The center. As human beings, we often try to find the center of things. It is just the way we are. We want to find the center. What is the center of Christianity? The bull’s eye?  The nucleus? We all know the answer. Jesus Christ. There is no argument about that. What does God want from us? We all know- faith in Jesus Christ, believe in Jesus Christ, trust in Jesus Christ. Christ and faith in Jesus Christ is the center of Christianity. The bull’s eye. We know that.

Why do Christians gather in worship services around the whole globe? To grow in faith in Christ. We want our faith to grow strong just as faith grew strong in Abraham. We don’t want our faith to be wavering and weak, to be doubting and double minded to be questioning and querulous. We want to move beyond that. We want our faith to grow strong, like it was in Father Abraham. We want to have faith like in the gospel story  about the Roman official who believed that Jesus could give life to his dead daughter. We want faith like the woman who was very sick and she believed that Jesus could heal her. Faith. Genuine faith. Deep faith. Trusting faith. Committed faith. New Testament faith. Growing faith. Faith in Jesus Christ is the bull’s eye, the nucleus, the very center of the universe called Christianity.

Romans 4:13 is a summary of Romans 4:1-12. God’s promise is independent of the law and rests squarely on the principle of faith. When God’s people look to the law for justification instead of to God, failure to keep the law makes them guilty and they face death instead of life. God’s promise of the law is uncertain. His promise of faith is certain. The promise given to Abraham has not expired nor become the private possession of any one race. It permeates the entire world.

We don’t know what was going on in the Roman church that made Paul go to the great lengths he does in Romans to make the point that God can give life, only God can breathe into corpses and make them come alive again.  God does that.  We cannot.  It is all grace. Apparently, however, that perennial temptation to see our salvation as a result of works, of obedience, of keeping some rules was alive and well in Rome.  And among at least some of the believers there, the argument must have centered to some degree on Abraham and how it was he got saved in the first place and so kicked off the whole stream of saving actions by God that culminated in Christ Jesus.

So Paul takes pains to do a little biblical education in Romans 4.  Basically his argument comes down to this: God’s promise to save the world through Abram and Sarai came from out of a clear blue sky.  Abram had had no law to keep, no rules to follow in order to make himself deserving of the favor God would bestow on him.  God took the initiative and somehow gave Abram the ability to believe the unbelievable, to imagine the unimaginable: from his and Sarai’s as-good-as-dead bodies would come new life.  Not just a child born to them in extreme old age but from that child a host of descendants by and by who would cover the earth the way sand covers the seashore, the way the stars cover the night sky.

When it comes to the subject of faith it is amazing how vague people become. To have a “lot of faith” is applauded, and the need for “more faith” is often expressed. People of “strong faith” are revered, those of “another faith” are distrusted. In all these common expressions of contemporary understanding of faith there is one major misunderstanding. The object of faith is that which really matters more than anything else. Some people who had strong faith in thin ice never lived to tell the tale but died by faith. Others who had weak faith in thick ice were as safe as if they stood on concrete. Abraham’s faith is not exemplary because of its strength or lack of it, but because its object was God.

Abraham believed in the God who specializes in breathing life into deadness and speaking the creative word which brings into existence things which previously were nonexistent. The magnitude of these concepts of God is so vast that they should not be overlooked because it is possible that some believers believe in a God who is far removed from the One revealed in Scripture.

Nothing is to be gained in terms of virile faith by ignoring those factors which militate against faith. On the contrary, strong faith triumphs over the difficulties it fully understands. Abraham was able to grapple adequately with the deadness of his own body precisely because he believed in a God “who gives life to the dead”. His inadequacy, therefore, became the arena in which God’s power was to be shown instead of the place where his faith would sink without a trace. The fact of Sarah’s incapability to bear a son even in her youth was matched in Abraham’s mind with the fact that God “calls the things that are not as being in existence.”The nonexistent capacity of Sarah’s womb was the very place to prove God’s ability to make the barren womb capable of reproduction. Abraham showed that faith links its knowledge of God with the difficulties that stand in faith’s way and throws in its lot with the reality of God in the situation.

Abraham’s faith conquered impossibility, improbability, inadequacy, inconsistency, insecurity, and infidelity. Abraham believed in the God of creation, who calls those things which do not exist as through they did. This is the essence of faith. The same God of Genesis 1-2 who brought forth life and the earth and sky out of nothing also brought forth Isaac, the son of promise, from the deadness of Sarah’s womb. Later, at the altar, standing over that same son with a knife in obedience to God, Abraham again believed that God could give life to the dead. Hope that is centered on God is contrary to the world’s hope.

Some people, when faced with delay and discouragement, “waver” in their faith, while others are strengthened by the delay. When he considered his circumstances on the one hand, Abraham must have been tempted to sink into despair; yet when he considered the promise of God as it related to his circumstances he must have been euphoric.

Abraham did not waver in his faith at the time of testing. For Abraham that faith was especially faith that God would give him and Sarah a son. But the great thing about faith–given Paul’s puzzle–is that you do not have to be Jewish to have faith in the God who “gives life to the dead.” Abraham had faith in the God who would give life to his loins, though he was good as dead. And now both Jews and Gentiles can believe in the God who gave life to Jesus at the resurrection. Jews and Gentiles can both have that faith whether they keep the law or not, or at least whether Gentiles keep the law or not. God’s ability to perform His promises was the foundation of the stability of Abraham’s faith. Faith looks past the gift to the Giver and past the promise to the One who promises.

When we read about the great heroes of the faith such as Abraham there is a tendency for us to feel that they had a special corner on God and thus it was easier for them to believe; if we had similar opportunities we would probably believe in similar fashion. Paul introduces a thought that explodes this idea completely. He reminds us that while Abraham believed in a God who could raise the dead, we have a record of an event which showed that God can raise the dead and that He has raised His Son from the grave. The object of the believer’s faith is not only the God of Abraham but also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul’s statement concerning the death and Resurrection of Christ shows that it was not the death of Christ alone which provides the basis upon which God justifies the believer, for if Christ had stayed dead, He would never have been regarded as anything other than another unfortunate martyr to a lost cause. But through His Resurrection, He was shown to be the “Son of God with power” and, accordingly, the divine answer to the human problem.

God never promises us anything that He can’t deliver. Do we believe that? If we do, then it only makes sense to put our complete trust in Him, regardless of how dark our circumstances might appear. God can declare believing sinners to be righteous even though they are not, by imputing His righteousness to them, just as God made or declared Jesus “sin” and punished Him, though He was not a sinner. Those whom He justifies, He will conform to the image of His Son.

(An audio version of this post can be foound gy clicking this link: Romans 4 verses 13-25 Faith in God’s Promises)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; p. 1549)
2. The Rev. Edward Markquart, “The Center: Faith in Christ.” Retrieved from www.sermonsfromseattle.com
3. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson inc.; 1982; pp. 101-105)
4. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
5. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
6. Scott Hoezee, “Romans 4:13-25 Commentary.” Retrieved from https://cepreaching.org/authors/scott-hoezee/
7. David Bartlett, “Commentary on Romans 4:13-25.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org