Law and works or faith and grace?

Paul uses a lot of questions and answers in Romans. First, he poses a question that he assumes will arise in the reader's mind, and then he gives an answer to it. It is worth noting that the third chapter ends with a question to which Paul already gives a short answer in the last verse of the third chapter, but the fourth chapter also continues to deal with the question "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?"

Often the chapter division of our Bible can confuse us: we do not connect the end of a chapter and the beginning of next chapter to each other in the same way as two verses in the middle of a chapter. However, the chapter and verse divisions were not done until well after the books of the New Testament had been written.

Paul reflects on Abraham's position as the father of faith. For us, Abraham is easily just one of the great figures of the Old Testament, but for the Jews, Abraham is the father of the whole nation, God's Chosen people started from him.

We can say that the history of salvation is the history of God's choices. First God chose Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, then Judah and finally David, whose descendant the future Messiah was to be (compare Matt. 1:1-21). Abraham was therefore the first focal point in salvation history, the beginning of the chosen people and the Messiah's family tree.

Pondering the question of the relationship between works and grace, Paul goes right away back to the start: what does the father of faith, Abraham, the patriarch of the Jews, say about this question? By what was Abraham justified, by faith and grace or by the law and works?

Abraham, the father of faith – Rom. 4:1-8

Paul demonstrates to his readers that even the Old Testament considers Abraham's justification to be based on faith, and not on works of the law:

"Abram (=Abraham) believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness."
(Genesis 15:6)

Notice the verb "count"! So it is not that we have something, but that something is credited to us. It is not something that we have acquired or earned, but we receive righteousness by grace.

This was one of the most difficult and at the same time the most important questions when the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church discussed the doctrine of justification: is a person righteous by an act of God alone (counted as righteous) or has he somehow also earned justification (by being a good person, by doing good works). We should maintain Luther's concept, "by grace alone": salvation is the gift of God, which is given to us, sinners.

Paul also testifies that another central figure of the Old Testament, King David, speaks of the justification by faith:

“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity…”
(Ps 32:1-2)

The Jews, on the other hand, emphasized Abraham's obedience. Abraham obeyed God's will; the Jews considered it as his merit.

But are the standpoints of Paul and the Jews far from each other after all, or are they just two different sides of the same issue? Paul emphasizes the starting point of obedience, i.e. Abraham's faith, while the Jews emphasize the result, i.e. works. So the Jews were also right in a way! But with particularly this, there is a great danger: often heresy and delusion are not the opposite of the true doctrine, or something distant, but right next to the true doctrine, very close to it. Delusion is often a very small change to the true doctrine!

So, Paul's teaching is this: the basis of Abraham's justification was faith and trust in God's promises. Works were only the result of this faith.

Which was first? Rom. 4:9-12

The Jews read the Old Testament differently than Paul: they put all emphasis on the covenant of circumcision (Genesis 17:11). Circumcision was the gateway to be a member of the chosen people (also compare Genesis 34:14-18). A God-fearing person was distinguished from a convert not only by the fact that they followed certain requirements of the law, but also by circumcision.

Not only Jews, but also us Christians are in danger of reading into the Bible what we suppose there is, or what we would like there to be. For many, the Old Testament is only law, and the New Testament is only gospel, etc.

One of the tasks of the Bible is to destroy our own idea of God and replace it with God's account of what he is like and what he wants from us. Often this change can be painful, but the Bible must nevertheless be read as it is written and not as we would like it to be. We should pray to the Holy Spirit that he would speak to us through the Word, and so we would discover God's will and his message.

Paul realizes that someone could claim that circumcision or some other thing was a prerequisite for Abraham to receive faith. So the pattern would have been: first Abraham takes a step of faith and then God gives him the rest as a gift.

However, Paul knows the Old Testament and reminds his readers that Abraham's justification (Genesis 15:6) took place before the covenant of circumcision was established (Genesis 17:11). The rabbis counted that there were 29 years in between these.

So it is not as it is often claimed that first God required righteousness through the law, but because people could not fulfill the law, God sent Jesus and accepted the righteousness that comes by grace. Not so, but grace has been the basis of salvation from the beginning, the law, instead, came later.

Who will be justified?

So Paul testifies that God justifies the sinful and wicked and not the sinless and pious. This was the great discovery of the reformer Martin Luther when he was studying the Letter to the Romans. Unfortunately, the pattern of self-righteousness clings to people so tightly that even today we do not want to believe according to the Bible but make our own ways of salvation. According to some people we must first repent, get rid of sins, some call for adult baptism, some speaking in tongues, etc. But the Bible requires only one thing: that we believe in Christ (1 John 5:9-12).

People are pleased and attracted by the idea that in some way they could take part in salvation – there are various possible ways for us to commit ourselves to faith. But acknowledging that salvation is God's work alone is difficult for us to accept. If we cannot trust ourselves, all that remains is that the Holy Spirit does his work in us, and we are saved – as the reformer Martin Luther taught – by faith alone, by grace alone, through Christ alone. Jesus taught that salvation is impossible for man, but possible for God (Matt. 19:23-26). It has been said that the greatest miracle in the world is that a sinner is saved.

The path of faith may seem even too easy; it cannot be that simple! But anyone who has seriously tried to walk it according to God's will knows how difficult it is. Putting aside one's own works and merits is difficult, downright impossible – so firmly does the piety of works cling to us.

If we find no other deed to our credit, we make faith and believing to be the work that will save us. However, I am sure that no one will go to heaven with overconfidence, but everyone will go there with humility and trusting in God alone (compare Rom. 10:13).

Jesus said that becoming great means becoming small (compare Matt. 23:11-12). We must become small, downright non-existent, so that Christ can become great in us. Faith is always, until the very end, faith in the forgiveness of sins. Such faith takes away from us all possibilities for boasting.

Christ + the law? Rom. 4:13-17

Paul still wants to clarify what he is saying: if the law were the way to salvation, the promise would be useless. Christ would not be needed if we could be saved through the law! Paul deals with the same theme also in Galatians (especially in Gal. 5:1-6): whoever trusts in the law cannot trust in Christ. The way of salvation cannot be Christ and something else, but either Christ alone or something else alone. The matter is not both…and, but either…or.

In verse 15, Paul says, "For the law brings wrath." This was true in Paul's day and is true today. It is equally true that when a person starts to have feelings of contrition, it often makes him angry at God's law and those who proclaim it. It is not pleasant to stir up anger, so today many have solved the problem by stopping to talk about God's law. But that cannot be the right way, after all Paul was not silent about God's law, either.

The principle of the law in the Old Testament starts from creation: because God is the Creator, he knows what man should do and what he should not do. God has revealed this to us in his law. Keeping silent about the law would be hiding God’s guidelines for our lives!

At the same time, keeping silent about the law would be profound lack of love. Who would not stop a blind man walking towards a precipice? Who would refer to human freedom and the right to self-determination in such a situation? However, this is called for in the field of spiritual life, where every natural person is blind according to the Bible, (2 Peter 1:9).

So, the law must be preached, and at the same time, we must be prepared for the fact that it will stir up hatred. In order to preach the law correctly and in such a way that people would be angry with God's law, and not with our preaching of the law, it is good to remember what happened when the prophet Isaiah was called (Is. 6). First the prophet saw his own sinfulness and the sinfulness of his people. Then God had mercy on him, and only then did he set out to proclaim God's will to his people. The prophet's message was not "you sinners", but "we sinners".

The function of the law and its proclamation is to lead people into a dead end, from which only Christ can help them out. Christ did not come to save the healthy and the sinless, but the sick and the sinners (Matt. 9:12-13). The task of the law is to point out sin, the task of the gospel is to provide atonement for sin. Without one, the other loses its meaning. The disgusting, hurtful law must be preached, so that people would turn to the gospel, and not to their own works.

In verse 17, Paul shows how difficult, downright impossible, it is for us to believe. Paul compares the birth of faith to coming alive from the dead, and to creating from nothing. There is nothing worthy of God in man. Everything is grace, everything is a gift. God does not set out to improve our religiousness, but he creates all things new from the beginning. Baptism is not only a burial, but also a resurrection! But this goes against our natural understanding. That's why, for example, infant baptism is so difficult to accept.

Life amid death – Rom. 4:18-25

Abraham's faith can be seen in that he believed in God's seemingly impossible promise. It is impossible for our reason to accept that Sarah would have had a child in her old age, and it is even more impossible to accept that Jesus’s death on the middle cross of Calvary would bring us the atonement of our sins and peace with God. But since God says so, we must believe it and not doubt it, as our reason would mislead us to do.

One of the clearest images of the nature of faith is the Old Testament story of the bronze serpent (Numbers 21:5-9). No one bitten by a snake was forced to look at the bronze serpent, but if they did, they would live. In a human sense, it was absurd to look at it – surely that image of a snake could not help anyone! Of course, the bronze snake didn’t help, but following God's will did help. You do not have to look to Christ either, but if you do, you will have eternal life.

Seeing the facts can weaken or even destroy our faith, but it can also strengthen it! That is why it is not irrelevant how we approach life, whether we see God's possibilities in it or only our own possibilities.

The birth of faith

In the New Testament, I think the best description of the birth of faith is Mark 3:1-6, the story of the healing of a withered hand. The problem with that man was that he could not stretch out his hand. Still, Jesus tells him to stretch out his hand, that is, to do something impossible. The man seemed to be in a dead end; the precondition for the hand to heal was to stretch it, and the precondition for stretching the hand was that it was healed. God made the impossible possible and the hand was healed (compare Mark. 10:27). It is the same with the birth of faith: it is impossible for us, but God makes it possible. Faith is purely an act of God, but still we exhort people to believe in God.

Maybe we feel that we have contributed greatly to the birthing of faith, but what we believe about ourselves or what we think we have experienced is not important; what is important is that we are on the road to heaven, on the way to our eternal home.