Romans 4:9-17, Commentary
Jul 9th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | 1 Comment |
[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3| 4: Intro, 1-8, 9-17, 18-25, Conclusion | 5 ]
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9 Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We say, “Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.” 10 How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, 12 and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised. 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.
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4:9-11a — Paul here makes a fascinating philosophical move. By pointing out that Abraham was declared righteous because of his acceptance of God’s promise (his “faith”) before he performed the central act of identifying himself as a Follower of the Law (circumcision), Paul argues that righteousness by faith historically precedes, and therefore is logically independent of, becoming a Follower of the Law.
By showing that the Law hasn’t always been the way to become righteous, but was preceded by another way of becoming righteous, Paul makes the Law look more limited in scope, more temporally-bound, more arbitrary. Therefore, he makes it more difficult for any of his hearers to simply assume that the Law is the only way to become righteous.
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Now, as I argued last time, it’s obvious that following the Law isn’t how you become righteous, since you’re not righteous (and therefore need to become righteous, to get justified) because you’ve already broken the Law.
Keeping the Law from here on out doesn’t change the fact that you broke the Law before. Therefore, the point of the Law isn’t to make you righteous (i.e., it’s point is not to help you make up for those times where you’ve broken it).
What Paul is doing here, therefore, is to add another argument to that line of reasoning, in order to get his hearers to stop thinking that the Law somehow allows them to change the past.
Not only can’t following the Law now change the fact that you haven’t always followed it in every one of its aspects before — i.e., it can’t make you righteous — but Abraham became righteous before he even entered on the path (through circumcision) of Following the Law.
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4:11b-12 — Now, Paul asks what was the point of Abraham’s becoming righteous before becoming circumcised. Was it to get him into heaven or save him from hell?
No. It was to create unity between Jews and Gentiles.
That is the point of Romans so far. This is not a letter about soteriology (the theory of how salvation works). This is not a letter whose purpose is to expound the Doctrine of Salvation (even though it does that). This is a letter about church unity.
Paul’s soteriological claims are made, not to get people saved, or to save them from eternal damnation, or to get them into heaven, etc. (He’s writing to Christians who are all already saved!) Paul makes these claims in order to get his hearers to see each other as equals, and therefore to get them to live in harmony with each other.
He obviously believes his claims about salvation/justification are true. He’s not lying to his readers about how they become righteous (how they’ve all already become righteous). It’s just that teaching them how they become righteous is a means to a further end: getting them to live the kind of life together that they’re supposed to be living.
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4:13-17 — If Abraham was to have the promise that he would inherit the world (I’m not sure where that promise is stated; perhaps Genesis 22:17?) fulfilled, and that would mean his descendants would have to inherit the world.
But if to be Abraham’s descendant means to follow the Law, then Abraham has no descendants, since no one has followed the Law in its entirety for their entire lives.
Therefore, Abraham has no descendants at all, and therefore he could not inherit the earth.
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However, everyone can be righteous through faith — and if being Abraham’s descendant means participating in the same righteousness through the same “means” (faith) as Abraham, then the promise that Abraham’s descendants will inherit the earth can be fulfilled (since everyone who has inherited their little part of the earth can become righteous like Abraham).
Therefore, Paul says — and this is the conclusion he has been trying to reach — Abraham “is the father of all of us”; that is, both the Jews and the Gentiles in the Roman church have Abraham as their father.
Thus, they should live like a family.
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[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3| 4: Intro, 1-8, 9-17, 18-25, Conclusion | 5 ]
Indeed.