God Can

Romans 4:17 God Can

In the previous verses God had made a promise that Abraham and his dependents would be heirs to the world (13). This promise was contingent on Abraham having children. It is based on the grace of God and is guaranteed to those who put their faith in Christ, the seed of Abraham (16). Paul is talking here about how to be justified, how to have a righteousness before God that will inherit the promise. Notice the opposite of grace and faith in these verses. The opposite of faith is working, and the opposite of grace is due (or debt or desert). If you try to work for righteousness instead of trusting God, he says you will get a wage that you are due, and that is not "in accordance with grace," but is the opposite of grace. But if you don't try to work for your righteous standing with God, but trust him who justifies the ungodly, God's righteousness will be credited to you as a gift. That is grace and the only condition of the heart that corresponds to it is faith.

So grace is the purpose of God to give you the righteousness and the promise that you do not deserve. That is why grace is the guarantee of the promise. It overrides our demerit. What condition of the heart "accords with" this grace? Faith alone. Faith is the restful experience of the work of grace in our lives. (Piper)

Perception of God As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” I have made this is not a passing thought, but God’s final word. It denotes the certainty if the divine counsel (Calvin). Verse 17. “As it is written” - this is parenthetical - “a father of many nations have I made you.” The eternal purpose of God in justifying Abraham was to make him the prototype of salvation by faith in a promise given by grace to an unworthy, ungodly, undeserving sinner. And in that sense, the spiritual sense, he is a father of many nations because there have been many in many nations who have come to salvation by faith that is like Abraham’s. (Mac Arthur) I Have made -literally, to give, to grant; and also, to set, or constitute. The past tense is used - I have made - so God spoke of a thing as already done, which he had promised or purposed to do. The sense is, he had, in his mind or purpose, constituted him the father of many nations; and so certain was the fulfillment of the divine purposes, that he spoke of it as already accomplished. (Barnes) How can God speak of that which shall not be realized till so distant a future as if it were an already accomplished fact? The apostle uses this expression to penetrate to the very essence of Abraham’s faith. In the eyes of God, the patriarch is already what he shall become. Abraham plants himself at the instant on the viewpoint of the divine thought: he regards himself as being already in fact what God declares he will become. that is to say, in the eyes of the God who was speaking with Abraham, the latter was already made the father of those many nations (Godet) The spiritual fatherhood exist in the sight of God. God can promise Abraham and Abraham can believe – that certain things not now existing will exist because God is the God who gives life to the dead and calls those things that are not as though they were (Moo) In the sight of God Abraham was already the father of Isaac and all the seed. That is what “before God” means. God looked at Abraham and saw him in that light. God says it, God sees it. God could speak like that to Abraham because with God nothing is impossible., because God is able even to quicken the dead. And he did so. (Jones)

Problem for God He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed Without the birth of Isaac, the promise to Abraham will have failed. But Isaac does not exist, and humanly cannot exist. His Father is ninety-nine years old. His mother is ninety and barren all her life. Human works and resources have been tried: a concubine named Hagar and a son named Ishmael. But God says, No. The promise will be fulfilled and guaranteed not by my cooperation with your human resources, but by my sovereign grace to do the humanly impossible. Paul explains in verse 19: "Without becoming weak in faith [Abraham] contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb." If the promise is to be guaranteed, God must do the impossible. He must do what humans cannot do: "give life to the dead and call into being that which does not exist. (Piper) At the time God said these words to Abraham, the birth of Isaac was still far in the future, and those "many nations" existed only as a promise of God; but God had promised them and, therefore, did not hesitate to speak of them as already born. This is prophetic tense, in which God speaks of the future as though it were past (Coffman) Paul is thinking to some extent of God’s bringing life from the body of Abraham and he womb of Sarah The deadness of Abraham’s body and the barrenness of Sarah as the visible evidence that Abram’s faith had to transcend. (Moo)

Power of God the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. Why does he call attention to this kind of sovereign, divine activity? The point is this: in order for Abraham to have a guarantee that he would inherit the promise, God must bring life from death and call into being what does not exist. This is sovereign, omnipotent, free grace. He is describing here what he means by the grace that guarantees the promise. Deadness must come to life and non-existence must exist. That is what grace does. Man cannot do this. Man cannot raise the dead. And man cannot create something out of nothing. But God can and God does in order to guarantee the promises for his people. That is the meaning of grace. (Piper)

Abraham believed in him as omnipotent. His omnipotence is described by two great effects of it. 1) Regeneration/Resurrection: making that to have a being again, which had ceased to be, as in the resurrection. The power to quicken (or raise again), has sometimes been explained as the resurrection of the dead, spiritually speaking, or the conversion of the Gentiles, or even the sacrifice of Isaac! But Rom 4:19 shows plainly enough what is the apostle’s meaning. It is in Abraham and Sarah’s own person, already 100 years old, and his wife barren, that a resurrection must take place if the divine promise is to be fulfilled.2) Generation/Creation: causing that to be which never was; or to make all things of nothing, as in the creation: he expresses this by calling things into being: he only spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and all was created. (Gen 1) The simple meaning of the word call: to invite one to appear, is fully sufficient. Man in this way calls beings which are; on the summons of the master the servant presents himself. But it belongs to God to call beings to appear which are not, as if they already were. And it is thus God speaks to Abraham of that multitude of future nations which are to form his posterity. He calls them up before his view as a multitude already present,

Path to God in the sight of God, in whom he believed. The nature and greatness of that faith of Abraham which we are to copy is here strikingly described. What he was required to believe being above nature, his faith had to fasten upon God‘s power to surmount physical incapacity, and call into being what did not then exist. But God having made the promise, Abraham believed Him in spite of those obstacles.(Jamieson) He believed everything that had been revealed about God. He also believed that God was the only hope of salvation for himself, that he as a sinner had nothing in his own life that could commend him to God. And so he came to the God that he knew to be the God of creation and the God of resurrection, and he pled with that God to be gracious to him. Abraham understood God as the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which doesn’t exist. He understood Him as the Creator God and the life-giving God. . . . Sarah’s womb was dead and he was past the capability of producing a child, and in that sense, God gave life out of two dead people. (MacArthur) the two attributes which the faith of Abraham lays hold of: "before the God whom he believed as quickening...and calling." The two divine attributes on which the faith of Abraham fastened at this decisive moment, were the power to quicken and the power to create. It was, indeed, in this twofold character that God presented Himself when He addressed to him the words quoted: I have made thee—here is the assurance of a resurrection—father of many nations—here is the promise of a creation. Faith imagines nothing arbitrarily; it limits itself to taking God as He offers Himself, but wholly. (Godet) The Lord having promised to make Abraham the father of many nations, which he had no seed, nor was ever likely to have any; he believed the thing to be both credible and possible, because God had spoken it, however improbable it was. And although with respect to generation, he looked upon Sarah's body, and his own, as good as dead; for she was barren and past bearing, and he was an hundred years old, and past all hopes of having a child; yet he exercised his faith on the promise and power of God, who quickeneth the dead, that is, his own dead body, and Sarah's barren womb; and called those things which be not, that is, the Gentiles which were not then a people, as if they were. (Burkitt) The peculiar excellence of Abraham’s faith, that it overleaped the obstacles of physical incapacity, and nonentity, and believed implicitly God’s promise. 2 Cor 1:9. (Alford) This is the God whose word Abraham trusted. It was in this character, that of Life-Giver to the dead, and the Caller of not-things existent, that he trusted Him. Thus Abraham was nothing (but dead), and the seed, non-existent! Yet Abraham believed God's word that he should be "Father of a multitude"; and obediently changed his own name from Abram to Abraham! (Newell)

Applications

The supernatural birth of Isaac is a picture of how God creates children of promise - you and me. (Gal 4:28) Not like Ishmael, born from what humans can do. Isaac was born by a miracle of the Spirit; you are born by a miracle of the Spirit (John 3:1-8). He was brought forth from deadness; you are brought forth from deadness. . . . grace is precisely this: it is the work of God to raise spiritually the dead - to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. (Eph 2:1-10). (Eph 2:8) That is the meaning of grace. And that is why grace guarantees the promise. It does what human resources cannot do. Grace not only gives us better than we deserve (Rom 4:4-5); grace gives us what we cannot produce: life from the dead -the sight of glory, the hearing of divine truth, the tasting of spiritual sweetness. It all comes into being by the sweet and sovereign grace of God. That is why the promise is certain. His faith was called into being out of nothing; your faith is called into being out of nothing. Faith is the gift of God's grace the way seeing is the gift of light and the way hearing is the gift of sound and the way tasting is the gift of honey on the tongue (Piper)

Only God is capable of certain actions. When Sarah and Abraham could not bring a child into the world on their own, God set aside natural law and allowed Sarah to become pregnant. Sarah had never given birth, and when this promise was made, her body was too old for the natural process to work. Abraham's body was as good as dead. Several obstacles had to be overcome for Sarah to become pregnant. A similar point is found in the spiritual realm. Man has never been able to justify himself. Man cannot save himself. If he is to be saved, there must be divine intervention. (Price)

This text also speaks of God's ability to create events, to create history, to chart the course of the world. He is the sovereign who calls the people, the places, the events into existence, and the calling here is an effectual divine determination. He is the God who gives life to the dead, that's His power. And He is the God who calls things which are not as though they were. He calls things into existence. That is His absolute, ultimate sovereignty. All-powerful, sovereign God is the God in whom Abraham believes. (Mac Arthur)

God does not look at the difficulties. He knows his own Almighty power. He quickens the dead., He is Omnipotent. He calls things into being There is nothing there, But God can call into being something out of nothing. God as it were called the seed into being and immediately gave them names -your name my name, God knew the seed then and already using their names before they came into being, This is because he sees the end from the beginning and what he purposes is most certainly going to come to pass. God was able in that way to look at Abraham without a heir and without a child and to speak like this about his being the father of many nation . . . because he is Omnipotent and Omniscience. Death means nothing toe Omnipotence, Hopelessness and despair are nothing to the Omnipotence God quickens the dead and calls those things which be not as though they were. If God had not the power to quicken the dead and give life the lifeless we would still be in our sins and in unbelief. We did not start if, God starts it, He quickens the dead (Eph 2:3 ) It is all of God and all of grace. Nothing but Omnipotence could ever hold and keep and guarantee the perseverance of anyone (Jude 24). Nothing but the same Omnipotence could ever bring any one of us unto the final salvation and glory (Rom 8:30). But he can and that is why here is hope for the vilest sinner in the world. Do not tell me about your sins. I am talking about the Omnipotence of grace, Your vileness make no difference. There is as much hope fo the vilest as for the best and purest. Still more wonderful nothing can stop this process nothing can frustrate it. What God has planned and purposed He will carry out. The fullness of the Gentles will come in . . . and the work will be final and completed. The promise is “sure” to all the seed. It is guaranteed because God quickens the dead and calls into being things which have no being. It is sure to all the seed because the Omnipotence of grace (Jones)