In Nomine Iesu

Pastor Thomas L. Rank
Trinity 7
July 10, 2005

Text: Romans 4:1-8
What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” 4 Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. 5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, 6 just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; 8 Blessed is the man to whom the LORD shall not impute sin.”

THESE ARE YOUR WORDS, HEAVENLY FATHER, SANCTIFY US BY YOUR TRUTH, YOUR WORD IS TRUTH. AMEN.

Abraham had received promises from God, three promises in particular. Abraham was promised that he would possess a great land, that a great nation would come from him, and that through him all nations would be blessed through a special descendant of Abraham's. Each of these promises Abraham received by faith. He left the land of his father and his family and journeyed to a strange place, all because he trusted the promise of God and even though he’d never seen this land.

Abraham also believed the Lord when God told him that he would have descendants as many as the stars in the heavens. Abraham believed, even though he was an old man, and even though his beloved wife Sarah has been unable to have any children for decades.

And finally, Abraham believed that there would be a special descendant, one that would come his own flesh and blood. This special descendant would be none other than Jesus Christ, born over 1800 years after Abraham.

For all these promises of God Abraham had only God’s Word to rely on. When we read about all of this in Genesis chapter 15, do you know how much land Abraham had, or how many descendants? He basically had nothing. But he still trusted God’s promises, and that trust in the Word of God, in God Himself, was "accounted to him for righteousness."

St. Paul uses the example of Abraham because of his primary role in the history of Israel. Abraham is the father of the nation of Israel. He is the great patriarch. If Abraham can be shown to have been saved by the law, by works, by his own righteousness, then Paul’s contending for faith alone will have no firm foundation. Therefore St. Paul goes right to the heart of the matter and points to Abraham as the great example of salvation by faith alone. We also see here a great example of how Scripture interprets Scripture, where St. Paul quotes from Genesis, and also from one of David's penitential psalms, and shows how they fit perfectly with the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Old and New Testaments are not separated, but united in their teaching on justification by God’s grace alone through faith alone.

What we see in these words of Romans 4 and the reference to Abraham from Genesis 15 is the teaching of the nature of saving faith, what it is. Luther defined this faith in this way: "Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times" (LW 35, 370). And in the same way our Lutheran confessions discuss faith. We hear from the Formula of Concord, Article III (Tappert, 541).

Faith is a gift of God whereby we rightly learn to know Christ as our redeemer in the Word of the Gospel and to trust in him, that solely for the sake of his obedience we have forgiveness of sins by grace, are accounted righteous and holy by God the Father, and are saved forever. Thus the following statements of St. Paul are to be considered and taken as synonymous: "We are justified by faith" (Rom. 3:28), or "faith is reckoned to us as righteousness" (Rom. 4:5), or when he says that we are justified by the obedience of Christ, our only mediator, or that "one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men" (Rom. 5:18). For faith does not justify because it is so good a work and so God-pleasing a virtue, but because it lays hold on and accepts the merit of Christ in the promise of the holy Gospel. This merit has to be applied to us and to be made our own through faith if we are to be justified thereby. Therefore the righteousness which by grace is reckoned to faith or to the believers is the obedience, the passion, and the resurrection of Christ when he satisfied the law for us and paid for our sin.

First let us note one thing that faith is not. It is not a good work. We are not saved because our faith is so strong and pure. Rather, faith saves because of its object, because of in whom it puts its whole trust and certainty. We are not saved because we believe, or because we can say, "I'm a believer." Salvation is brought because of who it is that is believed. We are saved because we confess our faith in Jesus Christ and no other. When the Christian church teaches about faith it is not about some generic faith, but about faith specifically in Jesus, the great descendant of Abraham through Jesus' mother, Mary, but also the Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds.

Also, faith is not even of our own creation. Faith itself is a gift of God, something He gives for us to use to apprehend, cling to, hold on to Jesus our Savior. This faith is worked in us as we hear God’s Word, as the Holy Spirit "creates faith where and when He pleases in those who hear the Gospel."

By faith in Jesus Christ, by trusting Him and all He has done, His life, death, and resurrection, you are blessed. You are blessed because in Christ your sins are forgiven, they are covered, they are not imputed to you. Instead of sin and all the judgment it rightly deserves you are now given the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

This saving faith, because of the great blessing it brings to you through Jesus Christ, is going to be targeted by the enemies of Christ and faith: devil, world, and flesh. Always there will be the temptation to add to faith with our own works. And this is so tempting because we know that faith without works is dead. But the conclusion is not to mix up works and faith, but to keep them in their rightful places. One of our Lutheran hymns puts it like this:

Faith to the cross of Christ doth cling
And rests in Him securely
And forth from it good works must spring
As fruits and tokens surely;
Still faith alone doth justify
Works serve our neighbor and make known
The faith that lives within thee. (ELH 227:10)

As much as there is a needed emphasis on the doing of works that serve the people God puts in our lives, still we must never brush aside the fundamental truth that "faith alone doth justify." For without faith it is impossible to please God, and without faith works are empty of any good whatsoever.

Besides this temptation to works, there will be the attack against the very Word of God on which faith rests. Consider the many ways that are used to cause doubt about God's Word: evolution instead of creation, the denial of the miracles of both Old and New Testaments, the false charges that Jesus is not true God, not equal with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Each of these, and all the others, finally have as their goal the destruction of saving faith in Jesus. Therefore we must learn to cling tightly to these words of St. Paul, given to him by God the Holy Spirit, so that we be certain of the scriptural fact that salvation is only through faith in the work of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. We close with the words of Romans 4:

For what does the Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.' ...Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the LORD shall not impute sin....

Thanks be to God! Amen.