anticipated the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and was fulfilled by it (vv. 23–25).

4:13 / This verse restates the conclusion of 4:1–12. Paul has argued that God’s call and promise to Abraham were independent of the latter’s works or achievement; it was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise. The same point was demonstrated more factually in Galatians 3:17, “The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.” Had the law been the doorway to the promise, then Abraham first would have had to receive the law in order to inherit the promise. But this he had not done. God had declared him righteous before the giving of the law, thus demonstrating that righteousness was prior to and independent of the law. Abraham was an heir not by virtue of family lineage or works, but through the righteousness that comes by faith, that is, by grace.

Paul could have alluded to the same motif in the life of Jesus. The call of Levi the tax collector manifestly illustrates the offense of grace (Mark 2:13–17). Had Levi been a former tax collector who had washed his hands of a dirty profession, his call might have been understandable. True, Jesus called him from tax collecting, but the call came while he was at his tax table, during business hours. The outcry was immediate: “Why does [Jesus] eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” Romans 4 is a similar probe of the impulse of grace, an impulse which Paul sees already at work in Abraham. Abraham’s justification lies in the justification of Gentile sinners “apart from the law.” Abraham is therefore a theological prototype for Paul and the father of faith for both Jews and Gentiles. It is also possible that Paul may have intended Abraham to be an ethical prototype for Jews and Gentiles following the edict of Claudius, as a point of convergence where their differences could be overcome and their unity in faith recovered.

The promise to Abraham (repeated frequently in Genesis) includes possessing the land and having offspring more numerous than stars in the sky or sand on the seashore. Since the promise came to Abraham before the law was given and even before he was circumcised, it could be received only as a gift in faith, for Abraham had done nothing to merit it. This was an about-face from the conventional view of the synagogue. The rabbis taught that the promise came to Abraham because of his observance of Torah, and the faith with which he received it was itself a meritorious achievement. For Paul, however, grace depended not on a because of but on an in spite of. He orients the discussion around two contrasting sets of terms. Verse 15 speaks negatively of law, transgression, and wrath, whereas verse 16 speaks positively of faith, grace, and promise. Abraham had to elect one option or the other. Where one endeavors to make oneself worthy of a gift, there one tries, however subtly, to take credit for something intended freely. Where there is no faith as the humble and grateful response to God’s promise, there can be no righteousness. When God makes a promise, one either receives the promise by faith or forfeits the promise. “For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise” (Gal. 3:18).

That the promise could be received only by faith and not by works was for Paul status confessionis, which could not be conceded without destroying the faith. He devotes a protracted discussion to this issue in Romans 4 and Galatians 3. Although the promise is not a prominent motif in the OT, it was for Paul a sublime expression of grace, for the promise was rooted in and guaranteed by the character of God. The God who issues the promise is fully able to fulfill it (4:21) because he brings the dead to life, and he creates from nothing (4:17). Since the law cannot impart life (Gal. 3:21), it is therefore subordinate to faith. The promise presupposes God’s gracious will and favor (4:16) and can be received only through faith, not by calculations of merit. A faith which doubts God’s ability to honor his promise constitutes a theft against God’s glory (4:20) and a challenge to his truthfulness (15:8).

The promise is more than a favorable disposition of God towards humanity, such as the “benevolence” of Buddhism or “bounty” of the older hymns. The promise comes as a concrete word of hope to individuals and peoples, to Abraham and his offspring (v. 13). Paul speaks of the promise variously as inheritance (v. 13; Gal. 3:18); life (v. 17; Gal. 3:21); righteousness (Gal. 3:21); a gift of the Spirit (Gal. 3:14; Eph. 1:13); or adoption as children of God (Gal. 4:5). These are not abstract qualities but characteristics of Jesus Christ in whom the promises of God take on human form (15:8). “All the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor. 1:20, RSV). God is not a divine killjoy, a cosmic sadist bent on “getting even” with the world. God says Yes to the world in the promise to Abraham, even before Abraham knows God’s name, his person, or his will. To say that the world is fallen and sinful is to say that it is the object not of God’s damnation but of his love.” ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’ ” (Jer. 29:11). The promise of God is an expression of his faithfulness (3:4), his “for us-ness” (cf. 8:31).

Abraham is the heir of the world. Genesis records extraordinary promises to Abraham—that he would become a great and powerful nation, that his descendants would be countless in number, and that future nations would be blessed through him (Gen. 12:1–3; 18:18; 22:17–18). In later tradition Abraham’s reputation evolved even further to the cosmic proportions that we saw in 4:1–12. A midrash on Numbers reads, “You [Abraham] have made my name known in the world; by your life I will enable you to inherit princes and paupers, as it says: blessed be Abram, the heir of heaven and earth from God on high.” That Paul also calls Abraham heir of the world reveals the influence of such thinking on him. He presses the tradition, however, into the service of his argument that Abraham’s offspring (Gk. “seed”) would surpass the bounds of Israel and include the Gentiles; that is, the object of God’s promise to Abraham was the world (vv. 17–18; also Acts 2:5f.). The promise, first spoken to a solitary pilgrim nearly 2,000 years before Paul, did not perish in the sands of time; neither was it to remain the possession of one branch of humanity. Rather like yeast permeating the whole, it lays hold of the world! “All things are yours,” wrote Paul to the Corinthians, “whether … the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God” (1 Cor. 3:21–23).

4:14 / The concept of inheritance played an important role in the OT and subsequent Jewish thought. When Paul speaks to those who live by law he refers to the attitude he attacked in chapter 2, namely, that circumcision and observance of Torah qualified one to inherit righteousness. But in Paul’s mind this led to “boasting” (3:27), to the calculating of merits, and to the laying of charges to God’s account. Claiming inheritance on the basis of law empties faith and annuls the promise (5:12–20; Gal. 3:18–19). When one attempts to secure by one’s own efforts what is intended as a gift, the attention is shifted from the giver to the gift. The thing promised takes precedence over the one who promises, and a consideration of dues replaces a relationship of trust. The argument is not unrelated to what Martin Buber terms “I-Thou” versus “I-It” relationships. There is an implicit admonition in verse 14 against any form of religious belief that values the things God does more than the God who does them. This is tantamount to loving God not for who he is, but for what he does, which is idolatry (1:25).

4:15 / The progression of thought leads Paul to a startling conclusion, law brings wrath. If by law Paul means Torah (the definite article in Greek implies this), he could hardly have penned a more offensive statement. Pharisaic Judaism taught that the law brought grace, not wrath. If the law was given by God, how could Paul assert that it provokes his wrath? In the present context the statement is somewhat problematic. The progression of Paul’s thought does in fact introduce the statement, but the constraints of the argument prohibit him from developing it until 7:7ff.

In order to unpack verse 15 we must recall 3:20, “through the law we become conscious of sin.” This complements the latter half of verse 15, where there is no law there is no transgression. A society which does not regard stealing as a crime, of course, has no thieves. The offensive word is wrath, the same word used of God’s wrath against “all godlessness and wickedness” in 1:18. The word katergazomai (brings) clearly implies that the law not merely reveals sin, but that it produces sin. There is a cause-and-effect relationship between law and sin. Calvin’s interpretation that the law shows the right way to live but supplies no power to live it falls short of explaining the verse (Romans, p. 171). A proper understanding depends on two observations. First, there is a missing link in the logic of the statement (law brings wrath) which the remainder of the verse attempts to clarify. As a whole the verse implies that the law makes humanity deserving of wrath because it reveals transgression; thus, transgression, and not the law, produces wrath. Nevertheless, the law is more than an impartial standard of justice, for it incites sin, as Paul will argue in chapter 7. Transgression, parabasis, hints at this, for a transgression is a willful overstepping or violation of a commandment. Paul suggests that the prohibition of something actually produces a desire for it. In prohibiting theft, adultery, covetousness and so forth, the law subtly creates a desire for the things it condemns. For this reason the law brings wrath. This idea, of course, is not nearly so foreign as it may seem. “Reverse psychology” and the “created desire” syndrome of Madison Avenue are two modern illustrations of it.

4:16 / To law, wrath, and transgression Paul contrasts faith, grace, and promise. Faith and grace are inseparable for Paul. Grace is God’s sovereign and gratuitous decision to redeem rebellious and estranged creation. Grace is “God’s very presence and action within us.… the sanctifying energy of God acting dynamically in our life” (Thomas Merton, Life and Holiness, p. 30). “Man shall not quite be lost,” said Milton, “but sav’d who will, Yet not of will in him, but grace in me Freely voutsaft” (PL, 3.173–75). The decision to act salvifically on behalf of the world derived solely from God. Faith in God’s saving action is not the will to achieve it, but the will to receive it. Salvation must depend on grace and not on works, for if salvation comes by grace then it depends on God and is therefore certain; but if it depends on works or law, then it is as unreliable as the human heart and will. “God is for us” (8:31). God’s grace assures us of that which we cannot assure ourselves.

The latter half of verse 16 may be misleading. The juxtaposition of those who are of the law with those who are of the faith might suggest that some (Jews) are saved by law and others (Gentiles) by faith. That, of course, would contradict Paul’s entire argument. The phrase deserves comment in two respects. First, like verse 12 above, it is a technical reference to Jews and Gentiles. Those who are of the law refers to Jews, who, like Gentiles, must receive the promise through faith. The latter half of the verse is contingent on the first half. The promise … to all Abraham’s offspring includes Jews and Gentiles. Second, and equally important, the phrasing does not pit Jews and Gentiles against each other or require that one adapt to the other to receive salvation. They have different stations, but they have a common faith (cf. 1:16–17). Paul again emphasizes the universality of the promise and of the faith symbolized by Abraham, who is the father of us all.

4:17 / In Genesis 17:5 God reaffirmed the promise that Abraham would be the “father of many nations.” God declares to him, “I have made you a father” (Gk. tetheika se, literally, “I have set you or established you”). Abraham’s fatherhood, in other words, depended not on him but on God. The plural, nations, is equally instructive. Abraham’s heirs were to be all peoples who walk by faith, “the world,” according to verse 13, which includes—but is not limited to—the Jewish people.

The remainder of the verse describes the kind of God in whom Abraham believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. In the sight of God is a bit cumbersome in Greek due to the expression katenanti hou, which probably derives from the Hebrew, lip̱e nê, meaning “in front of, before.” Paul pictures Abraham not as assenting to a theological truth, but as standing or perhaps bowing before the Almighty. There was a latent danger in God’s awesome works. Like Simon the Magician (Acts 8:9–25), Abraham may have been tempted to worship the power rather than the person behind it, the thing made alive rather than the life giver. Abraham’s trust, however, was in God rather than in the works which God did for him.

When Paul speaks of God as the one who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were, he appeals to the highest characteristics of God in the Hebrew tradition. Both manifestations—giving life to the dead and creating out of nothing—were also experiences of Abraham. His body and Sarah’s, long beyond childbearing age, were dead to the possibility of producing an heir. Yet God made a promise to that heir as though he existed, and the son born to Abraham and Sarah inherited that promise. Later, on Mount Moriah Abraham was called to sacrifice his son, and at the moment when Isaac was doomed, God restored him to life. For Abraham—and for Paul—there was no separation between the God of creation and the God of redemption. Both creation and redemption were for Abraham results of the one promise of God. Abraham did not have a vague notion of a “divine presence,” he did not recite platitudes about an “ultimate power.” Abraham’s God gave life—to himself, to his wife, to his son. He brought into being a posterity which, from a human perspective, was an impossibility. Abraham’s God was a God of the impossible. And so was Paul’s God, as he testifies in 2 Corinthians 1:8–9. The numbing darkness of the impossible was a terrible but necessary prelude to receiving the promise of the God who spoke and it was, of the God who breathed into clay and flushed it with life.

The God who raises the dead cannot be tamed or controlled. He can be received only by faith, and by faith God transforms frozen impossibilities into springs of hope and resurrection. “Faith beholds life and existence where the man of the world sees nothing but death and non-existence,” says Barth, “and contrariwise, it sees death and non-existence where he beholds full-blooded life” (Romans, p. 141).

4:18–19 / Faith in the God of the impossible gives birth to hope, and hope, in the words of Hebrews (6:19), is “an anchor for the soul.” Against all hope, or as the Greek might be rendered, “hope upon hope,” is how Paul describes Abraham’s situation in verse 18. When Abraham surveyed his circumstances he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead (v. 19; cf. Gen. 17:17). There was no hope for Abraham in circumstances. But Paul says Abraham saw his circumstances in faith, i.e., not from the perspective of mechanistic determinism, but from the viewpoint of God, who makes all things new. God’s promise transformed Abraham’s weakness and despair into hope. This did not mean that Abraham closed his eyes to the bleakness of his circumstances. A textual variant on verse 19 reads that Abraham did not observe the deadness of his body, which implies that he avoided sizing up his circumstances. This is surely a corruption of Paul’s meaning. It was precisely because Abraham had faith that he could see his terrible prospects for what they were. But that was not all he saw. Menacing and prohibitive though his circumstances were, because Abraham’s faith was in a God of mercy, he did not see the obstacles as insurmountable. God’s promise made them potential for something beyond his dreams. Abraham’s faith was not a safe faith: “If the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it!” Rather, his faith was beset with opposition. The passage of time sucked the winds of hope from his sails, and more than once he was driven to the brink of despair.

Despite all this, Paul makes a preposterous claim: Abraham’s faith grew. There was a disproportionate relationship between his obstacles and his faith. There was more involved in Abraham’s faith than Abraham himself, more than self-reliance or the tapping of inner reserves in times of crises. The older and more impotent he became, the stronger he grew in the conviction that God was faithful to fulfill his promise. His faith, in other words, was not bound by his sight. Calvin aptly observed that “there is nothing more injurious to faith than to fasten our minds to our eyes” (Romans, p. 176). It was not from his senses that Abraham found hope, but from his faith. What he saw filled him with despair, but the word of promise inspired him with hope “in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (v. 24).

4:20–22 / Faith is not an inoculation against the germs of life. Faith is a fierce struggle. The hardest thing in life is to believe God above circumstances. Abraham questioned God, “O Lord, what can you give me?” (Gen. 15:2). He pleaded with God (Gen. 18:16ff.). His wife laughed at God (Gen. 18:11ff.). One command—to sacrifice young Isaac—struck so hard that he was left reeling in confusion. But he obeyed the command, repeating to himself “God will provide” as he trudged up the mountain (Gen. 22). His obedience, however, was not the obedience of despondency. How could he be passive before the God of the impossible? Abraham questioned God and struggled with God. The decision of faith was not then and is not now an easy one. Calvin was right when he said,

All things around us are in opposition to the promises of God: He promises immortality; we are surrounded with mortality and corruption; He declares that he counts us just; we are covered with sins: He testifies that he is propitious and kind to us; outward judgments threaten his wrath. What then is to be done? (Romans, p. 180).

Yes, what is to be done? In the tempest of struggle Abraham did not allow himself to be swept into the vortex of disbelief. His questions did not cancel his belief; he did not become a nihilist. Things, facts, statistics, the hard evidence of life—these were inescapable for him, but they did not rule him. His faith neither minimized nor finalized his outward circumstances, but the final word for him was the promise of God. Abraham chose to believe the promise rather than become immobilized by the arguments against it—and his choice strengthened … his faith.

True faith is strengthening faith, which exists in tension with doubt and disbelief. The ideal, of course, is that the human will might become one with the divine—and someday it will be. But the initial lessons in the classroom of life are not so easily learned. “ ‘Abba, Father.… Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’ ” (Mark 14:36). Jesus too knew the struggle of faith. Faith does not exist in a vacuum. We may worship God in a sanctuary, but we do not normally find our faith in one. Faith is more often born in a boxing ring of choices—of doubt, disbelief, impossibility, and meaninglessness. To adhere to the promise of God in spite of everything to the contrary is to give glory to God. If Abraham can do nothing to receive God’s promise except to believe, neither can he honor and glorify God except by believing (1:21). “No greater honor can be given to God,” says Calvin, “than by faith to seal his truth, and no greater dishonor can be done to him than to refuse his offered favor, or to discredit his word” (Romans, p. 180). God is honored by the believing will. Leenhardt concludes,

[Abraham] believed what God had said because God said it, and not because he might have found in what had been said good reasons for adherence. His faith neither made a calculation of the probabilities of accomplishment nor a quick estimate of the advantages to be gained. Abraham thought only of that Being who had spoken (Romans, p. 126).

Abraham was fully persuaded of the promise because of the character of God who stood behind it, and This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”

4:23–25 / What Paul says in verses 23–24 will come as no surprise to the reader. The righteousness accorded to Abraham was not for him alone, but also for us. Paul had no intention of treating Abraham as a museum piece; neither is his review of righteousness in this chapter undertaken from purely historical interests. Paul saw in Abraham’s experience a model for the Gentiles, whose hope for salvation was as dead as Abraham’s body. Abraham was for Paul the first fruits of a process of salvation which extended from the patriarch to Jesus Christ. Abraham’s faith in God’s promise is expressive of the faith of believers in the God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Everything Paul has said finds its culmination in Jesus, who is here mentioned for the first time in chapter 4. Whoever believes that God raised Jesus from the dead testifies to the God of the promise “who gives life to the dead” (v. 17). As Abraham and Sarah believed despite the deadness in themselves (vv. 19–20), so believers are justified through faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead. It is the same faith in the same God who brings the dead to life.

A refined couplet concludes the chapter: He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. The parallelism—death for sin, raised for righteousness—points doubtlessly to an early Christian formula or confession. Christ’s achievement on both accounts was for us. The passive voice, He was delivered over, a divine passive, is a reverential reference to God without using his name (lest it be profaned), meaning “God handed him over.” The couplet is apparently a christological reflection on the final verse of Isaiah’s hymn to the suffering servant, where (in the LXX) the servant “was handed over on account of our sins” (53:12). The verb behind delivered (Gk. paradidōmi) is doubly suited to the context, for it embraces the idea that Jesus was betrayed by Judas (and others) as well as handed over by the providence of God. The themes of dying and raising which appear throughout the section are here completed. As the deadness of Abraham and Sarah typifies the death of the sinner and ultimately the death of Christ for sins, so God’s promise to quicken them typifies the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

God called forth Isaac from the “dead” body of Abraham, he called forth Jesus from a sealed tomb, and he calls forth believers from the death of sin and endows them with new life (6:13). Wherever God’s sovereign purpose prevails over mortal circumstances, there “is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).