Right with God - Romans 4

Occasionally in the news, you'll hear a story of someone who goes to check their bank balance and they discover that it's way, way higher than what they thought it would be. Last year it happened to Cindy and I. Although not way, way higher, a little bit higher, a few hundred dollars higher. We discovered in our bank account a random transfer had come from an account we didn't recognize. Popped up on our phone to say, you've received this number of hundreds of dollars.

And for a couple of minutes we were thinking, what is this? Who is this? Who owed us money? Did someone giving us a gift. And then Cindy got a text message from a number we didn't recognize.

And it was someone who had got a few numbers wrong in the transfer. And they'd sent the money to Cindy's mobile number instead of their friend's mobile number. And they were asking for it back, and we sent it back. Of course, I had to say that in case you spent the rest of the sermon wondering. We sent it back only for a few weeks later.

Money to appear in our account again. Same amount of money from the same person, followed by the same text message. Can you please send the money back this time? We thought about it just for a split second, and then we sent it back. Fortunately, it hasn't happened a third time.

But there was a story that I read in the newspaper a little while ago about the same thing happening to a Melbourne woman. She was supposed to receive a refund of $100 from a company. And the person at the company, instead of putting her account numbers into the account number box, put her account numbers into the amount to transfer box. And they sent her $10.4 million. This company obviously wasn't struggling because they didn't even notice the money was gone for seven months.

It took seven months until an audit occurred that they realized the money was missing. And then they started to try and get it back. But by that time, this woman had purchased a new house. She'd given a million dollars to a friend. She sent a few million dollars overseas to offshore bank accounts.

And she'd taken a few five star first class luxury holidays. She was subsequently arrested at Melbourne Airport with a one way ticket overseas. She knew that she'd done the wrong thing. The money had been put in her account, it had been credited to her, but it wasn't hers. It wasn't hers to spend.

So if you take nothing else from the sermon, you take this. If money is accidentally given to you, you can't spend it. You go to jail. All right, so you give it back. But I wonder if this afternoon, I want you to imagine this.

Imagine a huge sum turns up in your bank account. A huge sum that you didn't earn. A huge sum that wouldn't just make the next couple of weeks easier, would actually change your life. I want you to try and imagine the shock you would then feel if that sum was followed by a phone call from the person who sent it. And they said to you, the money's yours.

I've credited it to your account and I've done it on purpose. I'll cover the cost of it. It's yours. Keep it. You can spend it.

As we come To Romans chapter 4, we find Paul paints this picture for us. And he uses a specific Greek word to do it. The word is legizamai. He uses Legizamai 11 times in the chapter. Legizima is a bookkeeping term.

In Paul's day, it was the word that was used for financial transactions. Specifically, it described deposits made into someone's account. And Paul uses it over and over and over again. If you're an accountant or you're in financial services, Romans 4 is your chapter. If anyone asks you what your favorite part of the Bible is, you should say Romans 4, because it is a bookkeeping chapter.

But Paul uses it to deliberately describe our standing with God. And his point is this. He makes this point throughout chapter four. Paul. Being made right with God has never been about what you've done, your effort, or your religious background.

Being right with God is about what God credits to your account when you trust him. Now we're gonna see four ideas that are worked out through the passage, and they'll come up on the screen there. Because throughout chapter four, Paul makes these four points. Being right with God is not earned. It's credited.

Being right with God is not about ritual. It's about relationship. Being right with God is not conditional. It's guaranteed for those who believe. And being made right with God is not wishful thinking.

It's trust in God's track record. So let's read verses one to eight says this. Abraham was, humanly speaking, the founder of our Jewish nation. What did he discover about being made right with God? If his good deeds had made him acceptable to God, he would have had something to boast about.

But that was not God's way. For the Scriptures tell us Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith. When people work, their wages are not a gift, but something they have earned. But people are counted as righteous not because of their work, but because of their faith in God who forgives sinners. If I had my choice, I would love for us to sit down and work through all of Romans from start to finish, like you're preaching there, thinking, we're so glad we're not.

You know, we'd be here for hours and hours. But we break it up into chapters. Well, it's been broken up into chapters, and we chunk it so it fits within our Sunday morning services. But the risk of doing that is that sometimes we can see these parts, these sections that we're working through as disconnected ideas. Like Paul's just throwing out these tidbits of information, but he's not.

Each part builds on the parts that come before. It's one long, flowing argument. No one ever reads a letter in chapters. You don't do it. And Paul has written a letter to them.

And it matters for chapter four that we see it like this, because it flows on from chapter three. In the opening chapters, we've seen Paul paint this clear picture of our sin and of God's righteousness. And then towards the end of chapter three, in verse 28, he said these words. You might remember it from a couple of weeks ago. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.

Now, hopefully you've heard that. Hopefully you've read that. Hopefully you know that in your own faith walk. But this idea would have been radical for the Jewish Christians. The Jewish Christians gathered there in Rome.

This would have blown their minds because the rabbis had been telling them the way to be right with God was to fulfill the law. The idea of the law was so crucial to the life of a Jew, it's probably a bit foreign to us. We talk about it when we're working through God's word. But maybe if Paul was writing to Horizon Church in 2026, perhaps he would say something like, you are made right with God through faith, not by any ritual and not by your own effort. Because Paul knows how radical the concept is.

He opens chapter four that we've just read the opening verses of with a question. What did Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, discover about being made right with God? It shouldn't shock us that he goes to Abraham as an example, because for the Jew, Abraham was the most significant, the most revered figure in Jewish history. And so Paul turns to Abraham to. To illustrate his point.

The rabbis of Paul's day taught that God chose Abraham because Abraham was the most righteous person on earth. In fact, they even claimed that Abraham fulfilled the law. He kept the law before the law, was even given by God to his people. But Paul challenges this and he says to them, you need to look more carefully. And so in verse three, he says, abraham believed God and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.

He quotes directly from Genesis 15:6. Abraham believed and God credited him. In the Greek, the root word is legizamai. To him as righteousness, credited it to him as righteousness. And then he gives us an example.

In verses four and five, he says, when someone works, their wages are not a gift, they're a debt. The employer owes it to them. I wonder if any of you on payday, you've gone to your account, you've checked your balance, you've seen your pay is in there. And then you've got straight on the phone to your boss and you've said, thank you so much. What a blessing this is.

This is such a wonderful gift. Gift. I'm so grateful to you for transferring my pay. You probably haven't done it because it isn't a gift. You've worked the hours, you've earned the pay.

But Paul is saying, this is not how being made right with God works. It isn't a wage, it's not something you can earn. If it were, God would owe it to you. But. But he doesn't.

Instead, he credits righteousness to those who believe. To make it even clearer that it isn't a new idea. It isn't something that Paul simply came up with and now he's sharing. He turns to a second example. He turns to another hero of the Jews.

He looks to David. It's there in verse six. This should encourage us. Because if anyone knew what it was like to experience failure to it was David. He knew what it was to not meet the law.

And yet Paul quotes David's words from Psalm 32. David also spoke of this when he described the happiness of those who are declared righteous without working for it. Oh, what a joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight. Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin. What incredible words they are.

You know, I think if you are keen for it and you want to memorize some scripture, memorize these words. What a joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven. For those whose sins are put out of sight. What a joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin. When you come to Christ in faith, that is your story.

Those are the words that you can speak. Then Paul says to them, because it is credited to you, it isn't about fulfilling rituals. Let's turn to verse nine. He says, now, is this blessing only for the Jews, or is it also for uncircumcised Gentiles? Well, we have been saying that Abraham was counted as righteous by God because of his faith.

But how did this happen? Was he counted as righteous only after he was circumcised, or was it before he was circumcised? Clearly, God accepted Abraham before he was circumcised. So Paul asks another question to make it really clear to the church in Rome. Remember, a church made up of Gentile believers and of Jewish believers, he says, is the gift of being made right with God only for those who have taken part in the ritual of circumcision, which is what many of the Jewish believers thought.

Or is it for everyone who believes? And to answer this, he goes back to Abraham again. He says, when was Abraham made right with God? Was it after the ritual of circumcision or was it before? And the answer's clear.

He says, it was before. You see, God declared Abraham righteous in Genesis 15, but circumcision didn't come in until later in the story. More than a decade later, Paul is saying Abraham was right already, made right with God before he ever took part in the ritual, before anything external marked him. Something internal had already happened. He trusted God, and so he was counted righteous.

And so Paul's point here is really clear. The ritual of circumcision didn't create the relationship, it simply confirmed it. It was a sign of something that was already true, not the thing that made it true. Now, for us, we might be saying, thanks, Paul, like, it's always a bit uncomfortable when you start talking about circumcision. If you could stop doing that, that'd be great.

But it kind of doesn't apply to us today. But we have our own rituals we rely on. I've chatted with plenty of people who have said, oh, I'm an Anglican or I'm a Catholic or I'm a whatever, because I was baptized in my family's church as a baby. And Paul would say, sure, that might make you Anglican or might make you Catholic or might make you whatever, but it doesn't make you right with God. It's why for us, we see baptism as something that's done when people are old enough to make a decision to follow Christ.

It's an outward expression of an inward reality. It says, God has already done something in me through his grace and in response to my faith. And I'm being baptized to publicly declare that. I want to give a little plug here for our weekend away. Because at our weekend away down at the beach, we are going to have some baptisms.

And I would encourage you, if you haven't been baptized, we would love to talk to you about that. It is something that says God is at work in my life, that I've committed my life to following Christ and now I want to stand in front of his people and publicly declare that. And so I would encourage you, if you're interested in that, would you come and chat with myself or with Pastor James? Would love to speak with you about it. Let's look at verse 13 says this clearly.

God's promise to give the whole earth to Abraham and his descendants was based not on his obedience to God's law, but on a right relationship with God that comes by faith. If God's promise is only for those who obey the law, then faith is not necessary and the promise is pointless. For the law always brings punishment on those who try to obey it. The only way to avoid breaking the law is to have no law to break. So the promise is received by faith.

It is given as a free gift, and we are all certain to receive it whether or not we live according to the law of Moses and if we have faith like Abraham's. For Abraham is the father of all who believe. That is what the scriptures mean when God told him, I have made you the Father of many nations. This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing. Paul has just dealt with ritual and now he turns to the law.

Because if circumcision was about belonging, the law is about behaving. The argument is surely keeping God's law, his commands counts for something. Surely my obedience tips the scales in my favor. But Paul's clear here. The promise given to Abraham that God would bless him with a multitude of descendants and that through him all nations would be blessed was not based on law keeping, but on Abraham being made right with God through faith.

And Paul says, the reason the law can't secure the promise is simple. The law exposes our failure. It's not. The law is bad. The problem's us.

We can't keep it. The moment you have a standard that you can't reach, it doesn't create a system that brings us into relationship with God. It creates one that condemns. And here's Paul's point. For us, if being made right with God depends on our performance, it can Never be certain.

It will always rise and fall based on how we feel we're doing. We'll always ask, have I done enough? You know, I think some of us live our Christian life like this. We live with this view of God where we are constantly asking, have I done enough to make myself right with God? But Paul says something completely different.

He says, righteousness is by faith and given as a gift. And because of that, it isn't likely. It's not just even possible. It's absolutely certain. And then he says, who God is.

Verse 17. This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life. And he creates new things out of nothing. Paul is giving them two examples about God, of things we cannot do. We can't create something out of nothing, and we can't bring dead things back to life.

But God does these things. He is the God who speaks and a universe comes into existence. He's the God who takes what is dead and finished and beyond hope and restores life to it. And Paul is saying, if that is who God is, if that is who God is that we are putting our faith and our hope in, then how much more can you trust his promise? How much more can be.

You can be confident that his gift of righteousness for you is certain. And then finally we come to verse 18. Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping, believing that he would become the father of many nations for God's sake. Said to him, that's how many descendants you'll have. And Abraham's faith did not weaken, even though at about 100 years of age, he figured his body was as good as dead.

And so was Sarah's womb. Abraham never wavered in believing God's promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger. And in this, he brought glory to God. He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises.

And because of Abraham's faith, God counted him as righteous. And when God counted him as righteous, it wasn't just for Abraham's benefit. It was recorded for our benefit too, assuring us that God will also count as righteous us as righteous if we believe in him, the one who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead. He was handed over to die because of our sins. And he was raised to life to make us right with God.

You see, Paul's been explaining this conceptually. And now in these final verses, he says, here's an example of what it looks like in a real person's life. And so he returns to Abraham. God had made Abraham a promise. He said, to him.

Look at the stars. Count them if you can. So shall your offspring be. Abraham, you'll be the father of many nations. But everything about his situation said it was impossible.

He was old. Sarah was old, too. They're in the 80s when God makes this promise. Sarah's always been unable to have children. And even though God made them this promise, they just kept on getting older and nothing changed immediately.

And yet Paul says Abraham kept believing. You know, it's an interesting example, I think, because if you know the story, you know that there were moments when they struggled. You'll know that there were moments when they tried to take it into their own hands, when they got impatient with waiting for the promise. But struggle is not the same as unbelief. You see, while they didn't always get it right, Abraham kept coming back to God's promise.

He kept trusting what God had said. And so Paul tells us Abraham was fully convinced that God could do what he said he was gonna do, that he could fulfill his promises. Abraham didn't measure the promise against his own ability, but against God's character. And because of that, God counted him as righteous. And then Paul says, this story wasn't just written for Abraham's benefit.

It was written for your benefit. It was written for my. So that we might know that God counts us righteous in the same way when we trust in him. Then Paul takes us forward. At the end of chapter four, he takes us from Abraham to Jesus.

Because the same God who kept a promise to a couple that were 100 years old kept the promise of a child. He kept it again at the cross. Jesus was handed over for our sins and raised back to life to make us right with God. And because of that, Paul takes us back to the idea he's spoken about all through this chapter, that being made right with God is not earned. It is credited.

It has been secured by what God has done in Jesus. And so your standing with him is certain. God has taken your sin upon Jesus and put it upon Jesus and credited you with righteousness. So when you come to Jesus in faith, you don't have to keep asking, have I done enough to be made right with God? Because in Christ, it has already been done.

Church, I want you to hear that. I want you to know that this morning that you don't have to keep asking, have I done enough to be made right with God? Because in Christ it has already been done. What an incredible gift that is. If we think back to that story at the start, that righteousness has been deposited into your account.

And God says I have paid the price of it. You have done nothing to earn it, but I give it to you. Trust in me. All you have to do is trust. As we close this morning, I wanted to share the words of an old hymn.

I'm sure many of you will know it. I love it. It's the old hymn. It is well with my soul. The second verse, which is maybe not as well known as the first, it says, this my sin.

Oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin. Not in part, but the whole is nailed to his cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. O my soul, what an incredible joy it is when we come to see that Jesus paid for our sin, that he took it to the cross, that he paid our debt completely for us to so that we might be credited his righteousness.

That we might be made right with God not because of our own works, but because of the completed work of Christ. What a glorious reality that is. Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for this passage for Romans chapter 4. Lord, we thank you that it reminds us over and over again that Paul is.

It's like he's pleading with us so that we might understand the incredible reality. So that we might not put our hope in our own works, in our own rituals, in our own law keeping, but that we might put our complete trust in Jesus. Lord, we thank you for the gift that you give us. Not that we earned it, but you give us righteousness, that you give us right standing in your eyes. We thank you that you don't choose to ignore sin, but instead you paid the debt, that you paid the cost of sin on the cross that Jesus, you took not part of our sin, but all of it.

And you paid for it. And in return you gave us your right. We thank you Jesus, that you defeated death and you rose back to life. That you now reign in glory and honor and power. And that you have promised us that you will come back again.

And so we pray that we would be confident in your promise. Not in our own works, but in the righteousness that is credited to us by God. We are so grateful for that. We thank you for that. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.