Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

ROMANS
CHAPTER IV.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE REDEMPTIVE SCHEME OUT OF THE ABRAHAMIC
COVENANT.
1. “Then what we say that Abraham, our father according to the flesh, hath found?
2. “For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath boasting, but not before God.” The covenant
which God stipulated with Abraham is identical with the covenant of redemption which he made
with His Son in heaven, pursuant to which the mediatorial, involving the redemption of the world,
was launched (Galatians 3:16). This covenant two thousand years subsequently God renewed and
confirmed with Abraham, being ultimately verified in the incarnation of Christ and ratified by His
atoning blood. It was pertinent that God should elucidate the plan of salvation by the stipulation of
the mediatorial covenant with some human being, who should give it notoriety and thus normally
receive the paternity of faith on the earth. This glorious honor, in His wisdom, God conferred on
Abraham. The very fact that the Abrahamic is identical with the mediatorial covenant involves the
conclusion that human salvation is restricted to that covenant. Hence we see that all the people who
seek justification by works are without hope, because out of harmony with Abraham, who was
justified by faith alone without works. Hence the utter and hopeless futility of all the legalistic
systems, which, like fallen Judaism, have girdled the globe for ages.
“For what saith the Scripture? But Abraham believed God and it was imputed unto him
for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
4. “But to him that worketh the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to
indebtedness;
5. “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him who justifieth the ungodly, his faith is
counted for righteousness.” This argument is so plain, clear and explicit that he who runs may read
and not be mistaken. Here Paul so utterly annihilates all the dogmas of justification by water
baptism, sacraments, legal obedience, church rites, priestcraft, prelacy, popery or ecclesiastical
loyalty as to put the gainsayer in the awful attitude of flatly contradicting God Almighty. How
strange that people reading these plain and unequivocal statements of the Holy Ghost, by which they
are to be judged in the great day, can still swallow down Satan’s lies, proclaimed from fallen pulpits,
and go off after legalistic rites, vainly seeking justification where they will never find it. In order to
set this matter clear and unequivocal, God actually justified Abraham twenty-four years before he
became a member of the visible church, or received circumcision, lest somebody might be stupid
enough to identify justification with legal obedience. Now, remember, if you are not identified with
the Abrahamic covenant, you have no interest in Christ (Galatians 3:29). If you are a bona fide
member of that covenant you are justified by faith alone, without works, like Abraham, whom God
converted through faith alone twenty-four years before he received a solitary church ordinance. If
you do not belong to the faithful paternity of Abraham, you have no participation in the Fatherhood