Romans 4:23

Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned unto him; but for our sake also, unto whom it shall be reckoned, who believe on him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.

Who believe on him that raised Jesus ... These words focus upon a point of similarity in the faith of Abraham, and that of Christians. One great mark of identity between his faith and ours is in the fact that only an obedient faith avails, or availed, either for Abraham or Christians; but, in these verses, attention centers upon what he believed, and the similarity of it to what Christians believe. Abraham believed in God's power to raise the dead, a faith which was manifested in the offering of Isaac; Christians believe in the resurrection of the dead: (1) that God raised Christ from the dead; (2) that all shall at last be raised from the dead by Christ (John 5:28,29), and, in the spiritual sense; (3) that all who hear Christ's voice and obey him shall be raised from the deadness of trespasses and sins (John 5:25). In Romans 4:17 Paul specifically mentioned, "God, who giveth life to the dead," as a conspicuous aspect of Abraham's faith. Another similarity between Abrahamic and Christian faith lies in the manner of regarding the "seed," Christ, Abraham truly believing that he would in time appear ("Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad (John 8:56)), and Christians truly believing that he indeed did appear in his first advent, and also that the Christ shall appear the second time to judge the world.

Who delivered us from our trespasses ... It is not mere faith on the part of Christians that Jesus Christ lived, but also that he is the sin-bearer, that he is the propitiation for sin, that in him alone is the righteous ground for the plenary discharge of all human transgression - it is faith in Christ as "my Redeemer" that marks the genuine faith. Inherent in this is the conviction that Christ died for us, while we were yet in our sins.

And was raised for our justification ... The final two verses of this chapter bring the reader's mind to rest upon Christ as man's only Saviour, with special emphasis upon his death and resurrection. Moreover, the oneness of all the faithful of all ages, as they shall at last be summed up in Christ, appears here. As Brunner noted:

Only in Christ Jesus does that inheritance in which Abraham believed become a reality; for only through him, by his atoning death and victory over death and the grave, are all nations included in the history of redemption that began with Abraham and the setting apart of Israel. And only the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which is the center of the message about Christ, makes manifest the meaning of God creating life out of death. What Abraham experienced was indeed a beginning, but yet only a beginning, of what Christ's Community experiences in the realization of the divine promise of inheritance.[17]

Paul's mention of both the death and resurrection of Christ in these verses shows how intimately the two are joined to form the solid ground of human forgiveness and justification. The introduction of such essential elements of the Christian gospel into this resume of Abrahamic faith shows the intimate connection between them, and that the New Testament answers to the Old Testament as antitype to type. All that is in the Old Testament points beyond itself and contains the seed that comes to flower in the New Testament. All that happened to the Jewish fathers happened unto them "for our example" (1 Corinthians 10:11); and all the shadows and prefigurations of the old covenant are now fulfilled in the new institution, which is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In this great chapter, the relationship between the faith of Abraham and that of Christians was brought forward by the apostle Paul, the great design of his doing so being that he might prove that Gentiles were just as entitled to salvation as Jews, and that God's eternal, intrinsic righteousness was in no way compromised by the calling of the Gentiles. Abraham was definitely not presented in this chapter as an example of how alien sinners accept the gospel of Christ. True, Abraham's faith was exactly like that of Christians in the matter of its being an obedient faith; but the tests God required of Abraham were utterly different from the tests required of sinners who would become Christians, therefore, what Abraham did to prove his faith before God cannot stand in any manner as an indication of what people must do now to prove their faith in God's sight. The very thought that God would have required proof of Abraham's faith, and that now a sinner's mere assertion of it is enough, is illogical. The force of Paul's stressing the fact that Abraham was justified "apart from works" of the law of Moses (Romans 4:6), and apart from "circumcision" (Romans 4:10), was not for the purpose of showing that Abraham's justifying faith was accepted by God, without any tests at all, but that the law and circumcision were not the tests, the logic of Paul's argument appearing from the fact that certain Christians of Jewish origin were intent upon making God's testing of faith to include both law and circumcision.