Righteousness

Romans 4:1-8

By Faith from First to Last

Romans 1:17-- “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.”

Romans 4:1--8: “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about--but not before God. What does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

‘Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. “

In the opening chapters of Romans, Paul is concerned with how men and women are “wrong with God”. As we read Romans we feel, I suspect, the sting of Paul’s accusation that human beings have a thousand times a thousand ways of being wrong with God. And when we get bored of the old ways of being wrong with God, we invent new ones.

All of these ways of displacing God with some other process, substance or being Paul labels as idolatries. In contemporary parlance they are often called addictions. The most common Biblical word for all that fractures our relationship with God is sin. Idolatries, addictions, sin--they are the cause of and the result of being wrongly related to God.

How do we become rightly related to God? First of all, Paul makes it abundantly clear in the first chapters of Romans, we do not get right with God by way of anything we are able to do for ourselves. Being right with God, righteousness, does not mean what it means in a court of law. We are not now and never will be declared “not guilty”. Being right with God, righteousness, does not mean doing for God or serving God to the point where God owes us a debt that He finally repays by accepting us. You cannot buy and you cannot borrow a right relationship with God because righteousness is by faith from first to last.

How do we become rightly related to God?

Models of Faith

From the middle of chapter 3 to the end of chapter 4 of Romans Paul establishes the major premise of his theology. What is it that restores you and I to a right relationship with God? The answer is:

Faith

Faith in what? The God who is revealed to us in and by Jesus Christ. Who is this God that is revealed by Jesus? He is, first of all in Paul’s thinking, the God of our fathers and our mothers, beginning with Abraham and Sarah whose story is told in the Old Testament book of Genesis. The God we are to believe in is the God whom Abraham trusted, and because Abraham trusted, he was declared righteous by God. I find it fascinating to realize that in looking for a model of faith Paul was able to find it in Abraham because in the Old Testament obedience to law-- being good enough to deserve God’s love--was the most potent way of being right with God.

How Abraham became right with God was a major topic of debate among Jewish scholars of Paul’s day. Paul had been one of these scholars just a short time before. And it was the common conclusion among them that Abraham was declared righteous because of his obedience to God, and because he had passed a test and because he was circumcised. (Achtemeier, p. 78) But Paul, in his rebuttal of these arguments, quotes Genesis 15:6: “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”

Abraham believed, and that faith ended a wrong relationship and began a right relationship with God.

And then Paul develops an “evermore shall be so” argument. As it was with Abraham so it must be with us. From Romans 4:16:

“Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring--not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.”

Abraham is our spiritual father and Sarah is our spiritual mother and we will not get right with God if we do not do know faith the way they knew faith. So we would be well advised to find out a few things about their way.

The Spiritual Way Of Abraham and Sarah

1) First of all, remember where Abraham and Sarah appear in the Biblical Story. We meet them at the end of the eleventh chapter of Genesis. The eleventh chapter began with the Bible’s most grandiose tale of idolatry, The Tower of Babel story, in which humanity sought to build its own security arid reach towards God. Before that, in chapters 6—9, we are told about a humanity so sinful, so separated from God, that the only way to repair the damage to the creation is to destroy it all--except Noah, his family, and two animals of every kind. And before that, in chapter four, we see the beginning of addictions to power and violence. Cain killed Abel. And of course, in the opening three chapters, we learn of humanity’s fall, the idolatry of knowledge. And so it is that all of these sins, addictions and idolatries provide the backdrop to the lives of Abraham and Sarah. They had to turn things around, back towards God, on behalf of the entire human family.

Abraham and Sarah show us that a faith that leads to righteousness is a faith that knows the depth of sin from which it has come and. stays attentive to the temptations that still abound.

2) Second, getting right with God required, for Abraham and Sarah, letting go of a particular primary idolatry. That idolatry was security. They had spent their lives becoming secure. Abraham is 75 years old. He and Sarah fully deserve the comforts of their retirement. They have accumulated many possessions, the story tells us, and intend to enjoy them. Then they hear from God, who says: GEN 12:1 “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”

“Give it all up, Abraham!” God says. “Have I got a plan for you!” But first they had to agree to let go and let God. They had to leave home and begin a journey.

A belief that leads to righteousness is a belief that looks toward the future and not the past. The spiritual heirs of Abraham and Sarah always, in one way or the other, leave home and begin a journey. Everyone who becomes right with God first lets go of other forms of security and trusts God to guide them on a journey of faith that leads towards the land of promises. It is not a journey for those who seek safety, certainty and comfort. It is a journey for those who are willing to stand on, and only on, the promises of God.

3) Third, along this journey, Abraham and Sarah fall quite a number of times. For example, they repeatedly lie to protect themselves, not trusting in God’s protection. But their greatest failure of faith comes when Abraham and Sarah plot to get a son with the help of an Egyptian maidservant, Hagar. God’s promises required a son. How could Abraham be the father of a great nation without a boy child? And Sarah was old, many years past menopause. They needed to figure out a way to help God out.

The result of their manipulations and mistrust, the result of not waiting on the Lord, the result of doing it their own way, was Ishmael. Listen to what Genesis tells us of Ishmael:

GEN 16:12 “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”

So much for the plans of woman and man! How many of us have made a mess out of an event in our lives because we would not wait upon the Lord? There are a thousand times a thousand ways that we try to do our lives our own ways instead of God’s way. And, oh, what a tangled web we weave, even when we are on the journey with God.

None-the-less, God is faithful and, once we have begun the journey, forgives our mistakes, shows us how to make amends, and then guides us back on to God’s path for our lives. So it was that, by the plan of God, when Abraham was 100 years old——despite Sarah and Abraham’s disbelief--Sarah gave birth to their son Isaac, through whom the promises of God would be fulfilled.

One of the changes that trust creates in our lives is that it gives God room to work in accomplishing God’s purpose. For example, how can God show you to exactly the right job for you if, for reasons of insecurity, you are frantically running around trying to find somewhere, anywhere, to park your resume? The same principle applies to choosing a friend or a mate, writing a sermon, making a moral decision, and thousand other situations where we need God’s guidance.

How God Convinces Us To Trust

One thing I definitely do not understand about the Abraham and Sarah story is how God got God’s message through to them so that they could become righteous by way of faith. I don’t understand how they heard God’s voice and I don’t understand why, amidst all the idolatries of their day, they believed that the voice was God’s.

But I do understand how God gets the message about righteousness through to us so that we can hear it and in hearing believe and in believing find ourselves restored to right relationship with God. God gets through to us by way of Jesus.

Again, I do not know what it was that convinced Abraham that the God who spoke to him was a God who could be trusted. But I know how God convinces us. Jesus.

With crystal clarity, in Jesus, God shows us what kind of God He is. And the God Jesus shows us is worthy of our trust.

I did not always have even the imperfect trust in God that I have today. Why? Because, in the past, the God I thought I knew was not a trustworthy God. Some of you have heard part of this story before. Thirty-seven years ago, I was five years old, my dad was repeatedly going of f to the hospital to die from ulcerated colitis, and my mom was struggling to keep it all together with three small boys, a very sick husband, and not too much money. I made a decision then that was quite reasonable for a small child. I decided there was no one to take care of me but me. This was the genesis of a control addiction, an idolatry of personal power. God was, at best, a temporarily absent God. For all I knew, neither He nor my Dad were ever coming back. As I grew older I learned about God and I even grew to see God moving in the major events of my life--but for many years I did not believe God was close enough to me to be trusted as a guide, protector and friend. It took the six years between 1982 and 1988 for my spiritual journey to bring about a gradual yet dramatic transformation of my image of God and my ability to trust. As you read my sermons or listen to me preach you will occasionally encounter a story about those years and my journey towards faith.

I was a control addict because I had come to believe that God was not to be trusted with control of my life. Basically, all idolatries have their origin in a decision that God is not the kind of God we can live with. An encounter with the Risen Christ radically alters those decisions. Rather than being an absent God, Jesus shows us, Jesus is, Emmanuel, God with us. It was a growing collection of experiences of the nearness of God that finally enabled me to put aside my image of an absent God and replace it with an image of a God as close to me as my breath. The God I meet in Jesus Christ is worthy of trust.

Rather than being an angry and wrathful God, Jesus shows us and Jesus is a God of forgiveness and compassion. Jesus calls God, “Abba”, usually translated as Father. It really means Daddy or even Mommy. The God Jesus reveals is as intimately caring as the most perfect human mother. Good friends, it is God’s plan that we learn to trust God by way of having, as infants, parents who are worthy of our trust. But, either because our parents betrayed that trust or because of difficult circumstances many of us grew up believing that nothing around us was trustworthy. As adults that belief, often all too appropriate in our childhood, must be changed. To be right with God we must come to believe in a’ God who desires to take care of us always, and in all ways. Jesus reveals this ever present and ever loving God. And so we are told in the hymn:

“Be not dismayed whate’re betide, God will take care of you.
Beneath His wings of love abide, God will take care of you.”

How We Experience God’s Love

God takes care of us every day in every way. Often the love of God is channeled through persons and we may not recognize the love we are receiving as God’s love. I once knew a women who, when I would get too mystical about God would tell me, “I want my God with skin.” She meant that she experienced God’s love best when it cam to her through other persons. Never forget that at any moment you, skin and all, may be the closest someone ever gets to God.

God’s love comes to us every day in a thousand ways. To know and to remember how God has loved us is one of the most important ways that faith is built, and it is faith from first to last that creates a right relationship with God. I learned something extremely important last weekend when I was on a spiritual growth retreat that has deepened immeasurably my trust in God. When I, as a young child, was going through those painful years when my dad was very ill and my mother was barely able to handle the day to day details of survival-

-to say nothing of the emotional needs of three children--I experienced God’s love on a daily basis. I, in my immaturity, just did not know it was God. I had a doll named Susie. When my dad was in the hospital and I was very lonely I remember lying on my bed sobbing and crying out, “Susie, you are the only one who loves me.” Children, and I checked this out with my seven year old daughter Lauren to be sure I was right on this, consider their dolls and stuffed animals to be very real and very capable of loving them. The love of my doll was the way God channeled his love to me at that time in my life. If my parents could not be present to me, God would use a doll. God also uses teddy bears and kittens and puppy dogs and even imaginary playmates. God channels love through whatever object or creature or person is available to let God’s precious children know they are loved.

If you want to be right with God you have got to trust God. And if you want to trust God you may want to remember all of the ways God has loved you and proved Himself worthy of your trust. Each one of us needs to create, in our imaginations, a “Trusting God” scrapbook. This scrapbook contains photos and drawings and mementos of all the friends and family and teachers and preachers and animals and dolls and events and memories that convince us that God is good.

In my scrapbook there is:

A picture of Susie and me, and one of my Aunt Arlene who took care of me when things got bad. There is a lock of Mrs. Sunny’s white hair. She taught me about Jesus, and she taught me the words of the song:

“The Lord knows the way through the wilderness, all I have to do is follow.”

My Trust God Scrapbook has a picture of my father’s courage. He taught me that God’s love would sustain me through anything. And my scrapbook contains a picture of my Mom’s sense of justice. Mom knows that the God who loves me also loves the world and calls forth from us compassion for all God’s children.

My faith scrapbook contains a vile of water from my baptism and my God and Country Medal from Boy Scouts. Henry Rollins was my first youth advisor. He sang like an angel. He was also the first Black man I ever knew and he taught me that God’s love is colorblind. His picture is in my scrapbook.

I am. an incredibly blessed person. My scrapbook is full to overflowing. Every people I live and serve with contribute items to my scrapbook, until one is so full I have to start another. . If your Trust God scrapbook is very thin or non—existent then today is the day to begin, like your spiritual parents Abraham and Sarah, a journey of faith where you will encounter over and over again a God who is worthy of your trust. That journey may begin today by making a decision to get to know the God who is revealed to us by Jesus Christ. The God whom Jesus called Daddy loves you and believes in you. He can move mountains on your behalf, as well as events, and can even change all too human minds and hearts.

Righteousness is by faith from first to last and we are learning the faith that in God’s time will allow all of us, always, in all ways to be right with God.

So be it.

Amen.