Bleard

Romans 4

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Tonight the Gamma Phi Beta house bible study is starting back up. I was reviewing the lesson tonight, which is over Romans 4.

In Romans 4, Paul is tracing the evidence for justification by faith to the Old Testament in Abraham. Paul quotes Genesis 15:6 to show that Abraham was not justified by works: "And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness." According to Tim Keller (who writes this study we are going through), the Jews of the time thought that faith = obedience of the law, but Paul shows in the first four verses that really that means faith = righteousness, which can't be true because faith is not a "work" that merits anything. If faith = obedience = righteousness, then the actual object of our faith would be ourselves and our own abilities. But if, as Keller says, faith = trust God's promise to save, then the actual object of our faith is God and his ability.

This is an important distinction to make, since most churchgoers and religious people today think faith is something that it is not. Keller says that if you ask a random sample of churchgoers today "What are the general requirements for admission into heaven?" their answers often fall into three categories:

"Because I have tried my best to be a good Christian" (read: "salvation by works")
"Because I believe in God and try to do his will" (read: "salvation by faith plus works")
"Because I believe in him with all my heart" (read: "salvation by faith AS a work")

In all these cases, the religious people are still working to be saved and are not trusting in God to do the saving. God credits us righteousness while we are still wicked and unable to save ourselves. That is what we believe and have faith in. God doesn't only exist, He saves by transferring Christ's righteous standing, a righteousness of character, to us.

The last question of our study tonight is GREAT:

How does the case of Abraham (vv. 18-25) illustrate the difference between only believing in God, and believing God (v. 3)? How can his example help you strengthen your faith (v. 19)?

We must realize that there is a difference between believing IN God and believing God. We don't just simply believe that God exists and that he is good and holy. We also look at what God has said and let that define reality for us. This means we don't live our lives according to our feelings or appearances. In verse 19, "He [Abraham] did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb." Abraham looked at the appearance of his body and it looked hopeless that he would ever bear a child. Now, faith is not opposed to reason, but to self-trust. Faith is God-trust. It is going on something despite our weakness, feelings, or perceptions. (And it is not easy, but scary.)

And lastly, that is why Theology matters. If we are supposed to self-trust less and less, and God-trust more and more, we must find ways to know God and act on God's promises and word. This is hard to do, because it might mean giving away money generously, even if it appears economically risky, says Keller. (Malachi 3:9-10). It is also hard to do, because when we study God and His word, it is easy to impose our own perception and feelings onto what we take in. If I studied my Bible every day for two hours, yet I only ever studied it alone and without any other resources or interpretive helps, I could make any crazy assertion I wanted to about who God is and what He has said. I could misinterpret the Bible to say most anything. It's so important to study God's word corporately and to hear it preached by others who have studied and trained in theology.

It applies even to this passage. The NASB Bible quotes the Genesis 15:6 passage as "Then he believed in the LORD," which does not fit at all with how Paul's exegesis of the text.

Whew!

Pray for us as we study this passage tonight!

Seven

Monday, January 29, 2007

1. School started again.

2. Julie Serven and I have started running together on Wednesdays. Of course both of us can't run very far right now, but I am excited to try running with another person regularly. Plus Julie is awesome.

3. We had an awesome girly sleepover last Friday night. We played fun games like Annie's obscure fact game and charades. We ate pizza and brownies and ice cream. The night was finished off with more girl talk and a screening of the classic chick flick Steel Magnolias.

4. I finished The Brothers K by David James Duncan. It was superb. (And I am not just saying that because it is Doug's favorite book and he gave it to me for my birthday) Duncan's wriiting is really good. The plot centers around a family of eight, especially the four older brothers and how they relate to each other and their parents. The youngest, Kincaid, usually is the perspective Duncan writes from. In my creative writing classes last year, I definitely found that writing in the first person was more difficult than the 3rd person (at least for me) so I noticed how well Duncan wrote, especially if he was completely absorbing me in events revolving around one of the older brothers though it was told by Kincaid. Duncan also uses some really creative ways of supplementing the story, such as a school assignment where one of the older brothers writes the biography of their father. This was not only a clever and hilarious story-within-the-story which added a lot of plot detail, but fleshed out the another of the characters by being in his perspective for a short time. Anyway, it's good. Here is an excerpt I loved:

"I could call it 'detachment,' or 'purity of effort,' or 'a refusal to judge by results.' But as I watched from the hedge I felt no need to squeeze it into a formula. I was learning not by words like these, but by the nonsensical songs and babblings and sound effects that accompanied Papa's destinationless pitches out into the night, that there are genuine alternatives to the black-and-white categories into which most of us dump our lives. I was learning not by thinking, but through a father/son osmosis, that winning and losing, success and failure, are like the chalk strike zones I'd watched Papa draw. There was no question that shedball wasn't aimed at the Bigs, or even at the bush. It was just an oddball backyard hobby built upon the shards of Papa's old baseball dreams and accomplishments. But while many ex-ballplayers hoard their shards, sucking on them and staining their lives with them the way Papa had done with his Lucky Strikes, Papa himself had finally crunched his shards underfoot, found a new and pure kind of effort to make, and commenced punching walls, swearing, joking, whistling and living his life as if the past had passed. And in the present he was surviving. Perhaps even thriving. He didn't know. It wasn't his business to know. His business was to simply keep making the effort."

4.

5. It is COLD in Oklahoma.

6. New episodes of LOST start this Wednesday. Yay for DVD Recorders.

7. I applied for membership at Christ the King today!