Pentecost 2 – 2026
Romans 4:13-25
Marian Free
In the name of God who creates one family of many diverse people. Amen.
A major problem for the earliest Christians was whether and how those from a non-Jewish background could be included in the people of God. If Gentiles were to be included two major questions had to be answered: did Gentiles first have to be circumcised and, as believers in a Jewish Jesus, did they have to observe the Jewish Law? Paul deals with these questions in his letters to the Galatians and to the Romans. Paul is utterly convinced that the sole criterion for membership in the people of God is faith and in both these letters he refers back to Abraham, the father of Judaism, to make his point.
Paul’s letter to the Romans is his most considered and therefore the best structured of all his letters. It is generally thought to be his last letter and, because he is writing to a community which he didn’t found, his letter-writing is less rushed than his previous off-the cuff responses to issues in his communities that were causing him some concern. The letter itself informs us that Paul’s purpose in writing to Rome was his plan to visit the community there and his hope that they would send him on his way from there to Spain. A reading of the text suggests that in writing to the Romans Paul is also keen to make it clear that Jew and Greek are on an equal footing: “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (3:23), and that both Jews and (uncircumcised, non-observant) Gentiles belong to the people of God and that all are children of Abraham by virtue of their faith and not through anything that they have done (or not done).
In making this argument, Paul is keen to make it clear to his readers that the inclusion of Gentiles is evidence of the faithfulness of God. It appears that members of the Roman church were concerned that the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles who did not keep the Jewish law was a sign that God had been unfaithful to God’s promise to the Jews – a promise that set them apart.
For the Jews, being a descendant of Abraham (a member of the people of God) meant being circumcised and keeping the law. Both were signs of identity which made them distinct from the community around them. It was impossible at least for some of them to imagine that Gentiles as children of God, descendants of Abraham without circumcision and the law.
And yet, something new had happened. People who were not circumcised descendants of Abraham were coming to faith in Jesus Christ and joining communities of faith. What could this mean in relation to the historic faith?
In order to respond to this problem, Paul masterfully uses the foundational story of Judaism to prove that God’s choice of, promise to and covenant with Abraham already presages the inclusion – not only those physically descended from Abraham, but of all who have faith. Paul argues that in including the Gentiles, God has not broken God’s word but has been entirely faithful to the promise to Abraham.
The Jews based their origin story on Genesis 17 in which God’s promise to Abraham is sealed with the covenant of circumcision. What Paul does is to take his readers back to God’s promise to Abraham in chapter 15 of Genesis. Here God promises Abraham that despite his age and Sarah’s apparent barrenness, he will become the father of a multitude of nations. It is important to note that, at this point, Abraham is not circumcised, and has done nothing except trust that God will provide Sarah and himself with a child. In other words, he is still a Gentile! – proof positive Paul would claim – that God’s promise is to both Jew and Gentile. As he says in Romans 4:11: “The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.”
The covenant of circumcision on which the Jews relied was made after the promise and the law, on which so much weight would be placed would not come into being for another 430 years.
Using the foundation story of the Jews then, Paul claims that belonging to the people of God, being a descendant of Abraham relied not on circumcision or the observance of the law, nor on anything a person did or did not do but solely on faith.
If we accept as Paul does that faith is the sole criterion for being righteoused by God we, like the Romans and Galatians, have to revisit all the criteria we have used for keeping people out. We have to abandon all the standards to which we would have people of other cultures adhere and by which we have judged the quality and strength of their faith. And we need to repent for all the often unnecessary (often Western) conditions that we have imposed on people of other faiths.
Our failure to accept difference has caused great harm throughout centuries of missionary endeavour. I think for example of all the women abandoned by their husbands in parts of Africa because their husbands were forced into believing that polygamy was inconsistent with being a Christian, or of the Chinese Christians coerced into abandoning the social and familial glue of the veneration of ancestors or our indigenous peoples who were made to feel lesser because they did not conform to our norms and experienced God in the world around them, and all other peoples and cultures who have been compelled to do things the way we have always done them.
Paul states: “For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us).”
May we have the wisdom, the courage, and the openness of Paul, so that we too might see that God’s only requirement is that we have faith in: “the God in whom Abraham believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”
Swallowsrest 