“Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
— Romans 4:3 (quoting Genesis 15:6)
Context & Key Themes
Having announced in chapter 3 that justification comes by faith apart from works of the law, Paul now faces the obvious question: can that claim be demonstrated from the Old Testament itself? If this doctrine is genuinely the gospel, it cannot be a first-century innovation. It has to be the way God has always justified people. Paul’s witness is Abraham, and the demonstration is elegant. Abraham was counted righteous in Genesis 15:6 — four hundred and thirty years before the law was given through Moses, and at least fourteen years before he received circumcision as the covenant sign in Genesis 17. The sequence matters. Faith came first. Righteousness was credited on the basis of that faith. Circumcision followed later as a seal of a righteousness Abraham had already received. If the founding father of Israel was justified by faith before he was circumcised and before the law existed, then faith has always been the basis of right standing with God, and Gentiles who come to Christ by faith without passing through the Jewish ceremonial law are doing exactly what Abraham himself did.
The chapter also does something more than winning a historical argument. Paul uses Abraham as the portrait of what saving faith actually looks like in practice. Abraham was a hundred years old. Sarah’s womb was barren. The promise of descendants as numerous as the stars had nothing on the ground to rest on — no ongoing line of children, no natural probability, no remaining biological window. And Abraham believed anyway. Paul describes it in verses 19-21 with remarkable specificity: Abraham did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, as good as dead, or the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver in unbelief at the promise of God, but grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. That is the texture of saving faith. Not mental assent to a doctrine. Not blind optimism. Trust in the character and power of God to accomplish what God has said, even when the circumstances contradict every rational expectation.
Summary
Paul begins with a rhetorical question: what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about — but not before God. What does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due; but to the one who does not work but trusts Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Paul reinforces the point with David, who describes the blessedness of the one against whom God will not count his sin — blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered, against whom the Lord will not count his sin.
Then Paul presses the timing of Abraham’s justification. Is this blessing only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness — but how? Was it while he was circumcised, or before? It was before. He received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was clear: to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and also the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who walk in the footsteps of the faith Abraham had before he was circumcised. The promise to Abraham — that he would be heir of the world — did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it were through the law, faith would be empty and the promise void. The law brings wrath; where there is no law, there is no transgression. That is why the promise depends on faith, so that it may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring — not only to those of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
Paul closes with the portrait of Abraham’s faith itself. In hope Abraham believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told: so shall your offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But these words were not written for his sake alone. They were written for us also, to whom righteousness will be counted — to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Reflection
The argument Paul builds from Abraham’s timeline is not a clever rabbinic sleight of hand; it is historical theology at its most careful. Genesis 15 is the moment Abraham believes and is credited with righteousness. Genesis 17 is the moment, years later, when Abraham receives circumcision. The book of Exodus, where the law begins to be given, is still centuries away. Anyone who reads the text plainly cannot escape what Paul is pointing to. Righteousness came to Abraham not through any ritual observance, not through any law-keeping, not through any physical marker of covenant identity, but through faith — and only through faith. The ritual followed as a public seal of a private reality. The law arrived much later as a tutor to Israel, not as the means by which Abraham’s righteousness had originally been established. Paul’s case is not that the Old Testament contradicts the gospel; it is that the Old Testament, read correctly, has always been telling the same story the gospel now tells openly. Abraham is Paul’s proof that justification by faith is not a New Testament innovation but the deep grammar of God’s dealing with humanity from the beginning.
The portrait of Abraham’s faith in verses 19 through 21 is worth holding in the hand for a long moment. This is not the faith of someone who ignored reality. Paul emphasizes that Abraham considered his own body. Abraham considered Sarah’s barren womb. He looked the contradictions in the face — the hundred-year-old frame as good as dead, the wife decades past childbearing, the circumstances in which the promise could only be kept by a miracle — and he believed anyway. Saving faith is not naive. Saving faith is not willful ignorance of the difficulties. Saving faith is a clear-eyed reckoning with how impossible the situation is, held together with an even clearer reckoning of who has made the promise. Abraham did not believe in his body. He did not believe in Sarah’s body. He did not believe in favorable circumstances or lucky odds. He believed in the character and power of the God who had spoken. The object of faith was God Himself, not the mechanism by which God would fulfill the word. And because the object was trustworthy, the faith held, even when everything else appeared to contradict it. That is the texture of the faith that gets credited as righteousness — not the strength of the believer’s grip, but the trustworthiness of the One being held onto.
And then the chapter’s final turn, which lifts Abraham’s faith off the ancient page and lands it in the reader’s life. These things were not written for Abraham alone. They were written for us. Paul explicitly says that the righteousness credited to Abraham by faith will be credited to us in the same way, and he specifies the content of our faith: we believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. The parallel Paul draws is breathtaking. Abraham believed in the God who brings life from a dead body and a barren womb. We believe in the God who brings life from a dead Savior and an empty tomb. The resurrection of Christ is, for the New Covenant believer, what the birth of Isaac was for Abraham — the proof that God’s promises are honored by the very power that called creation out of nothing. If God raised Jesus from the dead for our justification, the cross is not merely a past event that cancelled a debt; it is the basis on which God, in the present, credits righteousness to everyone who trusts the Son He sent and raised. Abraham’s faith and ours are not two different kinds of faith. They are the same faith, looking at the same God, resting on the same character, receiving the same gift. And the gift, in both cases, is life from the dead.