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.

Romans 4:9-12 “Thoughts”

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

⁹Therefore, [is] the blessing upon the circumcision or also upon the uncircumcision? For we are saying the faith was counted to Abraham into righteousness. ¹⁰Therefore, how was it counted, being in circumcision or in uncircumcision? [It was] not in circumcision but in uncircumcision, ¹¹and he received a sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith, being in uncircumcision, into him to be a father of many of the ones believing through uncircumcision into to be counted to them righteousness, ¹²and [he was] a father of circumcision not only to those out of circumcision but also to ones walking in the footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham in uncircumcision.

I have the same problem here I had in the first eight verses. It seems like the truth here presented is so obvious, I want to move on to something I personally find more “helpful.” Yet, I do want to slow down and ponder my way all the way through this book of Romans. As I discovered in the first eight verses, while the immediate truth of the passage seemed obvious, yet the larger truth behind it is utterly profound. I’ll see if the same thing happens here.

Once again, if someone wants a verse by verse commentary on this passage, the world is full of very detailed and often excellent commentaries which will do exactly that. Since the immediate truth seems obvious to me, I want to look past it to the larger truths we can observe.

Basically, Paul is addressing the whole question of Jews versus Gentiles. The Jews are “the circumcision” while us Gentiles are “the uncircumcision.” In the ancient world, apparently it was mainly the Jews who circumcised their boys, while the rest of the world did not. The Jewish people considered it their badge of honor, their mark of identity, the rite that secured to them their special relationship with God. And of course, they derived the idea from the Scriptures themselves, going all the way back to Abraham (Gen. 17:9-14), when the Lord gave to him the rite of circumcision as the seal of the Covenant.

While I’m on it, I think it is worth admitting that this is actually very strange to us. We circumcise our baby boys today but that is, I understand, mainly a health thing. But it is frankly an uncomfortable subject to discuss in open public forums (like church services!). It is an awkward thing for us to discuss, but then it also seems strange to me to designate it as the sign of the covenant. You’d think it would be better to use a red dot on our foreheads like the Indian people do. At least you could “see” it! It seems strange to designate something as a “sign” and then have it be something no one ever “sees.” In the Bible, as far as I can find, God never addresses why He chose this odd, obscured rite of circumcision as the sign of the covenant.

I would like to suggest it has everything to do with the fact that the Lord loves babies. He told us from the beginning to “be fruitful and multiply,” but of course it goes far beyond just reproducing like rabbits. What He desires is “a godly offspring” (Mal. 2:15). He instructs fathers to “bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). I would like to suggest the Lord chose circumcision as the sign of His covenant so that literally every time a man urinates, he is reminded that his reproductive capabilities belong to Someone else. For any Jewish man to engage in sexual sin, he had to do so with the very body part bearing the sign that all he was and all he did was with a body dedicated to a holy God. So the “sign” is actually for the man himself to see. The red dot would be for others, but the Lord wanted circumcision to be a sign a man could never escape. Observing that sign literally several times every single day ought to have been a powerful and constant reminder to men that they, their wives, and the children they bore ought to be consecrated wholly to the Lord. It should have kept “family” always before a man’s mind. Once again, the Bible itself, as far as I’ve ever observed, doesn’t address this question at all, so all of this is at best just my opinion, but, since we’re on the subject I wanted to write it down for anyone else’s interested consideration.

The force of the passage, of course, is that Abraham was “declared righteous” already in Gen. 15:6, before the Lord gave him this sign of circumcision in 17:9-14. Paul’s point is that Abraham was already accepted as a man of faith even before he was circumcised. For Jews this would be similar to a debate Christians might have regarding baptism. Many teach one has to be baptized to be saved. Yet, the rest of us will point to the thief on the cross who believed, was told by Jesus Himself, “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise,” and yet could not have been baptized. We will assert that salvation is by faith alone, and that baptism, as important as it might be, is only a sign “after the fact,” just as circumcision was to Abraham. Paul’s larger point, of course, is that uncircumcised Gentiles have just as much of a right to salvation as any circumcised Jew.

Probably anyone reading this would say with me, “That’s pretty much obvious,” and I think it is—to us living today. It was, however, revolutionary in the first century, so Paul has to address it. For most of us, our minds would go quickly to passages like, “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, …There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:26-28). In Christian circles, I think it safe to say we all understand faith is unconditionally available today to Jew and Gentile alike.

That leads me to two observations from the Bixby mill: The first is a huge “why?” I don’t know I’ve ever heard this pointed out, so I will here. Why? Why is it so important that faith should leave Judea and spread to the uttermost parts of the earth? You might offer a number of (very good) reasons, but consider what the Father says to the Son in Isaiah 49:6, “It is too small a thing for You to be My servant to restore the tribes of Jacob…I will also make You a light for the Gentiles, that You may bring My salvation to the ends of the earth.”  Notice: “It is too small a thing…” The Father thinks it is “too small a thing” for His Son Jesus to only redeem the Jewish people! Do you see what I’m seeing? Jesus is too great to only save the Jews! He is so great, His salvation must be extended to “the ends of the earth!” The fact that salvation is provided for us who live in the “ends of the earth” is actually not because we so desperately need it (which we do), but because Jesus is such a great Savior! Like I said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else make that observation, but I think it’s cool.

The second thing I want to observe from this passage is that we do see here “the circumcision” and “the uncircumcision,” Jew and Gentile. I touched on this back in chapter 2 but I want to note it again here. As in the passage from Galatians 3 above, Christians today like to quote that there is no longer “Jew nor Gentile,” that we have all become “one” in Christ, with the implication that there is no longer any distinction between us. To those verses in Galatians 3, we could add many other passages that seem to imply the same thing – like Eph. 2:14,15, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace…”

However, I think we must recognize that, while all of this is true—that, in fact, in this Church Age, we are all one in Christ—we also need to note that throughout the New Testament, we still see the Lord acknowledging that the Jews still exist as a distinct people in His eyes. This isn’t terribly hard to embrace as the passage in Galatians 3 also said there is no longer male or female. Does anyone want to suggest that, since the Cross, there is no difference between men and women? Obviously, His “oneness” is a spiritual reality, not something that obliterates real physical differences. Men are still men. Women are still women. Slaves are still slaves and masters are still masters, and Jews are still Jews and we are still Gentiles. Consider that, as late as Rev. 7, when the Lord would raise up 144,000 witnesses, they are “from all the tribes of Israel.”

We will see this matter addressed at length in Romans chapters 9-11, but I want to point it out here as I think it very dangerous to read and understand our Bibles ignoring the reality that the Jewish people are still a distinct group in God’s eyes. People for centuries have tried to “spiritualize” the Jewish people, then claim they have become the Church. That may be theologically convenient for some, but I would suggest you cannot honestly read the New Testament and deny that the Jewish people are, in fact, still a distinct people group. What that distinction means exactly is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I related many of my questions back in chapter 2 but can’t say I’ve come up with any answers since then. That is a subject I’ll have to keep pondering on.

One last thing I’d like to point out from this passage is to observe the much larger truth behind it all, and that is that what God does is to bring people together. In our universe, Satan is a murderer and his presence always divides, always separates. If he can’t literally kill people, he murders their relationships. Where God is, He can even let people be very different—like men and women or Jews and Gentiles—and yet still make them one. This is precisely why it’s always been true that the more a husband and wife love God, the more they’ll love each other. It’s why real Christian families seem to treasure each other. It’s why, when America owned the Bible we could be basically a unified nation, but now, having cast it behind us, we only get more and more divided. Obviously all of this could bear a much lengthier discussion, but suffice it here to observe that, once again, the truth of the Gospel actually informs the realities of our existence. Jesus invites us into a salvation that not only delivers us from hell but will actually create for us a world where love infuses our relationships and where people are drawn together, not driven apart.