QuickThoughts: Justified by Faith

📘 Now to the one who works, his wage is not counted according to grace, but according to what is due.

Romans 4:4 LSB

God does not owe us anything. There is nothing “due” to us that He must pay, no works we have done to earn any wage other than death.

Instead, God, in His mercy, credits His own righteousness to those who have not earned it through any works:

📘 But to the one who does not work, but believes upon Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness

Romans 4:5 LSB

Even Abraham had righteousness imputed to him prior to the covenant of circumcision. It was not his works, nor the circumcision, that God credited as righteousness, but it was through his faith in Yahweh.

📘 Then he believed in Yahweh; and He counted it to him as righteousness.

Genesis 15:6 LSB

Circumcision was not required for Abraham’s justification, but it was given to him as a physical “seal of the righteousness of the faith” (Romans 4:11) and as a sign of the justification God had already granted him.

📘 For the promise to Abraham or to his seed that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.

Romans 4:13 LSB

No works. No rites or rituals, no circumcisions or baptisms. No prayers or mantras or charity or service. “But through the righteousness of faith” and faith alone.

The Law does not save, nor does it bring us righteousness. The Law brings only judgment upon us:

📘 For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith has been made empty and the promise has been abolished; for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no trespass.

Romans 4:14-15 LSB

Stop striving for righteousness, brethren, as though you could earn God’s favor. Strive to be holy as Christ is holy, not for salvation, but because He is worthy and has called you into fellowship with Him.

Like Abraham, our faith in many things might waver. Our financial situations, our health, and our very lives are subject to radical changes. But God changes not, nor are His promises ever shaken.

📘 In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, “So shall your seed be.” And without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to do.

Romans 4:18-21 LSB

Give glory to God in all things, and rest assured that what God has promised, He has already accomplished!