Monday 1st May - Romans 4

Today’s chapter is Romans 4

Tom writes:

“Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against him.” “Blessed” feels too small a word to carry the freight of the fullness of God’s favour. But that is what it means. The atonement of Jesus grabs you by the neck and shoves you under the shower of boundless generosity that God had poured out on Abraham. Verse 13 in particular is mind-blowing; Abraham would be heir of the world. Stop a second and dwell on that. If you have gone through the process of atonement you now hold the righteousness that comes by faith. You now stand with Abraham’s arm around your shoulder; his beard tickling your neck. He waves his arm towards the hills and assures you that you now are a co-heir with him of all the nations of all the earth. A chapter ago you were storing up wrath for yourself and had run out of options. Now you are a prince and a co-ruler of 195 countries and 5000+ tribes. The staggering shift in your fortunes deserves a long hard consideration. The assurance of our exalted future is something most of us never really make our own. The next 4 chapters will help us mull over that magnificence.

But the focus of Paul’s chapter here is the collaborative nature of this promise. If you pan out just slightly you see Abraham has a crowd of arms around his shoulders. His beard is tickling the necks of billions. And many of them are black, or bald, or Chinese, or Jewish. They will co-rule their tribe and your tribe with you. The twin challenge of grace is to comprehend the super-abundant generosity that God has lavished on you and also to grasp that your privilege is one shared equally with others; many of whom were utterly different to who you were. So no one can boast. No one can really act or talk or think of themself as an individual saved by Jesus; all of us have been drafted into a whole new collaborative family of faith. We - the redeemed - all stand together as partners and co-heirs. The shower of God’s crazy kindness to Abraham has become communal. We stand under the blessing together; rejoicing in its refreshment, bewildered by its beauty, soaking in its promise.

Question for reflection

What will it be like to co-rule all of creation?

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