Called According to Paul: Romans 4:17

I want to put this old series of posts in the favorite posts section on the right sidebar, so I’ve been reposting them from my previous Blogger blog one by one. An explanation of this series of posts can be found here. You’ll find other posts in this series here.

Not Herman Ridderbos.

In Roman 4:1 Paul writes,

…as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (ESV)

Paul is writing in Romans 4 of Abraham’s faith. Abraham, he says, believed that God would fulfill his promise. You’ll remember the promise: God told Abraham that he would make him the father of many nations so that the number of his offspring would be like the number of stars in the sky.

Abraham’s faith held firm when a son seemed like an impossibility because he knew the God who spoke the promise to him was the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In other words, Abraham’s faith was strong regardless of the impossibility, humanly-speaking, of what God had promised him (Abraham, after all was “as good as dead” and Sarah was barren), for he understood that his God was the God of divine fiat.

The language of the phrase we’re looking at—”calls into existence the things that do not exist”—harks back to God’s creation by command. And while in this usage call is not refering to the call that works salvation (or faith, or conversion) like the usages already examined in 1 Corinthians 1 and 7, Paul is nonetheless using it in the sense of divine command. Abraham understood that just as God had called all of creation into existence out of nothing, he could produce offspring from an old man and his barren wife by calling into existence things that do not exist. Paul is using call here to refer to a command with creative power.

As with other posts in this series, I welcome additions/corrections/comments regarding the way Paul uses of the word call in this passage.

A Catechism for Girls and Boys

Part I: Questions about God, Man, and Sin

15. Q. Who wrote the Bible?
      A. Holy men who were taught by the Holy Spirit.

(Click through to read scriptural proofs.)

Click to read more ...

Sunday's Hymn

Our God, Our Help in Ages Past

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

Thy Word commands our flesh to dust,
“Return, ye sons of men:”
All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,
And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering ere ‘tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

—Isaac Watts

My favorite YouTube video of this hymn has embedding disabled, but I like this, too:

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• How Watchful Is the Loving Lord at Tried With Fire
• All the Way My Savior Leads Me at Rosemary at Home
• Stand Up for Jesus at Wordwise Hymns
• As with Gladness Men of Old at Field Stone Cottage
• Forever Settled in the Heavens at Hiraeth
• Come and Rejoice with Me at Conjubilant With Song
• Lord’s Day 1, 2010 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Psalm 62 at Daily On My Way to Heaven
• Your Weekly Dose of Spurgeon at Pyromaniacs: A Rebuke to Our Cold-Hearted Calvinsim
• Sabbath Keeping at Thistle Grove Farm
• Voices of the Past - January 2, 2011 at The Upward Call

Have you posted a hymn (or sermon, sermon notes, prayer, etc.) today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by contacting me using the contact form linked above, and I’ll add your post to the list.