Sunday School: Counted as Righteous

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Next Sunday is Pentecost! Remember to wear red!

When we meet in person, we share our joys and concerns with each other. If you have prayer requests to share, you can add them to the comments on this post. When you are ready, you may use the prayer below to get started:

In humility and thankfulness, we come to you, Lord God. We thank you for your grace and forgiveness, knowing that even “our best efforts are grease-stained rags,” but because of what Christ has done for us, you count us righteous by faith. And so we give you praise, in Christ’s name. Amen.

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Today's lesson is on Romans 4:13-25. 

Lesson Context
​Romans 4 is part of Paul’s argument in support of the well-known statement he makes in Romans 1:16-17:
“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed — a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”

The good news is that God’s will is that there be a way of reconciliation between God and humans. But there is an obstacle that prevents it — namely, the profound sinfulness of all human beings. Paul explores that obstacle in chapters 1 to 3.

Then in chapter 4, Paul begins his discussion of the remedy to universal sin. Far from facing a hopeless situation, we human beings have model available to us of how to approach God — the life of Abraham. When God promised God would bless the world through Abraham, Abraham chose to respond in faith.

Paul’s readers, especially his readers of Jewish heritage, would have agreed that Abraham’s legacy was important and valuable. The question in dispute is precisely what that legacy is. Paul argues that Abraham had a relationship with God because he placed his faith in God and trusted in God’s promises. Nothing else.

In the New Testament, faith equals trust in God as the one who has promised to bless humanity. Jesus modeled that trust by submitting to his sacrificial death on a cross, being confident that God would work for good through Jesus’ shame and suffering. That trust is the basis for any relationship with the same merciful God.

True heirs of Abraham (verse 13)
Paul does not exclude the Jewish people from God’s concern or minimize the importance of the Law. But Paul builds on the insight that God’s promise to Abraham predates the Law because Abraham lived hundreds of years before Moses and the giving of the Law.
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Faith — which biblically might be defined as trust in God and God’s intention and ability to keep God’s promises — can characterize any person, not just those who were given the Law. Therefore, Paul argues, the relationship between God and humans rests on something deeper than the Law. That deeper reality is faith in Jesus Christ.

Supporting arguments (verses 14 to 25)
Nothing that we can do can save us. That radical confession has its roots in the Old Testament, which also affirms that human achievement does not deliver in the final analysis. The reality of earthly deliverance (such as in Psalm 44:3, and Hosea 11:7-11) is a precursor to the reality of eternal salvation (such as in Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-15).

Rather, the Law of Moses leads one to love God and his fellow human beings. Paul does not mean that Jews or Gentile converts who keep the Law cannot also trust God. Instead, he means that law-keeping cannot substitute for the primary requirement, which is faith.

It is important to recognize that Paul does argue against Jews’ keeping the Law. He only argues against the insistence that Gentiles must do that as well. It’s an unfortunate irony that, after the Judaism and Christianity became separate religions, Christians persecuted Jews and used passages such as this to justify it. But that was never Paul’s position.

In verse 15, Paul points out that the Law has limitations. It can point out sin and the effects it has, but it cannot save people. The Law of Moses emphasizes God’s sense of justice and God’s desire for people to live together in justice and righteousness — the appropriate response when we have a genuine love for God.

Faith is what both Christians of Gentile and Jewish heritage have in common. Trusting in God’s promise, just as Abraham trusted God, is what makes us all children of Abraham and heirs of the promise that God made to him.

Abraham was a very old man and his wife, Sarah, was beyond the age of reproduction. While Abraham recognized the reality of his and his wife’s physical states, he did not see that natural limit as the end of the possibilities available to God.

Just as Abraham trusted God in spite of his seemingly hopeless situation, those who trust in Christ acknowledge they are hopelessly separated from God and can do nothing to remedy the situation. But, like Abraham, they trust God will be true to God’s promises and that God will respond by giving life and creating a new reality.

It was because of that trust, Paul writes, that God counted Abraham as righteous. In the same way, when we trust in God’s son and in the promise of life that we believe Jesus’s death brings, God imputes his righteousness to us.

Conclusion
God counts us righteous when we, like Abraham, trust the promises of redemption and live accordingly. We are not righteous because of the good we do or the evil we avoid, but because God acknowledges us as loyal to him, staking all our hopes on his promises. And his offer of salvation extends to all because sin has wrecked us all. We stand together in both our need and our hope.

This unity of humanity may show itself in different ways. We might wallow together in our sin, growing increasingly hostile to each other and sacrificing our common humanity on the altar of greed, envy, pride and hatred. Or we might acknowledge our need, trust in God’s mercy, and so join in a community built on such a faith. The choice belongs to us.
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How do we build a community on such a basis? A church full of people who trust in God’s promises live generous, open-hearted, kind lives. They, like Abraham, show hospitality to strangers as though they were angels (Hebrews 13:2). Such a church values the whole trajectory of a person’s life of faith, emphasizing neither failures nor heroic successes but faithfulness in the face of adversity (James 1:2-3) and God’s seeming slowness to act (2 Peter 3:9). This community of believers knows itself to be saved, not because of its own merits but because of God’s mercy.

Prayer
God of Abraham and all who trust you, focus our minds not on our own limitations but on your great love for your creation. Thank you for Jesus’ sacrifice, which we accept in faith as reconciling us to you. In his name we pray. Amen.

Questions for discussion

• When have you experienced someone “voiding” a promise?
• What gives you confidence that God has not voided the promise God made based on Abraham’s faith?
• How often to you speak of hope as a wish or a dream?
• How could your witness be strengthened if you only used the word to refer to hope based on God’s promises?
• Do you react differently to a broken promise if the promise-maker lacks the power rather than the will to fulfill it? Why or why not?

Benediction

Next week's lesson will be on Romans 5:1-11.