Again, a quick summary, and I don't want to belabor this too much at all because now we're in Chapter 4. The more chapters you cover, the more you have to review if you want to try to review it all. Last week we saw again the Apostle Paul was making a great effort and case to establish that there was no difference, essentially, from the Jews or the Gentiles. Same kind of law keeping, and whether the Gentiles did it in ignorance or because they learned the law, didn't matter. There was blessings for obedience, there was curses for non-compliance. Paul also made a very strong case that God is not partial in his judgments. Romans 2.11, for there is no partiality with God. Further, we learn that God is just. But as the one who is just, he is also the justifier, because we're not capable of justifying ourselves through the law. Our only hope is that God would make this just. And Romans 3.26 says, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ. Then we talked also about propitiation and how through God's blood, Christ's blood, his shed blood, that we have gained this access, as it were, to the throne of God. We also spent a lot of time looking in Romans 1, when we started out, on creation. and seeing and understanding that man was intended to be something completely different. But as he was created, as well as the creation, and man was then set in the creation, he became futile in his thoughts, as Paul describes it. In Romans 20, or excuse me, one, chapter one, verse 20 and 21 says, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but were futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Paul makes this final conclusion then, in verse 23, that all have sinned, and I pointed out last week that this is really, when you get to the end of chapter 3, you really have a pretty gloomy, doomy picture of humankind. Both as a mass humanity, as a national humanity, and as individuals. We're kind of left undone. Then we get this very small little peak at the end of Romans 3. regarding salvation, and regarding the fact that God does make this propitiation for us, and that it is his righteousness that then is applied to us, and he ends up asking then the question, okay, if we are so miserably wretched, blind, naked, empty, without merit, and we are brought into a salvation that is holy, righteous, perfect. What is our claim? And Paul asked this question by saying, where is boasting? And he makes a very emphatic statement, it is excluded. As humans, we cannot get from here to over here without a gift. Without it, just simply, and we're gonna get into how that actually occurs in chapter four. So, with that as an introduction, let's look at chapter four. And chapter four, I'll give you a brief It's rather a lengthy chapter and we are not gonna actually spend a lot of time on it. It's speaking about Abraham and who Abraham is. And I just want you to think before I read it, the context that Paul might have read this. If Paul read this chapter four in a synagogue, He probably would have been stoned as he was running out the door. If he reads this to a Gentile audience, they're probably screaming hooray by the end. So with that as an introduction, let's look at chapter four of Romans. What then, shall we say, that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, His faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whom the Lord shall not impute sin. And if you note your footnote there, that is recorded in Psalm 32. Does the blessedness then come upon the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. How then was it accounted? While he was circumcised or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe. Though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also. And the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of the faith, which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised. For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect, because the law brings about wrath. For where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore, it is a faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. And then you have a parenthesis, most of you have a parenthesis in your Bible that runs down to, it's a ways there, I lost where the end of it, oh it's right, that's a short one, I'm sorry, I'm thinking of the next passage, or next chapter. As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. And again, that's from Genesis 17. And the presence of him whom he believed, God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did. Who contrary to hope, in hope believed. So that he became the father of many nations according to what was spoken. so shall your descendants be. And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead, since he was about 100 years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not waver at the promise of God, though through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. And being fully convinced that what he promised, he was also able to perform. And therefore, it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now, it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of your offenses and was raised because of our justification. So we have this discourse on Abraham. What's the impact here of what Paul says to the Jew who's hearing this? How did the Jew view Abraham? The father of the Jews, right? He's the one God called out of earth, called these, to go out and he was going to make a nation. Okay, so he's the father of the nation Israel. And so as much as the Jews believed that they were exclusive to all the rest of humanity, that God had put a special blessing upon them, that they were going to receive the promises of God, that they were going to receive the ongoing care of God as father, that God was going to ensure the generations to follow. He was going to bless them with land. He was going to bless them with a heritage. He was going to bless them with his presence and go before them and watch behind for them as well. He was going to protect them from all their enemies. And all this began with the call of Abraham. Okay? Go ahead, Bob. There's a lot of evidence by the community for all the facts that have been presented in the series. I think it's John's report that he's made at that point. It's almost as if, because there's been a whole series, they're all about it again. So the whole idea of that, the long-term success model, It would have been absolutely offensive, especially for anybody to come out and say, Abraham wasn't really called to be the nation of Jews, of Israel. He was called to be the nation of everyone who has faith. Gentiles included. So basically he took the axe and cut down the tree of Israel in terms of its value associated with faith of Abraham. Now there's another point that he is making in here. And this study, I just really want us to think about the impact of what this means. And again, I want to review, though, too, first, this notion of faith. And we talked about it last week in looking at Heidelberg Catechism 21. And we asked the question, what is faith? And we tried to better define what faith was according to the catechism. And we find that there is a certain knowledge and that knowledge is a knowledge that is absolute. It is understood in a depth and breadth that the scriptures reveal to us. This is not a kind of knowledge that we're just going to read a lot of books and then we fill our head with every kind form of knowledge. but this is a very specific, certain knowledge of God. And it's also a holding for truth with assured confidence. So this knowledge is not just simply something we know, but it's something that gives us assurance, tremendous assurance that we can truly be confident in this knowledge and in, again, the work of God. And this assurance and the knowledge comes through the work of the Holy Spirit in us, working in us, revealing God to us, chiefly by the means of the Scriptures, but also by the preaching, by the teaching, by our own reading of the Scriptures, and of our of our prayers even. The Holy Spirit is in us working these things to the glory of God. And it is by this faith, this faith that we have that is certain, again, and that assures us we know by this knowledge, by this faith, that we have remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation. And we also know, as we have it all, and as we experience it all, that we don't deserve any of it. It's freely given, the Heidelberg Catechism says, freely given, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merit. So again, as Paul says, what do we have to boast about? We have nothing to boast about. It is all of grace. It's all a work of God. Go ahead. Sometimes we have to forbear the words of the beast. That's a work that we do. But there's a question. Right. Right, well I would even go beyond saying even our believing because I think we sometimes have converted faith from a noun or an adjective to a verb. So faith is an exercise, okay? The best that the confession says regarding this is that it's a hearty, what's the word? Hearty trust, right? So there's a sense in which we could say that's a decision, that's an act, or that's an action verb, okay? But the greater sense of it is I believe very clearly from scripture, from the catechism, is that it's a state of being. Faith is something that happens to us. It's a work of the spirit in us. So we want to be careful never to see, oh, well, after Paul explains this all about faith and all about what it is, and we're going to get into it more here, that somehow that state of being that I have is because I decided to accept Jesus. Yes. And that is the total sense of faith right there. Yeah. Exactly, and imputation is exactly where I'm going to be going for probably the last 15 minutes of this. Go ahead. That's right. Right. Absolutely. He didn't accomplish anything until God brought it about. Right, right, right. But it is by revelation. Okay, so there's that knowledge. There's that knowledge. Tim. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. And it is amazed when you look at the landscape of Christendom in the largest sense of it, how many have just taken faith in a completely different direction. And I'm not just saying, oh, it's these Armenians, it's Roman Catholicism, even a lot of Lutheranism, even in the RCUS, Nevin and all of his, the things that he wanted to propose as the new way forward, which led to a very significant liberalization of the RCUS. Absolutely, yep, it falls right back to that now. And so, again, we're dependent upon God's word to reveal to us this truth. It doesn't come from us, it comes from God. And as we discover salvation and understanding faith, from the Word of God, we also find that the Word of God is also informing us how we should live, how we should worship, how we should treat others, how we should work, how we should sing, how we should dance, how we should conduct business, how we should play, how we should dress. Everything about us is revealed to us in the scriptures. So just as our faith is understood through the scriptures, so our life and everything that we do is understood through the scriptures. And that's why we continually have to come back to the scriptures. And oftentimes, the very same scripture that we looked at last week. Because we have an innate ability Do forget to not see the application of something. We're constantly having to go back and to hear it again, hear it again. And that's one of the beautiful things about the Heidelberg Catechism. Sometimes you sit there and you say, I know this question already by heart, can't we move on and do something else? But no, we need to re-hear it because We are moving targets in this world. And Satan's firing guns, firing advertising. Families are firing. So we have to continually be instructed by the word. So what I've, go ahead. Oh yeah, there he is. I heard something. Something mumbling back there. That's right. That's it? And that's right. And going to that point, you heard, and I think it was Bobby mentioned, the word impute. And impute is seen in verse 6. I think it's 6, right? Yes. Just as David also described the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Then if you jump to verse 11, and he received the sign of circumcision, the seal of the righteousness of faith, which he had while uncircumcised, that he might be the father of those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them. And then all the way forward to verse 23, Now, it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification. So this word impute is not one that we probably use every day. It is probably one of the most controversial words in the Bible in terms of interpreting it. Because the word impute is really not found in a sense directly in the scriptures, even when you go back to the Greeks. which is really what I needed to do. I found that the word impute has a sense of to be reckoned. That's exactly how, if you did a straight read, would find it. In the NIV, They have chosen to, I don't know if anybody has an NIV, but they have chosen to interpret it as credited. The Saint Joseph's Catholic Bible uses the same term, credited. And there's a lot of other Bibles that you could look at and you'll find a variety. but very few of them will actually use the word impute. Impute is actually found also in a Heidelberg question and answer and that would be number 56. Now it says in there, let's see, It's asked the question, what do you believe concerning the forgiveness of sins? The answer is that God, for the sake of Christ's satisfaction, I will no more remember my sin nor the sinful nature with which I have to struggle all my life. But graciously imputes to me the righteousness of Christ, that I may never more come into condemnation. And one of the passages that that question references is the very passage that we're looking at in chapter four of Romans. It's interesting when you read commentaries. Some commentaries, because that word doesn't go straight to, the Greek word doesn't go straight to impute, or the sense of imputing, imputation, seem to almost dance over it, like they don't even know that Impute's there. Calvin's one of them. But when Calvin was there, there wasn't a new King James Version, or an old King James Version. He's going by the Greek, so he certainly speaks in the same sense of being reckoned, and being brought. Luther's commentary on Romans is the same. But even some of the more modern one's Martin Lloyd-Jones. Doesn't really talk about imputation. I had an experience of having Bob Grossman stay at our house when he spoke to us at a conference, I should say, Dr. Bob Grossman. And Janie pulled out some of these old books that were left behind in her father's estate, one of them being a little tiny title. And we're thinking, boy, this is old, trustworthy Heidelberg, right? And Bob Grossman says, question 56, question 56. You know how excited you get to open up, read question 56. And I'm looking for this word impute. But I don't find that. I find imparted. He said, that's Nevin. That's liberalism. That's no good. He said there's all kinds of things that are written in the revised version of the Heidelberg that came out of that whole movement. But that was one of the most substantial ones. It's one that when you open the book, you go to question 56, if it's there, if you're reading in part, you've probably got the wrong confession. And by the way, there are multiple forms of the Heidelberg. The Heidelberg was written by two people and they, the most common that we know is your sinus, but altered various ways. Some people thought they were way too weighty, some people thought they were not weighty enough. And so there was all kinds of revisions that had been brought along. So what's the difference between impute and impart? And that's exactly, go ahead, Tim. I'll tell you one way that that might break down a little bit. You're making a good point, actually. What I was thinking of, if you took somebody who was just a regular layman and you gave them the authority as king, And even though they had no royal blood in them, now they're king. They're declared to be king. The only breakdown in both illustrations is that now you can spend or not spend some of that money. You could give that all away. But impute is, the concept behind imputing is it's not anything we can give away. Okay, so it is, it's grace and it's justification and it's status. And we can deny we have the status. We can live like we don't have the status. We can sin as if we don't have the status. But the status doesn't change. because we had nothing to do with it in the first place. And secondly, when God does something, he does it. It stands, it remains, it's unchanged. And that's a fundamental aspect of the doctrine of God, is that he's unchangeable. Right. Right. That's right. And even if we did, in that sense of spending, as Tim pointed out, even if we did spend that, what happens, it's automatically, it's like the miracles that Jesus did with food, right? How many baskets do we have? Oh, we got two, or whatever. Okay, hand out what you got. 5,000 people later, we still got a bunch left. We actually got more left than what we started with. And that is the sense of it. So, imputation. And again, the Greek is really interesting. A lot of you are familiar with the word logos. Lagos is the most, I guess, substantial place that that word is used is in John 1, where Jesus is the lagos, the word. And when we say the word, it's not just a spoken thing. It is a spoken, declared to be true, substantiated, and infinite in nature. word. That is the root word of the word that being reckoned. Again, if you really take it the way the Greek books show it is to be reckoned. Greek is weird in terms of tenses. and in terms of use of it, whether it's an infinity, adverb, noun, whatever part of speech, and that all is determined by the ending of that word. So you have a root word and then you have an ending. In this case, the root word is that we are basically declared status, and with a to be associated with it. So it is a state of being that we are brought into. And that is that when Christ died for us, he really died for us, and we can't get out of it. We can die in rebellion still. But that salvation has been imputed to us. If you use the word impart, as Bobby mentioned, it's optional. And that's what is intended. The same way with the use of the word to be credited. To be credited almost implies that I again have this credit to my account, I can actually get rid of that account if I want. I still maintain this sense of freedom regarding that. But this is an applied to us. Randy. That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah. That's right. And what's interesting about that aspect that I always like to throw in, and we'll need to end here soon, is creation. How did creation come about? God spoke and it was. It's absolutely no different when it comes to our salvation in the sense of imputing. There's a work associated with it that God is working, and he does that. but it has been decreed from the foundations of the earth. We'll see more of that as we continue to go through. I think what they say is that it's the instrument. Right, yeah, that's true. Right, but notice what Paul's saying, though, about Abraham. When was imputation applied to Abraham? before it ever happened, before any of it, before Christ came. So we look at those, he mentions David, right? David is the one who uses the word impute. So the imputation by the faithful of Old Testament was understood. This is not, in a sense, brand new revelation. Yeah. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,