Unearned

Brian Carroll / General Adult

Unashamed - A Study of Romans / Romans 4:1–8

God does not justify us as payment for what we have accomplished; He credits righteousness to the ungodly who trust Him. Like Abraham and David, we discover the blessed freedom of receiving by faith what we could never earn through works.

Introduction - Image of Paris

•	Paris, early 1800s.

•	Jean Valjean has just been released after nineteen years — nineteen years for stealing bread, and for trying to escape a system that never let him go.

•	No one will hire him.

•	No one will feed him.

•	No one will let him sleep under their roof.

•	Except one man. A bishop. Monsignor Myriel.

•	The bishop takes him in — a stranger, an ex-convict, a man the whole town has already judged.

•	He feeds him. He gives him a bed. He treats him like a guest, not a threat.

•	And in the middle of the night, Valjean gets up — and steals the bishop's silver.

•	The silverware. The plates. Everything of value in the house.

•	He runs. He's caught within hours. The police drag him back to the bishop's door — silver in hand, guilt written all over him.

•	This is the moment.

•	Because everyone in that room expects the same thing to happen next.

•	The bishop will identify his silver.

•	The police will haul Valjean away.

•	Justice will be served. The books will be balanced.

•	That's how it's supposed to work. That's how it always works.

•	You take what isn't yours — you pay for it.

•	But the bishop looks at Valjean. Looks at the police.

•	And then he says:

•	"This silver was a gift. I gave it to him."

•	Then he turns, walks back into the house — and comes back with the candlesticks. The ones Valjean didn't even think to steal.

•	"You forgot these," he says. And hands them over.

•	No lecture. No probation. No "don't let this happen again."

•	Just — silver, given, to a man who had shown himself to be a thief.

•	That's not how it's supposed to work.

•	That's not how anything is supposed to work.

•	We live in a world of wages. Of earning.

•	Of getting what we deserve — and we mostly accept that, because most of the time, we assume we come out ahead.

•	But every one of us has a version of that night.

•	A moment we took what wasn't ours.

•	A moment we deserved the police at the door, not a gift in our hands.

•	Paul is about to tell us about this incredible grace that overrides what's owed.

•	And here’s the deal - it isn't just a beautiful moment in a musical.

•	It's the foundation of how a person gets right with God.

•	Or, another word that gets used a lot — how we are justified.

•	In Romans, justification is God’s courtroom declaration that a sinner is righteous in his sight.

•	It does not mean we have lived a righteous life or suddenly become morally perfect; it means God gives us a right standing we could never earn.

•	He can do this justly because Jesus bore our sin in his death and was raised for our justification.

•	We receive that verdict through faith—not as a reward for our work, but as a gift of grace.

•	And in chapter 4, we’re going to be looking at a case study for how justification actually takes place.

•	It goes all the way back to a very significant friendship between God and a man named Abraham.

•	Stand with me in honor of the reading of God’s Word.

Scripture Reading

Romans 4:1–8 ESV

¹ What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?

² For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

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

⁴ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.

⁵ And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,

⁶ just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

⁷ “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered;

⁸ blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

•	Paul doesn't waste a word getting there.

•	“What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?”

•	He picks the one name every reader would reach for first - Father Abraham.

•	Before we get into this text, I think it is a good place to remember that salvation in the Old Testament worked the same way as it does for us.

•	Abraham was justified by the righteousness of Christ.

•	The only difference is that Abraham’s faith looked forward, our’s looks back.

•	But salvation was still secured by the person and work of Jesus Christ.

•	I love how Hebrews describes Abraham’s forward-looking faith:

Hebrews 11:10 ESV

¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

•	I do have to say, I can't read about Abraham and not think about the old kids' song.

•	Years ago we had a missions partnership in Jamaica, and we were often invited into the local elementary schools.

•	Public schools — but they didn't mind.

•	The teachers were overworked and happy to hand the room to someone else for a while.

•	Those kids could not get enough of that old song with the goofy motions - Father Abraham.

•	If you were losing them, if nothing else was landing, you dropped in Father Abraham and you had the whole room back.

•	But Abraham is more than fodder for a kids' song.

•	More than a character in an Old Testament story.

•	Christians, Jews, and Muslims all trace their faith back to this one man.

•	If anyone in Scripture has earned the right to boast, surely it's him.

•	But watch what Paul does with that question.

•	He's about to take the one man everyone assumed had grounds to boast, and open his hands to show there's nothing in them.

An Unearned Reputation — Romans 4:1–2

•	Abraham was an incredible man of action.

•	God told him to move.

•	He left his ancestral home for a nice piece of real estate a few hundred miles to the west.

•	He wasn’t looking for better schools or moving for work.

•	He was moving, sight-unseen because God told him to.

•	I would have had some questions - but he believed what God said and he went.

•	Put a contract on the house and never even met the neighbors.

•	God told him he would have a son, even though the calendar wasn’t on his side.

•	His wife’s advanced age put child-bearing out of reach.

•	But still Abraham believed God and trusted that God was going to keep his word.

•	And later, God would test the mettle of Abraham’s faith by demanding that the child God had given him be offered as a sacrifice.

•	Abraham was willing to go through with the plan because, as Hebrews 11 states, he believed God could raise the dead if he needed to.

•	Of course, Abraham was far from perfect — He was prone to putting God’s promises in jeopardy from time to time.

•	Despite those failures, there’s still no denying that Abraham had remarkable faith.

•	The promises he was holding on to wouldn’t even be fulfilled in his lifetime.

•	Abraham recieved the remarkable designation “Friend of God.”

•	That has to earn some credit - right?

•	I love how The Message handles vv. 1-2.

Romans 4:1–2 MSG

¹ So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things?

² If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story.

•	Paul isn't saying Abraham didn't do anything.

•	He left Ur.

•	He offered his son.

•	He believed against every calendar and every biological reality stacked against him.

•	Those are real actions with real consequences.

•	If I were put into those scenarios, I can assure you that there would be some sleepless nights, wrestling through the implications of obedience.

•	Paul isn’t denying that Abraham did remarkable things.

•	Instead, he is asking whether those faithful actions put God in Abraham’s debt.

•	Did Abraham’s obedience become the price of his acceptance?

•	Did his faithfulness look so impressive that God was obligated to declare him righteous?

•	Paul’s answer is NO and spells it out very clearly in v. 2.

•	"If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about — but not before God."

•	Read that carefully.

•	Paul doesn't say Abraham has nothing to boast about.

•	He is basically saying Abraham might have plenty to boast about — to his neighbors, to his family, to anyone impressed by a such things.

•	Just not to God.

•	Before people, "Friend of God" is a title that could open every door in town.

•	You better believe that’s a title that belongs on a business card or a name tag.

•	That’s a title MADE for the “humble brag” or the “dinner party flex.”

•	“Oh, did I tell you what God told me the other day? Out of the blue, he just said, ‘Hello friend!’”

•	Paul’s point is this - before God, it doesn't even get you in the room — because in God’s economy, Friend of God wasn’t a title that was ever earned in the first place.

•	He asks what Abraham gained — and the answer isn't "I gained it by working for it."

•	The Message got that right: This isn’t Abraham’s story, it's God’s

•	And the temptation to turn a God-story into a story about us did not end with Abraham.

•	We can take good things God has done in our lives and quietly begin treating them as reasons we deserve to belong to him.

•	So ask yourself: when you think about why you belong to God, what part of your own story rises to the surface first?

•	Some of us have a "Friend of God" line of our own.

•	You might be the person who:

•	Grew up in church.

•	Never really strayed.

•	Deacon Body.

•	Sunday school teacher.

•	Forty years of faithful attendance.

•	None of that is bad. Abraham's faith wasn't bad either.

•	But watch what you reach for when someone asks how you're doing spiritually, or when you're lying awake wondering if you're right with God.

•	If the answer starts with your track record instead of Christ, you've quietly slipped into a you-story instead of a God-story.

•	Your pedigree can open doors with people.

•	It doesn't get you in the room with God — because that was never how the room worked.

•	Abraham may have the reputation as the Father of our Faith.

•	But the reputation that mattered most—righteous before God—was one he could never earn.

•	But here’s the question -

•	If reputation doesn't earn you anything before God, what does?

•	Paul doesn't leave you guessing.

•	He moves straight from reputation to something even more basic: payment.

•	Because if reputation is what people give you for who you appear to be, wages are what people owe you for what you've actually done.

•	And most of us live by wages, whether we call it that or not.

•	You put in the hours, you expect the check.

•	You do the job, you expect the credit.

•	That's not greed. That's just how fairness works everywhere else in life.

•	So Paul asks the obvious next question: is that how it works with God, too?

•	Not really - as we will see, our “paycheck” isn’t earned, which means it really isn’t a paycheck at all.

An Unearned Paycheck — Romans 4:3–5

•	In order to begin, Paul quotes Genesis 15:6.

•	God had promised Abraham descendants even though Abraham had no son and no natural reason to expect one.

•	In spite of those obstacles, Abraham trusted God’s promise.

•	In that moment, Abraham did not accomplish something for God.

•	We’re told that all he did was trust what God promised to accomplish.

•	And in that moment, God “counted” or “credited” righteousness to Abraham.

•	The accounting word credited becomes central.

•	God credited Abraham with a righteousness he had no hand in producing

•	This does not mean Abraham’s faith was such an impressive virtue that God rewarded it with righteousness.

•	That would turn faith into another work.

•	Faith receives its value from its object: Abraham trusted God and his promise.

•	But it is important to know, Abraham was counted as righteous before many of his spiritual accomplishments.

•	Before the covenant of circumcision.

•	Before Isaac was born

•	Before most of his significant demonstrations of faith.

•	God didn't wait until Abraham had racked up a lifetime of proof and then declare him righteous.

•	God credited righteousness to Abraham when Abraham believed God’s promise.

•	But that idea is something we’re not really used to.

•	To prove his point, Paul turns to something that everybody understands - a paycheck

•	We all instinctively understand how a paycheck works.

•	We put in the hours and we are compensated for our time.

•	In a very real sense, our wages are owed as a debt and our employer clears that debt on some kind of regular basis that we affectionately call payday!

•	You earned whatever compensation you received.

•	And when you get a raise, a ton of overtime, or some other boost to your paycheck, you can absolutely boast about that accomplishment.

•	This is what Paul is saying in v. 4 — to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as something that has been earned.

•	But salvation isn’t payment for a job well done.

•	We aren’t saved because we’ve worked hard enough.

•	Salvation is not compensation God owes us for services rendered..

•	What an obnoxious place to be - to claim that God somehow owes us something.

•	The reality is that we are the ones with a debt.

•	And no amount of labor is going to settle that debt.

•	Fortunately, we do have an alternative — this beautiful thing called grace.

•	V. 5 is the pivot point for us.

•	To the one who does not work.

•	That’s not talking about a lazy person who never lifts a finger for the kingdom.

•	It’s talking about the person who recognizes that he cannot be justified by his work.

•	In order to be justified, one must believe in the justifier.

•	Jesus said it just as plainly in the passage we all know so well…

John 3:16 ESV

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

•	Not, whoever works hard for him.

•	Not, whoever tells everyone about him.

•	Not, whoever is baptized in his name.

•	Not, whoever gives, serves, loves, blesses in his name.

•	Not, whoever joins the right church in his name

•	Believes — or as we might say it in our current context:

•	Whoever has faith in Jesus.

•	That’s not to say that those are unimportant responsibilities.

•	But we must recognize that there’s not a single good work you can do in the church today that will justify you.

•	There are all kinds of things that you can do out of gratitude and in response to God’s saving work — but none can provoke God’s saving work.

•	And let us not forget that we all share a common problem, which is why we need to be justified to begin with.

•	We are ungodly.

•	Paul made that very clear to us back in Rom. 3:10-12

Romans 3:10–12 ESV

¹⁰ as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;

¹¹ no one understands; no one seeks for God.

¹² All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

•	If we were godly — we wouldn’t need justified.

•	Sadly, we all fall into the same boat of ungodliness which is why we so desperately need that righteousness that we couldn’t possibly earn.

•	Which means some of you need to stop checking your hours.

•	Some of you are still clocking in.

•	Not at church, necessarily — in your own head.

•	Tracking the quiet time you missed.

•	The Bible reading plan you fell behind on.

•	The way you snapped at your spouse this morning and haven't made it right yet.

•	And somewhere underneath all that tracking is a quiet math problem: Am I doing enough to be okay with God today?

•	That's wage thinking.

•	That's clocking in and clocking out and hoping the hours add up.

•	But Romans 3 already told you the hours don't add up.

•	Not even close. Not for you, not for Abraham, not for anyone in this room.

•	You were never on the clock.

•	Righteousness was credited the moment you believed, not the moment you'd earned enough to deserve it.

•	If you're still checking your hours, you've missed the point.

•	This was never a paycheck.

•	It was a gift.

•	But an unearned paycheck only addresses one side of our problem.

•	Abraham shows us that even remarkable faithfulness cannot put God in our debt.

•	David shows us something darker: we have not merely failed to earn righteousness; we have actively sinned against God.

•	So Paul moves from a man remembered for his faith to a man haunted by his failure.

•	He turns to David.

An Unearned Pardon — Romans 4:6–8

•	This time, Paul turns to Psalm 32.

•	The Psalm doesn’t identify the specific occasion — other than it was penned by David.

•	We know Psalm 51 was written after David’s conspiracy with Bathsheba…perhaps Psalm 32 came from the same occasion.

•	David had a title like Abraham.

•	As Abraham was a Friend of God, David was a man after God’s own heart.

•	But just like Abraham, David was a flawed leader.

•	The power of sin captured David’s heart just as it captures our hearts.

•	But in spite of his sin, David shared another thing in common with Abraham - he was justified by faith.

•	And just like Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, the same could be said for David.

•	But David came to realize something significant about this “credited righteousness.”

•	That is what he wrote in Psalm 32 and what Paul draws on to make his point.

•	This credited righteousness has tremendous consequences in God’s spiritual accounting.

•	I’m going to tell you one of the most terrifying things I could possibly tell you this morning.

•	God knows everything about everything.

•	We have no issue acknowledging that in abstract.

•	God’s omniscience isn’t up for debate.

•	But let the significance of that sink in.

•	God knows EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING.

•	This means that God knows every single one of our sins.

•	Make a list - I dare you - you’ll forget something.

•	God knows them all.

•	Every sinful word - known.

•	Every sinful act - known.

•	Every time you did the right thing for the wrong reason - even your motives aren’t hidden from God.

•	Every cross word, every stray glance, every whispered threat.

•	If you believe there is a God in heaven, the realization that you are FULLY known by him should leave you absolutely mortified.

•	You could put together an inexhaustible list of violations of God’s standards.

•	You could spend the rest of your life trying to outrun the list. You will never get to the bottom of it.

•	The awful thing about our sinful condition is that even our best efforts miss the mark.

•	All you will ever do is continue to store up wrath for yourself (which is exactly what Paul said back in Rom. 2:5).

•	But here is the good news from the pen of King David.

Romans 4:7–8 ESV

⁷ “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered;

⁸ blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

•	You see, something incredible happens when we are justified.

•	All of that sin that we have collected is forgiven.

•	All of that debt that we have collected — God doesn't pretend it wasn't real.

•	He settles it. But he doesn't settle it with us.

•	He settled it at the cross, with Jesus's blood, and then he does something even more staggering: he refuses to charge it to our account.

•	Paid for by Christ. Never counted against you

•	And when God looks at us, he doesn’t see us in the filthy rags of our own efforts at righteousness…instead he sees us covered in the perfect righteousness of Jesus.

•	You could spend the rest of your lives making that list of failures - but because of the finished work of Jesus and your faith in the Gospel - that list is always covered under the righteousness of Jesus.

•	“blessed is the man against whom the LORD will not count his sin.”

•	Remember the bishop's house in Les Mis?

•	Remember Valjean — silver in his hands, guilt written all over him, waiting for the only verdict that made sense.

•	He knew exactly what came next.

•	Everyone in that room did.

•	But the bishop looked past the verdict everyone expected and gave him something else entirely.

•	That's the feeling Psalm 32 is describing.

•	That's what David couldn't get over.

•	You must remember, however, that you do not earn the blessings of which David spoke and Paul now quotes.

•	Those are blessings obtained by faith and given by the grace of God.

•	But what exactly does this faith look like?

•	How do you know if you have the kind of faith that Paul is talking about here?

Invitation - The Three Legs of Saving Faith

•	I’ve been pointing you to the importance of faith this morning.

•	But what exactly does that even mean?

•	We know that it isn’t a work that we do.

•	Salvation isn’t secured by more faith, stronger faith.

•	We don’t get a greater pardon from sin by “faithing” harder.

•	There are three elements of saving faith.

•	First - the facts.

•	Saving faith is not abstract.

•	Saving faith is particularly concerned with the Gospel.

•	Whenever we share the Gospel, we want to include certain key data points.

•	God is perfect and holy.

•	Humanity rebelled against God and continues to do so - every single human being comes up short of God’s standard.

•	God loves us so much he sent his son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for sin by dying on the cross.

•	Jesus was resurrected from the dead and will return one day to judge the wicked and usher in his Kingdom.

•	Secondly - assent.

•	We have to acknowledge the truth of the data.

•	We saw the new Spider Man movie last night.

•	I know some data about Spider Man, but I don’t believe in Spider Man.

•	Lots of people hear the Gospel but don’t believe it.

•	In order to be justified, we have to acknowledge the truth of the Gospel.

•	But that’s still not enough.

James 2:19 ESV

¹⁹ You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!

•	Recognizing the truth of the Gospel does qualify you to be a demon, but it doesn’t actually save you.

•	You lack one more thing.

•	Finally, saving faith requires personal trust in Jesus.

•	You have to know the facts about the Gospel.

•	You have to believe the facts about the Gospel.

•	And then you have to put your trust in Christ alone to save you.

•	But even in that, faith is not a work that we do.

•	But it is something that demands a response

•	Stop waiting until you feel ready, or worthy, or like you've finally got your life together enough to come.

•	There is nothing left to prove.

•	Nothing left to fix first.

•	Nothing left to do before you trust in Jesus.

•	Just open hands.

•	That's all faith has ever asked of you — not your effort, not your record, not your best attempt at being enough.

•	Just you, coming as you are, trusting that Christ has already done what you could never do for yourself.

•	If you're here this morning and you know your life doesn't add up — the things you've done, the person you know you actually are underneath what everyone sees — stop pretending you can fix that on your own.

•	Stop trying to be good enough long enough to earn your way back to God.

•	Bring it to Jesus, exactly as it is.

•	Believe what he's already done.

•	Receive what he's already offered.

•	But understand this…

•	Coming as you are doesn’t mean staying as you are.

•	David didn't just receive forgiveness — he stopped hiding first.

•	He said in Ps. 32:5 "I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity... and you forgave the iniquity of my sin."

•	He said the true thing about himself before God said the true thing about his mercy.

•	That's not a condition on the gift.

•	It's not one more item to check off before you qualify.

•	It's just what receiving it actually looks like — agreeing with God about what's real, instead of managing how you look while you reach for God’s gift.

•	So if you're here this morning and you already know what you've been carrying — stop managing it.

•	Name it. Confess it.

•	Turn from it. Then open your hands and receive God’s grace.