Father Abraham had Many Sons--Rom. 4:1-5, 13-17 (First Essay)

"What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. 5 But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.. 13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. 16 For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) —in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist."

I. Paul's Problem

Each Pauline letter has a purpose, which usually can easily be divined from a quick reading of the letter. In many instances Paul tries to refute opponents who have come in after he left the community and, in his judgment, twisted his words. Romans' purpose is harder to determine, principally because Paul has never visited the Roman congregation. He tells them in ch. 15 that he intends to visit them, and he hopes that they might "speed him on his way" to Spain. In a paper I wrote 30 years ago, I argued that this phrase meant that he was asking for money--money to "complete" his Mediterranean mission work. In order to do this, however, Paul needed a basic declaration of "his Gospel," a document which might have been shaped by the controversies of the past decade or so but was not directed to or shaped by specific opponents. Romans functions as this basic declaration of Paul's Gospel.

Central to Romans is Paul's attempt to negotiate a problem that dogged the early Christian movement late into the first century--and that was to what extent Christianity was a successor and continuator of Judaism. This was a problem of immense proportions in the 1st century, and Romans is in the middle of the "debate." In fact, so difficult was this problem that it never was "solved," or, in other words, it was solved when Christianity and Judaism decided to part company about a generation after the destruction of the Temple in 70. By the early second century Christianity had become primarily a Gentile phenomenon. At that time, then, the problem which had been such a problem only a generation previously had fallen aside. It is like the problem of communism in the world of the 21st century. Our children study it as a historical phenomenon, while the WWII generation was engaged in a life and death struggle with it.

So we meet Paul in Romans as he tries to wrestle with this tremendously difficult problem of how the early Christian movement is dependent on but independent of Judaism--a problem which divided the early Christians but really has almost no practical importance for us today. Thus, the Word of God in this most precious Pauline letter is shaped in the white-hot cauldron that has gone completely cold. Almost no one today looks at Judaism and Christianity as anything but two different religions, even though we often speak of the "Judao-Christian" tradition in the West.

As we move to Paul's specific argument in Romans, we need to divide it into 1:1-3:20 and then 3:22-4:25. There are a few verses in the first part that are important for us to understand his argument about Abraham in today's passage. In short, in his argument in 1:1-3:20 he seeks to consign all people, Jew or Gentile, to the same condition in life--that of sin and separation from God. The culmination of his argument is in 3:19-20:

"Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For "no human being will be justified in his sight" by deeds prescribed by the law..."

The law "shuts us up," so to speak, and we have no legal leg on which to stand before God. This happens to Jew and Gentile alike.

By so arguing Paul has almost overplayed his hand, and he is aware of that. What I mean is that if both Jew and Gentile are judged according to the same standard and are found wanting, what is so great about being a Jew? Weren't they the chosen people of God? What does that mean, then, that they had to endure immense suffering as God's chosen people when, in fact, it leads to no perceptible benefits in Paul's argument?

So, Paul backtracks a bit. Just enough to try to fend off the complaint. How does he do so? In two ways. First, after he has exposed the sin of Jew and Gentile alike, he asks the question,

"Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision" (3:1)?

He will answer it positively--"Much in every way. For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God," 3:2. No matter that Paul doesn't get to the "second place" until chapters 9-11; no matter that he doesn't explain how the oracles of God benefit the Jews. He says this because he is trying to blunt the effect of an argument that might be too overreaching.

Second, after he consigns all people to sin and death, he backtracks a bit in 3:27-31 by connecting law and faith, whereas in other parts of the Epistle these concepts are opposites. Boasting is excluded (3:27). Why? "by the law of faith" (3:27). He never explains what he means by this, but I think Paul has realized that if he contrasts the two concepts too strongly he is inviting problems for himself. So, he mentions a 'law of faith,' which he nowhere explains. Then, at the end of this passage, he refers to the circumcised and the uncircumcised, both of whom God will justify by faith. He concludes with a rhetorical question:

"Do we then overthrow the law by this fatih? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law."

This was an unexpected thought! We might have expected that law and faith, though not identical, would have been placed in different realms at the end of this chapter, since that is the flow of the passage. But, Paul can't quite get out of his mind the fact that law is so significant for Judaism. Thus, he says that we, through faith, "uphold" the law.

In fact, Paul has left us confused and, in my judgment, he has done so because the problem or conundrum on which he is working resists any definitive resolution. The flow of his argument in 1:1-3:20 was to consign everyone to death. No one has a leg up on God. All are in the same boat, heading for the same waterfall that will bring us to the death we richly deserve. But he can't quite allow himself to go that far, and that is why he bumbles a bit at the end of the chapter on the issue of faith and works.

But he can't solve the problem, especially now that he has backed himself into this intellectual corner. So, he does something brilliant--he takes us away from logical or intellectual argument and draws attention to a person--Abraham. The reference to Abraham was probably triggered in Paul's mind because of the notion of "circumcision" that Paul introduced in 3:29. After all, circumcision was a custom that came in through Abraham (Gen. 17). He gently steps away from the argument in ch. 3 that really has not solved anything, and will turn to Abraham. And, in great measure, he extricates himself from the difficulty he has created by appealing to Abraham.

Let's now turn to Abraham...

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