Or, Wavering Isn’t Worship
Scripture: Romans 4:18-25
Date: April 10, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Regardless of what anyone tells you, doubt doesn’t make you cool. We doubt because it makes us think that we know better, because we think it’ll help us save face when the thing, whatever it was, turns out not to be true. “Hey, at least I wasn’t gullible like those twits.”
Christians should be more comfortable looking crazy. We should boast more in the things we can’t see. We are believers, and if you can see it, then you don’t need faith. If you don’t need faith, then you can’t glorify or please God. He delights to make promises to His people and then making their faith like gold.
So, yeah, we don’t believe everything anyone says, but we do believe everything God’s Word says. The world is full of liars, but Scripture doesn’t make a virtue of skepticism, and actually condemns the double-minded. The righteous live by faith, we are born again to a living hope, and that means we live on unseen things. This is how we are saved, this is what we are saved unto: faith and hope.
Doubt siphons of strength. Doubt divides attention. Doubt hamstrings our walk in obedience. Disobedience may cause doubt, but doubt also leads to disobedience. The Word calls for and builds up faith.
Abraham is the man of faith, he is the father of all those with faith. In this last part of Romans 4 Paul puts a bow on the story of Abraham’s belief and asserts that it applies to all believers.
Verses 18-21 are one sentence, with a follow up conclusion sentence in verse 22. Having already taught that it was Abraham’s faith that saved him, not his works or circumcision or connection to the law, Paul tells a little more of Abraham’s story.
The first part Paul points out are the two reasonably incompatible facts on the ground: 1) the word of the Lord said Abraham would be a father and 2) there was no human way he could be a father.
Who, that is [Abraham], against hope in hope believed that he would become the father of many nations according to the word said, “So will be your offspring,” and not wavering in faith he considered his own body already having been put to death, being about one-hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb, (verses 18-19)
The two prepositional phrases are right next to each other and they start the sentence: against hope in hope. That Abraham believed against hope means that there was no good reason to hope; the wind was against him and he had no ground to stand on. Becoming a father at this point in his life was as hopeless as telling a mountain to move.
Yet he’d been told that even his name wasn’t sufficient for what was supposed to happen. Abram, meaning “exalted father,” was too little. Abraham means “father of a multitude” (Genesis 17:5). Paul quotes “So will be your offspring” which requires the context.
And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Genesis 15:5, ESV)
The object of his belief wasn’t hope, hope was the way he believed. He believed bullishly, confidently.
Abraham did not believe blindly. He saw the problems with his situation. He considered, he measured in his mind, that his body was basically dead, at least in reproductive terms. He was century-level impotent, past the point of help from mail-order drugs. And Sarah’s womb was barren; Paul uses a word for deadness and says she had “deadness of womb.” But his consideration was without weakening in faith. His faith wasn’t giving way.
except faith flies upward on celestial wings, so as to look down on all the perceptions of the flesh as on things far below, it will stick fast in the mud of the world. (John Calvin)
Verses 20-21 state what didn’t happen and what did happen and what resulted from that happening.
but unto the promise of God he was not wavered in faith but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being fully convinced that He who promised is able also to do (it).
In verse 18 “believed” is active and in verse 19 “considered” is active. Abraham acted. In verse 20 was not wavered is passive and in verse 21 was strengthened is also passive meaning that Abraham was acted upon.
Stated one way, his faith was kept from wavering. The word waver has the idea of being divided, of being split apart. His faith wasn’t being reduced to a fraction. Stated another way, his faith was strengthened. So, not weak but strong, not wavering but steady, like wind rather than rain to a fire.
The result of faith is that he was giving glory to God. The verb, “glorifying” isn’t a separate thing in addition to the being strengthened in faith, it is a result of the strong faith. God is glorified when we depend on Him.
This belongs first with justification by faith alone, which Paul is still explaining in Romans 4. It also belongs with living by faith. The Lord is not impressed by us, He desires to impress us, so to speak, when we acknowledge that we need Him, and then when we give Him thanks after He’s given what we need. This is the message of Psalm 50: call on Him in the day of trouble.
God isn’t impressed because we doubt Him better, or if we work to keep ourselves never needing His help.
There was a filling up of Abraham’s thinking with the power of the Promiser: being fully convinced that the one who promised is able to do (whatever He promised). Abraham did laugh (Genesis 17:17), and even asked that Ishmael might be the one, and yet the
This is the conclusion; we’re back to where it all started, since Paul quoted the same thing in verse 3 and referred to it again in verse 9.
Therefore, it [faith] was counted to him unto righteousness.
Abraham believed God and God’s Word to him. Justification is the word for this imputed righteousness, righteousness credited or counted by God to Abraham’s ledger.
From the beginning of the chapter Paul has been pushing Abraham’s story as the example, and here at the end of the chapter Paul leaves no doubt as to its relevance.
But this was written not only for him, that “it was counted to him,” but also for us, those who will be counted,
Counted, credited, counted. It’s now the fourth time that Paul has quoted this statement from Genesis 15:6. We could call it the proto-iusto, the first justification. The Scripture revealed it for every son of Abraham in Israel, which was instruction for them that they missed. And as Paul regularly affirms, the Old Testament is profitable for us. It applies
The “us” of application are identified:
the ones believing in the one who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered over on account of our trespasses and who was raised on account of our justification.
Abraham looked forward, by faith in hope, to the promise to be fulfilled, and we look backward and forward, to the Person of Jesus and to our inheritance in Him.
The one who raised…Jesus is not Jesus, but the Father. God who promised seed to Abraham (Galatians 3:16) is God who raised the Seed. We do not share the exact same words of promise, but we do share the exact same God of the words and promises.
The last verse has a parallel structure that modifies Jesus our Lord. Jesus was delivered, handed over to the Romans who beat and crucified Him, and this was because of our sins. Jesus was also raised, brought to life on the third day, for our justification.
His death was because of our sin. He was without sin. He died because we deserved to die. More than the Jews and Romans, the Father delivered Him up for us (Romans 8:32, see also Isaiah 53:10). He was “pierced for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53). “For our sake He (the Father) made Him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him (Jesus) we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). It is substitution, the righteous for the unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18).
His resurrection guarantees our justification. As with the delivering, so with the raising, the Father did it (Romans 6:4; Ephesians 1:19-20).
There are other verses that say we are justified by His death, by His blood (Romans 5:9, see also Romans 3:24-26). But this distinction is part of the “all are yours” of ways to talk about our salvation. We should run out of ways to refer to it just as soon as a woman runs out of ways to prepare meat.
His resurrection means that He is alive, it confirms that the Father accepted His sacrifice, and it means that our hope is not in this life only (1 Corinthians 15:19). We shall be made alive in Him as well.
What around you feeds your faith, fills your hope? Corruption, death, disappointments, sins, doubts. Look to the Father through the Son. Christ in You is the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). Forgiveness, riches of kindness and patience, life. So get to the Word, get ahold of the promises. Pray for grace to strengthen your faith that it wouldn’t waver. Wavering isn’t worship.
His goal is to bring our doubt to an end, by eventually bringing our faith to an end.
Thomas Watson wrote, “If the sinews be cut, the body is lame; if the sinew of faith be cut, hope is lame.” Don’t play with the knife of cynicism. When the evil one flings his flaming darts of doubt in your direction — and do you think he won’t? — take up the shield of faith (Ephesians 6:16).
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13, ESV)