Romans 4 is a challenging passage, and encouraging too. It's exciting to see how Abraham's faith gained him the gift of righteousness from God, just as our faith in Jesus does today. Abraham was the beginning of what would become the Israelite nation. Paul's point here was that all the law and the history and the prophets began, not with obedience and righteous living worthy of praise from God, but with simple faith and trust in him who "calls into existence the things that do not exist." (Romans 4:17, ESV) It's a powerful testimony of God's amazing love, patience and grace that He has given first to a family based on his faith, then to a nation now to anyone who will call on His name in faith.
While that big picture is encouraging and amazing, I have this feeling that there are many nuances that I'm missing here. Do you ever read a passage and feel that there's something in it that's escaping you, that you just aren't getting? That's how I felt reading Romans 4 this time through. I've felt that before, with the entire book of Hebrews for example, and later on it's clicked. Some of those passages are now my favorites (I love Hebrews now), perhaps because of all the head scratching that proceeded the 'aha!' moment.
Romans 5:2 - If the grace of God is a room we stand in, faith is the doorway we must pass through to get there. Or perhaps more accurately, Jesus is the doorway and our faith in him is our 'backstage pass' or ticket to get in. Perhaps that gives us too much credit.
Romans 5:10 - I wonder if 'reconciled' and 'saved' in this verse mean two different things. I used to think of them both as salvation, in the saved from Hell sense, but now I wonder. For it says "now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life." We are saved through His life after we are reconciled. In other words, His death and sacrifice provide reconciliation that enables His life to save us form a world of hurt. For once we are reconciled, we begin to examine His life and emulate it. In doing so, we are saved from the pain of sin and its consequences. Things we would have done before without thought, and would have hurt us and others in the process,, we now run from. In that way, once we are reconciled, we are then saved.
Romans 5:19 - Some see in this verse, and the surrounding passages guilt that was placed upon everyone because of Adam's sin. But Romans 5:12 says "death spread to all men because all sinned" and that is the context of verse 19. Also, if you look at verse 19 and say that Adam's sin made everyone guilty, apart from any action on their own, it would be consistent to use the second part of the verse to say that Jesus' obedience made everyone justified apart from any action on their own. Even those who take the view of original sin and the Calvinist position that we do absolutely nothing in our salvation (it's all God's doing, period) would not say that Jesus' obedience justifies everyone, would they?
I'm always amazed by Abraham's faith when I read the passage in Genesis referenced in this text. I'd sure like to think that I'd be willing and able to trust God for anything if He gave me a son when I was 100 and my wife was 90, but I suspect I'd be much more coveteous of that son than Abraham obviously was.
I started thinking that maybe the term "saved" meant, as some have said, that your not saved until you actually die. I didn't know what they wanted to call it when you were living but reconciled fits pretty good. Then I looked up reconciled, in the dictionary, to see what it meant and one of the description is: "to restore to friendship or harmony" which sounds cool in terms of our relationship with God. Another one: "to check (a financial account) against another for accuracy" and thought about checking our lives next to Jesus to see if they are the same. Pretty cool. Then do a search on reconsiliation and you get the ministry of reconsiliation, among other things, (2 Cor 5:11-21) Anyway, an aha moment of sorts. Thank you.
Maybe Jesus is the door and faith is whatever it is that's inside us that gives us the guts to walk through the door.