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Examined Doctrine
PASSAGE · BSB

Romans 4

20 positions in the corpus lean on this chapter. Cited verses are marked.

1What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, has discovered?

2If Abraham was indeed justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God.

3For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

4Now the wages of the worker are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation.

5However, to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.

6And David speaks likewise of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

7“Blessed are they whose lawless acts are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

8Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.”

9Is this blessing only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness.

10In what context was it credited? Was it after his circumcision, or before? It was not after, but before.

11And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but are not circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them.

12And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

13For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world was not given through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.

14For if those who live by the law are heirs, faith is useless and the promise is worthless,

15because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression.

16Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may rest on grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.

17As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the presence of God, in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not yet exist.

18Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”

19Without weakening in his faith, he acknowledged the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) and the lifelessness of Sarah’s womb.

20Yet he did not waver through disbelief in the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God,

21being fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised.

22This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”

23Now the words “it was credited to him” were written not only for Abraham,

24but also for us, to whom righteousness will be credited—for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.

25He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and was raised to life for our justification.

Who leans on it

Jacobus Arminius on justificationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Justification by faith, with righteousness imputed — substantially agreeing with the Reformers on this locus, which is often forgotten in the caricature.Augustine on justificationPRIMARY SOURCELEANS°Justification makes the sinner actually righteous, not only declares them so — but Augustine's fuller argument is subtler than that headline. The good works that earn eternal life as a 'reward' are themselves gifts of gr…Calvin on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°A verdict, not a transformation. 'To justify, therefore, is nothing else than to acquit from the charge of guilt, as if innocence were proved' (Institutes III.xi.3), and God does this not on proof of our innocence but by…Jonathan Edwards on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Justification is a judge's verdict, not a change wrought in the person: God "is pleased, in his dealings with the sinner, so to regard one that has no righteousness, that the consequence shall be the same as if he had." …M. Heiser on the nature of saving faithPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Frames saving faith as believing loyalty — trust in the true God that shows itself as allegiance rather than as moral performance. Works are the validation of genuine faith and never its meritorious cause, and the object…Tim Keller on justificationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Forensic imputation, and characteristically pressed as the answer to both moralism and irreligion — the elder-brother and younger-brother problem in Luke 15.Second London Baptist Confession on justificationPRIMARY SOURCELEANS°Chapter 11.1 denies infusion and affirms imputation in Westminster's own words, then goes further than Westminster does by naming what is imputed. Faith is the alone instrument but never alone in the person justified (11…Luther on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Justification is by faith alone, on the ground of Christ's death and resurrection, and nothing may be conceded on it. Luther states it as the article on which everything else depends and from which nothing can be surrend…Luther on extent of the atonementDISPUTED READINGCONTESTED°Luther consistently speaks of Christ dying for the world and never restricts the object. The Smalcald Articles' chief article names him "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world," and the 1522 Ascension Da…John MacArthur on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Forensic imputation, stated with a direct, explicit denial of the infused-righteousness alternative: not a virtue infused into the believer, but a legal declaration built on the double imputation of the believer's sin to…Philip Melanchthon on the nature of saving faithPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°The Apology argues the case that later Lutheran dogmatics compressed into notitia, assensus and fiducia. Faith is not bare knowledge of the history, which the devils have; it is assent to the promise; and lest assent its…Philip Melanchthon on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Forensic, and Melanchthon wrote the sentence the Lutheran churches subscribe. Augsburg IV denies that works, powers or merits justify, grounds justification in Christ's satisfaction, and closes with the imputation clause…Gavin Ortlund on justificationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Forensic imputation.John Owen on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Forensic, and defined with unusual care against both Rome and the Socinians. Owen distinguishes imputation of what is already ours — an act of justice — from imputation of what is not ours until imputed, which is of mere…John Owen on the nature of saving faithPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Faith is defined as resting on the promise, not as assent to it. Owen's catechism calls justifying faith "a gracious resting upon the free promises of God in Jesus Christ for mercy, with a firm persuasion of heart that G…John Piper on justificationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Forensic imputation, defended at length against revisionist accounts.Charles Haddon Spurgeon on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Imputed righteousness on a penal-substitutionary ground, not a transformative or infused category. Frames the problem as "how can a just God justify guilty men" and answers that Christ bears the sentence due to the sinne…Wesley on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Pardon, not transformation — a declared change of legal status, sharply distinguished from sanctification even though the two begin in the same moment. States the distinction as a category error to blur: justification do…Westminster Confession on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°WCF 11.1 is unusually explicit for a confession: it denies infusion by name, denies that the act of believing is itself what is imputed, and names imputed obedience and satisfaction as the ground. Faith is the instrument…Westminster Confession on baptismPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°WCF 28.4 includes the infants of one or both believing parents alongside professing adults, and the Assembly's proofs run through the covenant sign rather than through any account of infant faith - Genesis 17 with Coloss…