Sermon for March 1, 2026, Second Sunday in Lent

Romans 4:1-8, 13-17 (Second Sunday in Lent—Series A)

“Children of Abraham Who Receive the Gifts of the Promise”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

March 1, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is the Epistle Reading recorded in Romans 4:

¹What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, found and then lived out? ²For if Abraham was declared righteous by works, he has a boast, but not before God. ³For what is the Scripture saying? “And Abraham believed in God and it was credited to him as righteousness.” ⁴Now to the one who works, the payment is not credited as a favor, but according to what is due. ⁵But to the one who is not working, but believes in the One who declares the ungodly righteous, his faith is credited as righteousness, ⁶just as David also speaks the blessing of the person to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: ⁷Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered;  ⁸blessed is the man whose sin the Lord shall surely not charge to his account. . . . ¹³For the promise to Abraham and to his descendants was not through the Law, that he would be the heir of the world, but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴For if they become heirs by the law, faith has been emptied and the promise has been nullified. ¹⁵For the Law brings wrath, but where there is no Law, neither is there transgression. ¹⁶On account of this, the promise is by faith, so that it may be according to grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to the one from the Law, but also to the one who is from the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us, ¹⁷just as it stands written, I have made you father of many nations, before whom he believed God who gives life to the dead and calls the things that are not into being.

          Do you remember the children’s song, “Father Abraham”? You probably sang it in Sunday School or Vacation Bible School. “Father Abraham, had many sons; Many sons had Father Abraham; I am one of them and so are you; so let’s all praise the Lord!” And then arms started swinging (right arm, left arm!) and feet started to stomp (right foot, left foot!) and heads started to nod as the song also provided exercise!

          But why would Christians sing about “Father Abraham”? He’s the father of the people of Israel, the Jews. And Paul, as a Jew, would agree. He opens our text describing “Abraham our forefather according to the flesh.” Through a line of generations from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, and so on . . . these are the children of Abraham according to the flesh. Now there were certainly Jewish believers in Jesus in the church at Rome to whom Paul wrote this letter. But there were also many Gentile, non-Jewish, believers in the congregation at Rome. And Paul says in verse 16 that they, too, are descendants of Abraham, “who is the father of all of us.” “Father Abraham, had many sons; Many sons had Father Abraham; I am one of them and so are you.”

          You and I are children of Abraham, not according to the flesh, but according to trust in the promise of God. Again, verse 16, “The promise is by faith, so that it may be according to grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to the one from the Law, but also to the one who is from the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us.” You and I are those who are “from the faith of Abraham.”

           The apostle Paul begins our text today with a question: “What then will we say Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, found and then lived by?” Let’s explore this question and text together this morning as children of Abraham by faith.

          Is it true that Abraham found that God had chosen Abraham because he feared the one true God? No, this is FALSE. Joshua 24:2 tells us, “And Joshua said to all the people, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods’” (ESV). Abraham, at that time, did not fear, love, and trust in the one true God. He didn’t worship Yahweh. Luther wrote, “For if you should ask what Abraham was before he was called by a merciful God, Joshua answers that he was an idolater, that is, that he deserved death and eternal damnation. But in this wretched state God does not cast him away; He calls him and through the call makes everything out of him who is nothing.”^[1] 

          God chose Abraham simply out of His gracious favor. Moses records by the power of the Holy Spirit in our Old Testament Reading, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’” (Gen. 12:1–3 ESV). God alone is the actor. Abraham, in and of himself, had nothing to do with the Lord’s calling him and giving him a promise because Abraham was too busy worshipping false gods. God alone chose. God commanded. And God promised.

          Well, did God make the promise to Abraham as a reward because Abraham obeyed God’s command to go from his country and kindred? No, the promise was made first. When we read in Genesis 12:4, “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him,” God had already made His promise. This was before Abraham did anything. God’s promise had already been given BEFORE Abraham responded faithfully to the Lord’s command. God alone chose Abraham according to His gracious will. God commanded Abraham to go to the land that the Lord would show Him. And then God promised Abraham the blessing of making Abraham into a great nation so that through Abraham, all nations of the earth might receive the Lord’s blessing in the Savior of all. It is only at this point that Abraham responded to God’s promise with faith and with obedience, however imperfectly. Twice he lied about the fact that Sarah was his wife, saying she was his sister (Gen 12.10-20; 20.1-18). His conduct in regard to Hagar (Sarah’s maidservant, whom she gave to Abraham in order to have a son, Ishmael, because they lost trust in the promise) is far from exemplary (Gen 16.4-6).

          It is not on the basis of Abraham’s faith or righteousness or even his fear of God that the Lord chose him to be the father of many nations and the forefather of the Savior according to the flesh. God chose Abraham by grace and offered the promise to Him as a gift, without any merit or worthiness in Abraham.

          Let’s take a moment then and take up this question: Is it true that God chose us to be His people because we are always righteous in and of ourselves and because we always fear, love, and trust God? Not at all! By nature, we are the same as our forefather, Abraham. We were idolators. We were unfaithful. We are sinners nature

          Paul wrote in our text, “The payment is not credited as a favor, but according to what is due.” What is due or owed to as sinner? God’s wrath, physical death, and eternal damnation! “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6.23 ESV). That’s what we should receive from God—punishment for our idolatry, unfaithfulness, and lack of love toward God and toward our neighbor. We, like Abraham, have no standing of righteousness or faithfulness before God on our own merit.

          Did God, then, promise us salvation from our sins if we just do our best and try to be “good people” according to His Law and Commandments? Certainly not! The Law brings God’s wrath because we cannot and do keep it. Even our best isn’t good enough. “Good” isn’t good enough. Only perfect will do! (Matthew 5:48). The Law doesn’t make us better. Doing the Law in part doesn’t fix the problem. The Law makes us aware of our problem in order to point us to the One who remedies the problem. Those blessed are not those who “just do their best to make God happy.” The blessed are those who have their “lawless deeds forgiven” and “their sins covered.” The only thing we could offer to God is the sin that makes His grace necessary.

Abraham, then, was credited with righteousness by grace alone through faith alone. Paul quotes Genesis 15:6, “And Abraham believed in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Righteousness, being right and doing right according to God’s Commandments, is credited to Abraham because God counts something—righteousness—as belonging to Abraham as a gift. Righteousness is not something Abraham does, but something Abraham simply receives through believing the promise. God acted for Abraham in choosing him according to His grace to be the father of many nations. God acted for Abraham according to His promise, crediting the sinner with righteousness because of the promised Offspring, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who would win forgiveness for Abraham and all his descendants, those of faith who trust in the promise of salvation. The apostle writes later in Romans 4, “Now not for [Abraham’s] sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification” (Rom. 4:23-25 NAS95).

God’s promise to Abraham is for us too, and it is to be received by faith. Romans 4:16, “On account of this, the promise is by faith, so that it may be according to grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to the one from the Law, but also to the one who is from the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us.”

Jesus Christ, the promised Offspring of Abraham according to His flesh, purchased and won our forgiveness with His sacrifice on the cross. His blood “covers” us as it is applied to us personally in Baptism. Through the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith, through God’s gracious gift trust in Jesus, we, who are by nature sinners and who have committed lawless acts, do not have our sins counted against us because they were counted against Jesus. Our sins are covered in the blood of Christ. They are atoned for, God’s wrath appeased, by Jesus’ death for us. You salvation from sin, death, and hell is won. Christ’s own righteousness is given to you, wrapped around you like a garment. Isaiah 61:10, “For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Is. 61:10 ESV).

God our Father, according to His gracious favor, has credited Jesus’ own righteousness to us and He truly views it as our own righteousness before Him. The gifts of Christ’s righteousness and the forgiveness of sins are received by us by Baptism through faith in His Word of Promise. And this promise is sure and certain, just as it was to Abraham, our forefather in the faith. Amen.

     ^[1] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 2: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 6-14, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 2 (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1999), 246.