Bible Study - June 5
June 5, 2005
Romans 4:13-25 - (Eugene Peterson translation)
"It depends on Faith"
13That famous promise God gave Abraham--that he and his children would possess the earth--was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God's decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. 14If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal. 15A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise--and God's promise at that--you can't break it.
16This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father--that's reading the story backwards. He is our faith father.
17We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. 18When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!"
19Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. 20He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, 21sure that God would make good on what he had said. 22That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." 23But it's not just Abraham; 24it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. 25The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
Notes: For another week we return to Paul's letter to the Romans. If, as Paul says "we are justified by faith?" What does this mean for our actions and for "doing God's will." Are we simply to live according to "faith" or are we supposed to act upon the faith that we have, trusting in God that we are doing the "right thing?"
In other words, what good are "good works?" Are they a means for justifying ourselves before God - or are they actions which grow out of the work of God's spirit within us?
Also, what was the whole controversy over works really all about? Why was Paul trying to include the Jews in God's plan for salvation while, at the same time, trying to "preach the Gospel to the Gentiles?"
How has Paul's understanding of "justification by faith" been use against the Jews and often misinterpreted to support anti-semitism?
Was Paul's understanding quite different from what we have commonly thought ever since the Reformation and Martin Luther's struggle with the Catholic church?
How easy is it to give with the right hand without letting the right hand know what we are doing? How easy is it to not want to take credit for our actions?
Are any of our actions pure ... and without corruption?
Do we deceive ourselves as individuals, as communities, and as a nation by ascribing "ideal" motives to our actions when we are acting out of self interest? What, then, is sin all about?
Who, in the end is to judge our actions?
Romans 4:13-25 - (Eugene Peterson translation)
"It depends on Faith"
13That famous promise God gave Abraham--that he and his children would possess the earth--was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God's decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. 14If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal. 15A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise--and God's promise at that--you can't break it.
16This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father--that's reading the story backwards. He is our faith father.
17We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. 18When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!"
19Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. 20He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, 21sure that God would make good on what he had said. 22That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." 23But it's not just Abraham; 24it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. 25The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
Notes: For another week we return to Paul's letter to the Romans. If, as Paul says "we are justified by faith?" What does this mean for our actions and for "doing God's will." Are we simply to live according to "faith" or are we supposed to act upon the faith that we have, trusting in God that we are doing the "right thing?"
In other words, what good are "good works?" Are they a means for justifying ourselves before God - or are they actions which grow out of the work of God's spirit within us?
Also, what was the whole controversy over works really all about? Why was Paul trying to include the Jews in God's plan for salvation while, at the same time, trying to "preach the Gospel to the Gentiles?"
How has Paul's understanding of "justification by faith" been use against the Jews and often misinterpreted to support anti-semitism?
Was Paul's understanding quite different from what we have commonly thought ever since the Reformation and Martin Luther's struggle with the Catholic church?
How easy is it to give with the right hand without letting the right hand know what we are doing? How easy is it to not want to take credit for our actions?
Are any of our actions pure ... and without corruption?
Do we deceive ourselves as individuals, as communities, and as a nation by ascribing "ideal" motives to our actions when we are acting out of self interest? What, then, is sin all about?
Who, in the end is to judge our actions?
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