Gospel Humility: NBA-No Boasting Allowed-Romans 4:1-8

New Testament, Romans, Sermons

 

2018-05-22 13:47:08

Created by: 66

Last week: Gospel Application–NBF (Nothing But Faith). This week: NBA (Gospel Humility). Consider: Why do we Christians boast? Why should we not?

“…that God, in the act of justification, has no regard to anything in the person justified, as godliness, or any goodness in him; but that immediately before this act, God beholds him only as an ungodly creature; so that godliness in the person to be justified is not so antecedent to his justification as to be the ground of it.” Jonathan Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone.

“You are not mature if you have a high esteem of yourself. He who boasts in himself is but a babe in Christ, if indeed he be in Christ at all. Young Christians may think much of themselves. Growing Christians think themselves nothing. Mature Christians know that they are less than nothing. The more holy we are, the more we mourn our infirmities, and the humbler is our estimate of ourselves.” Charles Spurgeon.

“Grace puts its hand on the boasting mouth, and shuts it once for all.” Charles Spurgeon.

“Many may boast in the depth of their Bible knowledge and in the excellency of their theological tenets, but those with spiritual discernment are aware that it is dead.” Watchman Nee.

“Least doers are the greatest boasters.” William Gurnall.

“When we look at the ungodly, we are not to hate them – but to pity them, mourn over them, and pray for them. Nor have we any right to boast over them; for, by nature, and of ourselves, we are no better than they.” John Newton.

“However sweet the word may sound, any sectarian boasting is but the babbling of a babe. The divisions in the church are due to no other cause than to lack of love and walking after the flesh.” Watchman Nee.

“It is common for those that are farthest from God, to boast themselves most of their being near to the Church.” Matthew Henry.

How do we Christians boast about:

* how spiritual/obedient/holy we are?

* ourselves — our views/strengths/merits/criticism of others who are not like us?

* our church — “superior” church practices, “special” church history?

* our family/children/siblings/friends/leaders?

* our connections with “special” people?

What does boasting show about Christians (Mt 6:1, 5, 16)? Might Christians mistake boasting for praising God? When or how does Scripture say to boast (1 Cor 1:31; 2 Cor 10:17; 11:30; 12:9; Gal 6:14)?

The theme of 3:27-4:25 is “by faith alone.” In the great theological thesis of 3:21-26, Paul concentrates on one key element in that thesis: “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” (Rom 3:22). Faith is the only means of justification/righteousness/salvation. Faith is the topic in every paragraph of this section of Romans (3:27-4:25).

  1. General statement (3:27-31). Initial statement of the theme: “By faith alone.” Paul’s defense against critics.
  2. Elucidation and elaboration with a specific instance — Abraham (4:1-25). The faith of Abraham: “By faith alone.”

Romans 4 is Paul’s appeal to Abraham to support his insistence that righteousness can be attained only through faith. As in 3:27-31 Paul not only establishes the doctrine of justification by faith alone, but also draws out the implication of sola fide–faith alone by quoting and explaining Genesis 15:6 regarding how God credited/reckoned Abraham as righteous by virtue of his faith alone–without works.

3:27-31 and Romans 4 are closely related with an impressive degree of parallelism between the two in regards to:

  • Boasting: It is excluded (Rom 3:27a); Abraham has no right to boast (Rom 4:1-2).
  • Faith/works: Justified by faith not works (Rom 3:27b-28); Abraham was justified by faith, not works (4:3-8).
  • Gentile inclusion: Circumcised and uncircumcised united under one God through faith (Rom 3:29-30); circumcised and uncircumcised are united as children of Abraham through faith (4:9-17), not circumcision (9-12) or the law (13-17).

4:1-8 (a commentary on 3:27-28) unfolds in four stages:

  1. NBA: Boasting excluded (1-2) because justification/righteousness is by faith without works.
  2. Scripture: OT evidence that Abraham was justified by faith alone without works (3).
  3. Grace: Abraham’s righteousness is a gracious act of God who justifies the ungodly (4-5). The heart of this paragraph.
  4. Forgiveness: God’s reckening defined in terms of forgiveness with appeal to David in Ps 32:1-2 (6-8).

The points Paul briefly makes in 3:27-31, he now elaborates by referring to the history of Abraham. It is important for Paul to cite Abraham for two reasons.

  1. Judaism made much of Abraham but viewed him as a great pioneer of “torah piety,” a man who pleased God above all by his obedience to the law.
  2. Abraham was a recipient of God’s promise, an ancestor of the Jewish people and thus occupies a crucial place in OT salvation-history.

The importance of Romans 4:

  1. Paul clarifies the meaning of justification by faith by using what Scripture says about Abraham and David to elaborate the significance of both words: “justification” in terms of reckoning of righteousness to the unfrighteous, and “faith” in terms of trusting the God of creation and resurrection.
  2. Paul wants Jewish Christians to grasp that his gospel of justification by faith is no novelty. It was proclaimed beforehand in the OT. He wants Gentile Christians to appreciate the rich spiritual heritage they have entered by faith in Jesus, in continuity with the OT people of God and which is attested to by the OT (Rom 1:2; 3:21, 31). Abraham and David show that justification by faith is God’s one and only way of salvation, 1st in the OT as well as in the NT, and is for Jews as well as for Gentiles.

Why did Paul choose Abraham as his main example?

  1. He was the founding father of Israel.
  2. He was held in the highest esteem by the Rabbis as the epitome of righteousness and even the special “friend of God (2 Chron 20:7; Isa 41:8; Jas 2:23). The Jewish interpretation of Abraham stressed his works as the essence of his piety and the basis for his extraordinary, exemplary relationship to God. They took it for granted that he had been justified by works of rightesousness. They quoted the Scriptures in which God promised to bless Abraham because he had obeyed him (Gen 22:15; 26:2), without observing that these verses referred to Abraham’s life of obedience after his justification (Gen 15:6). They even quoted Gen 15:6 in such a way as to represent Abraham’s faith as meaning his fidelity or faithfulness, which was terefore meritorious.

4 chief episodes of Abraham’s life:

  1. God’s calling (Gen 11:27ff; 12:1ff).
  2. God’s promise of land and descendants (Gen 13:14; 14:6; 15:5).
  3. God’s covenant of circumcision (Gen 17:1, 17).
  4. God’s test to sacrifice Isaac (Gen 22:1ff).

“Let us also remember, that the condition of us all is the same with that of Abraham. 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. What then is to be done? We must with closed eyes pass by ourselves and all things connected with us, that nothing may hinder or prevent us from believing that God is true.” John Calvin.

Paul saw that one of the central errors of his Jewish contemporaries was to emphasize the Mosaic covenant at the expense of God’s prior arrangement with Abraham (Gal 3:15-18). Paul thus needs to cite Abraham to show that his emphasis on justification by faith is no new, revolutionary doctrine, but the teaching of Scripture from the beginning. Furthermore, Paul uses Abraham to make absolutely clear just what faith is in a series of contrasts that anticipate the great Reformation principle of sola fide.

NBA, NBF (Gospel Humility) — No Boasting Allowed, Nothing But Faith. The condition Paul states — If … Abraham was justified by works — must be rejected because it was God’s own verdict not on the basis of works, but on the basis of Abraham’s faith (Rom 4:2-3). This verdict is given in Scripture itself in Genesis 15:6. This text becomes the basis for the rest of Paul’s exposition. He shows that this “credit/reckon as righteous” precisely because it is based on faith and excludes works (4-8), circumcision (9-12) and the law (13-17). Paul details the strength and nature of Abraham’s faith that led to his righteousness (18-21), the cites his text once again (22), and concludes by making clear its applicability to Christians (23-25). Thus:

  1. NBW, NBA: Abraham was not justified by works (1-8). Boasting is excluded (Rom 3:27-28).
  2. NBC: Abraham was not justified by circumcision (9-12). Circumcision makes no difference (Rom 3:29-30).
  3. NBL: Abraham was not justified by the law (13-17a). The law has its proper, God-assigned plance (Rom 3:31).
  4. NBF: Abraham was justified by faith (17b-22).
  5. NBC: Conclusion: Abraham’s faith and ours (23-25). [Abbreviations below.]

In Gen 15:6, Abraham’s faith is his complete trust in God with reference to God’s promise that he would have a natural descendant (Gen 15:4-5), which is a renewal of the promise of worldwide blessing in Gen 12:1-3. “Reckoning” of Abraham’s faith as righteousness means to account to him a righteousness that does not inherently belong to him. Abraham’s respons to God’s promise leads God to “recken” to him a “status” of righteousness. The essential point that Abraham’s relationship with God is established as an act of God’s grace in response to Abraham’s faith is the same in both Genesis and Romans. In contrast Jewish interpreters often viewed Gen 15:6 through the lens of Gen. 22, so that Abraham’s “faith” became his obedience to God and was regarded as a “work” for which God owed Abraham a reward. Paul’s interpretation stands squarely against this tradition.

Paul’s purpose in Rom 4:4-5 is to contrast faith and works, from what is said about Abraham’s justification in Gen 15:6.

  1. Works have no part in justification.
  2. This is so because God’s justifying verdict is not earned, but freely given.

Works imply obligation. A person who works receives wages that an employer is obligated to pay. Faith, on the other hand, implies a situation of free giving. Faith makes no demands on the giver nor is the giver obligated to respond. God is never obliged by his creatures: justification is a gift, freely bestowed, not a wage, justly earned. This contrast shows clearly that justification must rest on faith. This is because God, by definition, is a God of grace, a God who justifies the wicked/ungodly (Rom 4:5). No one is accepted into a reltionship with God because they have earned it by their righteousness/works (which they boast about). It is only the wicked/ungodly person, the person who has no righteousness of his own to plead his case, whom God accepts. Here Paul reminds us of one of the great truths of Scripture that people can make no claim on God’s attention. Establishing a relationship with God is entirely a matter of God’s free gift, to be accepted in humble faith. That God acts toward his creatures graciously — without complulsion or necessity — is one of Paul’s nonnegotiable theological axioms. Thus, the faith that gained righteousness for Abraham was a faith that excluded works. This might appear mundane or obvious to us Protestants today. But it flew in the face of the dominant Jewish theology of the day, which joined faith and works closely together, resulting in a kind of synergism with respect to salvation.

To underline the point that Paul has been making from the Pentateuch (Gen 15:6), he adds, in good Jewish fashion, a confirmatory text from the “Writings.” In Ps 32:1-2, David also makes clear that God justifies people “apart from works” (Rom 4:6). Blessing, David makes clear, is a matter not of a person’s achievement/works/merits, but of a person being forgiven by God (Rom 4:7-8). Paul makes clear that the phrase “credited as righteousness” in Gen 15:6 means that God considers a person to have a status of “righteousness” (“calculated in his favor, putting him in the right” — NT Wright), in which that person’s sins are not “counted” against them (Ps 103:10-12).

Paul uses a series of antithesis to draw out the nature and implications of faith as the sole means of justification. Faith is contrasted with”works of the law” (Rom 3:28),”works” (4:1-8), circumcision (4:9-12),”sight” (4:17-22).

With these contrasts Paul enunciates the hallmark of the Reformation teaching: sola fide — that “faith alone” is the means by which a person can be brought into a relationship with the God of the Bible.”Faith alone” Paul argues in this section is necessary to maintian sola gratia: “by grace alone.” Also, it is necessary to ensure that Gentiles have equal access with Jews to the one God. The inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God has been God’s plan all along, as his dealings with Abraham demonstrate. The revelation of God’s righteousness “apart from the law” (Rom 3:21) opens up this possibility not present before. Thus, the inclusion of the Gentiles within the people of God is also an important theme in this section and continues to crop up (Rom 3:29-30; 4:9-12, 16-17) as one motif within the larger argument of “faith alone.”

With a Jewish/Jewish-Christian viewpoint Paul argues for “faith alone” with a polemical thrust by contesting the importance of the law (Rom 3:27-28; 4:13-15), works (4:2-8) and circumcision (4:9-12). Paul’s presentation of the gospel in Romans maintains continuity with the OT and with Judaism by explaining that justification by faith is nothing more that what the OT itself teaches (ch.4), that faith “establishes/upholds” the law (Rom 3:31) and even circumcision, while no longer the necessary sign of those who belong to God, is upheld as valid for Jews (Rom 4:11-12). Paul is intent to show how the gospel breaks the boundaries of the Old Covenant while at the same time standing in continuity with it: continuity within discontinuity is his theme. This meets the needs of all people, both Jew and Gentile, with neither having any advantage or superiority.

Boasting for Jews/Christians is excluded (Rom 3:27a; 4:2). Boasting is a sin common to all people. It reflects the pride that is at the root of so much human sinfulness. The pride of Jews/Christians is their special covenant relationship to God (Rom 2:17), as well as their pride in accomplishments. It is the tendency for the Jew/Christian to think that his obedience to the law constituted some kind of advantage and claim on God, that Paul rejects. There is nothing at all wrong with doing the law (obeying the Bible), according to Paul. The problem, rather, is when doing the law is regarded as an achievement on the basis of which some credit or benefit is earned and that a relationship with God could be established or maintained as a result of it.

Paul’s reason for excluding boasting has also to do with a contrast between faith and works (Rom 3:27b-28).

Questions:

Romans 4 is Paul’s use of Abraham to support his nonnegotiable thesis that righteousness/justification is only through faith by quoting and explaining Genesis 15:6. Thus,

  • Abraham was not justified by w____ (1-8). Boasting is excluded (3:27-28).
  • Abraham was not justified by c___________ (9-12). Circumcision makes no difference (3:29-30).
  • Abraham was not justified by the l__ (13-17a). The law has its proper, God-assigned place (3:31).
  • Abraham was justified by f____ (17b-22).
  • Conclusion: Abraham’s faith and o___ (23-25).
  1. What, apart from Christ, might you be tempted to boast in as the grounds of your confidence or self-worth? How do we Christians boast about:
  2. how spiritual/obedient/holy we are?
  3. ourselves — our views/strengths/merits/criticism of others who are not like us?
  4. our church — “superior” church practices, “special” church history?
  5. our family/children/siblings/friends/leaders?
  6. our connections with “special” people?
  7. What does boasting show about Christians (Mt 6:1, 5, 16)? What effect should justification by faith have on boasting (3:27-28; 4:1-2)?
  8. As Christians what should we boast in (1 Cor 1:31; 2 Cor 10:17; 11:30; 12:9; Gal 6:14)? How will you ensure you boast only in this God glorifying way?
  9. Why did Paul choose Abraham as his main example (Gen 12:2-3; 2 Chron 20:7; Isa 41:8; Jas 2:23)? Is justification by faith just a NT teaching (Gen 15:6; Ps 32:1-2)? How did Jewish interpreters view Abraham (Gen 15:6; 22:18; 26:5)? How does Paul show that Abraham was justified by faith and not by works (Rom 4:3-5; Gen 15:6)?
  10. What are the 4 chief episodes of Abraham’s life?
    1. God’s c______ (Gen 11:27ff; 12:1ff).
    2. God’s p______ of land and descendants (Gen 13:14-15; 15:5).
    3. God’s c_______ of c___________ (Gen 17:1-2, 10-14).
    4. God’s t___ (Gen 22:1ff).

References:

  1. Douglas Moo —The Epistle to the Romans (New International Commentary on the New Testament, 1996).
  2. Douglas Moo —Exegetical examination of Romans. This course was recorded during a D.Min. seminar at the Carolina Graduate School of Divinity in May 2012.
  3. John Stott —The Message of Romans (The Bible Speaks Today, 1994).
  4. Tim Keller —Romans 1-7 For You (The Good Book Company, 2014).

 

  1. NBW, NBA: Abraham was not justified by works (1-8). Boasting is excluded (Rom 3:27-28). [Not by works. No boasting allowed.]
  2. NBC: Abraham was not justified by circumcision (9-12). Circumcision makes no difference (Rom 3:29-30). [Not by circumcision.]
  3. NBL: Abraham was not justified by the law (13-17a). The law has its proper, God-assigned plance (Rom 3:31). [Not by law.]
  4. NBF: Abraham was justified by faith (17b-22). [Nothing but faith.]
  5. NBC: Conclusion: Abraham’s faith and ours (23-25). [New born Christians.]

 

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