Romans
Chapter 4
Overview
Paul is writing to communities of Jesus-followers in Rome, where Jewish and non-Jewish believers must learn how they belong together. He turns to Abraham, the honored ancestor of the Jewish people, and asks what truly put him right with God. Circumcision was the physical sign that a man belonged to the Jewish people and their agreement with God, while the law shaped Jewish life and conduct. Paul argues from the Jewish sacred writings that trust came first. The chapter then widens Abraham’s family beyond one people and links God’s promise to Jesus’ death and resurrection.
1What, then, should we say that Abraham, our ancestor by physical descent, discovered?
2If Abraham was declared to be in the right because of what he did, he would have something to boast about—but not before God.
3For what do the Jewish Scriptures say? “Abraham trusted God, and God counted that trust as putting him in the right.”
4When someone works, that person’s wages are not counted as generosity but as a debt that must be paid.
5But when someone has no deeds to present and instead trusts God, who declares a person who has lived without regard for him to be in the right, that person’s trust is counted as putting them in the right.
6David says the same thing when he describes how fortunate people are when God counts them as being in the right apart from anything they have done:
7“How fortunate are those whose wrongs have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered!
8How fortunate is the person whose sin the Lord will never count against them!”
9Does this good fortune belong only to Jews who have undergone circumcision, or also to non-Jews who have not? We have said, “Abraham’s trust was counted as putting him in the right.”
10When was it counted that way? After Abraham was circumcised, or while he was still uncircumcised? It was not after his circumcision, but before it.
11Abraham received circumcision as a sign and seal confirming that God had counted him as being in the right because of the trust he had while still uncircumcised. In this way he became the father of all uncircumcised people who trust God, so that they too might be counted as being in the right.
12He also became the father of circumcised people—not merely those who are circumcised, but those who follow the path of trust that our father Abraham followed before he was circumcised.
13The promise that Abraham and his descendants would inherit the world did not come through the law. It came through being put right with God by trust.
14If the heirs are those whose claim rests on the law, trust has been emptied of meaning and the promise has been made useless.
15The law brings God’s anger, because people violate what it commands. Where there is no law, there can be no violation of it.
16That is why the promise depends on trust: so that it may be a gift of God’s generosity and remain certain for all Abraham’s descendants—not only those who live under the law, but also those who share Abraham’s trust. He is the father of all of us.
17As the Scriptures say, “I have made you the father of many nations.” Abraham is our father in the sight of the God he trusted—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist.
18Even when there was no human reason to hope, Abraham trusted God and kept hoping. As a result, he became the father of many nations, just as he had been told: “Your descendants will be just as numerous.”
19His trust did not weaken when he considered that his own body could no longer produce a child, since he was about a hundred years old, and that Sarah’s womb could no longer bear a child.
20He did not doubt God’s promise through lack of trust. Instead, he grew strong in trust and gave honor to God.
21He was fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
22Therefore, Abraham’s trust was counted as putting him in the right.
23The statement that it was counted to him was not written for Abraham alone.
24It was also written for us. God will count us as being in the right if we trust the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.
25Jesus was handed over to death because of our wrongs and was raised so that we could be declared in the right.