Daily Devotion – March 1, 2021 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison
Romans 4:13-25
4:13 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.
4:14 If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
4:15 For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
4:16 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,
4:17 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.
4:18 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.”
4:19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.
4:20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,
4:21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
4:22 Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
4:23 Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone,
4:24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
4:25 who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.
Paul is making a case here for all Roman Christians, and indeed all of us reading him down through the centuries, that God’s promises do not get kept by God because we are so very good at obeying the Law, which is yet another gift God gives us.
The Law is good for many things. You can number those things off better than I can. The Law is useful.
But God’s promises, even the very first ones God made with Noah and with Abraham, God’s promises do not depend on how well we keep the Law. If they did, they would just be contracts; I will do this if you do that. If God keeping God’s promises were based on that “contract” behavior, God wouldn’t need to be God, and we wouldn’t have something quite as terrific to believe in. Our relationship with God wouldn’t be any deeper than a chicken’s relationship in those experiments with that little bell she pecks to get a pellet of feed. She does one thing, and the bell system does the corresponding thing.
God wanted to be in relationship with human beings, not just in contract with us. So God promises to love and care for humans, whether they are able to keep God’s good laws or not. That way, their blessed lives do not depend on themselves. Their blessings are a gift from their parent-creator who wants to show them daily that they are loved no matter what.
Re-read this passage. Now stop at the words about reckoning. I love that term reckon. They say it a lot in Westerns. “I reckon.” It doesn’t just mean “I think” or “I believe.” It means “I have done the math.” Abraham believed God, no matter how outlandish God’s promises may have seemed. He was consistent in this belief. And so God reckoned his faith as his righteousness, his rightness-of-relationship-to-God. His faith was his right relationship. Think of that when you consider what promises God has made to you. And believe. Show God that you trust in those promises. Live as though you do. There will be some good reckoning to your account.
Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Help us to show our faith. Reckon it to us as righteousness. Amen.
