How can we have hope when our circumstances seem impossible? See how Romans 4:18–25 teaches us to trust in God's promises and the risen Christ, even when our faith feels weak.
Introduction: Coming to the End of What You Can See
There are moments in life when you come to the end of what you can see, the end of what you can fix, the end of what you can carry.
You look at your marriage and think: “I don’t know how this gets better.”
You look at your kids and think: “I don’t know how their hearts change.”
You look at your body: “I don’t know how much longer I can go.”
You look at the church and think: “I don’t know how we move forward.”
You look in your soul and think: “Why am I still struggling with this sin?”
Then the Word of God says: In hope he believed against hope!
That’s one of the great lines in all of Scripture. Abraham had every human reason to give up. His body was as good as dead. Sarah’s womb was barren. The promise looked impossible. Yet: In hope he believed against hope.
This isn’t the story of a naturally heroic man. This isn’t the story of a spiritual giant who never struggled. This is the story of what faith looks like when a sinner stops looking at himself and starts resting on the promise of God.
Relevance: why does this matter to me? That’s why this message matters! We all have faith in something. But there’s a saving faith that’s in someone outside of you that brings you into a saving relationship with God.
Summary: where we’re at in Romans and where we’re going in this passage. Paul’s been teaching us since Romans 3 that sinners are justified by faith alone in Christ alone. Now at the end of Romans 4, he shows us the nature of that faith.
Theme
Faith justifies because it rests in the promise-keeping God who brings life out of death and who raised Jesus from the dead for our justification.
Transition: Why is faith powerful, certain, and beneficial? Because faith isn’t the hero. God is. So first: what makes faith so powerful?
What Makes Faith So Powerful? (vv. 17–18)
Faith is powerful because of its object, not itself. Faith is powerless apart from what it is placed in. Children: if I give you a shiny new key and say it’s for a storage locker down at the San Diego airport and in that locker is a backpack with a million dollars in it, how powerful is that key? It’s worthless unless you know which locker the bag is in.
We read in verse 17 of the God in whom Abraham believed. Note that: in whom. What makes God such a source of power for our faith? Who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Our minds think of the resurrection of the Summanite woman’s son by Elisha, or of Lazarus, or of Jesus Christ and we think of God’s power to create all things out of nothing. But what’s he talking about? That power as it was applied to Sarah’s dead womb and the creation of Isaac in that womb where it seemed impossible! My faith feels weak today; but God is powerful! That’s why in hope Abraham believed against hope, that he should be the father of many nations, as he had been told (v. 18). What kind of God do we have? The one in whom we place our broken, lackluster, tired, and weak faith! Our Catechism teaches us that because God is Almighty, he’s able to do anything, but more personally, that as our Father in Christ, he’s willing to do everything we need. Thus, we sing, “He is able, more than able, to accomplish what concerns me today.”
Faith gets all its power from God, it’s object. Not from itself. Not from its quantity. Not from its intensity. Faith is powerful because of the God it rests in.
That is so important, because many Christians talk about faith as if faith were a spiritual commodity. “If I just had more faith.” “If I had your faith.” “If my faith were stronger.” This turns faith inward. We make faith about faith—us.
Abraham cures us of that illusion. He came from an idolatrous household. He lied about Sarah to save his own skin. He struggled with God’s promise. He tried to produce the promised son by his own scheme through Hagar.
Faith can’t be about you, because if faith is about you, it’ll collapse under the weight of who you really are.
What makes faith so powerful isn’t the hand itself, but what the hand is reaching for. A key is useless if it opens nothing. A light bulb does nothing if it’s not connected to power.
Application: So, here’s the comfort: your faith may feel broken, lackluster, tired, and weak. But your God isn’t. Weak faith saves because it’s in a strong Christ! Strong faith is never the foundation of salvation; Christ is! And so, in your darkest moments, when you feel hopeless, let this text keeps you going: in hope he believed against hope (v. 18). Turn to the promises of the Lord, put your faith in him, put your hope in him to do what you can’t do.
Romans 4 says stop staring at your faith and start staring at God! Your faith was never intended to be the hero of your story. God is.
Transition: But that raises the next question: if faith gets its power from God, what makes faith certain when everything you can see seems to deny the promise?
What Makes Faith So Certain? (vv. 18–21)
Faith is certain because it rests on God’s promise, not visible circumstances (vv. 18–21)
Yes, God’s power makes our faith certain, but notice how in these verses there’s something more specific that makes my faith certain: the promise of God. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations—why?—as he had been told in Genesis 15:5—“So shall your offspring be.” There are two kinds of hope, beloved. The human kind—a wish based in yourself—and the divine kind—based on what God has promised.
Humanly speaking, Abraham had no reason to hope. That’s the point. Paul doesn’t hide the facts: Abraham considered his own body and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb (v. 18). Abraham was ninety-nine years old and his wife wasn’t far behind with a dead womb. God backed them into a corner, didn’t he? What was the way out? Trust the promise!
Application: Doesn’t God do this with us, too? God has at times in our 25+ year history backed us into a corner as a congregation—financially, numerically, spiritually—to show us that it’s not about us but him. Will you believe that with me? It’s the only thing we have to go on! Note the certainty of verses 19–20:
He 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. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.
“Houston, we have a problem.” But didn’t Genesis describe him as struggling in faith because he took Hagar and had a son with him? Yet we have Romans 4 saying he did not weaken in faith and no unbelief made him waver. Hebrews 11 tells us Abraham’s life was characterized like this: “By faith.”
So how can Paul say that, when Genesis records Abraham’s stumbles? Because Paul is not denying Abraham’s struggles; he is describing what fundamentally defined his life. And that helps us too, because faith always has both an objective and a subjective side:
Objectively, faith is a gift of God that’s placed in the Lord, who’s powerful and has promised. Note what Abraham wasn’t weak about or didn’t waver about? The promise of God.
Subjectively, there’s our experience and feeling of faith. For example, William Cowper (1731–1800) was an amazing Christian poet who struggled with depression, insanity, and even an attempted suicide. Yet he sang:
In holy contemplation
We sweetly then pursue
The theme of God’s salvation,
And find it ever new.
Set free from present sorrow,
We cheerfully can say,
Let the unknown tomorrow
Bring with it what it may.
Applied to Abraham, how could Paul say he wasn’t weak and didn’t waver in faith? Because of the promise of God (v. 20). The promise is objective. Cowper again said it like this in another of his hymns:
Mine is an unchanging love,
Higher than the heights above,
Deeper than the depths beneath,
Free and faithful, strong as death.
Lord, it is my chief complaint
That my love is weak and faint;
Yet I love Thee, and adore:
O for grace to love Thee more!
You can be fully convinced with your father Abraham that God was able to do what he had promised (v. 21). He provided Abraham a son, who was a type of God’s Son to come; he provided Cowper the same Savior and the same assured faith in weakness; he provides us today with the assurance of our right standing with God. Listen to Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 21:
What is true faith?
True faith is not only a sure knowledge whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also a hearty trust, which the Holy Spirit works in me by the Gospel, that not only to others, but to me also, forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.
Faith doesn’t pretend there’s no problem. It doesn’t close its eyes to the facts. But Abraham looked right at the problem of the deadness of his and his wife’s deadness and impossibility and didn’t let it have the final word! He opened his ears to the Word: “The circumstances are real, but God’s promise is more real.”
Then Paul says he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God (v. 20). Faith glorifies God because it treats God as able, faithful, and truthful. Faith says, “God is God, and he will do what he has said, even here, even now, against all human evidence.” Abraham was fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised (v. 21).
Application: Again, there are times when God is going to back you into a corner like with Abraham and Sarah. He’s going to wait until your situation is humanly impossible. He’s going to let the deadness become undeniable. Why? So that when new life comes out of that dead circumstance, you will not be able to say, “I did that!” God is going to back you into a corner where the only way out is straight through his promise. When he does, strip away your self-confidence and rest in him. Empty your hand so that you’ll hold onto his promise. When you’re down to just the promise of God, you have everything!
When Abraham’s and Sarah’s bodies said “no,” God’s promise said, “Yes!”
Transition: Now Paul takes one more step. He’s shown us what Abraham’s faith looked like. But he doesn’t leave Abraham in the past. He brings the whole point of Abraham’s faith into the present and says: this was written for you!
What Makes Faith So Beneficial? (vv. 22–25)
What makes faith so beneficial? Faith is beneficial because it receives Christ and his righteousness for us (vv. 22–25).
That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness (v. 22). That’s the big point Paul’s been making all along in these chapters. Abraham was not justified because he was morally impressive or because his faith was a meritorious work. He was justified because faith received what God gives: righteousness apart from works.
Then note what Paul does here. After laboring against Jewish objections to prove justification by faith alone from Abraham, he brings his exposition home: But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (vv. 23–25). Don’t miss this. Abraham isn’t merely to be admired. We’re to join him in faith in Jesus.
What does that look like for us on this side of the cross and resurrection? Abraham believed in the God who gives life to the dead with respect to Isaac. We believe in the God who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord (v. 24). The Christian’s faith is Abraham’s faith this side of Easter.
We have the same God with the same promise-keeping character and the same power to bring life out of death. But now the object is even clearer, fuller, and more glorious: Jesus our Lord. Faith is beneficial because it takes hold of God’s promises and makes them our own. Faith says, “I’m righteous in Christ. I have no other option than to hope against hope that God will give me what I need!”
Then Paul gives one of the shortest and richest summaries of the gospel in all his letters: who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Delivered up for our trespasses: your sin wasn’t just brushed aside. Your trespasses are so serious that the Son of God had to be delivered up to death for them.
Raised for our justification: his death for your trespasses was accepted. The resurrection is God’s vindication and declaration that Christ has done all that needs to be done to reconcile you.
The cross paid the debt. The resurrection announced the payment was accepted.
Gospel Call
If you’re not a believer today, that’s the gospel. Jesus died and rose. He didn’t do it for himself, but for you. Embrace Jesus and all his saving benefits will be yours. Say in your heart even now, “Lord, your death was for me. Your resurrection was for me. Count it all to me and enable to walk in a new life.” If that’s you, come and talk with me after the service so we can rejoice together!
Are you a struggling believer today? Do you know the gospel is true? That Jesus died and rose for sinners? But, are you hesitating to say, “Not only to others, but to me also.” Don’t leave this place today without remembering the whole point of him dying and rising was that you’re a sinner. Believe! Receive! Rest!
Conclusion: Faith Looks Away From Itself
Now you can see Paul’s point. Faith looks away from itself, faces the facts, and rests in the crucified and risen Christ. This means the call of this text isn’t, “Try harder to be like Abraham.” The call is, “Believe in Abraham’s God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”
Maybe you feel like Abraham looking at deadness. Your circumstances look impossible. Your faith feels shaky.
Then hear the good news: your salvation doesn’t rest on the impressiveness of your faith, but on the trustworthiness of your Savior.
Hope against hope because God keeps his promises. He delivered up Jesus for your trespasses. He raised Jesus for your justification. That’s your hope. That’s your righteousness.