In Romans 4, our eyes are opened to the God of miracles, the God who calls Abraham out of obscurity and makes impossible promises to him – and keeps them! It is the same God of Psalm 32, who forgives sins not because we, in our wisdom and effort, convince him to do it but because it is simply in his nature to forgive. The God of miracles is the ancestry of the Church.
Paul alerts us to this ancestry because a debate is going on in the Roman church, a debate as to what actually is the rightful ancestry of the church and true barrier to entry. What role does Jewish law play in our membership in the people of God? Are circumcision, sabbath observance, and dietary restrictions necessary for belonging to Christ? The short answer is no. “If it is the adherents of the law who are to be heirs, then faith is null and the promise is void.” (Romans 4:14)
You and I might think this debate is perfectly settled by now. Of course circumcision, sabbath, and a kosher diet have no bearing on the identity of the Church. That’s true enough. However, we still think, discuss, and debate about which parts of the Church are doing the best job at religious doctrine, piety, and procedure. That debate is alive and well in the Church today just as much as it was 2,000 years ago. We have a way of fixating on who is the most correct in how they “do” religion. And even if those who are less correct can still technically belong in the Church, maybe we’ll just relegate them to being not quite as special as we are over here on our team.
But there are no teams! God’s promise to Abraham was to join together to bless the whole world. So there are no teams, but only the grace of God and the faith to receive that grace, the faith to partner with the God who makes impossible promises. Paul gleefully dwells on the strangeness of the Abraham story. He was too old. Sarah was too old and too barren to have children. But this is the God who raises the dead we’re talking about. And before any religious effort was put forward, before there were any religious structures and rules, there was the impossible faithfulness of God.
The central question of the whole letter of Romans is a question of, who belongs and how? Belonging is found in faith, and faith is found in the strangeness of God. It is the tenacity of God to enter into human history and do things that violate human effort and human logic that is actually what makes the church. God has made a promise to claim us and transform us. And it is precisely through the impossible death and resurrection of Jesus that God has come through on that promise.
Our efforts at following the rules and practicing our religion the right ways are incredibly important. But the God who calls Abraham and Sarah is the God whose faithfulness violates human effort. And so our efforts, important as they are, always have been and always will be secondary to the faithfulness and transforming mercy of the God of miracles. Let us stand before this God and love and adore him for the impossible work he does in our lives and in the world. Let us listen carefully for his wisdom, knowing that our own wisdom and effort is not enough. Let us trust, as Abraham and Sarah did, that God is able to do what he has promised (4:21). And let us not waste a single second getting hung up on anything else.
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