Romans Chapter 4 (part 2)

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Keep reading below if you want to start where we are (Romans 4:9-12)
Or go back to the beginning - [Here's the intro to Romans], and [here's the full archive] so you can start from Chapter 1.

Either way works. I just don't want you to feel lost.

Before diving into my notes, I encourage you to read Romans 4:9-12 first (or the whole chapter if you have time).

I include all the Scripture below, but there’s something about sitting with the whole chapter first — giving yourself room to be curious.

What catches you off guard?
What doesn't make sense?
Where is that?
Who's that?
Why?

Those questions will make the notes hit deeper.

"When disciples followed a rabbi, they followed him closely so they would never be out of his sight, never be someplace where they couldn’t hear him speak. They followed him so closely that his sandals often kicked up dust."

May you be covered in His dust.

Peace to you, brothers and sisters.

Last week we learned how a guilty sinner gets declared righteous before a holy God.

Abraham believed, and God counted it to him as righteousness. That's Genesis 15:6. That's justification. A courtroom verdict rendered by a just God who didn't look the other way, because the guilt had to land somewhere. And it landed on His Son.

Abraham shows you that righteousness is counted to you. David shows you that sin is not counted against you. Two sides of the same transaction.

Paul drove a stake in the ground. This righteousness comes by faith. Not works. No add-ons. No qualifiers. The moment you bring something to the table it stops being a gift and is no longer grace.

That's where we left it.

Now Paul keeps going. Same Abraham. But the question changes.

Last week was how.

This week is who.

Are you ready? Let’s get into it.

Since verse six Paul’s been talking about a blessing.

A specific blessing. The one David described in Psalm 32. The person whose lawless deeds are forgiven. Whose sins are covered. Against whom the Lord will not count sin. God looks at a guilty person and says righteous. That blessing.

Now Paul stops.

And he asks a question that’s been sitting in the back of the room the whole time. Every Gentile who’s been listening knows it's coming. They've been hoping someone would ask it. They've been afraid to ask it themselves.

Is this blessing only for the circumcised?

Because if it is, they're still outside. Still strangers to the covenant. Still watching through a window at something that was never meant for them.

So this isn't a theological question for the Gentile in the room.

It's the question for their eternal life.

And every Jewish reader knows exactly where this is going. Paul’s about to examine the one thing their entire identity was built on. The sign they received on the eighth day. The heritage they were born into. The covenant they carried in their body their entire lives.

And they can't stop him.

Paul starts on common ground, "For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness."

“We say.”

Not I say. Not here's something new. We say. This is what we all already believe. Every person in the room accepted Genesis 15:6. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. That was settled ground. You can't reject what's coming without rejecting what you already believe.

Then Paul asks the question nobody's thought to ask for two thousand years.

It sounds almost too simple. But the answer to that question is the whole argument.

Go back to Genesis.

Genesis 15. God makes a covenant with Abraham. Abraham believes him. God counts it to him as righteousness. That's the moment. That's the justification.

Now keep reading.

Genesis 17. God institutes circumcision. Abraham is circumcised. He's 99 years old. And Ishmael, the son born while Abraham was still waiting on the promise, is thirteen.

Thirteen years. At minimum. Between the righteousness and the sign.

Most people have read Genesis their entire lives and walked right past it. Paul went back to the text and looked at the sequence. Chapter 15, righteousness. Chapter 17, circumcision. And that quiet gap sitting between two chapters, those thirteen years, destroys the entire argument that circumcision had anything to do with making Abraham right with God.

It was already done.

God declared Abraham righteous before circumcision existed as a practice. Before there was any such thing as a Jewish person. Before the law. Before the nation. Before any religious marker of any kind.

Abraham was justified as a Gentile.

That's not a minor detail.

That’s
the
whole
thing.

If righteousness came after circumcision you could argue the sign contributed. You could build a case that this blessing belongs to a specific people with a specific practice and a specific heritage.

But it came before.

Which means circumcision didn't cause the righteousness. It confirmed something that was already there.

And if God justified Abraham before the sign existed, then righteousness was never tied to the sign.

Which means it was never tied to being Jewish.

Which means the door was never locked.

Paul saw it in the timeline.

Two thousand years. Right there in the text. Waiting.

Go ahead and read Genesis 15:6 and Genesis 17:24 again. See if you can unsee it.

So why did Abraham get circumcised at all?

Paul just showed that circumcision had nothing to do with making Abraham right with God. The righteousness came in Genesis 15. The circumcision came in Genesis 17. Thirteen years apart. At a minimum. So if the sign didn't cause the righteousness, why did God give it to him?

Paul answers it in two words.

Sign and seal.

Most people read right past them without stopping. They should stop.

A sign points you toward something. A stop sign doesn't stop you. It tells you to stop. A road sign doesn't take you anywhere. It points you in the direction of something else.

Circumcision was a sign pointing to a righteousness that was already there.

A seal authenticates something that already exists. Neither one creates anything. They confirm what God already did.

Think about the last time you signed a legal document. Maybe a contract. Maybe a deed. The signature didn't create the agreement. The two parties had already come to terms. The deal was done. The signature was the moment someone said, this is real, this is binding, this is official.

That's what circumcision was.

God wasn't saying to Abraham, now you belong to me. He was saying, this mark on your body is my official seal on what I already declared over you in Genesis 15. The righteousness came first. The sign came after.

Always in that order.

And then Paul tells you why.

Slow down when you read that.

God didn't justify Abraham before circumcision by accident. He didn't look at the timeline later and decide to make something of it. He put it in that order on purpose. He justified Abraham as a Gentile so that Abraham could stand as the father of every Gentile who would ever believe.

Abraham wasn't just uncircumcised when God declared him righteous.

He was a Gentile.

That's who God chose. That's who God justified. That's who God made the father of everyone who would come after him in faith. Not because Abraham had the right bloodline.

Because he believed.

And God looked at that belief and said righteous.

Four thousand years before you were born, God was already thinking about you. He was ordering the life of one man so that the door would be open. So that no one could ever stand up and say “this blessing only belongs to us.”

That man is Abraham.

Not because of his bloodline. Because of what he did in Genesis 15.

He believed.

Now Paul turns to the Jewish believer.

And you have to understand who he's writing to.

Not Jews who rejected Jesus. Not Jews who were still waiting for the Messiah. Jews who believed. Jews who had already said Jesus is Lord. They were in the church in Rome. They were sitting in the room when the letter was read aloud.

And Paul has something to say to them.

“Abraham is still your father.”

You are the circumcised. That heritage is yours. That lineage goes all the way back to the man God called out of paganism and made a promise to.

But then Paul adds three words.

“Not merely circumcised.”

The mark you received on the eighth day before you could walk or talk or choose anything for yourself. The thing that identified you as belonging to God's people from the moment you entered the world.

That's not what makes Abraham your father.

What makes Abraham your father is walking in the footsteps of his faith.

The faith he had in Genesis 15.

Not the mark, but the faith behind the mark.

The Jewish believers already paid the social cost of following Jesus. They're not the enemy. They're brothers.

The Gentile didn't have to become Jewish to belong to Abraham.
The Jew couldn't claim Abraham by bloodline alone.

Both of them had to do the same thing Abraham did in Genesis 15.

Believe.

One faith.
One father.
One way in.

The ground is exactly the same for every single person who has ever come to God. Not similar. Exactly the same.

Go back to Genesis 12:3. The very first promise God made to Abraham. Before circumcision. Before the law.

All the families.

Jew and Gentile.
Me and you.

Paul just showed us how.

Most of us have read Genesis.
More than once.

We know the names. We know the stories. Abraham left his home. God made a promise. Isaac was born. We know how it goes.

And because we know how it goes, we stop looking.

We read familiar words and call it good. We move through chapters that have been sitting there for four thousand years and we don't slow down long enough to ask why. Why this order. Why did Paul go back to Genesis and spend this much time on a timeline most people have never thought about.

Because there's more there than you think.

There is always more there than you think.

Paul saw something in the sequence that most people walked right past. Righteousness in chapter 15. Circumcision in chapter 17. Thirteen years apart. And in that gap, sitting quietly between two chapters of Genesis, was the answer to the question every Gentile in that room had been afraid to ask out loud.

Am I in?

And the answer was there the whole time.

“All the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

You are not an afterthought.

You were written into this before circumcision existed. Before the law. Before Israel. Before any of it.

And if you’ve put your trust in Jesus Christ, you are in it. Not watching through a window.

All the way in.

A child of Abraham. Covered by the same righteousness God declared over a man standing alone in Genesis 15 with nothing but a promise.

He believed it.

So can you.

Man. No wonder the Lord canonized Paul's letters. We need them. Paul saw things in the text nobody else saw. And he wouldn't let it go until everyone understood it.

I love you,
George

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George Sisneros is a full-time missionary in Guatemala and the founder of Ordinary Missionaries and the El Rosario Christian Academy for Boys.

He’s been married to his wife, Vonda, for 27 years. He’s a father to nine children, five adopted.

In 2024, George and his wife expanded to Cuba, joining forces with nine pastors committed to transforming lives through the gospel.

You can get George’s newest digital book, Uncovering Scripture: The Gospel of Luke HERE.