Full Transcript

Hi and welcome to Share the Word. Let me start by asking some questions. Do you know how the transaction for salvation works? Do you know what it means to have credit for Christ’s righteousness, or how to get it? If you’re not clear about how salvation comes to each of us, or you want to be able to explain it to others, then you need to keep listening. Romans chapter 4: Perfect credit score.

What’s your credit score? Do you know where your credit is? If you’ve ever needed to borrow money, you almost certainly have been asked those questions. If you need to buy a car, trying to get a house, or even rent an apartment these days and don’t have deep enough pockets to just fork over the cash, how solid your credit looks is going to make all the difference in what you’re able to do. If you have no idea what your credit score is, by the way, you can find out free online from one of our sponsors like Credit Karma or Credit Sesame. No, they’re not our sponsors.

I just said that. By the way, 800 is a perfect credit score. The salesperson is going to be falling all over him or herself to show you their most expensive rides. But if your credit score is low, like say 500 or so, they’re going to be ushering you out the door with directions to Ralph’s bargain rides, where they do buy here, pay here, or, you know, riskier clientele. You know, it’s no joke how many people in America right now are getting squeezed financially with rising prices and fixed incomes. You get behind in your obligations, and then your credit score tanks.

Then if your car blows up or you have to find a new apartment, no one wants to talk to you. I just read a story, a sad story, about an elderly lady the other day who called into Money Talk, that kind of show where they talk about your finances, and she’s in this very predicament. The financial experts on the other end of the line had no real answers for her, because when you’re out of money and you have no credit or very bad credit and can’t get any money, you’re in an unworkable bind. Hold on to that thought. In Romans chapter 4, Paul calls the ultimate Jewish patriarch to the stand as a witness to illustrate the huge idea he has posited in chapter 3. Remember, he wrote there, But now God has shown us a way to be made right with Him without keeping the requirements of the law.

We’re made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ, and this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who you are. For everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard, yet God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty of our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God, the most important thing that could ever happen to us, when we place our faith in Jesus, Paul writes. When we come to trust in and rely on Him, because God made Jesus the sacrifice for our sins.

That’s the good news, the great news. Paul’s been arguing this is the only way anyone can be made right with God since the middle of chapter 3. Salvation by God’s grace and through our faith in Jesus is the only way, because every one of us is a sinner and cannot save himself. Now, what does this have to do with Abraham, you might be thinking, someone who lived 2,000 years or more before Jesus’ time? Well, Abraham was seen to the Jews, he was the founder of their nation. He was the ideal.

He was a man who originally lived in what’s today Iraq, but who God called and chose to be in a special relationship with Himself. And to whom he made great promises. The Jews call him Father Abraham, sort of like many Americans esteem George Washington as the father of our country, and we look up to him as an ideal. So, to Paul, Abraham was the perfect person to point to as he laid out his case for the Christian faith to a largely Jewish audience in the church at Rome. What can we learn from Abraham, he asks. Was Abraham made right with God, again justified is the term, the key term you have on one of your cards, right?

Was Abraham justified before God by his works, Paul asks, made right with God by things he did? If so, Paul says, he has something to brag about because when you work and you get paid at the end of the pay period, you’re getting what you’ve earned. If Abraham, or by extension anyone else, gets paid by God with forgiveness and eternal life at the end of their life’s journey because of their works, then they have earned it, and they can boast that they have only gotten from God what they deserve. But was that the case, even for Father Abraham, Paul asks? He then quotes Genesis chapter 3, verse 15 from the heart of the Old Testament section recounting Abraham’s life, where it says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Make a mental note of that term, credited.

To one who works, what they are paid is what they are due. The Bible says Abraham got from God credit because of his faith, what he believed, not what he earned. Then Paul’s mind jumped for a moment to another Old Testament hero of the Jews, King David. His mind was like that, very active, jumping around from place to place. And remember, David, although a man God greatly loved for some of his best traits, was also a man who failed and sinned miserably at points. Yet Paul quotes David’s own words from a 32nd Psalm: Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man whose sin God will not take into account. Despite David’s awful sin, we talked about this a couple episodes ago, he later repented and wrote this psalm about the blessing and the relief of knowing his terrible sins had been forgiven, that God was not keeping them on an account to one day judge and punish him over. So how in the world does that work, you might be wondering. Paul starts with making sure we know how it doesn’t work. The Jewish people felt they were in a special place with God and expected that God would accept and justify them at the end of their lives because they kept certain traditional Jewish rites like circumcision. We saw this in Galatians.

And also because they had been given the law of Moses. But Paul contradicts those notions in verses 9 and 10 when he restates, Faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness. His faith is what caused God to see him as righteous. Then Paul asks, Now, was that after he was circumcised, as if circumcision had something to do with it? And he answers his own question, No. God accepted Abraham’s faith and counted it as righteousness long before he was circumcised.

Paul, like an attorney, is often making closely reasoned arguments, as here. He’s pointing out that in fact Abraham was called by God and declared righteous by God because of his faith. And if you go back into the account in Genesis that talks about that happening, it was 14 years before he and his household were circumcised as a sign of his covenant with God. So obviously that had nothing to do with it. At verse 13 and following, he also makes the point that God declaring Abraham righteous in his eyes had nothing to do with his keeping the Old Testament law. It couldn’t, because the law was not given until more than a thousand years after Abraham’s time.

So no, Paul is saying, insisting really, Abraham, who you look up to as the ideal, as the father of the Jewish people, was not in a right relationship with God because of rights he performed or because of his obedience to God’s laws. Then what? What was the reason? Well, again, what does it say in Genesis 15? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. It was his faith in God and his promises.

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, as you might know, the New Testament in Greek. I know a little Hebrew and a little Greek, actually. Tony’s looking at me kind of impressed right now. Yeah, the little Hebrew, he had a shoe repair business in the town where I grew up, and the Greek a delicatessen. Preacher joke there, sorry. Actually, I have studied Greek when I was in university in grad school, but I never studied Hebrew.

But I read and listen to people who have, and what they tell me is that the Hebrew term in Genesis 15:16, where it says Abraham believed God, has to do with leaning completely on something because you fully trust in it, or in this case, trust in someone, in God. It’s a term of certitude. Abraham trusted God completely, and seeing that in him, his faith, is what God credited to him as righteousness. Get it? Okay, maybe not quite yet. But as it’s starting to come into focus, what Paul alludes to in chapter 4, verses 16 and following should help.

He brings up there how God promised to Abraham and his wife Sarah a son through whom the world would be blessed. But time went on and years kept passing till Abraham was approaching 100 years old and his wife was like 90. They were way past the normal years people could conceive children. Although Abraham did have kind of an adopted son who had been his servant for many years, a man named Eliezer, that was not what God had promised. He also had a son through Sarah’s handmaid, a great idea Sarah came up with, thinking she was helping God fulfill his promise, but that was not God’s plan either. God intended to do something miraculous and to give them a promised son way past the time they could normally have conceived one.

And Paul says at verse 19 about Abraham in that regard, without becoming weak in faith, although realizing his own body was now good as dead and Sarah’s womb was just as dead. As far as the promise of God went, he did not waver, being fully assured that what God promised he was able to perform. In my Bible, I have underlined being fully assured. That’s the certitude right there. Paul states, therefore, because of his faith, fully trusting in what God had promised him, that’s what was credited to him as righteousness. Then listen to this at verse 23.

Not for his sake only was that written; it was credited to him, but for our sakes also, it will be credited to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Paul assures us that on the very same basis as Abraham was credited righteousness, on the basis of his faith, righteousness can also be credited to us. That’s the point. Do you get it now? There was no way, according to how biology works, that Abraham and Sarah were going to have a baby at their ages. Abraham was shooting blanks, as we say, and at that point Sarah’s womb was shriveled up like a prune.

Their gynecologist would have chuckled under his breath when they approached him about the possibilities. But it didn’t matter. Abraham was fully assured that God could and would keep his promise. He leaned on that. He leaned on what God had told him, not his own feelings, not his own understanding of things. If God said it, he believed it.

Faith is what we should see and admire most about Abraham, Paul is saying. And Paul is saying also, it’s no different for us as well. This is how it’s always worked with God. In our case, the promise is not about a miracle child going to be born when we’re old. It’s a promise about salvation from sin and judgment at the end of our lives. The promise to us is if we put our faith in Jesus and believe God will save us based on what Jesus did on the cross, he will.

He will credit our faith, our believing in him, as righteousness. Although we certainly aren’t righteous, as Paul has painfully and repeatedly pointed out in chapters one through three, we don’t need to be. God will credit Christ’s righteousness to us in response to our faith. We all need that, friends. There’s really no other way. There’s a passage in the Old Testament book of Isaiah that gets kind of graphic, but maybe we need to get kind of graphic to drive this point home.

Just as Paul last chapter underscored for us that we are all sinners and continually falling short of God’s righteous standards, that there’s no one who is righteous, not even one, Isaiah told his generation, We have all become one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. Another translation puts it, All our righteousness is like filthy rags. Again, I’m no Hebrew scholar, but what I understand is that a reference there to filthy rags is actually a reference to soiled menstrual cloths. Yuck! Why would he even say such a thing? Because he’s drawing the strongest possible contrast between even the best person’s efforts at being righteous and our holy God’s absolute perfections.

In comparison to Him, our best efforts are less than nothing, like filthy rags. Nevertheless, get this through your thick skull, as my mom would sometimes say to me, God justifies the ungodly. As Paul put it in verse 4, God will justify—remember, that’s one of our key terms, that is, declare righteous, treat as righteous—the ungodly because of their faith. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us, it says in Psalm 103. But how many people are stuck on the fact that they don’t feel good enough for God? How many people, when you invite them to church, say, Well, I’m not ready to deal with God yet.

There are too many messed up things in my past. There’s too much out of whack in my life right now. Maybe when I get it together a little better, maybe then. That’s whack reasoning. God justifies the ungodly. You may remember, if you’ve been listening for a while, during the Gospel of Luke, how many times Jesus was criticized by the religious crowd for hanging around with sinners, with the ungodly.

And how did he respond to those critics? I didn’t come to call righteous people. I came to call sinners to repentance. It’s not the well who need a doctor, he would say. It’s the sick. The Apostle Paul once said about himself, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.

Listen, you’ve got to be ready for God to do some new and better things in your life because he didn’t come to save us in our sin, but to save us from our sin. But don’t let the fact you know you’re ungodly, know how far you are from God, and who he wants you to be, hinder you from believing his promises, from coming home to him, receiving his gift of forgiveness and eternal life. The awareness you’re lost, that you’re unworthy, that’s the exact right starting point. Once we own that, what God is looking for us then is the same thing he was looking for in Abraham, and that is to believe his promises. All right then, let me get back to the intro where I started today about credit score, remember? A Greek verb translated to English as credited appears nine times in Romans chapter 4.

It is the big idea in this chapter, and it’s an accounting term. I don’t want you to miss the essential meaning of this term Paul used when he said about Abraham, he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Credited. That means when you take something that belongs to one person and put it into another person’s account. At one time in my life, I owned a car dealership, for real. I remember one day a young woman and her boyfriend came into my office and she, let’s call her Allie, she was very desperate to buy a car I had.

I could tell just by spending a few moments with these two that it was highly unlikely they had the cash needed. Not to be too judgmental, but when you deal with people a lot, whether it’s in ministry situations or in a business, you learn how to read folks pretty well. And I was doubtful that she also had any available credit to qualify for a loan. And a quick check on one of the online sites I mentioned at the top today bore that out. She had no money and no credit to qualify her to borrow any money. Nevertheless, she kept insisting she wanted to buy that car.

So I asked the obvious, Um, how do you think you could make that happen, Allie? She said, My father will pay for it, and she sounded very sure of that. She told me her dad was more than financially capable, and when I heard the name she dropped, I immediately recognized it as the name of a very well-known businessman in New York City. I was skeptical. She just, you know, didn’t come across to me as a young socialite, if you know what I mean. But she said, Can I use your phone to call him?

And I said, Sure. And she made the call. I overheard some of the back and forth for a few minutes, and then she said, He wants to talk to you. Well, okay then. I got on the phone and a man says, This is so-and-so, and he proceeded to ask me a few questions about this vehicle I had. I’d like you to fax me a bill of sale for that and a copy of the title, along with your bank information to this number.

I said, Okay, I can do that. Still pretty sure someone was trying to scam me here. But I faxed the documents to the number he requested. Within ten minutes, I got back a fax showing a scan of a transaction apparently showing his bank wiring money to my bank for that car. Hmm. Of course, I called my bank and said, Did you just receive a bank wire to my account from such and such a person for such and such an amount?

And the bank guy said, Let me check. In a moment, he confirmed, Yes, that actually came through. I turned my face away and quietly said, Are you sure that payment is for real? He said something to the effect, It’s a direct bank-to-bank wire transfer. It’s real. Um, okay.

Click. The young woman who was in my office was broke and had no credit, but someone who loved her and had more than enough deposited into my account on her behalf. Turning to her, I said, Well, congratulations, Allie. Here’s the keys to your new car. Okay, Paul, cool story. What does that have to do with anything?

Actually, it’s a perfect parallel to what Paul is explaining to us about our situation in Romans chapter 4. He’s using an accounting scenario. His point is that we sinners, in ourselves, have no righteousness cash and have no righteousness credit that a holy God will accept. But there’s someone who does, who loves us, and who we can call on. When we call in faith on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s promise is He will credit Jesus’ righteousness right into our account. And Jesus has more than a perfect credit score with God.

Christ’s righteousness deposited into my empty account? Yes, that’s the promise, on the basis of your faith. That’s exactly how the transaction for salvation works. On the basis of our faith in Jesus, we are credited with all the righteousness we need to be saved. That’s the deal that God offers us. So the questions are, do you believe in who Jesus claimed to be?

I mean, really believe it. Do you believe that he died as an atonement for your sins and that he was raised again for your justification? Are you ready to put your trust in him as your Savior and follow him as your leader? If so, make that decision from your heart today, because that’s what God is looking for in you. Seeing genuine faith in his promises, he’ll hand you the keys to full forgiveness and eternal life. And there’s never been a better offer than that.

This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks again, Paul. If the gospel has become clear to you and you’ve accepted Christ, or even if you’re a longtime believer and you’ve ever wondered, where do I go from here? Well, all you have to do is go to sharetheword.org, go to the blog section, and click on Now That I Believe, What’s Next? It’s a great article—sorry, blog—that I know you’ll find helpful. I also hope that you’ll download it and share it with all of those you think it might help.

Remember, everything we produce is free to share. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.