不劳而获? Getting the credit without doing the work?

罗 马 书 第 4 章 17-25 节
Sermon on Romans 4 : 17-25

Speaker: Rev. Enoch Keong
Title: Getting the credit without doing the work?

Christians are often reminded that we don’t—and we can’t—earn our salvation, Christians are simply declared righteous by God through the work that Christ has done on our behalf. In other words, it is getting the credit without doing the work. Friends, is such an understanding in-line with our view with regards to salvation?

No matter what our answer to the question may be, getting the credit without doing the work is something that happens all the time in the real world. Have we heard this one? 2 employees, assigned to a project. One did the lion share, the other looks quite free most of the time. Then come the time of appraisal, and the employee who did less got the promotion and the raise. I guess we might find this to be something not uncommon in the marketplace. Similar things happen in schools and learning institutions. There are the diligent students who worked real hard, missed quite a bit of fun and earned the high scores; and there are those who never needed to pay much attention to their studies but brought home results that are equally impressive. Getting the credit without doing the work is something we see happening when it comes to the topic of salvation, at workplace and learning institutions.

Needless to say, although getting the credit is the common denominator, the story in one case is very different from the other. Our task this morning is to tell the Christians’ story? And we will be doing it through considering an aspect of Abraham’s story. Why Abraham? Not because Paul cited him as the example in this morning’s passage? Neither is it because he is one of the first individuals in the bible that demonstrated something worth emulating. The answer, let us come to it only a little later.

Abraham, against hope believed in hope, says Paul, by which he meant that Abraham did not doubt what God promised him, in that he will have descendants numbered in terms of multiple nations, even though he and Sarah had way passed the age of giving birth to children.

The first thing to note about Abraham is this. The kind of faith that he demonstrates isn’t what is often called ‘blind faith’. Blind faith refers to someone believing in something that is baseless. As for Abraham, he did not hold on to make-believes. Neither did he put words into God’s mouth to manufacture for himself divine promises, as some contemporary Christians might be in the habit of doing. Paul reminds us that Abraham’s faith was based solidly on divine pronouncements, which were later recorded in the scriptures.

At the same time, Abraham did not imagine baselessly something enjoyable and try to picture that it will become a reality. People who practice blind faith - I believe - often say to themselves things, such as, “It will happen, God will make the thing happen” or “God is good, he will not fail us, we will not be disappointed.”

Wouldn’t Abraham have also said to himself such things? Not really. When we read the bible, either the book of Genesis or the epistle to the Romans, we don’t quite find Abraham to have been thinking much about specific outcomes, he did not dwell on how that which was hoped for will take shape. All we are told is that he had carefully examined his situation, and confirmed for himself the utter impossibility of it leading to what God said will happen. Yet, the hard facts just didn’t stop him from believing. In short, Abraham’s faith is one in which he hoped with an informed understanding, or we can say, an informed impossibility.

The impossibility, as mentioned, did not stop him from treating seriously the promise made unto him. Words of promise, if we may say, is something not very tangible, and doesn’t guarantee certainty. Yet, while being intangible, words of promise can at the same time be everything to a person. I recently had a word with a young girl - not from our church. This young girl uses a smartphone application, namely, WhatsApp, which has this entry called ‘status’. Guess what she entered for ‘status’? “Love is lie”. Many of us here use WhatsApp and we probably have something like “available”, “at work”, or “hey there! i am using WhatsApp” as the ‘status’, the young girl wrote “Love is lie”. It really pains the heart and generates quite a fair amount of worries to read something like that written by a girl, who is only studying in the upper primary level. What has caused her to come up with such a depressive expression? The girl comes from a family with divorced parents. The father during the divorce proceedings promised to visit her certain number of times each month. The father, in actual fact, hardly appears. And even if he were to turn up once in a blue moon, the focus was never quite on her. A father’s love can mean a lot to a young girl. So, with the feeling of being cheated compounded with a sense of dejection; the girl wrote “Love is lie”. Believing the words of promise made to her by her own father, the girl ended up feeling jaded. She’s only 10 years old.

Words of promise, intangible by nature and yet could mean everything to a person was also that in which the elderly Abraham had received. He indeed became a father of many nations, as the promise did come true. But it could also have been the case where he continued to remain childless. The risk he bore was in fact much greater than that of the young girl in comparison. For if the promise had not materialized, as a rich and childless old man, everything that was his would be handed over to a servant from his household who was not related to him (Gen 15:2). He himself would in turn be a nomad who had once lived and died and be conveniently forgotten by people within one to two generations. Abraham chose to believe in the promise nonetheless, and he did so amidst the stark reality of the deadness of his own body and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. The scriptures even insist that he did not waver but was instead strengthened in faith .

What fanaticism?

No. Fanaticism is a form of uncritical enthusiasm. We don’t see in the father of faith. He was both clear and critical, and recognized how incompatible his condition was with that which God promised him. Still we see him treating God’s words seriously, and the reason is because his faith was never based upon some desired outcomes, which may not come to pass, or on the words of promise which are intangible, but on God himself. Verse 21 says that, “He was fully convinced that what God promised he was also able to do.”

Friends, on what then do you and I base our faith upon? I believe when we ask this question, most Christians will say, “On God himself”. But i think we should ask the question yet again, on what do we base our faith upon? Because while most of us know that faith should be based upon God himself and would readily give the correct answer to the question, we may have unwittingly based our faith on something else. Some based their faith on miracles, or prosperity, or what their beloved Christian authors say, or the testimonies and teachings of certain respectable pastors, church leaders or Christian singers. And when these bases lost their convincing power, the persons’ faith is also shaken. Friends, on what do we base our faith upon?

Paul makes it clear that Abraham’s faith is based on God. Not only that, but in the God who makes the dead alive and summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do. (v.17) The way in which God is described in this verse tends to make readers think that Paul is referring to God as the one who has the ability to resurrect the dead and that he was the one who created the world. Guess that’s the reason translators of NIV rendered the Greek into, “the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” But when we read the descriptions in context, where there was Abraham who at the point when he received the promise was childless and later on had many descendants and nations that recognized him to be their forefather, we see that the verse is actually talking about God being able to see ahead of time and was summoning a situation that has yet to take place. In other words, Paul is not talking here about the past, about who has caused our world to come about. But about the future, about a God who looks into the future and exercises oversight concerning our future.

The aged Abraham who placed his faith in God was quickly becoming a centenarian, an old man with no future to talk about. God broke into the world of the old man and granted him a future.

Friends, for us whom I believe are concerned about the future - no matter if we are grandparents who wish and work for the good of our love ones, or we are adults trying our best to manage the multiple demands weighing on our shoulders, or students who has yet to have any idea about what tomorrow holds, let’s be sure that our God is concerned about our future and is exercising oversight in our life journey ahead. So let us ask again, on what do we base our faith upon? Is it on God who holds the future?

“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” We read this in Romans 4:3. And by the time we come to verses 23 and 24, we are told that the phrase “it was credited to him” was not written only for Abraham’s sake, but also for our sake. In our world that loves and abuses the use of credit cards, we know very well what the word ‘credited’ suggests. When we use a credit card, we are using future money, the banks’ money, which is someone else’s money that is not in fact ours. So what does that tell us about ‘it was credited to Abraham and us as righteousness? Let me use the words of a biblical commentator, “God’s righteousness is not native to human beings; it is an alien righteousness granted to us by God’s grace.”[1] In other words, if we think that we have anything in us to deserve God’s grace, think twice. We simply don’t have it. It is God who according to his grace who allowed us to stand not as one condemned but worthy before him.

That’s exactly getting the credit without doing the work isn’t it? But then, why did Paul cite Abraham amongst all the ones considered righteous in the bible. Time to answer the question left hanging since the beginning of this morning’s sharing. Why did Paul not cite Noah, who sailed the high sea with God; or Enoch, who walked with God; or Boaz, who displayed the princely generosity; or David the man after God’s heart? Simply because, brothers and sisters, we are called to hope and have faith in God; and not just a faith that believes in a God who can heal, and a God will bless, and that he will illuminate and grant wisdom, and that he will lovingly hear every prayer. Of course, we are called to all these. But fundamentally, we are called to a faith that’s exactly the same as that of Abraham. “A faith that is apart from works, apart from circumcision, apart from the law, apart from sight”[2] A faith that’s prepared to transcend impossibilities, a faith that sees one’s future, from the next minute till eternity to be in God. A faith that affirms with words and deeds that Jesus has risen from the dead and we are a new creation.

Getting the credit without doing the work? Of course. How else since righteousness is an alien property to human nature? But if anyone thinks that getting this particular credit is like a free lunch, let Abraham’s account fill in for us the necessary details.

Let me close with the words of the Reformer John Calvin, “Let us also remember, that the condition of us all is the same with that of Abraham. All things around us are in opposition to the promises of God: He promises immortality; we are surrounded with mortality and corruption: he declares that he counts us just; we are covered with sins: He testifies that he is propitious and kind to us; outward judgments threaten his wrath. What then is to be done? We must with closed eyes pass by ourselves and all things connected with us, that nothing may hinder or prevent us from believing that God is true.”[3]

So, in whom do we hope, in whom do we base our faith?

[1] Schreiner, Thomas R., “Romans”: BECNT, Grand Rapid: Baker Academic, 1998. 215.
[2] Moo, Douglas J., “The Epistle to the Romans”: NICNT, Grand Rapid, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1996. 287.
[3] Ibid. 284