Romans 4:13-25 Faith that is “Counted” as Righteousness

1:04So he decided to first test it by placing his hand firmly on it. Afterwards, having mustered up a measure of faith, he got down on his knees and started to crawl across the ice. When he got to the middle of the frozen river, where he was trembling with fear, He heard a familiar noise behind him. When he turned around, he saw a team of horses approaching the river. And behind the team of horses was a carriage. And upon reaching the river, the horses with the carriage in tow did not stop.

1:53Rather, it bolted straight across the river while he remained on his hands and knees looking up rather silly. So is the faith of many Christians. Our faith is weak and timid. Where is the man or woman of faith who will take God at his word, trusting in his promises of strength, guidance, and provision? Who will cross the ice, so to speak, not on their hands and knees in fear of the bottom falling out with little apparent faith in God's promises, but rather who will be the one with humble confidence take a team of horses and a carriage with people in the carriage across the ice.

2:56Abraham was such a person of faith. There was little, if anything, in Abraham's experience that might lead him to believe that he would be the father of many nations. Despite his dead body and the barrenness of Sarah's womb, the aged patriarch trusted in God and committed himself to the promises God had made. The result was that his faith was counted to him as righteousness. We find an explanation of Abraham's faith in Romans 4. It is embedded within Paul's theological argument against the Jewish and Judaizers' mistaken understanding of the righteousness of Abraham.

4:00The Jews believed that they possessed salvation solely on the basis of the descendants of Abraham. The Jews shared this salvation only with those willing to become Jewish proselytes, to be circumcised and to place themselves under the law of Moses. And when some of these Jews converted to Christianity, they insisted that to be saved, Gentiles needed not only to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, but they had to be circumcised and keep the law. In virtually all the churches Paul founded, or to which Paul wrote, Paul found it necessary to refute and correct the error of these Judaizers. This includes the church at Rome.

4:57Thus, throughout the book of Romans, Paul deals with the misconceptions and heresies of Judaism and the Judaizers, particularly when it came to Abraham. In chapter 4, Paul demonstrates that Abraham's justifying faith was apart from works, verses 1 through 8, did not come by circumcision, verses 9 through 12, did not come by keeping the law, verses 13 through 15, but rather it came solely by God's grace, verses 16 and 17, and the same righteousness which God made available to men today in verses 18 through 25.

5:43Which brings us to our sermon. We are not going to detail out Paul's aforementioned theological arguments to the Jews and the Judaizers. Rather, we are going to talk about what it means that faith Counted to us as righteousness. That is, what is saving faith? We are going to look at what saving faith is not, what saving faith is, and what saving faith believes. Let us first deal with what saving faith is not. Look again at verses 13 through 15.

6:28For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. In verse 13, Paul tells us that saving faith is not trying to obey some type of law. It is not doing your best to try and live up to a standard that you think you ought to live up to.

7:20If you think that God is going to accept, love, and forgive you because you have tried hard to do what you do. You think it is right, you are simply on the wrong track. It will never work. And Paul gives us three reasons in these verses. First, the promise of salvation to Abraham and his offspring did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. Abraham was declared right with God while he was neither circumcised nor in possession of the Mosaic law. In fact, if you were to look at Galatians 3:23 through 29, you will find that Abraham received the gift of righteousness 430 years before the law was given.

8:17The promise of saving faith does not come through law. Second, if salvation comes through law, then the law renders the promise to Abraham worthless. Verse 14, for if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. If salvation comes about by keeping the law, then we don't need the promises of God. If I can please God by behaving right, then I don't need him to get the Heaven.

9:02I want to borrow an illustration from Henry Mayhan, which I think will help you understand how the law nullifies the promise. So, how many of you that are 12 years or older or less believe that you are athletic? We got a handful. We got a handful. Good. If I were to ask you to stand right here before the pulpit and to jump up and touch this pipe, I promised you that if you could do that, I will give you $1,000.

9:43I doubt many of you will volunteer to try. Why? Because my promise is worthless. I am asking something that you, as a 12-year-old or less, simply can't do. It's not in your natural strength to jump up and touch that pipe from way down there. Even though I sincerely mean it, the promise has no value to you because you cannot do it. Likewise, the promise of salvation that comes with the law is useless. The promise of the law is do this and live.

10:31And if you perfectly obey the law, God will accept you as righteous because you have earned salvation by doing what the law demanded. But you can't. Therefore, the law is worthless in obtaining the promise. But Paul doesn't stop there. He says there's another reason why you will never be able to gain righteousness by trying to meet the requirements of the law. Verse 15, for the law brings wrath. The law condemns the sinner and pronounces a curse on all those who do not perfectly meet its demands. In other words, if you are trusting in your ability to perfectly keep the law to get to heaven, you are in a hopeless state. Brothers and sisters, if the promise of salvation is given out on a merit basis, if you can get to heaven by keeping the law, then you do not need saving faith.

11:35So, having considered what saving faith is not, let's now consider what saving faith is. Allow me to borrow three observations from Stephen Cole about the nature of faith in verses 16 through 22. First, saving faith is rooted in God's grace, not in Human performance. Look at verse 16. That is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace. If salvation comes to us as a wage that we deserve because of our good works, then it is not by grace. God would owe it to us, and then we could boast in our own efforts, which obtained it. But salvation would not be a gift, but a wage. Yet here Paul says that salvation rests on grace. Saving faith must be rooted in God's gracious promise to declare righteous all who believe in Jesus Christ, who Himself paid the penalty of our sins. It is available to all people without distinction. If God opens your eyes to see that you are a guilty sinner and that He offers a full pardon to those who believe in Jesus' death as the payment for sin, He will count Christ's righteousness, not your works, to you the instant you believe in Jesus.

13:30Saving faith is rooted in God's grace. Saving faith also rests in God's promise. We learn in Genesis 17 that Abraham was 99 years old. Although God had promised him a son through Sarah 25 years earlier, they still had no son. The human prospects of having a son seemed impossible. Sarah had been barren all of her life. She was now almost 90. She had already gone through menopause. But at this point, the Lord appeared to Abraham and promised to establish his covenant with Abraham, make him the father of a multitude of nations. As Abraham stood there before God, although the promise was outside any realm of human possibility, Abraham believed in God. And Paul here in verse 17 describes as the one, he believed in the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

14:47Abraham also believed in a God who could raise the dead. Nowhere was that faith more evident in God's ability to raise the dead than in Abraham. Willingness to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Brothers and sisters, Abraham's experiences are not without application to us today. For it is the same kind of faith which God requires of men today. We must acknowledge ourselves to be just as helpless to enter God's heaven by our own righteousness as Abraham was to become the father of a great nation. We must trust God to provide righteousness apart from and in spite of us, just as Abraham trusted God to fulfill that promise of a son. And we must trust in a God who has power over death and the grave, as did Abraham when he was willing to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Saving faith rests in God's promise, but saving faith also revels in God's glory. Verse 20, no unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.

16:24Abraham's faith was solidly God-centered. He didn't believe in himself. He didn't have faith in faith. He wasn't an optimist who practiced positive thinking. Rather, looking away from the circumstances and away from himself, he believed God and his promise so that God got the glory. Abraham grew strong in faith and gave glory to God. Okay, young people, how do you grow strong in faith? Young people, how do you grow strong in faith? The key is to grow in your knowledge of the object of your faith, who happens to be God. Faith is only as good as its object. So let me provide you with an illustration. Hopefully, we've got two bridges behind me.

17:28You can have really strong faith in this bridge, and you can run across that bridge with all the confidence in the world that it's going to hold you. But it may or may not, no matter how strong your faith is. Or you could have weak faith in this bridge. You can crawl across this bridge, fearful that it may not hold you, while 10 or 20 or 30 other people are. Walking with you on the same bridge.

18:06The bridge that is the object of your faith, not the strength or quality of the faith, is what saves you. To grow strong in faith, study God's attributes as his ways are revealed in his word. See how he has been faithful to his word in the past, and see how he has kept his promises to his people, even in the face of staggering odds. Then put your faith into action. And as you act in faith and see God work, your faith is strengthened to trust him the next time.

18:50So having explained how we grow strong in faith, what is it about faith that gives glory to God? What is it about faith that gives glory to God? The answer is given in verse 21. Being fully assured that what God had promised, he was also able to perform. That's what faith is. It is the strong assurance that God's promises are good and that he can and will perform them. And the harder the promises seem to fulfill. The more our faith honors God.

19:33So, young people, I want to borrow another illustration to help you out. Your mother is standing in the pool, a little bit out from the edge, and you're three years old, and you're standing on the edge of the pool. Your mother holds out her arms to you and says, Jump, I'll catch you, I promise. How can you make your mother look good at that moment? The answer is, what have faith and jump? That makes you look strong, wise, and loving. But if you won't jump, if you shake your head and run away from the edge, what do you do? You make your mother look bad. It's as if you're saying, She can't catch me, or she won't catch me, or she won't do what she promised. Your unwillingness to jump makes your mother look bad. Young people, if you want to make God look good, trust him. If you want to make God look bad, don't.

20:51That is what we mean when we say faith glorifies God, or faith gives God glory. So, having considered what faith is. Is. Saving faith is. Now let's consider what saving faith believes. That is, who or what must we believe in order to be justified? Allow me to borrow three observations from John Piper about what saving faith believes in these verses 23 through 25. First, saving faith believes in the one who performs inconceivable power. Verse 24b says, We believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. God does what Rudolph Boltman said is inconceivable. God raises the dead. He does what people say cannot be done.

21:44God brought Isaac out of a dead womb of a 90-year-old woman, and he brought Jesus Christ out of a tomb after three days and made him Lord of the universe. Saving faith believes in the one who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead with inconceivable power. Saving faith also believes in one who performs a merciful redemption. Notice the first half of verse 25. He who was delivered over because of our transgressions. God himself designed Christ's death and designed it for a purpose. Jesus was delivered over by whom?

22:30By soldiers? By Pilate? By Herod? By the Jewish mob? Acts 2, 23 gives a clear and forthright answer. This man, Jesus, was delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. The death of Jesus was due to the fact that God delivered Jesus over to death. So the death of Jesus Christ was by the design of God, and the design had a purpose, verse 25 again, because of our transgressions. God's design in Jesus' death was to deal with our transgressions. Why?

23:21He wanted to provide a substitute death so that we would not have to die for our own righteousness or for our own transgressions. And the only death that could do that was the death of his son. This is a merciful redemption. And then saving faith believes in one who performs an inconceivable power. Saving faith believes in one who performs a merciful redemption. Thirdly, saving faith believes in one who performs triumphant justice. Where do I get that? It's part of the last part of 25. God is the one who raised Jesus. Because of our justification, Jesus had to be raised in order to assure us that in the sight of God we are indeed without sin.

24:16This means that when Jesus died for our transgression, a full and sufficient payment was made for our forgiveness and justification, and it was proven by his resurrection. It was a declaration that he had accomplished in his death, successfully, completely, the purchase of our justification. What does saving faith believe? We believe in a God that performed inconceivable power in raising his Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead, that performed merciful redemption in designing the death of his son to save us from our transgressions, and that performed triumphant justice by raising Jesus from the dead to show that the basis of our justification was perfectly accomplished in the death of his son.

25:10So, in closing, I want to make one more comment on the central point of our sermon from verse 22. That is why his, Abraham's faith, was counted to him as righteousness. Some of you may really still be confused what that means. Does it? mean that faith itself is the kind of righteousness we perform and God counts our faith as good enough to be our righteousness and justification? No. Our faith is not viewed as some sort of righteousness that is good enough to cover our sins. Rather, saving faith lays hold of Jesus Christ, who becomes the righteousness of God for us. And by faith, God's righteousness in Christ is applied to us.

26:14Allow me to provide the young people an illustration of faith being counted to us as righteousness. Suppose my 16-year-old daughter had borrowed the family van on Wednesday night to take her teammates to soccer practice on a wet field. Due to the van being full of trash and mud after the practice, I say to my 16-year-old daughter when she gets home, please make sure the van is cleaned up before Friday night's football game. We need to take your grandparents to the game in the van, and if you don't get the van cleaned up Up before Friday night, you can't go to the football game with your soccer friends.

27:09Suppose she plans poorly and fails to clean up the van before she leaves for school on Friday morning. And suppose that I discover the messy van on Friday morning and I clean it. Not knowing that I had cleaned the van, she gets home just before it's time to leave for the game. She realizes what she's done and she feels terrible. She apologizes and humbly accepts the consequences that she can't go to the game because she didn't do what she had promised. To which I say, daughter, I'm going to accept your apology and your willingness to humbly accept the consequences of having not cleaned the van. I said you must clean the van or you can't go to the game tonight. But the van is clean. You can go to the game tonight. What I really am saying is, I count your apology as if you had cleaned the van. Not that your apology is the clean van or that she had really cleaned. It. I cleaned it. It was pure grace. But what I'm saying in my reckoning is her apology and willingness to accept those consequences connects her to the clean van that I cleaned for her.

28:51I count the clean van to her because of her willingness to apologize and accept the consequences, even though she didn't do the work. Or you can say, I count her apology as the clean van. It doesn't matter. Paul says it in both ways. Faith is counted as righteousness, and God counts righteousness to us but through faith. So when God says to those who believe in Christ, I count your faith as righteousness, he does not mean your faith is righteousness. God means that your faith connects you to God's righteousness provided through Jesus Christ's perfect life and death on the cross for the sins of those he died for. Let us pray.

29:53Father, we thank you for the incredible gift you gave. Sending your Son to this world to save a people. We are born with a sinful nature. And no matter how hard we try, we cannot perfectly obey your law. And knowing that, You sent your Son to live a perfect life, to die on the cross, to pay for our sins, and you accept His death as sufficient to pay for the sins of those who place their faith in His work, and you count that faith to them as righteousness.

31:04There are some in this room who are trying to save themselves by placing their faith in their ability to be obedient, and they will be disappointed. May they recognize the only hope they have is to place their faith in Christ's work on the cross and trust that to Him. There are others. Believers in here whose faith is weak. They're crawling across the ice. They're crawling across the strong bridge. Lord, may you make those who have such weak faith realize it's not the quality or strength of their faith that will save them, it's the quality and strength of the object of their faith, who is Jesus Christ in what He has done for us. May those who are struggling in weak faith prayerfully allow the Spirit to teach them, to show them the promises of God which are repetitively fulfilled. And may they grow in faith so that as they grow in faith, they will ultimately give glory to you because by placing their faith in you and testifying that of others, you can be glorified.

32:42We thank you for it. It's in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at New Life CS. Dot net.