Romans 4:1–8

In Romans 3 the Apostle set out to convince the Jew of his sinfulness. He showed that the Jew, just as much as the Gentile, stood under the judgment of God. He settled that argument by quoting what the law had said. Now the point is to prove that justification is by faith, with the deeds of the law shut out, and again he appeals to the Old Testament. Long ago the faith of the Gospel already showed itself ahead of time. That was true before the law was given, as with Abraham, and after it was given, as with David.

The Apostle turns to the history of Abraham to show the righteous condition in which God sees the believer. Every Jew would boast in Abraham as the man he descended from by natural birth. So if we can prove that Abraham was justified by faith, that would stop the Jew short. Such an argument would carry great weight with him. Now Scripture does state that Abraham was justified. How then was he justified? Was it by works? If so, says the Apostle, he has something to boast about — but not before God.

For a Jew this was powerful evidence that the flesh counted for nothing in the salvation of a man's soul. It was also very humbling to his pride, because he boasted of his descent from this great man.

To meet this case, the apostle now takes up the question of Abraham's blessing. God had blessed Abraham. That blessing came to him before the revelation of Jesus Christ. So how did he get it? Abraham's natural descendants were circumcised and kept the Law. Had it not always been God's way, then, to justify and bless His people on the ground of their own righteousness? Abraham had certainly found something. He had found favour and blessing.

The beginning and the perfection of Abraham's justification was that he believed God. God spoke to Abraham. He spoke to him about Himself, as the Giver of blessing — as the God of grace, who meets the ungodly with pure and absolute promise... God's righteousness was Abraham's righteousness... Receiving the word of grace, he received God, whose word it was.

If works had justified him, he would have had something to glory in — but not before God. Weigh those last two words. They show that the point of this passage is what counts before God, not what counts before men. Here lies an essential difference between this chapter and James 2, where the word is, "Show me your faith" (verse 18). Paul shows that the works of the law must be shut out; James insists that the works of faith must be brought in.

We may call this the typical case — the case that every other case must match. It is the case of the man who is called "the father of all who believe." So Abraham's justification is the pattern for the justification of Abraham's children. The principle on which he was justified is the principle on which all believers are justified.

Romans 4 then takes up two test cases to confirm the conclusion of Romans 3:28. The first of these is Abraham. This matters most of all to Jews. He is the father of Israel, and they made him their chief boast. God gave him all the promises of blessing first — to the nation Israel above all, but also to the Gentiles.

A Jew might admit that he had failed under the law, and then claim the privilege he enjoyed as a child of Abraham. Suppose we look at Abraham in that natural way — as the man whose privileges came down to his children as an inheritance. Suppose we take our place under him in that line to enjoy them. What principle does this put us on? The same principle of faith.

Had he been justified by works he would have had something to glory in, but not before God. Note those two words, for they show plainly what this passage is about: what counts before God, not what counts before men.

Abraham, then, in one sense, has something to glory in: not before God, but before the world. In God's presence he is dust and ashes. In that light his human glory turns out to be corruption, and he admits it. But before the world he is God's witness — a justified heir of grace, on the way to glory.

If justified by works, certainly the credit would be his; but this is never found before God. And Scripture agrees. It says nothing about his goodness before his call or his acceptance. It speaks plainly of one thing he did: he believed God's word, and that faith was counted to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6). No Jew who bowed to the divine authority of the books of Moses could dispute this.

Abraham was a great man, and God was pleased to link His name with him. Yet whatever blessing was his, he was justified on the same principle as any other poor sinner. Scripture is definite enough on that point. He had no more to glory in than anyone else. He was as empty of works of righteousness as the rest of mankind.

The religions of the world move on the principle of works, but justification before God is not on the principle of works. This is the whole argument of this chapter. At the start it says Abraham might have had something to boast of if he had been justified on the principle of works. But he was justified on the principle of faith. So all Abraham's boast was in God and His abounding goodness.

In James the whole point is what is valid before man, as James 2:18 shows. A man has the right to ask us to show our faith by our works, and so to justify ourselves and our faith before him. In Romans the whole point is what is valid before God. The very words "before God" occur in Romans 4:2. Our faith is quite plain to His all-seeing eye. He does not have to wait for the works that grow out of faith to be sure that the faith is really there.

Is faith, then, a new principle for being right with God? Was any child of Adam ever justified by works? Could human nature ever have boasted in God's presence? The apostle goes back to Abraham. How was he justified? If it had been by works, he could well have boasted. But that cannot be, for no one will boast in His presence. What then does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." However great a man Abraham was, however much God chose to link His name with his, and whatever blessing he had, he was justified on the same principle as any other poor sinner.

Abraham believed the Lord's word, though he was then an old man, and his wife an old woman. In the eyes of man this promise was impossible; but Abraham believed God, and God counted, or reckoned, this faith to him as righteousness. So the record goes in Genesis 15:5 and 6. Nothing could be more clear and more simple. It was by simple faith in a simple statement. Abraham did not look at the impossibility of the promise. He looked at the almighty power of the One who made it. … Remember that this happened 430 years before the law was given. Abraham had never heard of the law when God reckoned him righteous. It was all by grace. It was all by faith.

Read that chapter carefully and you will notice the words counted, imputed and reckoned several times. All three have the same force. They translate the same word, and the word reckoned comes closest to its meaning. "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness." That is, God reckoned Abraham righteous, or held him to be righteous, because of his faith. The little word "for" can mislead. It may suggest that faith is a substitute for righteousness, something that can be turned into righteousness. "Reckoned to him as righteousness" gives the sense more closely.

Eleven passages in Scripture speak of imputing righteousness, or of imputing something for righteousness. In nine of them faith is imputed for righteousness. So here it is not the value of what was done that God imputes. Otherwise our faith would be the merit… Righteousness imputed to a man means the same thing as the man being accounted righteous.

A person may be fully and securely blessed, but only by grace, and so by faith. Faith gives the glory to God, and faith itself is His gift.

"For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." Now this comes in Abraham's history many years before he "offered up" Isaac. The first is in Genesis 15:6, the second in Genesis 22. How completely distinct, then, is justification before God from justification before men.

Abraham accepted that when he could do nothing God would do everything, and that is just what he proved. Notice, God is able. We are utterly unable — God is completely able. This is where faith rests. There is this difference between Abraham and ourselves. He believed what God would do. We believe what God has done, for "we believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification."

If a man works, the reward is not seen as a gift, but as the wages owed to him. But suppose that, instead of working, he believes on Him who justifies the ungodly. What a magnificent proof and conclusion, that his faith is counted for righteousness! This is free grace, the very opposite of a debt under law. And this was the principle of God's dealings with their great forefather, in the account Moses wrote by inspiration.

If Abraham had been justified by his works, his justification would have been owed to him for what he had done. Wages are owed to workmen in the same way. There would have been no question of grace on God's side or faith on Abraham's. But in justifying, God acts in pure grace; for let us not forget that the believer in himself is "ungodly." So the righteous standing in which God views the believer is the result of pure grace. That grace does not look for or recognise any merit in the person justified. This is a very blessed and steadying truth: it frees the believer from any troubling thought that his standing rests on anything he has done or can do.

Now one who works for a reward does not at the end consider that it is given him by grace: he has earned it and would be most resentful if anyone suggested that it was a "gift of grace": his working has made his employer his debtor. Does God so employ men on this business basis? Men may suppose so, but their work is nothing to Him. He has given them no such contract. They are like men working, with no authoritative instruction, to build a railroad where no train will ever travel.

The apostle presses further the contrast between the principles he has been comparing. "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due." And the greatness of the reward does not change the principle involved: if you buy heaven cheap, you still buy it.

It is through grace, and through grace alone, that we come to know God. Suppose I could come to the door of heaven and ask to be let in on the ground of my own righteousness. Imagine for a moment that this were possible. How would I stand there? For "to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due." I might know God as the One who lived there. But it would be a cold entrance. I could not know Him as a God of love. What grace is shown in paying a man his wages for his work?

Verses 4 and 5 are aimed at the deep and natural link the mind makes between reward and work — between reward and debt. But Abraham did no work. "To him that works not" God reckons a reward. And what a reward! "I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward." To the believer God reveals Himself as the reward of His own work. He works the poor sinner's salvation, and places the crown of that work, in Christ Jesus, on the head of the saved!

Did you ever weigh these words of the Spirit of God, dear self-righteous worker? "To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due" (Rom. 4:4). If I work for you at £1 a week, it is only right and fair that you should pay me when the work is done; that is debt. But if I fail to do the work I should have done, and you then come and give me £5, that would be grace.

"Working" stands opposite "believing on Him who justifies the ungodly." Do I work for justification? Or do I receive it freely by God's grace through faith in His Son? It is one or the other. There is no mixture: the two are distinct. But God cannot count righteousness to my account because of my works. Why? Because they are not perfect in righteousness. They carry far too much unrighteousness in them. The value of the work of Christ is a different thing: it is perfect, faultless, unmixed. On that ground God can freely count righteousness to the account of the one who believes in Jesus.

And who are we to believe in? The God "who justifies the ungodly." Who but God could do that? A human judge could not. He might let the guilty one off, or be merciful to him; but no human judge has the power to justify a guilty criminal. To justify him, he would have to clear him of every charge against him. If the man was guilty, he could not do that. But, blessed be His name, God can, and in a way perfectly consistent with His own perfect righteousness.

In human law courts it is impossible in strict justice to justify the guilty. But the work of Christ on the cross has such power, and He took our place of judgment there so completely, that God is able to justify the UNGODLY.

"You have never yet seen God's starting point. All these years you have been striving, more or less, to be godly, believing that God justifies the godly. You have never yet believed that God justifies the ungodly; that is the starting point. Godliness will come afterwards."

Abraham is the great example of what is meant (verse 3). He — and we — are held by God as righteous in view of faith. That is its simple meaning. Faith brings in all the justifying merits of the blood of Christ. These are the great basis of that righteousness. We may also safely say this: the first right thing in anyone's life, and the start of a right course, is when he turns to God as a sinner and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many never enter into peace with God and full assurance of salvation. The reason is that they are looking inside themselves for something that would make God bless them. They admit that their works give them no claim on Him. But they think their faith might give them that claim. So the quality or quantity of their faith fills their minds. What should fill them instead is the free grace of God, the power of the work of Christ, and the Word of God that cannot fail.

This is God counting righteousness apart from works. Yet it is the only principle that produces good works as its fruit. Oh, do not let the pride of unbelief blind you to how lost you really are. May you turn to God just as you are, a poor lost sinner, and find in the grace of Christ all you need.

The apostle brings forward two great witnesses against the idea that righteousness comes on the principle of law... God made the promises to Abraham, and he was the heir of the world. The throne and kingdom belonged to David... No Jew would have disputed the testimony of these two witnesses. One lived four hundred and thirty years before God gave the law, and he declares that justification was by faith. The other lived in the age of law, and he declares that justification was without works.

"David speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works." Whoever that person may be. What qualifies someone for this blessing is not birth or any other privilege. It is simply a sinner's capacity to receive God's mercy.

Nothing is said of David's works. Instead he spoke of his sins and his wrongdoing. No man in the Old Testament records fell lower than David in his sins against God and man, and yet we learn that his sins did not exclude him from the blessing... His sins were ten thousand times worse because he knew God's mercy. Even so, they did not shut him out of the blessing of justification. It is a blessing into which the works of the best man cannot bring him, and from which the sins of the worst man need not exclude him. It is altogether of and from God.

Imputed righteousness means the character or quality in which the person appears in God's sight. It is not the cause of his appearing that way... It is not only that He does not count the sin the man has done. He does not view him as in sin, but as in righteousness... So the word used for imputed righteousness is not the word for a righteous act, but the word for righteousness itself — not an act or a sum of things done, but a state. God reckons him to be in that state.

The word for forgiveness only appears once in the whole letter. It comes when the Apostle quotes David's words from Psalm 32... This shows us, however, that counting righteousness to a person — that is, justification — comes to the same thing here as forgiveness.

David had only the dim light of foreshadowings and prophecies. He could take comfort only from the negative side: the Lord will not count sin against the believer. Paul stands in the full light of Christ's redeeming work. He gives us the comfort of the positive side: "God counts righteousness apart from works." How good it is to see the fuller light coming out.

Upon what equitable basis is He able to impute righteousness to a man apart from works? Psalm 40 will answer. There we hear the Incarnate Son saying: "Sacrifice and offering you have not desired... Behold, I have come to do your will, O God." The atoning sacrifice of Calvary has replaced for ever all the offerings of the old sacrificial system. It enables God to pardon and justify, in full righteousness, every sinner who believes in Jesus.

It is clear then that not to have sin reckoned is, in other words, to be reckoned to be in a righteous condition. God would have every believer to know the blessedness of this in his own soul.

Take again the testimony of David. Does he agree with the gospel, or contradict Moses, who gave the law? David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, confirms both. He calls blessed the very people whom the law could only curse... This is clearly justification, not by good works, but despite evil ones. It is God's grace blessing, not His law cursing, where there was no righteousness, but only lawlessness and sin.

On the other hand, David says nothing about his works. Instead he speaks of his iniquities and his sins. No man in the Old Testament record fell lower than David in his sins against God and man. Yet we learn that his sins did not exclude him from the blessing... It is a blessing into which the works of the best man cannot bring him. It is a blessing from which the sins of the worst man need not exclude him.

The transgression is FORGIVEN. Here the word means to lift away from. The great burden is removed: it no longer weighs upon the soul and conscience before God. How great is the blessedness of being forgiven! The sin is COVERED, it is concealed, blotted out of God's sight, so as to offend Him no more.

The Hebrew word employed is Kaphar, which means to cover. It is only by the death of Christ, by His atoning blood, that sin is covered, and its consequences averted. So we read, "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1)... "For it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul" (Leviticus 17:11). How beautifully the New Testament answers to all this: "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).

But this assumes the man is a sinner, not righteous in himself. The question is what God is in grace toward such a man, not what the man is toward God... His blessedness was that God did not impute to him the sins he had committed. It was not that he was righteous in himself before God. For man, righteousness lay in the grace of God. Here that righteousness amounts to God not imputing sins to a man guilty of committing them. He imputes no sin at all.

Our first need, as sinners, is forgiveness; and there is forgiveness with God... This blessedness is a present possession: "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses" (Ephesians 1:7). And this portion belongs to the simplest believer as much as to the most advanced. We read, "I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake" (1 John 2:12).

Abraham and David were the two men a Jew would accept as authority beyond dispute.

Nothing is said about David's works; instead, he spoke of his iniquities and his sins. No man in the Old Testament records fell lower than David in his sins against God and man. Yet his sins did not exclude him from the blessing… The works of the best man cannot bring him into this blessing, and the sins of the worst man need not shut him out of it.

But this assumes the man is a sinner and not righteous in himself. The question was what God was in grace to such a person, not what he was toward God… His blessedness was not that he was righteous in himself before God. It was that God did not charge him with the sins he had committed. Righteousness for man was found in the grace of God.

Sin was plainly there. Yet when the enemy tried to curse them, what was Balaam forced to say? "He has not looked on iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen perverseness in Israel." The iniquity was there, but God said, "I do not look on it." The perverseness was obvious, but God said, "I do not see it." We know on what ground God could say that of Israel, and does say it of us — the blood of the Lamb.

It is not that they are counted righteous because they never sinned, for all have sinned. Their sins have been covered and their iniquities forgiven. And it is not only their past sins that Christ's atoning death has covered. Infinite grace says more, and says it in perfect righteousness: "The Lord shall not at all reckon sin."

God forsook Him during the three hours of darkness, when His soul was made an offering for sin. No doubt it was then that the great question of sin was gone into and settled forever, condemned at the cross… He bore all the judgment of God due to us and died, and therefore nothing can be imputed to us who believe.

Our failure will never in the least impair the relationships that God has established between us and Himself, because He has established them in Christ. So until sin can be imputed to Christ, it cannot be imputed to the believer.

If a believer does sin, he loses his communion and becomes very unhappy. The Lord will deal with him about that sin, as one who belongs to Him, but the sin is not counted against him in the eternal sense.

David, in the dim light of pictures and prophecies, could only take comfort from the negative: the Lord will NOT impute sin to the believer. Paul, in the full light of the redemptive work of Christ, gives us the comfort of the positive: "God imputes RIGHTEOUSNESS without works."