Having asserted that righteousness was reckoned to Abraham not because he worked but because he believed, Paul asks the key question: Is this blessing of righteousness that Abraham received (and, implicitly, the forgiveness of sins that David spoke) for circumcised Jews only or also potentially for Gentiles? The answer is found in the simple observation that Abraham was circumcised (Gen. 17:22-27) after it is said that righteousness was reckoned to him (Gen. 15:6).

Circumcision was for Abraham a sign, a seal, a confirmation, of the faith that he had demonstrated while in effect an uncircumcised Gentile. (In Genesis 17:9-14 circumcision is a sign not of Abraham’s faith but of the ‘covenant between me and you’.) He did not need to be a circumcised Jew in order to believe in the promise that God would make him the father of a great nation: circumcision was for his descendants only a sign that they owed their existence to Abraham’s initial act of trust; it was not itself the act or condition that guaranteed their existence - or indeed survival when destruction threatened. So, Paul argues, if uncircumcised Gentiles now walk in the steps of the faith in the promise of God that Abraham had when he was also uncircumcised, they too will have righteousness reckoned to them.

The important point to keep in mind is that this has to do not merely with covenant membership. What was at stake when Abraham believed God was not whether he or anyone else would be members of a covenant community but whether God would keep his promise to bring that ‘new creation’ into existence. Gentiles are now counted as righteous because they also demonstrate a faith or faithfulness that will ensure that the people of God will have a future.