Romans 4:18 to 21 · Passage · Hope
Hope Against Hope
Paul wrote these four verses near the end of Romans 4, in his letter to the church at Rome.
Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran with God's promise, and Isaac was born when Abraham was a hundred.
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”
- The passage
- Romans 4:18 to 21
- Book
- Romans
- Hold in memory
- Romans 4:20 to 21
Summary
Romans 4:18 to 21 is Paul's portrait of Abraham's hope. God had promised Abraham offspring as many as the stars, and every natural reason to expect a child had failed. Abraham looked at the facts as they were and still trusted the promise, because he was sure that God could keep His word. Paul sets out this trust as the pattern of the faith by which God counts a person righteous.
- God's promise to Abraham was "So shall your offspring be" (Genesis 15:5), and his belief was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6).
- Paul names the obstacles: Abraham's body, about a hundred years old, and the lifelessness of Sarah's womb (Romans 4:19).
- Abraham did not waver through disbelief; he was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God (Romans 4:20).
- Paul writes that the words "it was credited to him" were written also for those who believe in Him who raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 4:23 to 24).
Verses 19 to 21, Word by Word
Each of the three verses carries a Greek word the English leaves less plain.
In these four verses Paul describes how Abraham went on hoping when nature gave him no reason to. Hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised, and these verses show it at its hardest: a promise of children that every visible sign contradicted. Paul calls him "the father of us all" (Romans 4:16).
The question the passage answers is how a person can hope when the evidence in front of him says there is no hope, and whether such hope is faith or folly.
Without weakening in his faith, he acknowledged the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) and the lifelessness of Sarah’s womb.Paul says Abraham faced his own body and Sarah's womb as they were, so his faith did not depend on ignoring them.
The participle Paul uses of Abraham's body, nenekromenon, comes from a verb the STEP Bible lexicon defines as to put to death. The noun of the second phrase, nekrosis, stands only twice in the New Testament.
Yet he did not waver through disbelief in the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God,Paul sets wavering against being strengthened, and he joins the strengthening to the glory Abraham gave to God.
The verb for waver, diakrino, can mean to judge or to doubt. The verb for was strengthened, enedunamothe, is passive in form, so Paul describes the strength as given to Abraham.
being fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised.The last verse names the ground of Abraham's trust, God's power to do what He had said.
The participle for being fully persuaded, plerophoretheis, is passive as well. The STEP Bible lexicon defines its verb as to assure or convince completely.
The Obstacles and the Promise
Paul names each obstacle in a few words, and Genesis gives Abraham's own words or the narrator's for each.
Every obstacle Paul names stands in the Genesis record, and so does the promise God kept in spite of them.
| What Paul names | The words of Romans 4 | The words of Genesis |
|---|---|---|
| What stood against the promise | ||
| No child | Against all hope (verse 18) | You have given me no offspring (Genesis 15:3) |
| Abraham's body | the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) (verse 19) | Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? (Genesis 17:17) |
| Sarah's womb | the lifelessness of Sarah's womb (verse 19) | Sarai was barren; she had no children (Genesis 11:30). Sarah had passed the age of childbearing (Genesis 18:11). |
| The promise | ||
| The promise given | So shall your offspring be (verse 18) | count the stars, if you are able (Genesis 15:5) |
| The promise kept | God was able to do what He had promised (verse 21) | Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age (Genesis 21:2) |
John Chrysostom counted the obstacles one by one in his eighth homily on Romans. He named the words against hope as the first, because "Abraham had no other person who had received a son in this way to look to". He counted Abraham's body as the second and Sarah's womb as "a third, aye and a fourth obstacle".
The Promise Under the Stars
Genesis 15 holds both the promise Paul quotes and the verse his whole chapter rests on.
And the LORD took him outside and said, “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able.” Then He told him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.Paul quotes these words in verses 18 and 22 of Romans 4.
The God Who Gives Life to the Dead
Hebrews 11 adds Sarah's faith and the offering of Isaac to what Romans 4 says of Abraham.
As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the presence of God, in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not yet exist.Paul names the God Abraham believed as the One who gives life to the dead, which is what the promise of a son required.
Years later God tested Abraham with the command to offer Isaac. Hebrews says that "Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead" (Hebrews 11:19), so the hope of Romans 4 held when the son himself was at stake.
Now the words “it was credited to him” were written not only for Abraham, but also for us, to whom righteousness will be credited—for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.Paul says the record of Abraham's faith was written for believers who trust the God who raised Jesus, so Abraham's hope is the pattern of theirs.
How Teachers Have Read the Passage
Origen of Alexandria, writing in the third century, read Abraham's steady faith as a sign that faith has its own health.
died 253 · Origen of Alexandria
“Therefore Abraham ‘against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations,’ which were to be as the stars of heaven, not only in multitude but also in brightness; and he, faithfully believing him who promised, ‘was not,’ he says, ‘weakened in faith.’ What he says, ‘he was not weakened in faith,’ seems to me to show that there is a certain weakness in faith. But if there is weakness, there is without doubt also health, as he shows in other places when he says: ‘Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.’”
Origen of Alexandria · Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans · on Romans 4:18 to 22Patristic
Two Readings of Against Hope, in Hope
Readers differ over what the second hope of verse 18 names.
The second hope is the hope that comes from GodJohn Chrysostom; Theodoret of Cyrus
John Chrysostom read the two hopes as two kinds: "It was against man's hope, in hope which is of God" (Homily 8 on Romans). Theodoret of Cyrus wrote that "Abraham believed against the hope of nature but in the hope of the promise of God" (Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans).
The objection: Paul uses one noun for both and marks the contrast only with the prepositions against and in, so the verse may contrast two grounds of one hope.
The second hope names the thing promisedAlbert Barnes
Albert Barnes read the first phrase as "against all apparent or usual ground of hope" (Notes on the New Testament). He read the second as the thing hoped for: "Hope here is put for the object of his hope".
The objection: the next verse speaks of Abraham's own faith, which did not weaken (Romans 4:19), so the passage describes the state of the man as much as the thing promised.
Hope That Rests on God's Power
Romans 4 closes on the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The next chapter of Romans carries Abraham's hope to the church: "And hope does not disappoint us" (Romans 5:5).
He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and was raised to life for our justification.Paul names the resurrection as the ground of justification, the act of God on which the believer's hope now rests.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible word index (TAGNT), the tagged Greek New Testament with Strong's numbers, morphology and glosses (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible Greek lexicon (TBESG, Tyndale House, Cambridge), based on Abbott-Smith (1922), CC BY 4.0, entries g1680, g3499, g3500, g1252 and g4135.
- John Chrysostom, Homily 8 on Romans.
- Origen of Alexandria, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, book 4.
- Theodoret of Cyrus, Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the New Testament (1832 to 1869), on Romans 4:18.