Romans 4:13-25 — Sermon Prep & Expository Preaching Guide

성경 본문

Romans 4:13-25

역사적·문화적 배경 · 절별 주석 · 설교사 수용사

Romans 4:13-25의 역사적·문화적 배경은 무엇인가요?

To read Romans 4:13-25 rightly, we must grasp what was at work in the minds of Paul's first-century Jewish hearers the moment he reached for Abraham. For Abraham was no mere ancient patriarch; he was the figure in whom the identity and pride of the Jewish people were concentrated.

Abraham in First-Century Judaism — the Model of Covenant and Law-Keeping

In Second Temple Jewish literature, Abraham is almost uniformly portrayed as "a righteous man who fully kept God's commandments." This helps us gauge how provocative Paul's argument was. The apocryphal book of Sirach (Ben Sira) praises Abraham, saying that "when he was tested he was found faithful," and explicitly grounds God's establishing of blessing and covenant even upon Isaac and Jacob "for the sake of Abraham his father."[bg1] That is, the covenant blessings enjoyed by later Israel were understood to rest upon Abraham's loyalty and merit. The apocryphal 2 Maccabees likewise opens its prayer by petitioning that God "remember the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,"[bg2] revealing that the covenant was a national asset bound up with the faithfulness of the patriarchs. Jubilees goes a step further, emphasizing the scene in which God commands Abraham, "You and your offspring shall keep my covenant," thereby reading the covenant within the framework of "an obligation to be kept."[bg3]

Against this background, Paul's statement provokes a head-on collision. For Paul declares that this same Abraham was justified "not through the law" (v. 13) but by faith alone. One modern study analyzes how, in moving from Galatians to Romans, Paul foregrounds Abraham as a "model to be imitated" (exemplarity), which dovetails with the exemplum discourse of the Roman rhetorical tradition and shows that Paul reshaped his interpretive strategy in order to communicate with his Roman audience.[bg4] In other words, Paul reread the Abraham whom contemporary Jewish tradition had set up as "the model of law-keeping" as instead "the model of faith," in order to argue for the universality of the gospel.

Law and Promise — Two Opposing Systems of Salvation

Beneath the passage lies the tension between two theological landscapes: "promise" (ἐπαγγελία, epangelia) and "law" (νόμος, nomos). In Jewish tradition the promise given to Abraham (Gen 12; 15; 17; 22) and the law given at Sinai were understood, without conflict, as two phases of one covenant. Paul, however, sharply opposes the two at the level of being a channel of salvation. The law only "produces wrath" (v. 15) and draws the boundary of transgression; it cannot serve as the foundation that guarantees the promise. This opposition is not one Paul invented arbitrarily, but rests on the redemptive-historical sequence: the lateness of the law (some 430 years after Abraham) and the priority of the promise. One modern study holds that when Paul's "law" and "works of the law" are reread within their contemporary Jewish context, it becomes clear that the law functions not as the basis of righteousness but to expose sin and human limitation.[bg5]

"Heir" (κληρονόμος) and the Expression "Heir of the World"

The expression "heir of the world" (κληρονόμον κόσμου) in v. 13 also requires background understanding. In the Greco-Roman world, inheritance was a central matter of legal right, and Roman social relations operated within a hierarchy of duties and rights. Ancient writers debated the "order of obligations"—who was to inherit and repay what—[bg6] so much so that inheritance and succession were institutions that defined status and identity. Now, the Genesis promise was originally an inheritance of "land" (Canaan), but Jewish tradition gradually expanded it into an eschatological dimension, reading it as the inheritance of "the whole world." Paul takes up this expanded understanding and widens the inheritance Abraham and his offspring would receive from the territory of one nation to the entire world. And by nailing down that the qualification for this inheritance rests not on lineage or law but on faith, he opens the scope of "Abraham's offspring" (σπέρμα, sperma) to Jew and Gentile alike (v. 16).

In this way, the background of the passage is the very point where the first-century Jewish commonplace "Abraham = the righteous man of the law" collides with Paul's evangelical reinterpretation "Abraham = the father of faith." When the preacher understands the terrain of this collision, he can convey to the congregation that vv. 13-25 are not a simple doctrinal statement but a gospel proclamation that overturns a people's self-understanding at the root.

참고 자료

  1. Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 44 (Ben Sira), the encomium of Abraham.
  2. 2 Maccabees 1:2.
  3. Jubilees 15:11.
  4. Niehoff, M. R., "A Roman Portrait of Abraham in Paul's and Philo's Later Exegesis," *Novum Testamentum* 63 (2021): 452-476. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685365-12341713 *(based on the publicly available abstract)*
  5. Matjaž, M., "Paul's Understanding of the Law and Works of the Law in Galatians: The New Perspective on Paul and a New Look at Paul's Relationship to Judaism," *Edinost in Dialog* 75 (2020): 51-71. DOI: https://doi.org/10.34291/Edinost/75/02/Matjaz
  6. Aulus Gellius, *Noctes Atticae* 5.13 (on the order and hierarchy of obligations).

Romans 4:13-25 각 절은 어떤 의미를 담고 있나요?

> This section is a detailed exposition that synthesizes the methodology of public-domain commentaries, the patristic and homiletical traditions, and modern scholarly articles to illuminate the meaning of each verse from multiple angles. In keeping with the request to strengthen the Reformed perspective, the "Commentary" for each verse explicitly foregrounds the angles of covenant theology, the sovereignty of God, justification by faith, and imputation.

4:13 — The foundation of the promise is not the law but the righteousness of faith

Text: Οὐ γὰρ διὰ νόμου ἡ ἐπαγγελία τῷ Ἀβραὰμ ἢ τῷ σπέρματι αὐτοῦ, τὸ κληρονόμον αὐτὸν εἶναι κόσμου, ἀλλὰ διὰ δικαιοσύνης πίστεως. Literal: The promise to Abraham or to his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

Original Language and Grammar: - ἐπαγγελία (epangelia): noun · nom. sg. fem. — "promise." In the New Testament it almost always refers to "a promise God has given," and here denotes the Abrahamic promise of Genesis. - κληρονόμον ... κόσμου (klēronomon kosmou): "heir of the world" — the eschatologically expanded form of the Genesis promise of "land." - διὰ δικαιοσύνης πίστεως (dia dikaiosynēs pisteōs): "through the righteousness of faith." The genitive πίστεως qualifies "righteousness" (δικαιοσύνη), defining faith as the source of righteousness.

Commentary: By placing the negative Οὐ at the very front of the sentence, Paul issues a strong denial and lifts the argument of chapter 4 to a new stage. The crux is the foundation on which the promise of "heir of the world" stands. What he decisively excludes is "through the law" (διὰ νόμου), and what he sets in its place is "through the righteousness of faith." What deserves attention here is the very word "promise" (ἐπαγγελία). A promise is by its nature unilateral. It depends only on the faithfulness of the giver, not on the qualification of the receiver. From the standpoint of covenant theology, the Abrahamic covenant was given from the start as God's sovereign promise (in Genesis 15, God alone passed between the divided animals), and the law was added several centuries later. To subordinate the promise to the law, then, is to reverse the order of redemptive history. Justification is not a "righteousness" produced by human merit, but the "righteousness of faith" that God acknowledges when he sees one's faith—and all of this is compressed into v. 13.

Homiletical Implication: The guarantee of the inheritance we will receive lies not in our law-keeping but in the faithfulness of the God who promised. → [Connects with Sermon Point 1: the promise is the language of grace]

4:14-15 — If the law were the basis of inheritance, the promise would collapse

Text: εἰ γὰρ οἱ ἐκ νόμου κληρονόμοι, κεκένωται ἡ πίστις καὶ κατήργηται ἡ ἐπαγγελία· ὁ γὰρ νόμος ὀργὴν κατεργάζεται, οὗ δὲ οὐκ ἔστιν νόμος, οὐδὲ παράβασις. Literal: For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified. For the law produces wrath. Where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

Original Language and Grammar: - κεκένωται (kekenōtai): verb · pf. pass. — "has been emptied, made void." The perfect tense emphasizes that this nullification is permanent. - κατήργηται (katērgētai): verb · pf. pass. — "has been nullified." Paired with the verb above, it shows that faith and promise are voided together. - ὀργὴν κατεργάζεται (orgēn katergazetai): "produces, brings about wrath." It states that the result of the law is not righteousness but wrath. - παράβασις (parabasis): "transgression, violation" — a deliberate crossing of the boundary of an explicit law.

참고 자료

  1. Worthington, J. D., "Creatio ex Nihilo and Romans 4.17 in Context," *New Testament Studies* 62 (2015): 49-59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0028688515000387 *(based on the publicly available abstract)*
  2. Rieger, J., "Hoping against Hope: Dealing with Hopelessness in Ancient Times and Today," *Religions* 11 (2020): 331. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11070331

교회 역사에서 Romans 4:13-25은 어떻게 해석·설교되어 왔나요?

이 본문이 교회 역사 속에서 어떻게 해석·설교되어 왔는지를 학술 자료를 바탕으로 소개합니다.

5.1 The Patristic Interpretive Tradition

> This section presents how the early church fathers (1st-5th centuries) read and interpreted this passage, drawing on the ANF (Ante-Nicene Fathers) and NPNF (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers) literature.

The Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists / 1st-2nd centuries — the circulation of Abraham's faith

The literature of the Apostolic Fathers (1 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and others) does not offer a full-scale exegesis of Romans 4. Yet as is evident when 1 Clement, in exhorting the church at Corinth, draws on Abraham as the model of one "justified by faith and obedience," the church of the first and second centuries was already deeply conscious of Abraham as a model of faith.[pat1] The mark of this period lies less in precise exegesis of the passage than in deploying Abraham's faith as a practical asset for exhorting the congregation to obedience and endurance. By the age of the apologists, Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho, argued from the fact that Abraham was justified by faith before circumcision that Gentile believers too are the true offspring of Abraham.[pat2] In other words, the core logic of Romans 4—that faith precedes lineage and law—was already actively at work in the Jewish-Christian apologetics of the early church.

Origen / c. AD 230 — the priority of faith and spiritual offspring

Origen of the Alexandrian school was an early commentator who probed deeply the passage's "justification by faith." Attending to the temporal sequence—that Abraham was already justified by faith before the law was given and before he was circumcised—he stressed that the basis of righteousness is not works but faith. Origen also read the "father of many nations" of v. 17 spiritually, foregrounding that Abraham's offspring is a universal family defined by faith rather than by lineage.[pat3] Despite his allegorical tendencies, it is notable that in his interpretation of Romans 4 he followed the passage's argumentative structure—the priority of faith and the universality of the offspring—fairly faithfully. This concept of spiritual offspring became an important foundation by which the later church located the identity of Gentile believers within the Abrahamic covenant.

Augustine of Hippo / 4th-5th centuries — the theology of grace and faith

The most decisive father in the history of this passage's interpretation is Augustine. In the thick of the Pelagian controversy, he made Romans 4 a key text of his doctrine of grace. When Pelagius asserted the possibility of human free will and merit, Augustine appealed to "justification by faith" (4:5, 22) to argue that righteousness is not human good works but entirely a gift of God's grace.[pat4] He probed especially deeply the "according to grace" (κατὰ χάριν) of v. 16, holding that the reason the promise is given by faith is precisely to make it pure grace. Going further, by understanding even faith itself to be a gift God gives, he established a thoroughgoing doctrine of grace in which no part of the human being can constitute a merit toward salvation. Augustine's interpretation of this passage became the theological wellspring flowing directly into the doctrine of justification by faith a thousand years later at the Reformation.

John Chrysostom / 4th-5th centuries — the glory of faith and pastoral exhortation

참고 자료

  1. 1 Clement, *First Epistle to the Corinthians* (ANF Vol. 1, Schaff ed.).
  2. Justin Martyr, *Dialogue with Trypho* (ANF Vol. 1).
  3. Origen, *Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans* (Origen commentary tradition, ANF/FOTC series).
  4. Augustine, *Anti-Pelagian Writings* (NPNF Series 1, Vol. 5).
  5. Chrysostom, *Homilies on Romans*, Homily VIII (commentary on Rom 4), in NPNF Series 1, Vol. 11.
  6. Chrysostom, *Homilies on Romans*, Homily VIII (commentary on Rom 4), in NPNF Series 1, Vol. 11.
  7. Calvin, J., *Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans* (commentary on Rom 4:13-22), CTS ed.
  8. Henry, M., *Commentary on the Whole Bible*, Vol. 6 (commentary on Rom 4).
  9. Edwards, J., "Justification by Faith Alone," Discourse I (Rom 4:5), in *The Works of Jonathan Edwards*, Vol. 1.
  10. Spurgeon, C. H., "How Is Salvation Received?" Sermon No. 1347 (Rom 4:16), *Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit*, Vol. 23 (1877).
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