NOTES for Rom 4:13-25

If the promise of being heir of the world were "owed by law" to people, there would be no relationship in it, there would be no personhood of ours; neither the human being nor God would be participating in it. If our life were governed not by a loving God and the human being created by Him, free and choosing relationship with God, but by some terrifying universal code, then violation of the law would mean exile forever from the people of God, while observance would mean automatic inheritance, according to law, without personal relationships, without Encounter.

But the Lord grants us the promise, the inheritance of the world, not for keeping a set of rules and obeying the law, but for faith, that is, the choice of relationship, the recognition that He is God, beyond hope, as with Abraham. And God responds not by fulfilling a contract, signed and sealed, but with mercy and love.

In the Epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul tells us what we can and should learn from Abraham. The patriarch's faith not only brings him the long-awaited child, but also makes him righteous.

Again in the Old Testament we see flashes of the radiance of paradise, which seemed to have been lost forever by humanity, paradise where aging and death had no power over Adam and Eve. The law of the material world is overruled, overruled by God and by the human being who believes His word and His power. Abraham had been promised that many nations would come from him. And what happened? Abraham was already almost a hundred years old and still had not seen his offspring.

But for a son to be born, another child first had to grow: the child of faith. Abraham nurtured that child within himself for many years. And it is remarkable that this very child, if we believe, makes us his descendants and gives us the opportunity to take part in the promise: the promise of being heirs of the world, the Kingdom of God.

Thanks to the faith of a single person - Abraham - God was able to separate a whole nation for Himself. For, the faith of Abraham is a promise of faithfulness and more, the faith is directed towards the future. That is why the faith is bigger than works and at the same time "dead without works". Bigger do not mean better. The faith is bigger than works because it is directed towards eternity. It is dead without works because works witness about faith, fulfill it. But works without faith are impossible: Abraham believed at first, and then got up and went, and even more important, Abraham first believed and only after that Sara conceived their son. Miracles are impossible without faith. Jesus made no miracles where they didn’t believe in Him: “and made no miracles there”.

Faith is important not only for ourselves, our faith is also important for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and even for the whole world. Among the people, whom God sanctified thanks to the just faith of Abraham, was born the Messiah Jesus Christ.

Abraham's faith involved risk, for against hope he believed in hope when everything around him spoke against hope. Faith should not be regarded as frivolous credulity, ready to follow any promise, or as stupidity that accepts whatever it is told. No, faith denies neither sobriety nor the lessons of bitter experience, and therefore it requires risk and courage.

Abraham's faith is a guide for his descendants, and not only for his descendants according to the flesh, but it cannot replace the faith of the generations that follow him. We should not point to the faith of ancestors who once made a choice for us; following Abraham, each of us must personally take the risk of faith amid circumstances that most often work against steadfastness in faith. It is not even a matter of persecution, for direct persecution on account of faith does not happen every day. But there is a constant danger of turning away from God by becoming mired in the everyday “sobriety” and “practicality” of the customs of “this age.” Sometimes it is not the sea that drowns us, but a puddle...

Paul speaks of what follows directly from the hierarchy of levels of existence that he describes throughout the letter to the Romans. In first place for the apostle are the relations that connect us with God and with people; in second place is the Torah as an instrument for establishing and consciously building these relations; and in third place is religiosity, internal and external, which may, or may not, be a consequence and outward expression of such relations.

Moreover, if the first two levels are absolutely necessary for a person because without them he will have no normal spiritual life, the third can be considered optional: in principle one can do without it. But if so, then in a person's relations with God the impossible becomes possible. If the Torah were the highest thing that sets the limit of a person's spiritual possibilities, no one would have to count on salvation.

Indeed, once violated, or more precisely destroyed, for to violate the inner Torah means to destroy it, losing the spiritual core on which all relations with God rest, the Torah can no longer be restored again by any human effort. Here it is not even a mountain, but a kind of abyss: having rolled down a mountain, one can still hope to climb it again, but having fallen into an abyss with sheer walls, one cannot count on climbing back up, even if by some miracle one remains alive.

But living relations with God are greater than the Torah. Having them, one can hope that there is a chance to begin again even when everything has been destroyed. In fact, Abraham too, in Paul's thought, begins in just this way, from the beginning, having nothing except those relations with God from which all the rest later grew, the whole history of the people of God. Such a beginning gives hope to us as well, but in our case the issue is the beginning of life with Christ in the Kingdom of God. The scale of the events is incomparable, but the logic is the same: first relations with God, with Christ as King of God's Kingdom, and only then all the rest, all the possibilities open to the one ready for these relations.

Continuing the theme of the universalism of the Torah, Paul turns to the figure of Abraham. He points to the fact that Abraham became righteous not as a result of his religiosity, but because he was able to trust God (vv. 1-3). The apostle again points out that trust in God is the basis of righteousness, while works of righteousness are only the consequence of that trust (vv. 4-8). Even such an important religious rite as circumcision turns out for Paul to be only a sign of the relationships that bind the righteous person to God, and in no way their foundation (vv. 9-12). One could say that in these reflections Paul remains a follower of Hillel and of his teacher Gamaliel, for it was Hillel and his followers who always maintained that the basis of righteousness and of spiritual life in general is relationship with God, while all the rest of religious life connected with observing the Torah is only its consequence; without that relationship, it loses all meaning.

But Paul again goes further than both Hillel and Gamaliel. He says: if circumcision is only a sign of belonging to the people of God, given by God to Abraham as a consequence of his righteousness, then righteousness is also possible for the uncircumcised if they are able to trust God in the same way as the circumcised. In this sense Abraham becomes the spiritual father of all the righteous, both the circumcised (Jews) and the uncircumcised (Gentiles) (vv. 11-12).

The apostle by no means thinks there is no difference at all between these two categories of righteous people; he only reminds us that righteousness is one, and if a person, even an uncircumcised person, walks the path of righteousness, then sooner or later he will come to the same place to which the circumcised come by that path. The Torah is not a flying carpet given by God to His people in order to carry them into the Kingdom as if by the wave of a magic wand, sparing them from the path on which righteousness is acquired; it is a guide that helps them stay on the path. To regard the Torah as a privilege is a dangerous error, for if one takes it seriously, it will reveal not the advantages, but the sins, of the one who strives to follow it. Righteousness is greater than the Torah; the righteous person receives from God what was promised to him not because he deserved it, but only by God's mercy. The Torah in itself gives no one any rights (vv. 13-14). If someone decided to boast before God that he knows the Torah better than others, this would quite naturally provoke only God's wrath, for such knowledge would reveal first of all not the righteousness, but the sins, of the one boasting (vv. 14-15).

In this respect it is simpler for a Gentile: he does not claim knowledge of the Torah or the role of its keeper. Knowledge of the Torah in itself does not guarantee righteousness, and therefore on the way to the Kingdom there is no difference before God between Jew and Gentile. But more is required from those to whom the Torah has been given, because they know more about their sins than those who have not heard of the Torah.