Sermons 2026

Text: Romans 4:1-8,13-17 

Theme: Justified, how? 

Outline 

1. Abraham justified by works? No, believed God credited it to Him as Righteousness 

2. Promise through Faith, Blessing to all nations 

3. Same with us, believe God’s promises in JC, Forgiven and live waiting for Life Everlasting 

Sermon 

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Epistle of Saint Paul’s letter to the church in Rome the fourth chapter verses one through eight, and thirteen through seventeen. 

Beloved lambs, I pray that you are doing well. Have you ever seen a sign like this before? It says one way. This means that as mom and dad are driving on the road, they can only drive the way that the sign is pointing. If they drive the opposite way they are breaking the Law and might cause an accident. In Romans, Saint Paul writes something similar. He states that we are justified, we are declared innocent of our sins, only one way. What is that one way? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you. 

1. Abraham justified. 

Saint Paul begins chapter four of his epistle with these words, “What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? ” What was gained? For that we have to go back to chapter three verse twenty-one, where he writes, “21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it .” How do we gain the righteousness of God and thereby justification, being declared innocent of our sins? These are the central questions that Saint Paul is posing to us still today.

 The Jews held that they obtained the righteousness of God, and were justified, in His sight, because they were the physical descendants of Abraham, and held to the Law of circumcision that the Lord gave to him. Many Jews looked to Abraham as the classic example of a man who pleased God with works. After all, he left his homeland and followed God’s leadership to the Promised Land, as we heard in our Old Testament lesson for today. Abraham obeyed God and would have sacrificed his son Isaac if God had not stopped him. This “friend of God,” as he came to be called (2 Chronicles 20:7), looked to them like a prime candidate for salvation on the basis of works and personal performance. 

Saint Paul refutes all of the Jewish thinking by asking a simple question, when did Abraham receive his own justification? Was it before he was circumcised or after? If it was after then Abraham could point to his own work and boast in what he had done. His righteousness was a wage that was due to Abraham because he worked for it. Yet, if it was before then it was given freely as a gift by God.

 Which is the answer? Look at the context of Genesis. Our Old Testament reading plainly shows that Abraham, when he was 75 years old, listened to the Lord. He left the city of Haran, and departed for lands unknown, simply trusting that the Lord who had talked with him would show him in due time. Later, Abraham receives the promise of Issac and the seal/sign of circumcision when he is 99 years old! 2. Promise held by Faith The answer is before he was circumcised. God called Abraham while he was still a Gentile, that he might indeed be the forefather and a blessing to all nations. God gave Abraham faith to believe and trust solely in God’s promises. Abraham trusted solely in God’s promise with every step he took. 

Even in spite of his faults, his lying about being married to Sarai to Pharoh, his desire to take things into his own actions to produce a son through Hagar rather than Sarah, Abraham is still upheld as one righteous before God because he trusted in His promises given to Abraham. That is what faith is, as we state in the Defense of the Augsburg Confession, “50 Now, that faith signifies, not only a knowledge of the history, but such faith as assents to the promise, Paul plainly testifies when he says, Rom. 4:16: Therefore it is of faith, to the end the promise might be sure. For he judges that the promise cannot be received unless by faith. Wherefore he puts them together as things that belong to one another, and connects promise and faith. [There Paul fastens and binds together these two, thus: Wherever there is a promise faith is required, and conversely, wherever faith is required, there must be a promise.] 51”. 

2. Our Faith 

Just as Abraham was justified solely by his faith rather than His works, so are we. We can uphold Abraham as our father, not in the flesh, but in the spirit. Unless we share Abraham’s trust therefore we are not his descendants; and unless we are his descendants, we cannot share the blessing promised to those descendants. But one becomes a descendant of Abraham, in Paul’s view, only by sharing his trust, not his genes As we sing in that lovely children’s song, “Many sons had Father Abraham, I am one of them and so are you.” 

Humanly speaking, the chance of Abraham having many descendants seemed impossible, but the more impossible it became from a human point of view, the more Abraham relied on God’s promise and his power to do what he had promised. Abraham reasoned that, if necessary, God could even bring life from the dead—which is, of course, what God in his good time did. Isaac was truly a miracle baby, born from “dead” parents. Abraham’s faith, with its disregard for human weakness and its unflinching confidence in God’s power, “gave glory to God” and as such “was credited to him as righteousness.” 

We hold to Abraham as our Father in the faith, who, though a sinner, God still redeemed and kept the promises He had made to Abraham. God kept His promises to give Abraham and Sarah a son. Though that son, Issac, God richly blesses all nations by sending His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh for us. Jesus takes upon Himself Abraham’s sin, my sin, your sins, the sins of all the world. Jesus dies our death upon the cross. He covers our sins with His holy and precious blood. Jesus crushes the head of the Devil beneath His nail-scared feet. By dying, Jesus destroys the power of death, rising again from the dead, Jesus gives to you and me, life everlasting. All of this Jesus did for us. We cannot point to any of our works. We are sinners, the best of our works, as we saw last week in Psalm 32, are nothing. This wondrous salvation is not given to us as a reward for our hard work. It is given solely by God’s mercy and grace, God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense, as a gift to us. 

The human exercise of faith is simply the prerequisite response of trust in God and His promise. Since faith and grace go together, and since the promise is by grace, the promise can be received only by faith, not by the Law.

 Our Faith, like Abraham our father, latches onto Jesus, as the source and object of our faith. Faith holds fast to His promises and trusts that what He has done, He has done for you and me, for our salvation. We live out our lives, secure in the promises of God, because of the faith He has given to us in the waters of Holy Baptism, and strengthened in His blessed Eucharist, that He has indeed forgiven all of our sins by Jesus death and resurrection from the dead. 

We cling in faith, no matter what happens upon this earth. In the face of many obstacles of the world, in the face of the assaults of the Devil, the temptation of our flesh, our faith clings to God and His promises given in His Word that He has made us righteous. He who opened barren Sarah’s womb, restored Abraham’s dead seed to life, blessed them with Isaac, so that He might bless all the nations of the world with everlasting life, through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, has indeed continued to richly bless us and sustains us unto life everlasting. 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.