wherefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
Paul has just described Abraham facing a promise that nature could not fulfil, and verse 22 draws the conclusion — "that is why." The question is what God did when He counted faith as righteousness, and whether faith itself earned it.
The phrase points back to everything said about Abraham just before. One writer traces that description and shows where Abraham fixed his eyes:
Notice how God said, "I have made you the father of many nations," even before Abraham had a child at all. The thing is so sure with God that He, with whom future things are as though present, could speak of it as a fact. Abraham believed God "in hope." That is, the promise was still future. His eye was not on himself, or upon Sarah, but upon God. So we read that he believed, he did not consider, he did not waver, he was fully persuaded. The power of nature could not make the promise good. Still he believed God, and counted on God's own power to keep it.
Much depends on what the counting means. One writer weighs two possible senses of the phrase:
Does it mean a set quantity of righteousness moved over into a man's account? Or does it mean holding a man to be righteous — reckoning or accounting him such? I say that in Scripture it always means the second... There is no question at all of a quantity of righteousness existing and then put to their account. The point is that righteousness itself is reckoned to them. This is clearer still, because all the apostle's reasoning rests on one sentence: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"... that is, God accounted him righteous because of his faith. This passage governs the rest — every other use of the phrase comes from it.
If faith is what God counted, faith can look like a small payment God takes in place of a large one. Writers warn against that idea:
Faith counted as righteousness means one thing for Abraham, for David, and for us who believe today. It means that God accounts us as righteous before Him in view of our faith. We must not imagine that all the virtue resides in our faith. It does not. But faith establishes contact with the work of Christ, in which all the virtue does reside. In that sense faith justifies.
Another writer answers a popular explanation: that God takes our faith in place of the righteousness we lack.
In this explanation it is something of our own — "our faith" — that God accepts. In the word it is not so. God has accepted Christ, and the work He has accomplished, and it is believing that... God raised Christ from the dead for our justification. That is a very different thing from accepting our faith.
What did Abraham's faith take hold of? One writer points to God Himself:
What characterizes faith in Abraham, then, is his laying hold upon God as the One who gives life to the dead. Believing in Him as the God of resurrection, he believed He was able to perform what He promised. The character of God was the guarantee of His word.
God's verdict is not a passing favour. It settles where Abraham stands for good:
God imputes righteousness to him. As Judge He declares that the man is not only no longer in his sins, but is in righteousness. He sets him before His face in righteousness. Because righteousness is imputed in this way, he is never to be charged with his sins. God never will charge them to him, nor will He listen to anyone who would presume to do it. Abraham is from now on before the face of God in unchangeable righteousness.
One writer sets Abraham's faith beside ours, and marks the likeness and the difference:
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."
- That is why — the verdict follows Abraham's faith. His eye was not on himself but on God's power to keep the promise.
- Counted — God held Abraham to be righteous. He did not move a stock of righteousness into his account.
- Not merit — faith carries no virtue of its own; it makes contact with the work of Christ, where all the virtue lies.
- Resurrection — Abraham's faith laid hold of God as the One who gives life to the dead. God's character guaranteed His word.
- Settled — the man God counts righteous stands before Him in unchangeable righteousness, and God will never charge his sins to him. Abraham believed what God would do; we believe what God has done.
Now it was not written on his account alone that it was reckoned to him,
Paul has spent a whole chapter on one line from Genesis, where God counted Abraham righteous. Here he explains why that line stands in Scripture at all. The claim is startling: Moses wrote it with people he had never met in view.
The point of the verse is not that Abraham's case was unimportant, but that it was never meant to stop with him.
Our apostle now tells us that the record of God's imputing faith to Abraham for righteousness was not written for him merely. It was written for him surely, but it was written for his seed as well — for "all who believe" — for those who have his faith. So the apostle goes on to say, "but for us also."
The alternative to reading Abraham this way is treating his story as a fine example belonging to someone else's life. One writer presses that the record was made with a future event already in view.
Are we to be satisfied with just admiring Abram and praising his faith? Are we to read his history as something that does not concern us? No... The gospel of the grace of God was no afterthought in God's mind. When Moses, by the Holy Spirit, wrote that chapter of the patriarch's life, God was looking on to the death and resurrection of His Son.
The word carries a specific sense, and it is not the transfer of a measured quantity of merit from one account to another.
There are eleven passages in Scripture which speak of imputing righteousness or for righteousness. In nine of them faith is imputed for righteousness. So here it does not mean that the value of the thing done is imputed, or our faith would be the merit... A person may be reckoned to be in a state he is not in fact in. Even so, imputed righteousness does not mean a quantity of righteousness lying ready outside him and put to his account. It means the state in God's sight of the person so accounted righteous. Righteousness imputed to a man is the same as the man being accounted righteous.
Abraham trusted God for something still ahead of him. We look back on something finished, and that makes believing easier, not harder.
There is however one important difference. In Abraham's case he believed that God would raise up life out of death. We are not asked to believe that God will do it, but that He has done it, by raising up Jesus our Lord from the dead. How much simpler to believe that He has done it, when He has done it, than to believe that He will do it, when as yet He has not done it.
Another writer draws the difference with a picture from prison.
If we were in prison, and the authorities gave us the promise of setting us free at a certain time, we could no doubt enjoy that promise with assurance. But how different our condition would be once we were free!
Some readers stall here, assuming Abraham was a special case with a special revelation. The answer given is that the condition attached in the next verse rules out anything internal as the ground.
"Now it was not written for his sake alone... but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if" — if what? If we feel, realise, or experience something in ourselves? No, but "if we believe on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead."
(The "if" here comes from an older translation. Newer versions, including the ESV, read the next verse as a plain statement.)
Notice where faith aims.
Abraham believed God. This is faith in its groundwork. God is believed. Next, in its object, not only did he believe in the resurrection, but in the God who raised. So with us; we do not merely believe in Jesus, who rose from the dead, but in the God who raised Him.
The principle stretches beyond this one story into how we read the rest of Scripture.
Apply that principle as widely as Scripture will let you. You come to a promise — a statement of the believer's blessing, of present grace and of future glory — and you can say, "It was written for my sake." It reminds one of Ruth, who gathered leftover grain in the fields of Boaz, never guessing that the handfuls of golden grain had been "let fall on purpose" for her.
- For us — the record. God wrote that record for Abraham — and for everyone who shares his faith.
- For us — the plan. When Moses wrote that line, God already had the death and resurrection of His Son in view.
- For us — the reckoning. Imputed righteousness is not a stock of merit handed to you. It is God accounting you righteous.
- For us — the fact. Abraham believed God would raise up life from death; we believe He has, which is the simpler thing to believe.
- For us — the page. Read every promise the same way, gleaning grain that was dropped on purpose for you.
but on ours also, to whom, believing on him who has raised from among [the] dead Jesus our Lord,
Paul has just retold how God counted Abraham righteous. Now he turns to his readers. That old record was written with us in view, and this verse says who "us" means: everyone who trusts the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
One writer says God was already looking far ahead when Moses first wrote Abraham's story down.
Should we be satisfied with only admiring Abram and praising his faith, while we read his history as something that does not concern us? No. The gospel of the grace of God was no afterthought in God's mind. Moses wrote that chapter of Abraham's life by the Holy Spirit. Even then God was looking on to the death and resurrection of His Son, and to the coming of the Holy Spirit. After that, the gospel could be preached.
So what has changed between Abraham's day and ours?
The same principles apply exactly. There is, however, one important difference. In Abraham's case he believed that God would raise up life out of death. We are not asked to believe that God will do it, but that He has done it, by raising up Jesus our Lord from the dead. How much simpler it is to believe that He has done it, now that He has done it. That is far easier than believing He will do it, while He has not yet done it.
That difference changes the whole ground a person stands on before God.
The gospel is not promise, but accomplishment. It is so complete that if the work were not already done in the cross, in the death and resurrection of Him who hung there, it never can be done — not even by Him.
Notice carefully who is named as the object of faith here. The verse does not say "believe on Jesus"; it says believe on the God who raised Him.
The same faith shall be counted to us also for righteousness: faith in God as the One who raised up Jesus from the dead. Faith here is not faith in Jesus, but in Him who came in power into the realm of death. Jesus lay there because of our sins, and God brought Him out by His power. This was the mighty activity of the love of God. Jesus had already borne all the punishment of our sins, and God brought Him out from under all their consequences. So by believing God who has done this, we take in the whole extent of His work, with the grace and power shown in it. We come to know God. Our God is the God who has done this.
This changes how God stands toward the believer.
I know the love of God in giving Christ. I know that all my sins are gone, and that God Himself is my Saviour. He is not here in the character of Judge. This is not faith in Christ before God. It is faith in God Himself, who has raised Christ from the dead. So it takes in everything between myself and God.
Why should raising Jesus be the thing faith fastens on? Because of what the empty tomb proves about the offences He carried.
If we want settled peace, we must believe in God as the One who raised up Jesus from the dead. In doing so He proved Himself friendly to us. He also proved His infinite satisfaction in the work of the cross. Jesus was delivered up for our offences. He could not be where He now is if a single one of those offences remained unatoned for.
What does it mean that righteousness is "counted" to us? Older translations say "imputed." One writer starts by saying what the word does not mean.
A person can be reckoned to be in a state that he is not in fact in. Even so, imputed righteousness does not mean a stock of righteousness lying outside him and credited to him. It means the state, in God's sight, of the person who is accounted righteous. To impute righteousness to a man is the same as to account that man righteous.
And the very word rules out any contribution from us.
If righteousness is imputed, it needs no argument to prove that the one to whom it is imputed had no hand in it. It comes by faith, and not by works.
- Written — Moses wrote Abraham's story for a wider audience than Abraham. God was already looking ahead to the death and resurrection of His Son.
- Believed — faith works the same way it did for Abraham, but ours is simpler. He trusted God for what would be done. We trust Him for what has been done.
- Raised — the object of faith named here is God Himself, the One who came into the realm of death and brought Jesus out of it.
- Reckoned — to be counted righteous is a verdict about you before God, not a store of merit handed over from somewhere else. You had no hand in it.
- Result — Jesus could not be where He now is if one offence were left unatoned. So the risen Christ is the ground of settled peace.