Trusting the God Who Gives: Faith Reckoned as Righteousness

As I said last week, Paul’s Letter to the Romans holds a special place in the lives of many. The epistle lesson this week comes from the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter. In the Wesleyan tradition (my own faith tradition) this chapter is significant for the following themes:

• Prevenient grace — God’s initiating action prior to human response.
• Justification by faith — being set in right relationship with God through trusting reliance upon divine grace.
• The universality of grace — the promise extends beyond ethnic Israel to all who share Abraham’s faith.
• Faith as living trust — not mere intellectual assent, but relational reliance that leads to obedient participation in God’s mission.

In Lent, as we journey toward the cross, this passage reminds us that salvation originates not in human striving but in the gracious initiative of God in Christ.

Wesley himself preached extensively on justification by faith and understood it as the gracious act of God that precedes and enables the life of holiness. This chapter resists any reading that would limit God’s saving purposes to a narrow ethnic or religious boundary. It insists that the God who calls and justifies does so on the basis of grace received through faith.  This faith is itself a response to the prior, prevenient movement of God (who by grace gives us the ability to accept the gift).

While we do not believe that our salvation is something that can be earned or deserved, we must be careful not to see this passage as a dismissal of the transformed life of obedience. Wesley distinguished between works of the law done in an attempt to earn justification and the works of love that flow from a justified and sanctified heart. Works of love are the combined acts of piety (prayer, fasting, sacraments) with works of mercy (compassion, justice, feeding the hungry). As Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

Paul is clear: if justification came through works, it would be grounds for human boasting. But in God’s presence, human boasting is excluded (Romans 3:27). To settle the matter, Paul quotes the definitive proof: Genesis 15:6, “And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” The verb “reckoned” (or credited) is an accounting term, meaning to put something to one’s account. It implies a gift, not a wage. This verse affirms that our relationship with God is founded on God’s grace, received through faith, not on any inherent merit or moral achievement of our own .

Lent is precisely the season in which the church confronts its own poverty before God — its inability to save itself, its need for the mercy that comes from outside. The God who justifies the ungodly is the God who receives the prodigal while still “a great way off” (Luke 15:20). This does not mean that justification leaves people in their ungodliness. Justification is the door into an entire life of transformation. Wesley famously insisted that “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6) was the real religion of the New Testament. But the starting point is grace received by faith, not human merit.

Paul makes the claim: “For he is the father of all of us” (verse 16). In a divided world — in Paul’s time, divided between Jew and Gentile; in our time, divided by race, culture, nationality, and class — the church is a community gathered around one ancestor, one promise, one faith. This has direct bearing on our Lenten spirituality: the practices of Lent are not individual achievement projects but communal acts of turning toward the God who is Father of all.

The final verse of Romans 4 is a beautiful summary of the gospel. Jesus “was handed over to death for our trespasses” (the atoning sacrifice for sin) and “was raised for our justification” (the divine declaration that his sacrifice was accepted and that we are now right with God). Our faith is not in a generic concept of God but in this specific God—the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has acted decisively in history to save us. Therefore, the same righteousness credited to Abraham is credited to everyone who shares this faith.

The God in whom Abraham believed is the God who raises the dead. Lent moves toward Easter, and Romans 4 provides understanding of why the resurrection is not merely a postscript to the cross but is itself the ground of our justification.

The blessed hymnist Fannie Crosby wrote...
     Near the cross! O Lamb of God,
     bring its scenes before me;
     help me walk from day to day
     with its shadow o’er me.

Let us pray...

God of Abraham, you remind us that righteousness is not something we earn, but a gift you freely give to those who trust in you. Teach us to rest in your grace rather than in our own efforts. Strengthen our faith, that we may believe your promises even when the path ahead is unclear. As you brought life from what seemed impossible, breathe hope into us today. Make us children of the promise, walking in trust, living in gratitude, and bearing your blessing into the world through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.