Romans 4
ROMANS 4
MADE RIGHT BY TRUSTING CHRIST (1:18—5:11), cont.
Abraham Righted by Faith (4:1–8)
Having claimed in 3:31 that the way of faith establishes the teaching of the law (cf. also 3:21), Paul now goes on to demonstrate this by means of a midrash on a foundational passage for Israel’s history. Revealing the biblical foundations for the points that he has just been making, he will establish that even Abraham could not boast in his works (3:27; 4:2); that even he was put right with God by trust rather than merit (3:28; 4:3–5); and that God had a purpose for uncircumcised Gentiles as well as circumcised Jews (3:29–30; 4:9–12, 16–18).
Abraham was the defining ancestor of Israel (4:1; though not only of Israel; 9:7–13), so his support for accepting uncircumcised Gentiles among God’s people would outweigh any other Jewish objections.1 Not only was Abraham the model for Israel,2 but later rabbis considered him the model Gentile convert to Judaism and affirmed his and Sarah’s witness to Gentiles. Those who appealed to the model of Abraham often appealed to his works, with faith among them.
But however much Abraham’s faith was expressed in obedience and righteousness, it is clear that faith was the foundation for these other elements. Scripture specifically announced that God counted Abram as righteous when he believed God’s promise (Gen 15:6; quoted in Rom 4:3). Abram’s faith was far from perfect: God had essentially promised both land and seed (Gen 12:1–2), but even after God assured Abram he would receive both, he requested confirmation regarding the land (15:7–8), and soon he and Sarai resorted to Hagar as a surrogate mother (16:2). Abram’s faith is much greater years later when he offers up Isaac apparently without question (22:2–3), but this initial, somewhat rudimentary faith is sufficient to be reckoned righteous, analogous to even those initially entering the Christian faith.
Reading his key text for all it is worth, as midrashic expositors typically did, Paul contrasts the text’s words with his construction of righteousness by obeying the law (what a Gentile Godfearer might feel necessary to become a full convert to Judaism). God was not paying Abraham his due for righteous deeds,3 but “reckoning” his faith as if it were righteousness (4:4–5); Paul highlights this term “reckon,” using it eleven times in this chapter.4 Paul’s claim that God “acquits” or “makes right the ungodly” (4:5) is deliberatively provocative,5 for it sounds like injustice (cf. Ex 23:7). Paul backs up this claim, however, with his following citation. Jewish midrash also linked together texts based on a common key term or phrase, and Paul in 4:6–8 cites the favored state (“blessing,” in many translations) of another whose behavior was “reckoned” by God’s favor rather than his works (Ps 32:1–2). Having produced Abraham as a witness, he now cites David, who was held to be the author of many psalms (especially in the early Psalter). The psalmist had clearly sinned (Ps 32:3), yet God did not “reckon” the sin to him.
Father Also of Gentiles Who Believe (4:9–12)
In 4:9–13 Paul returns to the issue that prompted (both in Romans and Galatians) his heavy emphasis on being made right by faith: God puts both Jews and Gentiles right with him by the same means. As we noted above, Jewish people regarded Abraham as a model Gentile convert. Paul uses context6 to point out that Abraham was put right with God by faith in Gen 15:6—over thirteen years before hs circumcision (since it preceded Ishmael’s conception, 16:4; and Ishmael was thirteen at the circumcision, 17:25). “This blessing” (4:9) of which David spoke (4:6–8)—of being “reckoned” righteous not by works but, as in Gen 15:6, by faith (4:3)—applied to Abraham before he was circumcised.
People spoke of both ethnic and spiritual ancestry; spiritual ancestors were those in whose ways one walked, i.e., those one imitated as if parents.7 Those who have faith, like Abraham did, are his spiritual heirs more than those who simply practice the outward seal of circumcision (4:11–12).8 Some Jewish teachers appealed to ancestral merit for blessing, a benefit unavailable to Gentile converts,9 but Paul allowed Abraham only as a model.
At this point, a Jewish interlocutor could have replied, “Abraham was counted righteous as a Godfearer, but joined the covenant by means of circumcision” (cf. Gen 17:10–14). Paul’s response is that God gave Abram even the promise of the land while uncircumcised, and certainly centuries before the law (Rom 4:13). Circumcision was merely an external “sign” or “seal” of his already-existing faith (4:11), and is not inherently essential to that faith (here Paul may recall his own argument about spiritual circumcision in 2:25–29). A “seal” could function as a symbol (Exod 28:11, 21, 36); a “sign” of the covenant would be, like the rainbow in Gen 9:12–13, 16–17, a reminder of the deliverance that God had established, not the deliverance itself.
The Promise through Faith (4:13–25)
Constructing again his antithesis between God’s original plan of promise and the Israel-specific law (Rom 4:13–15; cf. Gal 3:17–19), Paul argues that if righteousness came by faith in the promise, the law (like the circumcision that prefigured it) is not what is needed to achieve it. Various Jewish thinkers highlighted some biblical covenants while playing down others, so Paul’s treatment of Moses’s law as a phase between the Abrahamic promise and the new covenant was no more idiosyncratic than some other treatments of the day.10 Scripture promised Abraham “the land” (haaretz), but in Hebrew this could mean either a specific land or the earth, and by Paul’s day Jewish thinkers often applied the promise to the world as a whole, or even to inheriting the world to come.11 When Paul speaks elsewhere of “inheriting,” as here (4:13), he often uses it in the idiom of the life of the coming age (Rom 8:17; 1 Cor 6:9–10; 15:50; Gal 5:21).12 Just as faith does not void law (Rom 3:31), so in 4:14 the law cannot void faith and promise, which would also threaten Scripure and God’s covenant (cf. Gal 3:17–18). For Paul, law’s function (in this context) is to reveal failures to meet God’s standard rather than to reckon righteousness (Rom 4:15).
In 4:16 Paul again returns to the key issue that motivates his argument: God’s one way of righteousness is not only for those who are of the law (circumcised Israelites), but those who are of faith like Abraham—all his spiritual descendants, both Jewish and Gentile.13 While not citing the blessing of all nations in Abraham here (as in Gal 3:8; Gen 12:3; 18:18; 22:18), he cites Abraham as father of many nations (Gen 17:4–6; Rom 4:17). Although by itself that promise might mean father of Ishmaelites, Edomites, Midianites and other ethnic descendants,14 Paul applies it to Abraham’s spiritual heirs. Not all those physical descendants would really inherit the covenant (Gen 17:7–8; cf. Rom 9:6–13, 25–29), whereas God would welcome those with Abraham’s faith as he welcomed Abraham.15 Paul reads Scripture not only for covenantal history, but devotionally for insight into and examples of a dynamic relationship with God.
Some have contrasted Abraham’s model of faith with fallen humanity’s apostasy in Romans 1:16
Rom 1:20–27
Rom 4:17–21
Humanity failed to recognize its creator (1:20, 25)
Abraham trusted the creator (4:17)
dunamis
dunatos
Humanity did not give God glory (1:21)
Abraham gave God glory (4:20)
Humanity dishonored their bodies (1:24)
Abraham found new strength in his body (4:19)
Humanity used their bodies in non-productive, same-sex relations (1:26–27)
Abraham and Sarah conceived a child (4:19)—miraculously being fruitful and multiplying
If Paul intends such a contrast, it would help prepare for the further contrast between Abraham’s faith and Adamic humanity’s fallenness in 5:12–21.17
The affirmation that God raises the dead and creatively calls things into being (4:17)18 prepares for Paul’s explanation of the relevance of Abraham’s “resurrection faith” for later believers (4:19, 24). Abraham maintained hope despite the hopelessness of the situation (4:18), just as believers must (5:2–5; 8:24–25). The nature of Abraham’s faith would instruct Paul’s audience: whereas some of them were weak in faith (14:1–2), Israel’s great ancestor Abraham was strong in faith (4:19–20); as he was “fully persuaded” (4:21), so should they be (14:5); as he refused to doubt (diakrinō; 4:20), so should they (14:23). Likewise, he avoided unbelief (apistia; 4:20), in contrast to much of contemporary Israel (3:3; 11:20, 23). In contrast to those who refused to glorify God even after his works (1:21), Abraham glorified him before the fulfillment of his promise (4:20), counting his word as good as done (though he acknowledged fully his own physical state; 4:19). Abraham is thus a striking example of loyal, obedient faith, and this is the sort of faith that was counted as righteousness (4:22). Paul offers no comfort to those, in his day (3:8) or in recent centuries, who think that his view of saving faith is irrelevant to life, merely untested assent to a widely shared proposition.
The object of faith is also significant. The repeated theme of “promise” here (4:20–21; also 4:13–14, 16) might recall for Paul’s audience the importance of trusting the promised Messiah (1:2–4). The promise of the “seed” (descendants; 4:18) may point to a key element in Paul’s analogy. Most important in Paul’s analogy is Abraham’s faith in God’s message to him, but that message foreshadowed the gospel in key ways. Just as the promise of inheriting “the world” (4:13) foreshadowed the kingdom (i.e., the expected reign of the Messiah), so the promised seed may have foreshadowed a more particular seed (cf. Gal 3:16). Isaac was the child of promise (9:8), but his lineage also included a later promise, the seed of David (Rom 1:3; cf. 2 Sam 7:12). Those in Christ would reign with him (Rom 5:17; cf. Dan 7:14, 22).
More specifically, in 4:19, his faith in the God who could surmount the “deadness” of his body19 and Sarah’s womb was resurrection faith (4:17).20 Abraham modeled faith not simply abstractly, but by believing in a promised seed and in resurrection; these objects offered a concrete model for believers in Jesus’s resurrection (4:24).
All along, Paul thus has in mind his objective of applying the text to his audience, and he says so plainly in 4:23–24. Events in biblical history may have happened for the sake of those involved in them, but they were written for subsequent generations to learn from their example (cf. 15:4; 1 Cor 10:11).21 We have already noted how Paul shapes his telling of Abraham’s story to prepare for resurrection faith in 4:24. In 4:25 Paul summarizes his gospel (grounded in Scripture, cf. 1 Cor 15:3–4). Paul may use parallel clauses here (dia + the accusative = “on account of ”) simply for rhetorical effect, even though the first clause notes the cause requiring Jesus’s death and the second the goal (hence an ultimate, teleological cause) of his resurrection.22 In view of his abundant allusions to Isaiah in Romans, his language in 4:24–25 may allude to the suffering servant of Isa 53:5–12.23
Paul’s new term paraptōma (“transgression”) prepares for the six uses of the term in 5:15–20, as Paul’s use of the rare term dikaiōsis (“acquittal”) prepares for his only other use of it in 5:18 (where it contrasts with paraptōma). Paul’s teaching in the following units seems to flesh out more explicitly what Jesus’s death on account of sin means, both in terms of Jesus’s martyrdom turning away God’s wrath (5:9) and his perfect obedience in death reversing Adam’s disobedience (5:18–19).
1. Later rabbis also claimed the benefits of the patriarchs’ merits (e.g., m. ’Abot 2:2; Mek. Pisha 16.165–68, with other opinions in 16.169–72; Besh. 4.52–57; Sipra Behuq. pq. 8.269.2.5; Sipre Deut. 8.1.1). We lack space to engage the competing arguments regarding the syntax of Rom 4:1 (e.g., Hays 1989: 54; idem 2005: 64–73; Gathercole 2002: 234).
2. For Abraham receiving the covenant through obedience, Talbert (2002: 98) cites Gen 26:2–5; Jub. 15:3–4; Sir 44:19–21; CD 3.2. For a history of early Jewish approaches to Gen 15:6, see Oeming 1998: 16–33. For why Paul focuses on Abraham rather than Sarah here, see Grieb 2002: 51.
3. Just “wages” for human behavior, in fact, are death (a different term in 6:23), though the present term appears more positively in 1 Cor 3:8, 14; 9:17–18.
4. Cf. finding “favor” (charis, “grace”) in the Lord’s eyes in Gen 6:8; 18:3 (the lxx’s first two uses of the term).
5. The Greek terminology would sound even worse to those unfamiliar with the lxx (Anderson [1999: 209] speaks of “lexical shock”).
6. On the typical Jewish application of this principle, see e.g., Longenecker 1975: 118.
7. See Keener 2005a: 3; idem 2003b: 756–57. Many thinkers regarded shared character as a closer tie than birth (deSilva 2000: 194–95, 202–6; cf. Philo Heir 68–69).
8. Some later rabbinic sources treat circumcision as a seal (cf. t. Ber. 6:13; also Barn. 9.6), an idea presumably not borrowed from Paul; circumcision as a covenant “sign” recalls Gen 17:11 (Jub. 15:26). Some think Paul replaced circumcision with baptism (Lampe 1951: 3–5; Richardson 1958: 352–53), but Paul instead emphasizes faith (Barth 1974: 1:135–43; Dunn 1998: 454–55; Thrall 1994: 156–58). Paul’s “seal” of the Spirit (2 Cor 1:22) also does not explicitly mention baptism (though cf. Herm. 93.2–4).
9. For ancestral merit, see e.g., L.A.B. 35:3; T. Levi 15:4 (if not interpolated); 3 En. 1:3; Sipra Behuq. pq. 8.269.2.5; Sipre Deut. 8.1.1; for the exodus, Mek. Pisha 16.165–68; Besh. 4.52–54; for its unavailability to proselytes, see later Num. Rab. 8:9. Not all agreed (Sipre Deut. 329.3.1), and the application of such merit to individual salvation might be later. Circumcision (Mek. Pisha 16.169–70) and faith (Mek. Besh. 7.135–38) were also meritorious.
10. See Talbert 2002: 17, with sources; cf. Knox 1925: 135.
11. With many commentators (e.g., Byrne 1996: 157; cf. Jub. 32:19).
12. A common Jewish formulation (e.g., 1 En. 40:9; 4 Ezra 7:96; m. ’Abot 3:11; for other sources, see e.g., Keener 1999: 167; and esp. Hester 1968).
13. Paul’s wording in 4:16 may allow for God’s continuing plan for ethnic Israel, anticipating his later argument in Rom 11.
14. t. Ber. 1:12 applies it to being “father” of all humanity, perhaps in the sense of his seed eventually ruling the world (cf. t. Ber. 1:13; Mek. Besh. 7.139–40).
15. Viewed in a broader context of the empire, Paul’s portrait offers a striking contrast to the imperial subjugation of “the nations” (see Lopez 2008).
16. Wright 2004: 78.
17. Abraham also prefigures Christ in 5:12–21 in this respect, although I did not take pistis Christou in 3:22 as a reference to Christ’s faith (parallel to Abraham’s), as some do.
18. This is the contemporary Jewish language of creation ex nihilo (Byrne 1996: 159–60; Dunn 1988: vol. 1, 218; O’Neill 2002; 2 Bar. 21:4); Paul already appealed to creation in Rom 1:20. God’s “calling” that formed his people and would form them in the future appears in 8:30; 9:7, 12, 24–26. Mē onta appears also in 1 Cor 1:28.
19. He was “about one hundred” when the promise was fulfilled, not when (many years earlier) it was given (unless one is rounding to the nearest half century). The “deadness” of his body also anticipates the resurrection of believers’ “dead” (mortal) bodies (8:10–11). Cf. Heb 11:12.
20. The author of Hebrews, who focuses on Abraham offering up Isaac, also finds anticipatory resurrection faith there (Heb 11:17–19).
21. Paul’s approach here is to argue from analogy, not to “allegorize” like Philo, though he employs the same “on our account” in 1 Cor 9:10 (regarding a law; see e.g., discussion in Keener 2005b: 78–79).
22. Those who trust in Jesus’s resurrection are righted in 4:24. God rights believers both because of Jesus’s death (4:25) and his resurrection (5:9). Although his focus is more often on the resurrection, Paul emphasizes different aspects at different points for rhetorical balance.
23. Often noted: e.g., Hunter 1955: 54; Stuhlmacher 1994: 75; Dunn 1988: 1:241; Johnson 2001: 173–74; Byrne 1996: 161; Jewett 2007: 342.