Faith – Not works! Romans 4:1-8

Romans 4:1-8
What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.

But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:

“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”

Welcome back to Delving into the Scriptures! I pray that God will use these pages and these things I write for His Glory, and that you will somehow be touched through the Holy Spirit.

As mentioned in my last post (here), Paul is now about to embark on a section regarding faith – which is one of the key ‘doctrines’ in Christianity – for without faith, we are nothing! And hold in there if you think you understand it all already – because there is a key reason we are spending so much time on these basics – which you will see as soon as we hit Chapter 5. Feel free to read ahead – no secrets here!

The key message here in this first section is that our righteousness comes from faith – not works. Why is that?

Simply – because if you ‘worked’, you would expect wages. When I go to work every day, I expect a pay check to arrive at the end of the week – my boss doesn’t come to me all happy and offer me a ‘gift’ of salary – it is earned! To even pass it off as a gift would be rude and wrong – I work, I get paid. If you could earn your salvation, you would just need to ‘do enough works’ to get your bank account in heaven full enough, and you would be saved! But no – as explained earlier, and in much more depth later in Romans, there is nothing we can do to obtain God’s favor on our own. Nothing at all. We have all sinned – in some way or another – and therefore are no longer in His favor, and even more so, are deserving of both death and eternal separation from Him.

And the only way back to that favor is through the work of Jesus Christ. So – it is grace through faith – not works! Seems like a common topic for our past few posts…..

And lastly, we see the praise from King David, in regards to the grace of God. Many will know the stories, but David (like us all) was a certified sinner – unlike most of us though, he was ‘famous’ and therefore had his sins seen and recorded for all to see, and as the leader of ‘Gods Nation’, had his very own prophet come and tell him off (Nathan). We can read in the historical accounts of the sins of David, and even where he asks for forgiveness. We can read more though in the Psalms of David about the forgiveness of God and what that meant to him. What an amazing thing it is! That though we have sinned – for all have sinned – we receive grace and forgiveness through the gift of God, which is Jesus Christ His Son.

I’ll say it again because it hits me every time I write one of these – don’t you think that the actions of Jesus deserve a response on our part? I think it should start with thankfulness – and work it’s way from there.

Thank you again God that whilst there is nothing we could do to regain your favor, Jesus did the work for us on the cross. Continue to not only teach us what that means, but teach us how to respond to you. In Jesus Name. Amen.