THE GOSPEL OF GOD
Meditations in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans
THE BLESSING OF FAITH

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IT is a fact that natural religion based on law always has the tendency to come into our thinking and living, and by this destroying the blessing of saving religion which is by faith. The apostle Paul is seeking to combat this tendency in these verses before us, and I am seeking to bring out the apostles meaning and teaching under the general title of "the Blessing of Faith".

It is important, before we discuss the blessings through faith, that we understand what Paul means when he speaks about faith. In verse 13 Paul speaks of receiving the promise through the righteousness that comes through faith. The faith of which Paul is speaking is the faith that secures righteousness for us.

The righteousness which comes by faith is the righteousness of God which Jesus worked for us in his living and dying. Jesus came into this world as the second Adam, that is the second head of the human race. When God created Adam and made him a living soul, Adam became the father of the human race. All human beings are from Adam and are his progeny. We are children of Adam. This is what it means to be human. As the federal head of the human race, Adam made a choice for us all when he disobeyed God. Adam chose Satan as lord rather than to stay under the Lordship of God. We inherit the result of this choice. By this choice we are born into this world spiritual dead. We are born under the law of God which we must keep perfectly if we are to be saved from eternal death and separation from God and happiness. We are born with a corrupt nature which is opposed to the law of God. We are bound to keep the law of God if we are to be accepted into the favour of God, but by this nature inherited from Adam we are totally unable to do so. We sin every day, and nothing we do is free from some taint of imperfection which falls short of the law of God.

We are lost as Adam’s children, so Christ came into the world to be the second Adam, and the new federal head of the human beings. Unlike the first Adam, Christ was perfectly obedient to the law of God in his life. He is the only sinless man who has ever lived. Being sinless he could perfectly represent human beings before God, and this he did by taking responsibility for our sins, and accepting the penalty of death in our place, and meeting all the demands of the law of God against our sin. So in his perfect life and in his perfect atonement for sin through his death, Jesus worked a perfect righteousness. He fulfilled the whole law of God for us, and he provides a perfect righteousness for all who will renounce all claims to personal righteousness, and as lost sinners place their trust in him as Saviour and Lord.

This is the righteousness that comes by faith, so the faith Paul is talking about is faith in Jesus as Saviour. It is faith in Jesus as the provider of righteousness that satisfies the law of God. It is a trust in Jesus alone for our acceptance before God.

Before we can come into the presence of God and be accepted by him we must be perfectly righteous - that is have fulfilled the law of God perfectly. We have no such righteousness ourselves, and we can only receive it as a gift through faith. Paul speaks in Ephesians 2:8,9 "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works so that no one can boast."

When we speak of the blessings of faith it is this faith we mean - faith in Jesus so that we have his perfect righteousness imputed to us. Just as we inherited the sin and death and fallen nature from the first Adam, so when we believe in Jesus we inherit from Jesus all he did for us when he worked this perfect righteousness.

Paul speaks of Abraham and his offspring receiving the promise that he and his children would be heirs of the world, and that this would be through the faith we have been talking about.

When Paul speaks of Abraham and his heirs here, he is not thinking of the Jewish nation who are children of Abraham by human and natural descent. Paul is speaking of the children of Abraham who have the same faith as Abraham - that is all those who have faith in the promise given to Abraham that in Christ we receive blessing. The children of Abraham are all those who believe in Jesus, whether they are naturally Jews or naturally Gentiles. All who believe in Christ, in order to receive the righteousness Christ won, are children of Abraham in this spiritual and eternal sense.

The positive blessing of faith is that we are heirs of the world. This expression "heirs of the world" is a strange one, but the meaning is plain. It certainly does not mean we are heirs of worldly things. Jesus said that owning the world was nothing, and that what was important was that our souls must be saved. Heirs of the world must mean, therefore, heirs of the true blessings of God which God meant human beings to have, and which was lost by the sin of Adam.

An heir is someone who inherits an estate. To be heirs of the world means to inherit the estate of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Heirs of the world means to have all the blessings of salvation which Christ won for us. Heirs of the world is the blessing of being accounted righteous before God and without any stain of sin. It is to be a child of God and heirs together with Christ. It is to know true happiness which is to be in fellowship with God, dwelling in God’s love, and fulfilling the purpose for which we were created, which is to glorify God in our lives, by living to please him and set forth his glory in the world. Heirs of God means to be an inheritor of eternal life, and to be an heir of heaven.

Here is the great positive blessing of faith. We receive this blessing not by the law of God but by the righteousness which comes by faith. By the law we have no righteousness at all, because we always fail to reach the standard the law requires. We enter the blessings of God through righteousness received as a gift. This gift of righteousness, the perfect righteousness of Jesus, is received by faith in Jesus.

The negative side to the blessing of faith is that faith delivers us from the law of God. Here again we need to understand this deliverance correctly. This deliverance is concerned with the law as the means of our acceptance with God. The law of God is always our rule of life, that is the means by which we know how to live in order to please God. For our acceptance before God, and to be in God’s favour, natural religion tells us we must be good by keeping the law of God ourselves. This natural religion of law is what we are delivered from by faith. This is the blessing of faith. Our ability to keep the law ourselves, and merit God’s acceptance ourselves, is totally non existent. Our best, the very best of the best people, falls abysmally below the righteousness that the law of God requires. To be under the law for salvation is terrible bondage. It is like being in the hands of a money lender, where the interest we have to pay on the loan is always much greater than the amount we can pay back, so the debt is always increasing, and never can be paid off.

Paul speaks here of the fact that the law always brings wrath. This is always true when we think in terms of meeting the laws requirements by our own effort at being holy. We always fall short, so we are always under the condemnation of the law, and so always under the wrath of God against sin. The law can never bring anything else upon us than God’s wrath, because we are totally unable to keep the standard of the law. Our futile imaginings that something less than 100% will do is all vain. The law must be kept 100%, or else we suffer wrath. Faith delivers us from this awful predicament by providing us with a perfect righteousness as a gift that meets all the laws demands.

Paul then says at the end of the verses we are considering "And where there is no law there is no transgression". This is the deliverance that faith brings to us. Because faith is trusting in Christ as our righteousness, we are taken out of the dominion of the law, and as far as our acceptance before God is concerned there is no law anymore for us. We can never have any sin now accusing us. There is no law for us so there is no transgressing the law. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for us. Paul tells us this in Romans 10:4 "Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes."

So through faith in Christ we are delivered from the dominion of the law as the means of our acceptance before God. Through Christ the law is fulfilled perfectly and completely forever, and so in God’s eyes we are sinless in Christ. When God looks on us he sees only the perfection of His Only Begotten Son. Our names are written in the book of life, where no sin is recorded against any name written in it.

Here are the blessings of faith. Perfect salvation and eternal glory in heaven. Heirs together with Christ and the privilege of being the children of God. However these blessings only come by faith. If we return to trusting in anyway in our own merits, then we lose all the blessings of faith. Paul speaks in these verse before us, "for if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless."

Law is opposed to faith. Where there is reliance on the law, faith is destroyed and salvation is lost.

We must never cease to be trusting in Christ alone. We serve him, not to gain favour, for this is to go back to the law and lose the promises and blessings, but we serve him out of love and gratitude in order to show our love for him and please him for his grace.