RCL reading for Sunday, March 8, 2009:
Excerpt from The New Revised Standard Version
via Oremus (http://bible.oremus.org)
Romans 4:13-25
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.
14 If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
15 For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
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,
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.
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.’
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.
20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,
21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
22 Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’
23 Now the words, ‘it was reckoned to him’, were written not for his sake alone,
24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
25 who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.
QUESTIONS
In verse 17, what does the phrase "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" mean?
In verse 22, what does it mean that "his faith 'was reckoned to him as righteousness'"?
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This is where Paul establishes the assertion that the descendents of Abraham are all of us who put our faith in God. The justification by faith that Abraham had came before the ritual of circumcision. Both the Jew and the Gentile are justified or righteous by faith before either circumcision or the Law.
ReplyDeletePaul further asserts that God is in the continuous process of creation by calling into being things that had not been there before.
What does this say about the weak/strong tension among christians?
maimon