Romans 4:12,13 - Through faith

4:12

But the Jews are not excluded either, nor are they rejected. If a Jew, who is circumcised, believes in Christ then he too is counted as righteous. Abraham is their father too. But the key aspect of Abraham, the aspect we must follow, is to have faith in God. The Jews focused on the wrong thing, they put the emphasis on circumcision. This is a fundamental human weakness and we see it again and again in Christianity as well. A church will seek God, receive faith, receive inspiration from the Holy Spirit and start doing a really effective work, start seeing many people come to Christ. They will develop a system to manage the situation. Then they will start putting the emphasis on the system instead of on the faith in Christ, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the things that really produced the fruitfulness.

4:13

Abraham existed long before the Law was given, yet he was the one to whom the promises were given. At his calling he was told all nations on earth would be blessed through him (Gen 12:2,3). He was given various related promises throughout his life. Notably in Gen 17:5 God tells him he has been made the father of many nations. All this happened before the Law came, but during the time when God told him his faith would be counted as righteousness. Now see how the Jews had got things so wrong and we need to beware of getting things equally wrong. See also that the Law was, and is, clearly significant. In terms of pure bulk it accounts for a significant part of the Bible, in terms of history it accounts for a massive part of Israel’s history. Yet it was not the goal, nor was it the way to the goal. Rather it pointed to and prepared the way to the goal.