“Righteousness In Faith, Not Works”

Scripture: Romans 4:1-8

One of the major stumbling blocks of the 1st century church was the issue of circumcision. For Israel, it was an absolute. If you were a Jewish male, on the 8th day after you were birth, you were “under the knife”. If you weren’t Jewish but desired to become one, you too had to be circumcised, regardless of your age! We have to remember that initially, until about 70 AD or so, Christianity was still a part of Judaism and this teaching on circumcision, so deeply rooted in the Jewish faith, seemed to be working its way into Christian teachings. And the Gentiles, at least the men, weren’t all that happy about it, but they were doing it just the same, and they saw it as an expression of faith.

But Paul, who would describe himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews, of the Tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee in the law, and filled with zeal and legal righteousness (Philippians 3:4-6),
was now seeing this issue in a different light. In Romans 2:28-29, he writes that circumcision can no more make a man Jewish than the lack thereof can make you an unbeliever. He tells the church that it is our inward cleansing, our “circumcision of the heart”, that pleases God, and not our outward appearance.
And he prefaces our passage for today by telling the church that it is our faith that justifies us before the Lord, not the law, but that faith does not free us from law, it fulfills it.

Read Romans 4:1-3

“If Abraham had been justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God.” And this doesn’t only apply to circumcision – it applies to all good works. If the things that we do could be our justification before God, then we would be able to boast about them, and compare our lives to those of others, and we could be ranked as insufficient, marginal, fair, good, or maybe even blessed.
But justification by faith eliminates any possibility of our being better, or worse for that matter, than any brother or sister, and gives us absolutely nothing that we can point to in pride.
The reference to Abraham’s righteousness is found in Genesis 15:5-8. God then directs Abram to set up a sacrificial path, and God passes through it. The significance is this – when a covenant was established between a conqueror and a conquered people, animals were sacrificed, laid down in parallel rows, and both the new ruler and the people would pass between the sacrifices. This signified that if the covenant was broken, the offending party would suffer the same fate as the animals. But in the instance involving Abram, only God passed through, so if the covenant was broken, only God would be required to pay the penalty. Think about that for a moment – God would pay the penalty, even if we - even when we - break the covenant.
And Abram could never point to himself as either the faithful one, or the one who dutifully paid the penalty for failure. Not a single opportunity, not even one, to claim his own goodness or to prove his own righteousness.

Read Romans 4:4-5

We can’t compare our secular life with our spiritual life. Each has a totally different focus and a totally different impact. Our secular efforts create a debt that our employer then owes to us, and we are compensated through our wages. But a spiritual life in faith creates no debt, no obligation, but rather is simply recognized through God’s granting of His righteousness to us. Our work must justify our pay, and in this, we are seen as a good employee. But by faith, there is no reference to ourselves – only to God, and He will justify regardless of whether we are good or not – he only looks for faith. “God who justifies the wicked” is how Paul puts it – faith does not make us good in the eyes of God, because we can never be that good. Romans 5:8 – “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Justification, our validation as Christ’s own, doesn’t make us perfect – in faith, we are justified in Christ right where we are.

But this is not to be construed as meaning that works have no purpose and that we don’t need to work in faith.
Andrew Lincoln, in his commentary on Ephesians, writes “So good works are not the source but the goal of the new relationship between humanity and God. Salvation is not by works but for works. “
--Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians: Volume 42, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word Books, 1990), 114.

Paul is simply saying that works, of and by itself, are of worth only to the worker and never to God. But faith is of great value to both the individual and God!

Read Romans 4:6-8

Justification by faith is not the process that corrects our sinful ways – we are still sinful beings even in faith. Faith actually eliminates the debt that sin creates in us completely – it is gone from our lives. Faith does not make us perfect, but it allows us to stand before the throne of God just as if we were perfect – just as if we had never, ever, no way, no how, not once, committed a single, miniscule sinful act!
How could our human efforts, no matter how good and thorough they might be, ever accomplish that? Our abilities are feeble, our efforts are inadequate, our vision is clouded, and left to our own devices, we could never stand before God with confidence in our salvation.
And God has always known that. And so, God Incarnate, Christ in the flesh, came to earth and paid the penalty for our sinfulness, and now the only thing we can possibly do is to accept Him as our substitute – as the only one who could successfully bring about our salvation.

And so, where does that leave us? If we stand on our own works, it leaves us out in the cold, in the dark, all alone, wondering why we are unable to pick our foot up to take that walk that leads us inside. But if we stand with Christ, if we let go of our own accomplishments, if we take just one step in faith, we’ll find ourselves, not only on the inside, but as a beloved guest at the most glorious happening of all time and beyond all time.

Have you taken that step of faith?
Have you surrendered yourself to Almighty God?
Have you come to Him for forgiveness for your wholly inadequate life?
Have you admitted that your efforts can’t even come close to repairing the damage in your relationship?
Have you looked to the only one who can?

If you have never claimed Christ as your Lord and Savior, as the one who has redeemed you from your sin, as the one who has already paid the penalty for your failures, if you have never confessed Jesus as the only one who can bring righteousness into your life, or even if you have forgotten the time when you did, then today is the day when you can. During our last hymn today, as our brothers and sisters sing “I Know Whom I Have Believed”, and if you believe that this is the day when you are to take that one great step of faith, I want you to come forward and together, you and I, will join together in claiming before God, that you give your hope, your dreams, your sins, your life to Christ.

Come, not because you are worthy, not because you are able, but because you believe.