but to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.
Paul has just pictured a workman collecting his wages, and now he turns the picture over. God counts a person righteous for trusting instead of working — and He is the God who justifies people while they are still ungodly.
The argument turns on a contrast anyone can test in daily life. Work earns pay, and pay is owed, not given.
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.
So the choice is personal, and it comes down to one question.
"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.
Justifying is more than letting someone off.
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.
What makes it consistent is not leniency but the cross.
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.
Many spend years trying to become godly enough for God to accept them.
One writer told an old man that this was why he still had no assurance:
"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."
Faith is not a currency handed over the counter in exchange for a standing before God.
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.
Miss this, and faith itself becomes the new work people rest on.
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.
Shutting works out of justification does not shut them out of life.
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.
- Ungodly — that is what the verse calls the people God justifies. It is God's starting point, not yours.
- Debt — a worker's pay is his due, not a gift. Work for a standing before God, and you are asking for wages instead of grace.
- Grace — He gives instead, on the ground of Christ's work, so the verdict is righteous and not merely lenient.
- Faith — not a payment for righteousness. It is the empty hand that brings in the whole value of Christ's blood.
- Fruit — godliness comes afterward. Works are never the cause; they are always the result.
Even as David also declares the blessedness of the man to whom God reckons righteousness without works
Paul has just used Abraham to show that God counts a person righteous by faith. Now he calls a second witness, David — and the verse raises two questions: why David, and what it means for God to "count" righteousness to anyone.
Someone could dismiss Abraham by saying the law had not yet come. So Paul adds a man who lived under it.
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 does not say who this man is.
"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.
David's own record puts this to the test.
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.
The word does not describe a quantity of merit moved from one account to another. It describes how God regards the person.
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.
David's psalm speaks only of sins forgiven and covered. Paul quotes it to explain what being counted righteous is.
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.
Yet Paul's own words go further than the psalm he quotes.
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.
God does not set justice aside to bless a sinner.
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.
God means this to be enjoyed, not just believed.
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.
- Witness. David is Paul's second witness after Abraham. One lived before the law, the other under it. God justified both the same way.
- Without. Righteousness comes apart from works. The best man's works cannot earn it. The worst man's sins need not bar him from it.
- Counted. To count righteousness is not to move a sum of merit into someone's account. It is to reckon the person righteous before God.
- Covered. Justification and forgiveness meet here. David could only say sin is not counted. Paul says righteousness is.
- Ground. Christ's sacrifice lets God count a sinner righteous and stay just. He means every believer to enjoy that blessing.