로마서 4

Abraham counted righteous by faith

¹What then are we to say that Abraham, our ancestor by natural descent, has found?^{ab 2}Suppose Abraham was declared righteous because of his works: then he would have grounds for boasting, but not in God’s presence. ³What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and that was counted to him as righteousness.” ⁴A worker’s wages are not counted as grace but as what is owed. ⁵But to someone who does no work, yet believes in the God who declares the ungodly righteous, that faith is counted as righteousness. ⁶David says the same when he speaks of the happiness of the one whom God counts as righteous apart from works: ⁷“How happy are those whose wrongs are forgiven, whose sins are covered over! ⁸How happy is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them!”

⁹Is this blessing, then, only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness. ¹⁰Under what circumstances, then, was it counted? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before. ¹¹Circumcision was given to him afterward as a sign, a seal on the righteousness that was already his by faith before he was circumcised. In this way he is father to everyone who believes without being circumcised, so that righteousness is counted to them. ¹²And he is father to the circumcised as well: not to those who are merely circumcised, but to those who walk the same road of faith our father Abraham walked while still uncircumcised.^c

The promise comes through faith

¹³The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his offspring through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴If the heirs are those who rely on the law, faith is made empty and the promise is worthless. ¹⁵The law brings about wrath. But where there is no law, there is no breaking of the law either.

Abraham, the father of us all

¹⁶So the promise comes through faith, in order that it may rest on grace and stand firm for every one of Abraham’s offspring: not only for those who belong to the law, but also for those who belong to the faith of Abraham, the father of all of us. ¹⁷Scripture says, “I have made you father of many nations.” Before God he is our father, the God he believed, who brings the dead to life and calls into being things that do not exist.^{d 18}Hoping when there was no ground for hope, Abraham believed, and so he became the father of many nations, as God had said to him, “That is how many your offspring will be.” ¹⁹His faith did not weaken when he looked at his own body, as good as dead now that he was about a hundred years old, or at the deadness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰He did not doubt God’s promise or waver in unbelief. Instead he grew strong in faith and gave glory to God, ²¹fully convinced that God had the power to carry out what he had promised.^{e 22}That is why “it was counted to him as righteousness.”

Written for us too

²³The words “it was counted to him” were not written for Abraham alone, ²⁴but for us as well. It will be counted to us who believe in the God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. ²⁵Jesus was handed over to die because of our trespasses, and he was raised so that we would be declared righteous.