Through the first three chapters of Romans, Paul has much to say about the faithfulness of God and of Jesus. And when we get to Romans 4, we finally read specifically of what we mean when we talk about God’s faithfulness – faithfulness to his covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15). Since Abraham, God has been on a mission to bless the whole world, and that mission has never faltered (even though we humans mess it up plenty). As proclaimed in Romans 3, the death of Jesus, in his faithfulness, is the atoning fulfillment of that mission; the covenant is alive and well.
Genesis 15 plays another role in Romans 4. Within the Roman church, arguments are taking place as to what role Torah, the Jewish law (most specifically, circumcision, sabbath, and kosher food restrictions) plays in their Christian faith. These were once absolutely essential to being the people of God. But Jesus has turned everything upside down and reorganized life and religion around himself, not around Torah. So how does circumcision fit into the picture now? Paul mentions boasting twice, once here in Romans 4 and once before at the end of Romans 3. There’s simply no place for it, Paul says. The Church is the last community on earth in which there ought to be boasting that one faction has all the answers and the other faction doesn’t. And Genesis 15 takes us back, way back, to a chapter of God’s story before there were any factions and religious rules to be followed. Before any of that, there was faith. Abraham believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, Paul tells us in Romans 4 (quoting Genesis 15). God reached into the deepest crevasse of Abraham’s heart and awakened something, something bare and simple, something that longs for God and only God, something that wants nothing in the whole world but to trust God. The word we give this is: faith. Faith is pure beginning, the ground on which a life in God is built, the soil from which religion and history sprout.
Before, before, before, Paul repeats in Romans 4:1-12. The faith of Abraham existed before circumcision was ever part of the picture. Before there was religion, before ritual, before any piety and structures and gatherings and rules and history – there was God and Abraham stating to one another, I’m putting all my trust in you. Before circumcision or any other of the ways in which the people of God came to practice their religion, there was the ultimately simple desire to love and be loved by God. And God is the one who put that desire there. To believe, to have faith, to move our heart in God’s direction, is one and the same thing as God moving his heart in our direction.
You and I are loved by the love that brought us into existence. That is the truest thing about us, as Abraham once discovered for himself. It is the love from which we were made and toward which our whole existence moves. God himself is the deepest longing of our hearts. Now, what does that deepest of truths make us want to do and say? What kind of habits does it make us want to form? What kind of life do we imagine sprouting up from this faith?
Let us be done with boasting, with worrying over who’s right and who’s wrong, because… who cares? We are loved by the love that brought us into existence, so who cares who’s winning? Let us instead be still so that God may reach into our hearts and awaken faith, that deepest desire to love and be loved by him. Let us discover that there’s actually nothing else we even want.
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