Read: Romans 4:1-12 - STEP Bible, Bible Gateway
As you read Romans 4, you can tell St Paul is anticipating a backlash from his Jewish readers. ‘But wait!’, you can almost hear them saying. ‘God chose the Jewish people! He chose Abraham and the people who would be descended from him, and that means he didn’t choose the rest of the world! And, what is more, he set down various requirements for the descendants of Abraham, so that they could remain God’s chosen people! It says it in the Torah, our bible!’
Fair enough, says St Paul. If you want to do battle over what the scripture says, so be it. Did God make his promise to Abraham before or after Abraham fulfilled the first of the requirements God gave to him? Ah, yes, it was before, wasn’t it? In that case, fulfilling the requirements God gave him can’t have been what won Abraham and his descendants God’s special favour, can it? And in any case, why does the Torah insist God favoured Abraham in the first place? Because Abraham had faith! So it stands to reason that what God wants is not fulfilment of particular set of behaviour requirements so much as faith in God’s grace. And, as we have seen, through Jesus it is possible for non-Jews to have faith in God’s grace. So your argument falls! It is only faith that matters now.
It is critically important that Paul chooses to disarm his Jewish critics not through clever rhetoric or philosophy, but rather by taking them back to what their own bible says. As we modern Christians are faced with decisions about how we ought to live and act, or indeed about who ought to be able to marry or who ought to be a bishop, we need to follow his example. The only way for the church to mature in faith is if we know what our bible teaches.
These devotions were originally written for the parish of All Saints, Ascot and we are grateful for permission to republish them on Fulcrum.
Patrick is curate of All Saints’, Ascot in Berkshire. A musicologist by training, he is married to Lydia, a university lecturer, and dad to Madeleine. He writes (sporadically) at benedixisti.wordpress.com and tweets (even more sporadically) as @patrickgilday.