Dear Ken and Marcus, Last week, you discussed Romans 4:4: “Now to one who works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift but as his due.” Recently someone pointed out Phil 2:12, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Could you compare and contrast these, and discuss how they relater to servile and filial fear? Thanks, Bob
Romans 4:13-25
13: The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world,
did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
14: If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs,
faith is null and the promise is void.
15: For the law brings wrath,
but where there is no law there is no transgression.
16: That is why it depends on faith,
in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants — not only to the adherents of the law
but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of us all,
17: 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.
18: In hope he believed against hope,
that he should become the father of many nations;
as he had been told, “So shall your descendants be.”
19: He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body,
which was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old,
or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.
20: No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God,
but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,
21: fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
22: That is why his faith was “reckoned to him as righteousness.”
23: But the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone,
24: but for ours also.
It will be reckoned to us
who believe in him that raised from the dead Jesus our Lord,
25: who was put to death for our trespasses
and raised for our justification.
