CHAPTER 4
How was Abraham, our father according to human ancestry, made right with God? If he were justified by his religious performance then he would have had something to boast about- even though God would have seen right through it. For the scripture makes it clear: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." If someone works, then his reward is not a free gift, but something he's owed for his labor. But to the one who realizes he can't earn salvation, but simply stops trying to and just trusts in the One who saves the sinful, his belief is counted to him as righteousness.
Commentary:
Paul now turns his attention to the reality that what Jesus proclaimed so clearly about the necessity of “believing in Him” as the means to eternal life was not a new or foreign concept in the historical interactions between God and his people. In fact, “believing God” was front and center right from the start. Paul is linking deeply the gospel of Jesus (and the New Covenant encoded within it) back to God’s covenant with Abraham—the first Jew and father of the Jewish people. If Paul can show that believing in Jesus is not, in any sense of the word, “un-Jewish”, but in fact a logical extension and prophetic fulfillment of God’s historic promises to the Hebrew fathers, then he can show clearly that God has been faithful to keep His word despite the present-tense rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the majority of ethnic Jews.
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