God Counts Faith as Righteousness
Passage: Romans 4:1-8
Justification by faith is absolutely one of the most fundamentally important truths of the Bible and our faith. So it shouldn’t surprise us that Satan would cause this to be one of the most misunderstood truths, one that confuses Christians to this day. Many Christians don’t get it, let alone love it as a most glorious truth that is cause for constant worship and praise.
One evidence of this is how many people think the Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves. One survey of a thousand people revealed 75% believe that.
Modern man is hostile to the concept of justification by faith alone. We want to get our salvation the old fashion way, by earning it. That is the way every other religion on earth does it. That is the clear work of Satan, robbing God of His glory.
Related to this, many think heaven is for good people, for those who seek to have good character, who seek to be moral and upright most of the time. The implication is heaven is some of our doing.
This kind of thinking has been around for a very long time, going all the way back to the Jews who believed keeping the law was the path to their salvation. It was deeply engrained in their ethnic identity as the people of God. It is why they looked down their noses at Gentiles, pagans, as those with no hope of salvation because they didn’t have the law.
Paul has his work cut out for him. He is fighting against thousands of years of deeply ingrained thinking and tradition. He is fighting against an entire culture and race. Everything Paul is teaching and arguing is in the OT, in the Law and the Prophets, but over time it was lost.
Paul is being a good Gospel lawyer, building his case; making a careful argument. He is doing something our culture is averse to. Our culture is averse to well-reasoned argument, we don’t have the patience for it. We want sound bites, we want talking heads that boil things down to the least common denominator, and not take longer than 60 seconds.
Paul led by the Holy Spirit is using reason and logic to argue we are justified by faith. How can guilty sinners escape the wrath and judgment of God? How can the ungodly be justified and reconciled to God? Paul reasons this out here in verses 1-8. Watch the brilliance of his argument as he brings into the courtroom two expert witnesses, two of the greatest heroes of the Jewish faith, Abraham and David.