Or, The God Who Brings His Promise to Life
Scripture: Romans 4:13-17
Date: April 3, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Men are manipulators. It is not necessarily a bad thing, at least depending on the definition of manipulation. The Latin word manus means “hand.” To manipulate is a derivative that means to handle, so manipulation is the the word for putting your hands to something; a manual transmission is hand-operated. It obviously has picked up some nasty metaphorical baggage over the years, so that now our first thought about manipulation is trying to get something through “insidious means especially to one’s own advantage” (Merriam-Webster). We don’t appreciate this sort of pushing or steering by another.
The original meaning, subduing the earth by hand, belongs with our image-bearing. I don’t think that opposable thumbs is what makes us image-bearers rather than clever dolphins, but it belongs with our God-given bodies and our God-ordained work. Hand-eye coordination has brought some beautiful and useful things into our dominion.
But especially nowadays, we are tempted to think that if we can’t see it and touch it then it can’t be as important. We want to make things happen. We think we are the ones who make things happen. Is it urgent? All hands on deck.
Of course this is sort of true and mostly not true even though we work hard to ignore how much it isn’t true. We can’t see gravity, and we certainly didn’t create gravity nor can we move gravity around, and yet we depend on gravity so obviously that we take it for granted. God uses gravity to keep the planets and stars in their spheres, and we don’t worry about them crashing into earth. Our hands can write out a scientific formula, but we’ve had no hand at all in how it works.
The principle applies to babies being born, and to crops coming up. The principle also applies to God’s blessing on the world. It is His power, and it comes from His promise.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have things to do. But can you imagine if the world’s blessing really depended on our strength, our wisdom, our obedience? Instead, the world runs on grace, which is out of our hands. The world runs because God is gracious and He gives it His attention. The heirs of the world will only be those with faith, the offspring of Abraham.
In Romans 4 Paul looks to Abraham as the forefather, not just those according to the flesh, but all those with faith. We’ve seen so far faith over works, faith over circumcision, and now faith over law. In Romans 4:13-17 Paul stresses God’s promise to Abraham, and even more than that, the nature of the God who made the promise. God is the one who brings His promise to life.
Abraham’s circumcision didn’t earn him favor with God (Romans 4:9-12); God declared Abraham righteous almost fifteen years before he felt the knife. Not only the special sign, but the special revelation in the law came later. When codified in the Mosaic Law, which the Jews held so proudly, it was 430 years after Abraham’s justification (Galatians 3:17). God came to Abraham not with law but with promise.
For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. (Romans 4:13–15, ESV)
Promise is a noun, a thing, a summary, and it is also a way God acts. In Abraham’s case this promise was far beyond what he could have asked or imagined. Apart from considering Abraham’s moral resume, God promised him offspring , “seed.” The word in Greek (τῷ σπέρματι) is singular, and in Galatians 3:16 Paul goes out of his way to say that the seed is Christ. But Paul also uses “seed” in the collective sense of all the descendants, just as words such as “family” and “team” are one but include many parts. We know Paul means the many here because of verse 17 and the “many nations.”
The promise was that he would have offspring and that he would be heir of the world. Usually an heir takes possession when the owner dies, but Romans 4:13 doesn’t specify when it will happen. The cosmos was his inheritance, a description also given about God’s Son in Hebrews 1:2. The world would be his, and implied is both earthly and eternally, material and spiritual. As Paul put it to the Corinthians, “all are yours” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23), and will be forever.
This promise was unsought for by Abraham and it was also unconditional to him. He had done nothing to earn it, and he could not do anything to lose it. There are if/then promises from God, what are referred to as conditional promises. But this blessing, of offspring and the world, was based in God’s unconditional promise and grace alone.
It did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith . Inheritance did not depend on any particular rule or regulation, no general code of conduct. Abraham would be heir through nothing other than believing.
But what would be the case if the salvation of men was based on the keeping of the law? Consciences would have no certainty, but would be harassed with perpetual inquietude , and at length sink in despair; and the promise itself, the fulfillment of which depended on what is impossible, would also vanish away without producing any fruit. (John Calvin)
Verses 14 and 15 drill down to establish alternatives. If Abraham—and with him as the example it’s true for all the rest—could have held up his part of a contract, then it really wouldn’t be promise, his inheritance would be similar to wages (as in 4:4). If the giving of inheritance depended on Abraham, and he met the conditions, then it would be due to him, not really a gift. It also makes faith unnecessary.
Paul keeps taking opportunity to point out to the law-lovers that law never brings deliverance, instead the law brings wrath . This isn’t the work of the law to provoke sin (though that is true according to Romans 7:5), but that the law points out wrong and the consequences for doing wrong. Those who do such things deserve death (Romans 1:32, 6:23). The Lawgiver is just and punishes wrongdoers. That’s wrath.
The law came to make transgression clear. Where there is no law there is no transgression. The sign says: don’t cross the line, and the law makes no personal allowances or concessions for overstepping. The law provides no strength in itself for keeping it. If our inheritance depended on law, it would slip right through our hands.
When you hope for a great inheritance, and the “world” is pretty great, what is the guarantee? This is how much God intends to bless: He guarantees it by Himself. This is the reason we have hope and how that hope can be solid.
That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (Romans 4:16–17, ESV)
The gospel of grace, received by faith alone, is not about making salvation easy but about making it secure. Grace isn’t a breeze that cools off our guilt, it is the ocean that carries us along. And it doesn’t run dry. Grace goes to work and is opposed to our pathetic attempts to steer it or catch it. The promise rests on grace , and that’s how it was guaranteed to all his offspring .
Paul quotes Genesis 17:4-5 to reiterate that the believers are sons of Abraham, “the father of a multitude of nations” (a phrase used in both verses), and this promise comes when God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude.” The ultimate inheritance of the world belongs to Abraham’s offspring, even though we think the sons of Abraham through Jacob have a particular land promised to them as well.
The key is the nature of God, the one in whom Abraham believed, the same one in whom we believe. God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist . Considered from Abraham’s perspective, both of these descriptions could apply to his offspring, and then nations. He was “as good as dead” in reproductive terms, and no eggs existed in Sarah (Romans 4:19). Considered from Paul’s perspective, he knew of Lazarus and Jesus Himself who were raised from the dead. Think Ephesians 1:19-20. The non-existing to the existing things only take a word from God (as in Genesis 1).
The world came into being by God’s call, the world is the inheritance of faith by God’s call. You who believe have been brought from spiritual death to life, your hope was non-existent (Ephesians 2:12).
More about Abraham’s faith to finish chapter four.
We are here, four thousand years later, on the other side of the planet, looking to the same God and same promise. He continues to bring His promise to life. We are part of the fulfillment. No man could have made this happen with all his strength, let alone his sinful liabilities. This kind of good news is out of our hands.
We live on promises. We live through powerful grace. We live by faith in God through His Son Jesus Christ. All are ours, the world is ours, because God is a promise-maker. Lift up your head and hold out your hands in faith.
We live from faith to faith in what God has done, and by faith in what He says He will do. We are encouraged by looking back over His providence, but we are also changed as we hold onto His promises. He has given us “His precious and very great promises” in order to know His glory and excellence and let us partake in them (2 Peter 2:3-4). Hold fast to His promises.
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead. (Ephesians 1:17-20a, ESV)