Or, The Footsteps of Faith Romans 4:9-12 March 27, 2022 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins

Introduction

Everyone who believes is a son of Abraham. There are some who are sons of Abraham who do not believe. There are two ways to call Abraham, “father Abraham,” and while both ways include blessings, only one of the ways gets blessings proper, salvific, eternal.

When God called Abram/Abraham God promised to bring blessing to the nations through Abraham (Genesis 12:3; Galatians 3:8). This is quite surprising, for at least two reasons. It’s surprising that God would choose this particular pagan to become the human fountainhead of blessing, and it’s surprising–or at least striking-that God would choose a fountainhead of blessing. God is the giver of good things. He gives promises about giving good things, and sometimes He just gives good things. He gives good things to those who don’t deserve them, and in giving good things He makes them accountable.

God graciously chose Abraham to receive good things, and graciously chose Abraham to be the one through whom good things would come to all sorts of peoples.

The particular people who most looked to Abraham as their forefather was the Jews. This is right. God gave Abraham Isaac, God gave Isaac Jacob, Jacob was the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus regularly poked the eyes of those in Israel who claimed religious stature since they were sons of Abraham (Matthew 3:9; John 8:39). Jesus wasn’t denying their ethnicity (John 8:56), He was confronting their complacency.

But Isaac wasn’t Abraham’s only son. His first son was Ishmael, and God protected Ishmael and promised that Ishmael would also become a great nation (Genesis 17:20; 21:13; 21:18). This made them sons of Abraham. These sons of Abraham did not get the same kinds of blessings or promises. They did not get an Ishmaelian covenant or Messiah of their own. But all the Jews and many of the Gentiles trace their lines from Abraham “according to the flesh” (4:1).

And what Paul points out in Romans 4 is that Abraham is the father of all those who have faith. Though many are related to him by flesh, believers look to him as the first one declared righteous by believing.

All of Romans 4 relates to Abraham’s righteousness, specifically, it did not come from Abraham’s works (1-8), from circumcision (9-12), or from the law (verses 13-22). Justification has always been by faith, and Abraham’s story is for us to teach the same truth (23-25).

The Timing of Abraham’s Circumcision (verses 9-11a)

We just came off the great #blessed man who does not have his sins counted against him. Paul quoted David, but in support of his case about Abraham. The chapter starts by asking about those who looked back to Abraham as “forefather according to the flesh,” so now he asks, could others be forgiven? This is the question that leads us into the circumcision question.

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. (verses 9–11a ESV)

Paul is teaching by leading his readers through a series of questions and answers. The answer to the first question may seem to switch the subject, but it is the point. Of course the uncircumcised, those outside the Abrahamic covenant, can have the blessing of forgiveness. It’s not about your dad, it’s not about your behavior, it’s not about your religion or its sacraments and ceremonies. Forgiveness comes by faith, and is for whoever has faith. That is the answer to the question, becaus[...]