February 20, 2005

Calling to Existence Things
That Do Not Exist

Text: Romans 4:1-17

“What do you do?” It is one of the most commonly asked questions. It is usually the second question we ask a new acquaintance, right after we ask their name.

I spent almost ten years teaching theology in a couple of Christian universities before I became a senior pastor. During those days when I was on a plane, on the golf course, or at a party and met someone who asked me the great “so what do you do?” question I always had an inner debate about how to answer. I heard Tony Campolo – who also has that professor/pastor duality in his life – once say that when someone asks him, “So what do you do?” if he wants to talk he responds, “I’m a professor.” Usually the person responds, “How interesting…” and a lengthy conversation ensues. If he doesn’t want to talk he says, “I’m a Baptist Evangelist.” That response usually ends the conversation immediately.

I have found the same to be true. If I tell people I’m an ethics professor we will talk all day. But if I tell them I’m a Nazarene pastor, after I’ve explained what a Nazarene is, the conversation is usually done.

If I’m honest, one of the greatest struggles for me in transitioning from professor to pastor is the silence that usually follows when I tell people what I do. I understand that people get nervous around pastors. I realize all too well that some of the very public failings of pastors from every kind of denomination have tarnished the role of the clergy in the culture. I am extremely sensitive to the reputation pastors now carry thanks to certain high profile tele-evangelists who seem to never tire of pleading for money. So when I tell people I am a pastor, I tense up as I wait for their response because so much of my identity and self-worth is wrapped up in how people view what I do.

That is true for every one of us. Whether we like it or not, our culture is so oriented toward personal accomplishment that we draw our self-worth to a large extent from how we are able to answer the question, “So what do you do?”

Beyond our occupation our self-worth is also wrapped up in where we live, what we drive, the label on our shirt, our grade point average, the number of trophies on our mantle, our physical attractiveness, etc. As much as we might want to fight against it, we are taught over and over again that our value as people is equated with what we do.

Paul’s entire letter to the church in Rome is essentially dealing with the same problem of “doing” that we face, only in a different time and into a very religious context.

I. Our Ancestor of the Flesh?

The church in Rome was largely made up of Jewish believers. These believers had followed the laws, customs, and practices of the Jewish faith since they were children. They were the children of Abraham because they had followed the rules and regulations that had been central to the identity of the Hebrew people for generations. They had kept the law since their youth because you are what you do – or don’t do.

The Roman Christians certainly believed that Jesus was the Messiah of God and that he embodied the way of God. Jesus himself said that he had not come “to abolish the law and the prophets – but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17). Therefore, these believers kept right on observing their Jewish traditions but worshiping Christ as the goal and pinnacle of those traditions.

The conflict Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, addresses in the Roman church is the way in which the new Gentile believers are getting excluded and belittled. The Gentile believers did not grow up following the traditions and laws of Torah. All they knew was Christ. Not only did they not know or understand the Hebraic practices, some of those rites even seemed offensive to them – particularly circumcision.

For Gentile believers, raised in a predominantly Greek way of viewing the human body, circumcision seemed like a form of mutilation. Why would anyone want to deform the male body in this kind of way? Perhaps the best contemporary analogy would be to think of it in the way that some people would view tattooing. I recognize that some people see tattooing as an art form of sorts. But my grandmother would have shaved her head before she got a tattoo. If you can imagine how my grandmother felt about tattoos, you are getting close to the way Gentiles viewed circumcision.

For the Jewish believers however, circumcision was not an option, it was central to the covenantal law. When Yahweh established the covenant with Abram and gave to him the sign of circumcision it was not given “for a while” or “until you don’t like it anymore.” Circumcision was given as an “everlasting” sign of the covenant. Genesis does not make the practice of circumcision optional, secondary, or temporary. The practice is a law.

The law and the traditions of the Hebrew believers posed a major problem to the unity of the church. If the Gentile believers would not be circumcised then at best they could only be a secondary class of Christian – unable to be considered for leadership – or at worst they would be excluded from the fellowship of believers altogether.

Paul recognized that if the law continues to be included with Christ then the exclusion of Gentile believers is not the only problem. There are at least two other major problems this works orientation creates. The first is that it gives to some believers room to boast. A hierarch is immediately created inside the church based upon the keeping – or perceived keeping – of the law. Rather than the inclusivity and embrace modeled by Christ, the church ends up reflecting the self-righteousness of the Pharisees and teachers of the law (the very ones who crucified Christ).

Secondly, those who think that they can be declared righteous by keeping the law underestimate the holiness of God. For Paul, the holiness of God is so beyond our ability to be holy, that all attempts to be righteous before God on our own are doomed to fail.

What if Paul could demonstrate to these “children of Abraham” that they are making Abraham the father of the flesh rather than the father of faith? In order to do this he has to demonstrate that Abraham was not justified by his works of the flesh but by his faith only. This is the task to which Paul brilliantly sets his mind.

II. The Ancestor of Those Who Believe

Paul begins by pointing out that the scripture declares that it was Abraham’s faithful response to the graceful call of God that reckoned him as righteous (v. 3). God’s redeeming of Abraham’s life was not due to any holy work that he had done, it was simply God’s good and gracious favor to call Abraham into relationship with himself. Not only that, but Abraham was declared righteous prior to his being circumcised (v. 10). Circumcision, for Paul, was Abraham’s response of gratitude to his being justified in relationship to God, not the cause of his justification.

Not only did Abraham’s faith precede his works, but also his life demonstrates God’s overcoming of the impossible. Because the promise of God to Abraham included the “new life” of future ancestors, the reason for God’s grace to Abraham had much to do with his inability to procreate on his own. Abraham and Sarah’s barrenness became the opportunity for God’s grace to bring life. What they could not do for themselves in the strength of their own works – bring new life into existence – God did by an act of miraculous power and mercy.

In this way Paul demonstrates that a relationship with God by faith is not some radically new idea, but it is the very desire of God from the beginning to extend grace to humankind in such a way that people walk in faith and love with him, not in fear leading to attempts at self-justification.

The good news is that grace by faith does what our works could never do. There is now no room for boasting. If the church in Rome is going to orient its life around the law and Christ, then all that will be left is not only “wrath” but also the destruction to community that comes when the ugliness of legalism and judgmentalism creeps in (4:15). There is however in Christ the ability to become a community of grace that is able to receive the mercy of God and extend that same transforming grace onto others. Abraham is not the ancestor of those who walk in the flesh but of those who walk in faith (4:17).

III. Life From Death

The good news of this text is for two groups of people today. It is first of all good news for those of us who have lived in such a way that we continually try to please God through our good works. Again we come by this honestly because so much of our value in the other areas of our lives is place upon performance. Surely God too, we believe, must value us according to how well we obey the law or keep his commandments.

I remember as a child singing the little chorus, “O be careful little hands what you do” and being terrified, not comforted, by the idea that the Father up above is looking down. I realize that the words to the chorus specify that the Father is looking down in love. But what I heard in my heart was that the Father was holding a big stick and looking down watching for hands not to do the right thing, or feet not to go the right places, or eyes not to see the right sights, so that he might enact his wrath on us.

Those of us in the Holiness tradition have a long history of legalism to confess. The problems stemming from making the gospel about Jesus and the law that plagued the first century church abound in our churches as well. By God’s grace we can overcome the hierarchies of spirituality that have pushed people to the margins in the Body of Christ or worse yet excluded certain people entirely from Christian fellowship because we have made what we do, or what we don’t do, more important than the transforming work of the Spirit accomplished in our life through faith.

The second group of people who need to hear this text are those who have come to the end of their ability to be holy in their own power. Like Abraham and Sarah who ultimately found themselves laughably frustrated and exhausted from trying to create for themselves a child, many who hear this today feel ultimately trapped by habits, addictions, and lifestyles that they cannot overcome in their own will power.
The good news is that grace by faith does what our own strength could never do. For in the same way that God brought new life from two hopelessly barren people, God who gives life to the dead “calls into existence the things that do not exist” (4:17).
It would be inappropriate for us to see this text as an excuse for antinomianism (lawlessness). Paul later will address this very issue (Rom. 6:1-2) by asking whether we ought to keep on sinning so that grace will abound all the more? His answer: absolutely not!

Because Abraham’s faith is our model, Abraham’s response also becomes the pattern for the believer. Abraham responded in faith to God’s promise and stepped out to follow him in trust that the promise was good. Too often we think of faith simply as cognitive assent to a few propositions. This isn’t faith. James says that even demons believe in this way and shutter (James 2:19). Our relationship is not dependent upon our works, but following God in trust becomes the demonstration of our faith. Abraham’s faith was manifest in his willingness to leave all of his places of security and follow God into the wilderness of relationship.