Romans 4

For the promise to Abraham and to his offspring that he would be heir of the world wasn’t through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. Not Sinai but Genesis 15; not works but the counting already named. Heir of the world is gift-language.

Wesleyan Arminians hear the righteousness of faith as faith graciously counted, Christ remaining the meritorious cause. The promise is sincerely for Abraham’s offspring who believe—not a wage the law could have paid if they had tried harder.

Calvin will soon say: if heirship comes by works, faith vanishes and the promise is abolished. The world’s heirship is based on gift-righteousness.

The righteousness of faith is imputative—Christ’s, received by the instrument of faith. The promise did not come through the law because the law is not the source of this heirship. Mercy alone founds it.

If the adherents of the law are the heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is void. Mix the promise with law-heirship and you empty both. Wesley’s later word: it is of faith that it might be of grace, firm to those who follow Abraham’s faith.

Arminian readers refuse a hybrid: you cannot keep faith as a living condition and add the law as a second title to the inheritance. The promise stands for those who believe, not for those who would make the law their claim.

Calvin: if the heirship of salvation comes by works, faith vanishes, the promise is abolished; both must be sure and certain. Hence it comes by faith, stability based on the goodness of God alone.

Voided promise is the cost of works-heirship. Faith as instrument cannot share the title with the law. God guarantees the inheritance by taking it off the wage-system entirely.

The law brings wrath; where there is no law, neither is there disobedience. For this cause it is of faith. Paul is not slandering the law; he is telling the truth about what it does in this argument. Wrath is what law-heirship would deliver, because the law names transgression.

Arminian readers honor the law’s verdict without making it a ladder into the promise. The law is holy; it is not the source of the world’s heirship. Grace must give what law cannot—righteousness counted to those who believe.

Law brings wrath. That is why it cannot carry the promise. Calvin’s point stands: the curse and the inheritance do not flow from the same fountain as a title to the world.

Transgression is law’s exposure of sinners, not a small deficit faith can top up with effort. The promise must rest elsewhere—on grace, through the righteousness of faith—or wrath is all the law can pay.

That it may be according to grace, to the end that the promise may be sure to all the offspring, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. Wesley: the blessing is of faith, that it might be of grace—that it might appear to flow from the free love of God, and that the promise might be firm, sure, and effectual to all the spiritual seed; Jews and gentiles if they follow his faith.

Arminians hear faith as living trust: grace is the fountain, faith the condition so that the promise can actually meet Jews and Gentiles who believe. “Sure to all the offspring” is the spiritual seed who share Abraham’s faith. Both camps say grace, not works; the fork is whether faith is that living following, graciously enabled, or only a link God forges in a closed chain.

Calvin: it is of faith, that it might be by grace, to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed. If heirship comes by works, faith vanishes and the promise is abolished; hence it comes by faith, so that its stability, based on the goodness of God alone, may be secured.

Faith is the gift-in-the-chain, the Spirit-given instrument, so that grace remains grace and the promise remains sure. Guarantee is God’s goodness, not the quality of our following. Abraham is father of us all because God made the inheritance rest on mercy—faith receiving, not contributing.

I have made you a father of many nations. This is in the presence of him whom he believed: God, who gives life to the dead, and calls the things that are not, as though they were. Wesley: the dead are not dead to him; even the things that are not, are before God; he summons them to rise into being. The seed did not then exist; yet God said, So shall thy seed be.

Arminians find a God whose promise is sincere and creative: he calls, and faith receives what does not yet appear. Abraham believed this God, not his own body. Living trust rests on the Promiser who quickens the dead.

Calvin: whom he believed, who quickens the dead, and calls those things which be not as though they were. A seed was promised as though he were in vigor; he was as it were dead. He had to raise his thoughts to the power of God, by which the dead are quickened.

The God of this verse creates what he commands. Nations from a dead body are fiat grace. Faith is not Abraham’s contribution of vitality; it is the instrument that looks at God’s power and rests.

In hope believed, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, So will your offspring be. Hope against hope is not wishful thinking; it is trust in a word when the body says no. The stars of Genesis 15:5 are still the text.

Classical Arminians honor this as living faith: Abraham believed. Grace enabled the trust; he still believed against appearances. The promise was sincerely pledged; faith laid hold of it when hope, humanly speaking, was gone.

Against hope he believed in hope, because the speaker was the God who quickens the dead. Calvin’s deadness is still on the page: the promise did not wait for Abraham to feel possible.

“against hope” proves the object of faith is God’s word, not Abraham’s prospects. The same power that calls into existence what does not exist held him when natural hope died.

He did not weaken in faith, he didn’t consider his own body, as good as dead, or the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He looked at the facts and did not let them outvote the promise. Faith is not blindness; it is trust that God is greater than deadness.

Classical Arminians see a consideration and a not-weakening. Grace does not forbid looking at the empty tent; it forbids concluding that God cannot fill it. Living trust considers—and still believes.

Calvin: he was as it were dead; it was necessary to raise his thoughts to the power of God. Considering the dead body did not become unbelief, because the consideration was carried up to the Quickener.

Deadness is the point, not a hurdle Abraham’s willpower cleared. The faith that did not weaken is faith in God’s ability, not faith in remaining human possibility. Gift-faith looks at death and names God.

He didn’t waver through unbelief at God’s promise, but grew strong through faith, giving glory to God. Growing strong is the life of trust: not a single static ticket, but faith that gives God glory under delay.

This is faith that can grow. Giving glory is the believer’s living response, enabled by grace. Unbelief is refused, not because Abraham became his own promise, but because he kept trusting the Promiser.

He grew strong in faith, giving glory to God. Strength here is not self-manufacture; it is the patriarch held by the promise. Calvin’s whole argument still stands: stability based on the goodness of God alone.

Wavering is shut out because God is able, not because Abraham found a new inner resource. The Spirit’s instrument can be strengthened; the glory goes to God, not to the quality of the act as merit.

He was fully assured that what God had promised, he was also able to perform. The conviction is about God’s ability, not Abraham’s. Wesley’s God who quickens the dead is the one Abraham was sure of.

Arminians preach this as the shape of saving trust: persuasion that God can and will do what he said. Faith is living conviction, graciously enabled, the condition on which the counting meets the sinner—not a work that supplies what God lacked.

Fully convinced: faith’s fullness is fullness of trust in God’s power to perform his own word. Calvin: he raised his thoughts to the power of God by which the dead are quickened.

Assurance here is theodicy in miniature—God is able. The conviction is itself of grace. Faith as instrument is full when it is empty of self-ability and full of the Promiser.

That is why his faith was also able to perform. Therefore it also was credited to him for righteousness. Paul returns to Genesis 15:6 after showing what that faith actually was: trust in the God who raises the dead. Wesley: God accepted him as if he had been altogether righteous.

Those in Wesley’s line hear the why: this living faith, not works, is graciously counted. Christ remains the meritorious cause; faith is the sole condition. The same fork as 4:3 and Genesis 15:6, now filled with dead-body trust.

That is why: the faith just described—empty of works, full of God’s power—was the instrument of the counting. Calvin: faith brings righteousness not as a meritorious act but because it obtains God’s favor and adorns us with another’s righteousness.

That is why does not mean the quality of Abraham’s act became his righteousness. It means this is the faith that receives the imputed righteousness of Christ. The reason is still God’s counting, not Abraham’s vigor.

The words “it was accounted to him” were not written for Abraham’s sake alone. Moses wrote more than a patriarch’s diary. The accounting is canonical gospel: it aims at readers who will need the same counting.

Classical Arminians take the “not for his sake alone” as a sincere wideness. Scripture means to meet us. What was counted to Abraham is offered as pattern to those who will believe—not a closed story about one elect man we may only admire.

Not for his sake alone: Scripture’s purpose is larger than Abraham’s biography. God had us in mind when he had Moses write the counting.

The word is for the people God will justify the same way—by imputation, received by faith. “Not for his sake alone” is comfort that the gospel is public in Scripture, not a hint that every reader is already justified.

But for our sake also, to whom it will be accounted, who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. The same God, the same counting, now named on the far side of Easter. We believe in the raiser of Jesus; Abraham believed in the quickener of the dead.

Arminian interpreters hear a sincere counting to all who believe. Faith is living trust in the God who raised Jesus, the graciously enabled condition. “For our sake also” is as wide as the need: those who believe are counted righteous, Christ remaining the meritorious cause.

For ours also: righteousness will be accounted to us who believe in the one who raised Jesus. Calvin’s imputative righteousness is not Abraham-only. The God who quickens the dead has now publicly raised our Lord.

Us who believe names those in whom the Spirit makes faith the instrument. The counting will be done; it is God’s. Faith is not an independent lever that makes Easter take. It receives the Christ God has already delivered and raised.

Who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification. Wesley: delivered to death for our offences as an atonement; raised for our justification—to empower us to receive that atonement by faith. Death answers the trespasses; resurrection answers our receiving.

Classical Arminians glory in an atonement sincerely set forth. The risen Christ empowers us to receive by faith what his death accomplished. Both are grace, not works. Living trust lays hold of the delivered and raised Lord; faith remains the condition, not a merit that adds to the blood.

Calvin: our sins were expiated by the death of Christ; by his resurrection was obtained our righteousness. Satisfaction was given on the cross so that Christ might restore us to the Father’s favor; the completeness of that favor appears more clear by his coming to life again.

Delivered and raised are God’s accomplished gospel. Justification is obtained, not merely made possible. Faith is the Spirit-given instrument that receives this righteousness—empty-handed, not a co-cause. The ungodly are justified because Christ died and lives, not because their believing completed a half-finished work.