(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
Righteousness from works vs faith
- Therefore, what will we say that Abraham has discovered? (Who is our father according to the flesh.)
- For if Abraham was made righteous by works, he has a reason to boast (but not to God).
- For what does scripture say: “And Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.”1quotation/allusion to Genesis 15:6
- Now, to the man who works, his wage isn’t credited as grace, but as what’s owed.
- But to the man who doesn’t work but believes on the One who makes the ungodly righteous, his faith is credited as righteousness,
- Just as David also speaks of how blessed is the man for whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
- “Blessed are the men whose lawless deeds were forgiven, and whose sins were covered;
- “blessed is the man to whom the Lord definitely won’t credit his sin.”2quotation/allusion to Psalm 32:1
- Then, is this blessing only on the circumcision, or also on the uncircumcision? (For we say faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.)3quotation/allusion to Genesis 15:6
- Then how was it credited? While being in circumcision or in uncircumcision? Not while in circumcision, but while in uncircumcision.
- And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness of the faith he had while in uncircumcision, for him to be the father of all the men who believe while in uncircumcision, for it to be credited to them as righteousness also.
- And the father of circumcision isn’t only father to the men of circumcision, but also to the men who walk in the footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham while in uncircumcision.
Through faith, not law
- For the promise – for him to be an heir to the world – wasn’t given to Abraham or his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
- For if the men of the law are heirs, faith has been made void and the promise has been nullified.
- For the law brings about wrath; but where there’s no law, there’s no deliberate sin either.
- Therefore, it’s from faith so that it’s by grace, for all the seed to be certain of the promise; not only to the seed of the law, but also to the seed of Abraham’s faith, who is the father of us all.
- Just as it is *written: “I have established you as a father of many nations.”4quotation/allusion to Genesis 17:5 He believed before God, the One who gives life to the dead and calls the things which don’t exist into being.
- With hope against hope, Abraham believed the promise for him to become the father of many nations, according to what has been spoken: “So will your seed be.”5quotation/allusion to Genesis 15:5
- And not having been weak in faith, he considered his own body as [already] *dying (being about one hundred years old) and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.
- But he didn’t doubt the promise of God in unbelief, but was strengthened in faith; having given glory to God
- and having been fully convinced that what God has promised, He is also able to do.
- And therefore: “It was credited to him as righteousness.”6quotation/allusion to Genesis 15:6
- Yet it wasn’t written that “it was credited to him” because of him alone,
- but also because of us (to whom it’s about to be credited); to the men who believe on the One who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
- who was handed over because of our missteps7“missteps”. The Greek word used here doesn’t quite mean “sin”. It’s the word “παράπτωμα” (paraptóma) and carries the connotation of a “slip-up” with the strong implication – but not certainty – that it was unintentional., and was raised for the sake of us being made righteous.
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