Romans 4:17-21 “Normal”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁷Just as it is written that “I have made you a father of many peoples,” he believed, in the sight of whom—of God, who gives life to dead ones and calls the things not being as being, ¹⁸who believed from hope upon hope that he [was] to be a father of many nations according to what was spoken, “Thus will be your descendants.” ¹⁹and not being weakened in the faith, he discerned his own body [to be] already deadened, being about 100 years old, and the deadness of the womb of Sarah, ²⁰but he did not hesitate in unbelief into the promise of God but was strengthened in the faith, giving glory to God, ²¹and being fully convinced that what He had promised He is also able to do. Wherefore, “It was counted to him into righteousness.”

In the last post, I sought to assert that we should not try to dissect Abraham’s faith but rather see it as a living whole. That was particularly in light of the (supposed) scholarly debate questioning how the faith portrayed could really be saving faith. People ask, “How can believing he would have lots of descendants be saving faith?” Again, I think those people miss the fact that you cannot dissect real faith. It is not “the sum of its parts.” It simply is. When the soul suddenly awakens to see that God is there and when it welcomes His presence, then to understand, believe, and embrace the whole message of the Gospel is simply an expression of that same faith itself.

Having said all of that, however, I would like to inject a thought: I believe Abraham understood far more than just what was written down for us to read. I personally believe that, from the time God promised to Adam and Eve that one day “the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent,” godly people anticipated the Messiah. I personally believe each generation from Adam to Seth to Enosh and on to Noah, then Shem, and clear to Abraham knew they were carrying the promise of the Messiah. That is one reason why the birthright was so important and why it was so monstrously evil for Esau to treat it as nothing more than a bargaining chip for a bowl of soup. I further believe that is why Satan seemed to work overtime beating up on poor Joseph—he thought because of Jacob’s favoritism and Joseph’s giftedness that he was certainly heir to the Promise. It was late in Jacob’s life when it was finally revealed that “The scepter will not depart from Judah, until Shiloh (‘He to whom it belongs’) comes” (Gen. 49:10). Only then did Satan learn that it would be Judah, not Joseph, whose family would carry the promise of the Messiah. I would suggest to you that the very reason why Abraham “believed God’s promise” of descendants was because he already had embraced the promise of a Messiah. I believe when the Lord told him, “All nations of the earth shall be blessed through you,” Abraham understood exactly what He meant, that part of that promise was that his family would someday produce the Messiah.

And so, while not wishing at all to dissect Abraham’s faith, I would suggest that whether it is said so in so many words or not, a part of Abraham’s faith was, in fact, his belief in the promise of the Messiah. For us who are hopelessly addicted to linear logic and who can’t exist without dissecting the entire universe, maybe that will make us all feel better--to be assured that Abraham’s faith did include the Messianic promise. Brings back the “warm fuzzy” to our linear little hearts, yes?

And so, faith. Obviously, what the Lord would have us do in this passage in Romans is to stop and ponder and consider this thing that Abraham possessed. Faith. Can I once again step back and consider the big picture of what we see here? This is what I would like to suggest: Faith is something far bigger than just a particular religious creed or our own particular formula for salvation. Faith is part of the reality of all human existence. We are created beings. We were created by the ever-living God. We were created to need Him. We do need Him. We are incomplete without Him. We are incomplete if He is not an active, very present reality in our lives. Real faith is when we as human beings realize He is there, realize we need Him, and welcome His presence into the totality of our human existence. “Without Me,” Jesus said, “You can do nothing.” Faith agrees.

To try to live without Him is not just sinful. It’s actually absurd. For most of us, we have to come “to the end of ourselves” before we can see just how true it is that we need Him, but however the Lord gets us there, it will be “better late than never.” I wish that young people could get a hold of this truth and then, like Daniel, actually live a lifetime in a real relationship with God. We need Him growing up. We need Him in school. We need Him in our courtships and marriage. We need Him at our jobs. We need Him in our families. We need Him in our communities and our nation and our church and our sports and our Butterfly Collectors Club. Faith is not some religious appendage we may or may not attach to our lives. It is an essential element of our existence. We’re only “whole” when we live all day every day in the presence of God.

See then that Abraham isn’t just a case study of a “religious” man. He’s actually normal. (Maybe not typical, but still normal). Abraham was a man who had figured out who he was and how to be everything he was born to be. His faith wasn’t a matter of being religious. It was a matter of being sane. His relationship with God wasn’t just “practicing his religion.” It was a matter of living in the real world. It is nothing short of ludicrous for the rest of us humans to think we don’t need God in our lives or that “religion” is just some appendage we might add if we want to.

Here’s the deal and we see it play out in Abraham’s life: Life is hard and one way or another you and I are constantly faced with the impossible. In spite of everything I may do, still, everywhere I look, I see things—important things—I cannot control. I cannot stop people from dying. I can’t make someone give me a good job. I can’t make that beautiful girl want to marry me. We may or may not get that house we really want. We may or may not be able to conceive children. I’m faced with bills I do not know how I’ll pay. I cannot stop my children or grandchildren from making bad decisions. I can’t control the stock market, or the weather, or who does or does not get elected. I can’t even control the price of milk! Basically, we live in a world literally swimming (drowning?) in an ocean of both opportunities and threats over which, in the end, we actually have little to no control. How am I, as a mere man, to survive (much less prosper) in such a world? I can live in fear. I can be a control freak. I can resolve at all costs to get very, very rich—imagining that if I was just rich enough, I could buy whatever it is I desire. I can push, shove, manipulate, lie, steal, kill, or just give it all up and go live in an asylum.

Or I could just acknowledge I’ve come to the end of myself and admit something in my life is terribly missing. Something is terribly missing as I would try to live in this hard, threatening, impossible world. “And Abraham was called ‘the friend of God’” (Isa. 41:8, James 2:23). Abraham had it figured out. What he needed in his life was Someone who specializes in the impossible! Look again here at Romans chapter 4. Back in verse 17, who was it Abraham was believing in? “The God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” In verse 18 and 19, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed…he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead…” And verses 20 and 21 sum it up, “Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that what God had promised, He was able also to do.”

Can I assert again, this isn’t a matter of “being religious.” This is living in a real world. Like us, Abraham lived in a world of the impossible. The difference is that he welcomed into his life the God of the impossible. What Abraham portrays for us then is not some amazingly religious man but simply a man—a normal man, a man who’d figured it out. He had nothing going for him that was somehow beyond you or me. What does the Scripture say? “It is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith we are proclaiming” (Rom. 10:8). It’s that close. It’s already in our mouth and in our heart. If we’ll only open those hearts, we all already know that “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). That is why Paul says of Abraham, “He is the father of us all.”

As you and I would ponder here in Romans this man Abraham, may we not see someone who had something far beyond us. May we see in him an example of the person we each can be, should be, must be. May we see that drawing near the God of the impossible is the most sane, reasonable, essential thing we can do. Faith isn’t a fantasy. It isn’t just being religious. It’s being normal.

God help us.

Romans 4:17 “The Fractal of Faith”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁷Just as it is written that “I have made you a father of many peoples,” he believed, in the sight of whom—of God, who gives life to dead ones and calls the things not being as being.

There are two matters I’d like to address which arise from this passage. Both, I think are significant as we would head into the end of this chapter and as we would consider carefully the faith of this man Abraham. First of all, it is a matter of considerable theological debate to question what exactly was Abraham’s faith as it is presented here in Romans. What I mean is this. If you ask almost any church member today, “What must I do to be saved?” they will answer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” It is very clear to us on this side of the Cross that salvation is very specifically a matter of believing in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Yet here in Romans 4, where Paul is proving that salvation is by faith, the particular promise that Abraham “believes” is/was this idea that he would be “the father of many nations.” Someone paying close attention may ask (and many do), how is this saving faith? If the Lord had visited me at age 22 and told me I’d marry a beautiful girl and have three wonderful children and if I believed that promise, would that have saved me? Our typical, American canned answer would be, “No, you can’t be saved without specifically believing in Jesus.”

Here is a place I’m reminded I’m really writing these things down for the sake of my grandchildren and perhaps great grandchildren. To you, I would beg your attention to something your old grandfather feels is of absolutely profound importance. Let me try. One of the curses (and yes, I’ll call it that) of Western culture is our incorrigible slavery to what I have termed “linear logic.” We reduce everything to some kind of frog to be dissected, imagining that everything in the universe is the sum of its parts—therefore we can arrange the parts and understand the thing. There is of course an enormous problem with dissecting the frog—if he isn’t already dead, he will be when you’re done. When it comes to living things, there is a powerful sense that, when you try to reduce them to the sum of their parts, you kill them.

May I suggest that you must be very, very careful not to do this in your life? And may you consider it realizing I am an engineer? I am a scientist. The very essence of science is to do exactly this—to dissect things and understand their parts—in order to understand the whole. My whole life and career has consisted of what we call “applied science.” As an engineer, that is what I do every day. But please understand, it is one thing to understand water and all the interacting elements of pressure and flow and pipe friction, etc. It is an entirely different thing to dissect living things. The problem is, and what you must realize is that a living thing is far more than “the sum of its parts.” You cannot and must not try too hard to reduce living things to linear logic. You can only truly understand living things if you will comprehend that the logic of life is not linear, but rather fractal.

You may have run across this in some other scratchings of mine, but allow me to say again, the logic of life is a logic not of accumulated parts but rather of repeating patterns. In Western culture there is only linear logic. Everything must be reduced to number lines and Roman numeral outlines or our brains overheat. I realized a long time ago that the Bible utterly defies “outlining.” Then I discovered fractals, which are patterns which repeat themselves on a million different scales, yet always repeat the pattern. They are what I might call “picture logic.” Consider this: If I say a certain pattern is “good,” is it made worse or better by repeating it? If one square foot of wallpaper is a beautiful pattern, does it become more or less beautiful by spreading it onto all four walls from floor to ceiling? What if my neighbor likes it and uses it in a room of his house too? What if someone else really likes the pattern and wishes only to frame that square foot to hang as a picture? Do any of these uses make the pattern better or worse? Obviously not—it is the pattern that is beautiful. No matter the scale, it is still beautiful. Such are fractals and such is life. To understand life, you must learn to see its patterns. You must learn when to stop dissecting the frog into its parts and instead to step back and admire the beauty of its life.

May I go one step further and say this is so important because nearly everything in life that matters is actually fractal, not linear. It is the living things in life which matter most in the end and living things are fractal. Time itself appears to be linear, yet, for you, as a living thing, to truly appreciate it you must stop counting the minutes and realize it’s not the passing of time that matters, it’s what you invest into that time—as it passes. Someone once said, “Time is important, yet, the realization it doesn’t matter is the gateway to wisdom.” What that person was seeing was that the “passing of time” (something entirely linear) is a dead thing. What matters is to live in that time. The question is not whether time has passed. The question is, how did you live in that time?

I hope you see the difference.

I’ve belabored the point to finally say you must realize that faith is a living thing. I would suggest that the downfall of much of what is called theology is to be found precisely here—in their endless dissection of everything without every stepping back and seeing it is the pattern that is beautiful. Faith is a living thing because it exists between living things. To speak of faith and forget the living things is, in the end, to kill it.  Obviously, I’m saying that is exactly what theologians do when they question Abraham’s faith as presented in this passage.

This, I guess, leads to my second thought. Notice carefully what it says of his faith (which will be discussed more fully through the end of the chapter). The Greek is a little rough to translate here, but in my literal translation it says, “he believed, in the sight of whom—of God, who gives life to dead ones and calls the things not being as being.” He believed in God. The NIV smooths it out saying, “…in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” Again, I ask you to lay down the scalpel, step back from the table, and see that what we’re talking about is a relationship between a living man and the living God. Step back and see that what you’re observing here is a picture of Abraham’s faith. He believed in God. And what did he believe? In this place, we’re specifically told he believed that the Lord is a God who has the power to give life to the dead and who “calls things that are not as though they are”—who can make something out of nothing.

Abraham’s faith was in God. It wasn’t just a formula. It wasn’t just embracing a particular religious creed. It wasn’t active involvement in a particular church. His faith was in God. He was a person having a relationship with a Person. Abraham, the man, observed the Lord, our God, and saw that He is amazing. He saw that He “gives life to dead ones and calls what is not as being.” Make special note that Abraham heard God’s promise, “I will make you the father of many nations,” but he believed the promise because of what he saw in God. Do you see that his “believing” arises from the relationship, from the living relationship between living beings? And what is his “believing?” It is, of course, his faith. We see the same thing in Hebrews 11:19 where we are told what Abraham was thinking when he nearly really did sacrifice his own son: “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead…” Here is a place specifically where we see that faith is fractal. The “picture” of his trust, that living relationship with God, expresses itself in a million different ways on a million different scales, but it is always the same picture, the same pattern.

I’m thinking bottom line that it is foolish and hopelessly linear to challenge Abraham’s faith and to maintain that this cannot be saving faith if what he is believing is that he would be the father of many nations. What such people utterly fail to realize is that real faith is the totality of a relationship, a relationship between a living person and their God. That faith is not somehow the sum of its parts. It simply is. To understand Abraham’s faith, to understand saving faith, to understand faith at all means stepping back away from the table, laying down the scalpel, and enjoying the beauty of a living thing. Faith is a fractal thing which, once it exists in a person’s life, infuses the totality of that life, and becomes a picture which constantly repeats itself throughout that heart and life.

As we will see through the end of this chapter, this is exactly what was true of Abraham. The fractal of faith infused his life.

May you and I truly enjoy a faith that is all about a real, personal, trusting relationship with God—like Abraham.

 

Romans 4:13-16 “Sure”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹³For the promise [was] not through law to Abraham and his descendants that [he was] to be heir of the world, but [it was] through righteousness of faith. ¹⁴For if those out of law [are] heirs, the faith is made empty and the promise is rendered useless, ¹⁵for the law produces wrath, but where law is not, neither [is there] transgression. ¹⁶Because of this, [it is] out of faith in order that [it might be] according to grace, so that the promise might be certain to all of the descendants, not only to those out of the law but also to those out of [the] faith of Abraham, who is a father of all of us.

Here’s another passage that ought to be printed in gold letters. “It comes by faith, so that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure…” Bebaios. Sure. Certain. Guaranteed. The Greek word pictures a fence post set in concrete. You can grab it and think you’ll shove it right or left, only to find you’re the one going right and left, not the post. It is bebaios. Steadfast. Immovable.

That is a great quality for fence posts, but it is something far better when it concerns your eternal soul, your future, your own life and security. Here’s the problem: If our salvation, our relationship with God, and all of that depends on law keeping, we’re all doomed. As Paul says in v. 15, “the law produces wrath.” Although the law itself may be good and holy, yet it is rigid and unyielding. Law has no place for mercy. To break it is to be guilty. And that is not a 50:50 thing, not even 80:20 or 90:10, or 99:1. To break the law is to be guilty. Period. Culpable to punishment. If we could keep it perfectly, we’d be fine, but since we can’t, it produces only wrath. It is a judge not the least impressed with whatever it was you were doing right. If you broke the law, you’re guilty and the judge will tell you so.

The bad thing for us humans is we know that. The vast majority of the human race may deny it, refuse to think about it, pretend it isn’t true, but we all know our “good works” aren’t “good enough.” Even to suggest we need to be “good” begs the question, “How good?” If my acceptance with God depends on me being “good,” I’m left with the awful uncertainty of never knowing if I was “good enough.” There’s always something I could have done better. There’s always someone who does it better than me. It’s like the man who said, “I’m no brute like Genghis Khan, but I’m no saint like Mother Theresa either.” So where does that leave us? Uncertain. Then add to that the awful regrets. Not only am I uncertain whether I was “good enough,” I’m also haunted by all the ways I know I failed.

The human race answers with, “But I’ll do better.” Rather than admitting that our law system fails us, we look for some way to do it “better.” Is this not the basis of the entire world’s religious systems? Do they not all come down to, “Here’s the rules and if you follow them, you’ll be a good person”? Whether they’re Moslems or Amish or Hasidic Jews or Buddhists or Catholic monks or legalistic Christians, it’s always about keeping the rules. And when we realize the rules aren’t “working,” we think we just need new rules, or different rules, or better rules, or more rules, or less rules, or maybe no rules at all (!), but it always concerns “the rules.” We just can’t seem to admit we’re all chasing our tails. Even the promises of God Himself become useless if somehow their certainty depends on our performance. As it says, “Faith becomes empty and the promise is rendered useless.” Such a “promise” is no promise at all.

Enter the Gospel. Once again, “It comes by faith, so that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure…” God’s love cannot be earned. It can only be accepted. He offers us forgiveness, Heaven, hope and a future totally as a gift. We are still guilty, we’re still sinners, we’ve still failed and the law still condemns us, but Jesus took the all of our punishment on the Cross. Our sins are paid for. They’re gone. That’s why it says, “But where there is no law, there is no transgression.” Jesus satisfied the Law. “Law” is no longer the issue. Now in our relationship with God, we don’t need to concern ourselves any longer with the question of “Am I good enough?” or haunt ourselves with all our failures. The only question is whether I will or will not accept God’s gracious offer of salvation. I either do or I don’t. Will I or will I not accept God’s gracious and unconditional love? I either do or I don’t.

I suppose I’d better inject here that grace doesn’t make us lawless. In fact it has the exact opposite effect. When I comprehend grace, that God offers me His love entirely apart from how well I do or do not “perform,” it only makes me love Him more. It makes me want to do things that please Him, to avoid things that displease Him. But now I’m not doing them to “earn” anything. I just love Him. Now they’re no longer “rules,” but simply expressions of my wonderful Father’s heart.

But back to our passage. I love that it says it is by grace through faith “that the promise might be sure.” Sure. Bebaios. We need a God who is to us sure. We need a God who is like that fence post. Immovable. Certain. As Paul said in II Cor. 1:18-22, “But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ …For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ…He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

Sure. Certain. Step back with me a minute and think about those two words. How important are they to you and me? If I search around the circle of my life, everywhere I look I see places where it is extremely important to me to know things for sure, to be certain. How many times have we said to ourselves, “I just need to be sure”? I would suggest, if you ponder around your life, you’ll see the same thing. We need certainty. Now what I want to ask is, “Why is that?” Why is this thing of certainty so important to us?

Here is what I want to suggest: It is because our God is certain. Our Creator is a Rock. He is that unmovable fence post. You and I were created in a universe run by a God who is certain. We are born dependent on Him, but this One upon whom we depend is not some capricious, whimsical God. He is “a faithful Creator.” He is a God who “opens His hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing.” When He speaks, what we get are “very great and precious promises.” Jesus said, “I am the Truth.” That is why we need sure—because the God in whom “we live and move and have our being” is sure. It is part of the fabric of our very souls.

And that is precisely why we need Him in our lives. Because He Himself is certainty. With Him, we can literally “Build our house on a rock.” But without Him, we are left with that “God-sized hole” in our hearts. Without Him, we live in a world of almost total uncertainty. People ask, “Why are we here? Where are we going? What does the future hold?” It’s like the old song, “In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive…” “If.” That’s the best they can come up with: If.

Before the Lord saved me, I realized I don’t know anything for sure. I don’t even know if this world really exists or if I am just some point source of intelligence that has created all of this as some kind of dream to amuse myself. How do I know? I dream every night and create entire worlds. Who’s to say when I’ve “awakened” that I’m really awake? We’ve all dreamed that we were dreaming. I once even dreamed that I was dreaming that I was dreaming. It was a horrible experience “waking up,” as I kept “waking up,” only to find I was in another dream. It was an enormous relief to finally actually “wake up” and feel sure I was actually in the real world. But then…was I? Is my whole life a dream? Then the problem with that is realizing, even if it is true, what if I don’t like this dream I’ve created? What if, instead of a dream, I find it’s a nightmare? Where do I get off this merry-go-round, and if I do, then where will I be?

Without God, nothing is certain. And then the next horrible thought is that, if nothing is certain, then nothing really matters. My life doesn’t matter. What I do or don’t do doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If nothing is certain, then nothing matters.

Ugh! What a horrible, hopeless ball of confusion!

But here we are again. In the Gospel, our certain God offers us a certain relationship, and having entered into that certain relationship, we can build certain lives with certain hopes and certain futures—just like we were created for. Once again, we see how our entire universe spins on the truth of the Gospel.

God made it to be “by faith, so that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure…” “God did this so that…we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf” (Heb. 6:18-20). And now He invites us because of Jesus, to “come boldly before the Throne of Grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (4:16).

In the Gospel, this salvation by grace through faith alone, God offers us the very certainty our souls so desperately need. And then we will immediately discover, it wasn’t just my salvation that needed certainty—it is the totality of my human existence. Having entered into this certain relationship with God, I find that same certainty wonderfully fill every corner of my life.

I need to know for sure.

With Jesus, now I do.