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Rom. 4:13-15 - The law brings wrath

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13 For not through the law the promise to Abraham or to his seed that it is heir of the world but through the righteousness of faith.

14 For if those of law are heirs, the faith has been made void and the promise invalidated.

15 For the law brings about wrath; but where the law is not, neither is there transgression.


My translation
Submitted by andrew on Fri, 21/09/2007 - 12:43.

The fulfilment of the promise to Abraham that his descendants (spermati) would inherit the world cannot be attained through the law because the law brings about wrath - and the wrath of God will be expressed as the destruction of Israel (cf. Rom. 9:22). Behind this is a passage such as Deut. 28:58-68. If the Jews are not ’careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book’, then the Lord ’will bring on you and your offspring (in LXX spermatos or ’seed’) extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting’ (Deut. 28:58-59). The promise to Abraham is explicitly negated: ’Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God’ (62); just as before ’the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you’; they shall be ’driven away from the land to which you are going in order to inherit (klēronomēsai) it’ (63).

If everything depends on the law, the outcome can only be that the promise to Abraham is invalidated and the faith that he had in the promise would have been to no effect. Why? Because the law pronounces the judgment of destruction on a people that is inescapably disobedient because it shares in the sinfulness of all humanity (cf. Rom. 3:9). So the fulfilment of the promise must depend on something prior to or apart from the law: the faith or faithfulness that is reckoned as righteousness. Outside of or prior to the law there can be no transgression of a law that specifically prescribes destruction as the punishment for disobedience. Verse 15 is not a comment on the status of Gentiles who do not have the law: rather it reinforces the point that the promise to Abraham can find fulfilment only in a people that is not subject to the law.

The promise to Abraham was that his descendants would inherit the land (cf. Gen. 15:7) rather than the world. The expansion may reflect certain Old Testament themes: Abraham would be the father of ’many nations’ (eg. 17:4; cf. Rom. 4:17); his seed would ’inherit the cities of its enemies’ (22:17 LXX); he would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth (eg. 12:3; 18:18); and the later thought of the nations participating in the restoration of Israel. Or it may simply be the more immediate product of Paul’s argument about the inclusion of Gentiles through faith.

See also:

Inheriting the world or the land?

Submitted by peter wilkinson on Fri, 21/09/2007 - 17:37.

We should really be sitting down in a seminar to go through all these ideas; the internet is really very limited as a vehicle of communication.

So I’m purely adding this as it has very recently occurred to me that the substance of the promises to Abraham - many nations - all nations etc (where nations is more akin to peoples than national entities with borders) would have great difficulty fitting into the limited area of Canaan.

Maybe it’s in this tension that we are meant to see Canaan as being, at best, provisional, and a stepping stone to a more worldwide vision.

But this is more a comment on Genesis 12-24 than Romans 4:13-15.

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