traveling the right paths
Romans 4:13-5:2
This is the written form of a talk I gave on 6.21.22. I am sharing it because the righteousness that believers have through Jesus is often misunderstood, and for good reason. It can be thoroughly confusing! I hope that this post brings a little clarity to the topic. You can also listen to the audio recording under the resources tab of this website. Just click on the link labeled “Known Week 5 Romans 4:13-5:2 (Ch. 6).”
A few months ago, we ended a fun trip to Gatlinburg, TN with a visit to the aquarium because epic thunderstorms were on the move, and we did not desire to brave highways battered by torrential downpours. Five minutes in, my youngest son John ran into a close friend from school. Turns out, his friend’s grandparents were keeping him and his younger two siblings, and they were meeting the parents in Gatlinburg to return the grandchildren after a fun and exhausting week. An aquarium packed to capacity is not necessarily the place that tired grandparents want to bring their energetic charges, but with the crazy storm they had little choice. All that to say, we thoroughly enjoyed chatting and touring the exhibits with them.
At one point, though, the fun turned to fear when we realized that the middle son was nowhere to be found. If you’ve ever been to the zoo or an amusement park on a busy day, you know how easily this can happen, even with the most diligent caretakers. You also know the panic that sets in when you discover that the child is not anywhere in the surrounding vicinity. We split up and had several search parties scouring the aquarium. The ten year old boys and I finally made it to the gift shop (that you are forced to traverse before exiting the building—brilliant marketing), and we discovered a terrified boy, tears streaking his cheeks, talking quietly to a security guard. When he saw his big brother, the tears came down in torrents. Praise the Lord we found him! Poor kid—his curiosity got the best of him, and he was swept along in a crowd of people, suddenly unable to find his family.
So what does a lost child have to do with our righteousness in Christ? The second half of Psalm 23:3 reads, “He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” The literal meaning of this is “paths along which one does not lose one’s way.” This implies that the paths along which we lose our way are those that are not aligned with righteousness. Just as a child can easily get lost in a crowd, adults can also lose their way, whether it is due to curiosity or disobedience or apathy or any number of other reasons.
Throughout scripture, God likens us to sheep. We should be humbled by this comparison because sheep are stubborn, strong-willed and prone to wandering. Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way.” At the moment of salvation, when the Holy Spirit comes to reside in our hearts, He is at work around the clock to lead us in paths of righteousness. Now, just like sheep who stumble, we might choose to wander away from God’s path for us, but when we are trying to keep in step with the Spirit, He will lead us in paths of righteousness.
We could do an entire 10-week study on the righteousness we have in Jesus, and we would just be scratching the surface. I am attempting to address it now in this little post because understanding righteousness is key to understanding the paths along which the Lord leads us for His name’s sake, to bring Him glory. Righteous means “morally right or justifiable” (MW Dictionary). Let’s keep that in mind as we work through Romans 4:13-5:2. We will walk through this passage in three sections: 1. Rom. 4:13-16—the promise becomes reality through faith. 2. Rom. 4:17-25—faith is counted as righteousness. 3. Rom. 5:1-2—peace with God through the righteousness of Jesus.
I. The promise becomes reality through faith (Rom. 4:13-16). A flawed idea of salvation that was common for the Jews of Jesus’ day is also common today. This is the idea that our salvation depends on what we do—that somehow the better we are as human beings, the closer we are to God. It is contrary to all that scripture teaches us about drawing near to God. For the Jews, that meant they had to obey the Law to a T in order to gain the promises of God, but that is impossible, not because the Law is bad, but because humans are unable to keep it.
We are all born with a sin nature. Many mistakenly believe that we are born inherently good and we become bad, but this is simply not true. The Bible teaches that we are all born under the curse of sin. From the time a child is physically capable of being defiant, she will be. My daughter’s second word after “dada” was not something sweet and endearing like “mama.” It was “NO!” She has always possessed a strong sense of right and wrong, and she stands firm in what she believes. Her passion for justice is an amazing quality, and as a 15 year old young woman, I love watching God at work in her life. However, I can tell you, without a doubt, that her use of the word “no” was not always virtuous, even as a baby! Back to the 1st century Jews, they got to the point where they thought that the better they adhered to the Law, the more righteous and holy they were, so they held the standard of their faith to be how well they followed the rules rather than their heart orientation to God. This was particularly true of the Pharisees.
Have you ever met someone who appeared to be religiously pious, they went through all the motions of doing the right things—like going to church on Sundays and holidays—but their social or family life reflected an entirely different reality? Maybe they were mean-spirited or gossipy or out for selfish gain rather than living life to serve others? This is the type of person that thinks it is enough to follow the rules in order to be right with God.
The Bible teaches something entirely different though. Paul, the author of Romans, is showing us that mere rule following is not enough. The Law was never meant to save a person; it was meant to point out sin so that true heart change could happen. The Law was supposed to point people to their own need of God. Paul uses the example of Abraham to explain that God’s promise to him came through his faith. This all took place before the Law had ever been given centuries later to Moses. Therefore, the promise of God inherently cannot rest on the Law.
Let’s look at Genesis 15:1-6. That last verse, “he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness,” is what Paul’s entire argument centers around. Everything depends on faith. Those who are heirs to the promises of God are not the adherents of the Law, but those who have faith in God like Abraham did. Now if those who adhere to the Law also believe, then they too are saved, but you see here how it all centers on faith, not on rule-following, as so many people back then and so many today believe. Faith comes first, and then a changed heart desires to live a life centered on God’s principles. As believers, we do so imperfectly, but the point is that we feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
II. This brings us to section 2 of our text: faith is counted as righteousness. Let’s look at Rom. 4:17-25. I want to focus first on v. 17. Paul pauses for a moment to address the character of God. Look closely at this: 1. God “gives life to the dead.” He makes the impossible possible. 2. God “calls into existence the things that do not exist.” He makes the impossible possible. What is impossible in this chapter that God makes possible? It is the very state of our righteousness! It is impossible for us to be perfectly righteous. We are sinners trapped in these earthly bodies that will always battle the temptation to sin. But God is God, and He makes the impossible possible, so if He says something is so, it is. He says that because you believe in Jesus, because you have faith, you are perfectly righteous. You have been cleansed of your sin. As Paul writes in 1 Cor. 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He makes the impossible possible.
Look back to the text at what follows in v. 18-25. We are back into Abraham’s story. Abraham was OLD. Sarah was way past menopause. And yet he still had faith that God could make the impossible possible. Now if you know Abraham’s story, you know he and Sarah concocted a troublesome plan to try to speed up God’s plan. They decided to use Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant, to procure a descendant for Abraham. If you don’t know the story, you can at least see how this is not going to go well. Sister-wives are not a part of God’s plan. The resulting consequences of this debacle inflicted great sadness and brokenness into the lives of generations to come.
Clearly, Abraham and Sarah were not perfect, and they had times of doubt. However, we must remember that doubt does not equal faithlessness. Rather, we know from Abraham’s life, that even though he didn’t always act out of his faith, it was still there. That should encourage you. We all stumble at times. Don’t beat yourself up over it—look at the overall portrait of your life. God is there. Ultimately, Abraham was “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”
In these verses, Paul reminds us that Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness and that what is true for Abraham is true for us. Your faith is the bridge that unifies you to Christ so that when God looks at you, He sees your union with Jesus and counts you as righteous because He is gazing upon Jesus’ perfect righteousness in your place, all while you are still a sinner. He does not make you righteous but He declares that you are righteous. It’s an amazing paradox that God counts us righteous before we ever are righteous. Biblical righteoussness “is a gift that we receive from God when we believe, is a present reality in our lives, and is a future hope toward which we aspire” (Mounce). You stand righteous before God because of Jesus’ perfect righteousness. This is such good news!
III. The final section of the text, Rom. 5:1-2, teaches us that we have peace with God through the righteousness of Jesus. Twice in these verses we see the words “by faith.” Think of faith in Jesus like a vehicle that drives you away from your sinful self toward the righteous paths that God has in store for you. Your faith carries you to peace with God. It transports you to His grace. We don’t have to live and die with every failure; rather we live in grace. We get to live in the place where God smiles on us. He is patient, kind and forgiving. Because of faith in this great God, we can rejoice in His glory.
To paraphrase a wise preacher,* God does not love us because we are good, but hopefully we become good because we experience His love for us. All of this brings glory to God, and we can understand what David says at the end of v. 3 in Psalm 23, “He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” (Italics added for emphasis.) When we do good works out of the love of the Spirit that fills our hearts, we bring glory to the Father, and it is for His name’s sake. We don’t bring Him glory when we’re just trying to adhere to a set of rules.
One of my dearest friends to this day, a woman I would call a sister in everything except faith, once expressed to me how hard it was for her to get over the fact that all these people we grew up with would go to church and act like they were so perfect, but then they would backstab one another, gossip, and were just generally mean people. Her impression of Christianity, and ultimately her rejection of it, was based on the hypocritical nature of those who claimed to be something they were not. Many of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day acted this way, and many people in churches today do too. This is a sorrowful tale that is not uncommon, and it turns people away from truth and life.
True faith tells a different story—Jesus changes hearts and out of those changed hearts the fruit of the Spirit overflows. We can look at Galatians 5:22 to learn what that fruit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Are our lives marked by this fruit? Are we living for Him? As we seek Him earnestly, we will be less likely to stumble off the paths of righteousness that the Holy Spirit maps out for us. We will be less likely to be swept away by the crowd into confusion and chaos. My prayer for all of us is that we would continue to learn what it means to live for His name’s sake as we travel the right paths.
I attribute much of my understanding of righteousness to the works of Wayne Grudem, William Mounce, John Piper and Thomas Schreiner. Kevin Jamison’s sermon “Faith Alone,” preached on Nov. 15, 2017 at Sojourn Church East was also deeply impactful.
*Kevin Jamison was the aforementioned wise preacher.
