ROMANS 4: FREE CREDIT!
Today’s chapter was written by a 1st Century Hebrew academic. He was a Jewish zealot thoroughly trained in Jewish Law from a young age. HIStory 
picks up his adult life as a fundamentalist who had set out to squash what he thought was a Jewish ‘sect’ called The Way. After meeting the dead Yehoshua (Jesus,Isa) in a bizarre apparition while on the road to Damascus[a], Paul is now under house arrest in King Herod’s praetorium in Northern Palestine.[b] His Letter to the Romans was written to beleivers in the Creator God (both Jew and non-Jew) who were living in Rome. Now before you get bored out of your skin on a 21st Century autumn day, this background is hugely important for escaping our Maker’s debt collection.
If you’re up to your neck in debt, finding loopholes in the Law requires a lawyer. In this same way, if your debt that can’t be repaid is owed to your Creator God, then there was no-one alive at the time more suited than this zealous Hebrew called Paul for explaining the provisions provided for us in our Creator God’s Law. To connect this with us today, let’s start with understandable debt…
When tackling everyday debt today many people become thrifty and self-reliant. They want to hold onto what they already have. Other people start to worry about 
their future and make changes now in preparation for what’s ahead. They change their lifestyle and seek advice from people who know about debt e.g. CAP UK.[c] However, with a modern mindset that focuses on today, still others throw caution to the wind. Living life to the full, they only pay off the minimum balance required on their growing number of credit cards. The common result: their debt will eventually become a debt that can’t be repaid. With that said, most of us would not want to be so immersed in debt that there’s no way out. With no light at the end of the tunnel and no way of repayment, suicide rates sore as death is seen as the only solution. But what has any of this to do with today’s chapter and why have I gone so far as to also connect us back to a man who lived more than four millenniums ago?
Well…. such overwhelming oppression, that enslaves in ways that suffocate LIFE from our human experience, was at the top of our Creator God’s agenda from The Beginning. His rescue plan was a global initiative though quite simple. His Global Masterplan was and still is to “bless all families on earth”.[d] To get started and move His MasterPlan forward, our Maker simply had to find someone out there who would believe in His dream…
To understand what the Creator has on offer today, that can release us from our present and provide for our future, we must first understand the role of Faith. Without weakening in his faith, Abraham faced the fact that the divine promises of God were impossible on a physical level. [v19] Standing on the starting blocks before the Creator God’s global initiative could even get off the ground, both Abraham and his wife Sarah, were old and unable to have children. Still, he didn’t waver through unbelief regarding the promises of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God. [v20] In everyday terms, what does this mean to me?
Well… when our son Michael passed away, we also had to face the fact that nothing good seemed possible on a physical level. Like Abraham though, and without weakening in our faith in the promises of God, we trusted in the God 
who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that are not – things not seen, not currently possible, not currently in existence. [v17] By not wavering through unbelief regarding the promises of God, we then seemed to be ‘supernaturally strengthened’ in our faith and then able to give glory to God as we encountered His Breadcrumbs in the Storm.
By not “wavering through unbelief” Abraham’s faith 4,500+ years ago was reckoned to him, or credited to him (imputed to his account) as ‘righteousness’ (right-ness with God). Paul uses legal/accounting terms because the Creator God had drawn up a written contract called a “Covenant”. He drew up a contract first with one nation, Israel. He then drew up a second contract with the whole of humanity in which the first contract is fully sealed (completed/fulfilled) but under a different condition – a revised clause.[e] If the ‘account’ of his life was a debt owed to the One who invested life into him, then Abraham’s debt (concerning what he had done, not done, or done wrong) was completely written off. In other words, when the court is seated and the books opened[f], across the account of his life would be written: “free from the consequences, the results, and no longer account-able”.
In English we have a saying: a blotted copybook e.g. She blotted her copybook. If we have a copybook as HIStory has warned[f], then all our copybooks are blotted beyond repair. HOWEVER, this is where our black marks, smudges, mistakes, corrections, and ‘blots’ have been blotted out![g] This isn’t a new religious idea or modern loophole for twisting the Creator God’s script. Before the Creator God’s Law had been introduced during the days of Moses (in the Book of Exodus onward), Abraham 600 years earlier was considered “right-eous”, simply because of his faith in our Creator’s MasterPlan for humanity. If this isn’t amazing enough, this “imputing” of right-eousness” also happened before Abraham was circumcised – before he was ever branded as a follower of the Creator God. [v9-12]
Ok, now I can almost hear you thinking: Good grief! What on earth has a piece of skin cut from a man’s ‘unmentionables’ to do with righteousness! Well… Like a tattoo or branding God’s sheep[h], it’s a small private act that physically set apart from everyone else 
Abraham and his family, his workers, and everyone living under his umbrella. Regardless of weather we understand it or not, it is part of the Creator’s epic storyline all the way back to the first book in the Creator’s Handbook for LIFE. It’s still important for Jews, Muslims and half the Christians (monotheistic religions) today who follow the Creator God’s Law. HOWEVER, whether then or now, it can’t make a person any more “righteous” than the Law could somehow miraculously make us right. That’s where “faith” from our side and “grace” from our Father God’s side, gets woven into the fabric of HIStory.
Many people won’t be able to relate to our private storm after our Mikey left us, or the promises of God that we were holding onto through the storm. Many will struggle to relate to Abraham’s ‘farfetched’ super-natural promise of not only a son in his old age, but also that implausible idea of also being heir of the world [v13] and Father of Faith to many nations. [v17] Abraham’s original name was Abram but Father God Himself changed it to Abraham meaning “Father of Nations” and this while he was still childless!
So then, with all that said, we all have to personally work through ‘wavering in unbelief’ in our Maker and His Word today – 
especially when this comes as free credit offered by our God [v23-25] and the amazing grace that can be found in our Creator God’s Word. The choice for accepting free credit starts here. Will I be self-reliant and try to hold onto the ‘right-ness’ that I think I have – the ‘right’-ness described by the culture of this world. With a modern mindset focused on today, will I throw caution to the wind and live life to the full now, paying only the bear minimum to my Creator in “token payments” through self-‘right’-eous good deeds and minimum church visits at weddings and funerals. Or, will I concern myself with the future that is looming ahead, make lifestyle changes now, and seek qualified advice from people who know what they’re talking about – like the Hebrew Lawyer Paul has already done for us in today’s chapter.
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[a] Acts 9:1-9
[b] Acts 23:31-35
[c] https://capuk.org/i-want-help/cap-debt-help/introduction
[d] Genesis 12:3
[e] Jeremiah 31:31-34
[f] Daniel 7:10 and Revelation 20:12
[g] Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 1:18; Micah 7:19
[h] Matthew 25:32