Gift of Grace #8 - The Never Changing Gift
Description
What if the key to lasting peace wasn't about doing more, but receiving more? In this message from Romans 4, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund shows how God credits righteousness to us through faith alone—not performance—freeing us from the exhausting pursuit of earning God's approval and empowering us to live with genuine confidence and grace toward others.
What If You're Already Accepted?
Most of us carry a quiet anxiety about whether we're good enough — good enough for God, good enough for the people around us, good enough by our own standards. We perform, we improve, we measure. And still the question lingers: have I done enough?
In this message from Romans 4:1–16, Kurt walked through one of the Bible's most freeing passages — a chapter built around a single financial metaphor. The word "credited" appears again and again, describing how God puts something into our account that we could never deposit ourselves: righteousness.
The Core Idea: Credited, Not Earned
The entire chapter hinges on this banking concept. When you work for something, you receive wages — what you're owed. But when something is credited to you as a gift, the transaction works differently. You didn't earn it. You received it.
Paul makes this explicit in Romans 4:4–5: "Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work, but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness."
The word "ungodly" is the striking part. As Kurt noted, "The message of Christianity is not 'you become godly and then you get blessings.' It's 'you get blessings because God bestows them.' It's a gift, not something you earn."
Abraham: Even the Best Need Grace
To make his case, Paul starts with Abraham — the most respected figure in Jewish history. Surely if anyone earned righteousness, it was him. But Paul points out that Genesis 15:6, where God credits Abraham with righteousness, was written approximately 430 years before Moses gave the law at Mount Sinai. Abraham wasn't justified by law-keeping. He was justified by faith.
The implication is significant. If Abraham — the gold standard of faithfulness — received righteousness as a gift rather than a wage, then no one earns their standing before God through moral effort. As Romans 4:3 puts it: "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."
This dismantles the common assumption that the more religious or moral you are, the more divine credit you accumulate. That path, Kurt observed, only leads to insecurity — "never knowing if you've done enough."
David: Even the Worst Can Be Forgiven
Paul's second example moves to the opposite end of the moral spectrum. David — who committed adultery, orchestrated a murder, and abused his power as king — wrote Psalm 32 in the aftermath: "Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them" (Romans 4:7–8).
Kurt pointed out that Paul uses three distinct words for wrongdoing here — sin, transgression, and iniquity — covering the full range from careless mistakes to deliberate rebellion to deep moral distortion. The question the passage raises is pointed: how far do you have to go before God's grace isn't big enough? The answer, from David's own experience, is that you can't get there.
Together, Abraham and David address the two most common responses people have toward God. The self-sufficient person who thinks they've done well enough, and the broken person who thinks they've gone too far. The passage speaks directly to both.
Accepted Before You Behave
Perhaps the most countercultural implication Kurt drew from the passage is this: the credit comes before the behavior. Abraham was credited with righteousness before he was circumcised — before the defining act of Jewish covenant obedience. He didn't perform and then receive approval. Approval came first.
This flips the typical religious equation. Kurt referenced Tim Keller's contrast between religion and the gospel: religion says I behave, therefore I'm accepted; the gospel says I'm accepted, therefore I behave. The motivation changes entirely. Fear becomes gratitude. Obligation becomes joy.
As Kurt put it, when you understand the gospel, "I'm accepted by God, and I behave out of gratitude for what God has done — not in order to get his blessing."
This also reframes how we respond to failure. When things go wrong and you're operating from a performance mindset, it feels like God owes you an explanation. But as Kurt noted, when you're rooted in grace, "you're able to be patient and say, 'This isn't necessarily tied to anything I did or didn't do, because I have a full account. God has credited me.'"
Secure Because It's About Jesus, Not You
Romans 4:13–16 makes the foundation explicit. The promise to Abraham didn't come through law-keeping — it came through faith. And because it's grounded in God's work rather than ours, it's guaranteed. As the text says, the promise comes by faith "so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed."
Kurt illustrated it this way: imagine a child at the edge of a pool, scared to jump. A parent is in the water, arms open. The child jumps, and the parent holds them — even carrying them into deeper water. The security isn't in the child's ability to swim. It's in the one holding them. "If our righteousness comes from Jesus crediting it to us," Kurt said, "then you and I can have hope in what's ahead."
Questions for Reflection
As you consider what it means to live from a place of already being accepted rather than constantly trying to earn acceptance, sit with these two questions:
Where in your daily life are you still operating as if God's approval depends on your performance — and what would it look like to act from gratitude instead of fear this week?
Is there an area where you've assumed you've gone too far for grace to reach — and what would it mean to take David's posture and receive forgiveness rather than keep your distance?
The freedom Paul describes in Romans 4 isn't a license to live carelessly. It's an invitation to stop white-knuckling your way toward worthiness and instead receive what God has already credited — fully, freely, and permanently — through faith in Jesus Christ.
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Martin Luther
"Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly."
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Well, you've just heard part of Romans 4 that we're going to consider together. But let's pray. As we are gathered this weekend around Pittsburgh and online, I ask that you would help us to grow in our understanding of you, that you would help us to grow in our affection for you, and that you would help us to grow in our devotion to you. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
Years ago, when my kids were growing up, I remember one incident where my kids and I were going to go ride bikes together. And the bikes that we had were not in stellar condition. And so one child was like, "Well, I don't want to ride this bike." And we had this whole back and forth about who was going to ride what bike. And finally, one of my sons simply said — there are four of them — "Dad, why don't we just go get some new bikes?" To which, without realizing it was kind of a teaching moment — a moment to explain the theory about why we didn't have bikes at the certain level they wanted — I just simply said something along the lines of, "Well, we can't afford that right now."
Now, in my mind, I wasn't thinking through the implications of what that phrase probably communicated to my little boys. Like, are we going broke? Are we about to lose our house? What was in my mind was that we have for years — and still to this day — a weekly budget where we say, "This is how much money we spend, and if we want something like bikes, you have to save ahead so that you can purchase it down the road." But I didn't see that in the moment as a teaching moment. I just simply said, "We can't afford it."
So a moment passes, and one of my little boys again just said, "Well, Dad, I think there is enough money. Why don't we just go to the bank and use that card that you use — where you put it in and you can get all the money you need?" Now, in his mind, there was money in the bank and it was unlimited. All I had to do was go and stick the card in and I got as much money as I needed for anything, because that was how he perceived the world at the time. You obviously understand that money doesn't actually work that way — that there is a limit. When you go to the bank and put your card in, there isn't just an endless supply.
Well, today we're in Romans 4. If you've been here over the last several weeks, we've been in a series we've called the Gift of Grace. We're talking about what Romans chapters one through five teach about this incredible gift that God gives us.
When we come to Romans 4, there is some confusing imagery. We hear about Abraham, we hear about David, we hear about circumcision and uncircumcision and the law. In fact, I would guess that when that scripture was read, most of us glazed over a bit. I'll admit — I've studied it and prepared to talk about it, and I'm still like, "Wow, that's a lot of concepts flying all over the place." So let me try to bring this together in a way that we can think about it and understand what it has to do with our lives.
Because there's a word used repeatedly in this passage, and that word is "credited." It's a financial term, and it means that something is put into somebody else's account, in essence. This is the reason I started with the story about my son saying, "Just go to the bank and get money" — because this is the idea that God has credited our account with something, and in this case, it's righteousness.
Just look at this with me for a moment:
Verse 3: "What does Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness."
Verse 4: "Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation."
Verse 5: "However, to the one who does not work, but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness."
Verse 6: "David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one whom God credits righteousness apart from works."
Verse 9: "Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We've been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness."
Verse 10: "Under what circumstance was it credited?"
Verse 11: "And he received circumcision as a sign and a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised, so that he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them."
Verse 22–24: "This is why it was credited to him as righteousness. The words 'it was credited to him' were not written for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this chapter is about this idea of crediting righteousness from God to people. That is what this chapter is about. Even in verse 8, you don't get the exact word "credited," but it's the same idea: "Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will not count against them." So what this chapter speaks about is when God credits his righteousness to people.
There are two examples used — Abraham and David — and then three implications that are taught very clearly here.
The Example of Abraham (Verses 1–5)
This talks about how Abraham was not justified by works, but he was justified by believing in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. And here's why this particular example is so striking. Abraham was the father of the Jewish nation along with other nations, and for many people, they assumed he had to have kept the law — specifically circumcision. But if you do the chronology, Genesis 15:6, where it says it was credited to him as righteousness, was approximately 430 years before Moses gave the law on Mount Sinai.
Why does that matter? Because he was not justified by keeping the law. He was justified by faith. God's gift of grace began in the Old Testament. It's not just that in the Old Testament, people did certain things that got them over the bar — they are credited with righteousness, just like people today, by faith and not by works.
This banking term communicates that when you believe, you're credited. If you work for something, it's not a gift — it's wages. Part of what makes this so striking is that the people who would have first read this, the Jewish people especially, would have said, "Well, Abraham did everything right." But the question is: how right did he have to do it? By pointing to the fact that his righteousness is a gift from God, credited to his account apart from his work and effort, Paul is saying: think of the best person you can imagine — they are still counted righteous because of God's work, not because of their own.
And then Paul makes this incredibly striking statement in verse 5: "However, to the one who does not work but trusts God, who justifies the ungodly..." You see, the message of Christianity is not "you become godly and then you get blessings." It's "you get blessings because God bestows them." It's a gift, not something you earn. God justifies the one who is ungodly.
In our day and age, the way a lot of people think about religion is that you perform certain things to get credit from God. In some formal religious settings, the checklist is: be baptized, take communion, attend church, extend kindness, be generous, be a truth teller. In less formal religious settings, it's about general goodness. Whether churched or unchurched, the thought process tends to be: "The better person I am, the more likely I am to be credited with righteousness."
But Romans has been making the case all along that all of us are sinful and need a Savior, and we can't save ourselves. And so here again we see: "How good is Abraham?" And the answer is, "He was pretty good — but he was still credited with righteousness because of faith, not because of what he did." If this isn't where you land, the question always becomes: how much goodness do I need to bring to the table? How kind? How generous? How many Sundays can I miss? And what it leads to is insecurity — never knowing if you've done enough. But if we're credited by faith, then it isn't about what we do; it's about what Jesus has done.
The Example of David (Verses 6–8)
Then we get a second example — David. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one whom God credits righteousness apart from works. And now we get a quote from Psalm 32. It's interesting here because the quote is from the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament.
Paul says: "Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them."
Now, this was written in the context of a moment in David's life where he had sinned gravely. If you know the story, David was the king — one of the great patriarchs. But at one point, he took another man's wife, had her husband sent to the front lines to be killed in battle, and the whole thing blew up in his face.
So if Abraham speaks to the person who is good — who still has righteousness credited to them through faith, not through their goodness — David speaks to the person who says, "I've blown it. And I've blown it so badly that there's no way God could ever forgive me." By quoting Psalm 32, Paul goes to this lowest moment in David's life, and David says, "I'm blessed. I'm happy because my sins are covered, my transgressions are forgiven. How fortunate is the person whose sin God does not count against them?"
Here's what's incredible about this: as I think about who's gathered in any church this weekend — any breakfast spot, any bar — there are basically two reactions to God. "I don't need him. I've done well enough." And: "I'm not sure God would ever forgive me because of the things I've done." Paul addresses both in this passage.
The passage uses three different words for wrongdoing from Psalm 32: transgression, sin, and iniquity. Sin, at least in the Greek, basically means to miss the mark — things we do where, looking back, we go, "That probably wasn't my best moment." A transgression is where you say, "I'm going to do this, and I don't care." And an iniquity is really a perversion of something that should be right.
Let me give you a silly illustration. Let me say I'm on a flight recently — middle seat, back row, the bathroom row. The guy by the window rests his elbow out into my portion of the armrest. That's a sin — an offense. I didn't say anything; I just accepted it. That was the worst of that particular moment. But what if during the flight, he lifts up the armrest and sprawls out into my side of the seat? He's moved from sin to transgression — saying, "I don't care about the norms." And then if he pulls out a sloppy sandwich and starts slopping food onto me? That's an iniquity — a full perversion of what should be.
The point of all this? Here's the question raised: if we mess up, how far do we have to go before God's grace isn't big enough? And the answer from this passage is: you can't. It's an amazingly comforting piece of good news.
Three Implications
So we have the example of Abraham, the example of David, and then the passage gives us material about circumcision and Abraham being the father of all nations — and you might be saying, "Okay, I think I follow the examples. But what does this all mean for my life?" Let me give you three implications.
Implication 1: Credit Comes Before Behavior
The credit comes before the behavior. This is radical if you really get it.
Verse 9–11: "Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We've been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstance was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after but before. And he received circumcision as a sign and a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith when he was still uncircumcised."
Paul's point: Abraham didn't behave and then get credit. He got credit before he behaved. That changes everything.
Here's what religious people — and moralistic people, even if you're not technically religious — typically do: they say, "I'll behave a certain way, and then God will give me credit." But when we understand that God credits us before we behave, we start to say, "I'm accepted by God, and I behave out of gratitude for what God has done — not in order to get his blessing."
There's a chart in one of Tim Keller's books where he compares what he calls "the gospel" and "religion." Religion says: I behave, therefore I'm accepted. The gospel says: I'm accepted, therefore I behave. Religion's motivation for doing right is fear — fear that God will get you if you don't. But the motivation when you grasp the gospel is joy. Rejoicing at what God has already done.
When something goes wrong and you're operating out of religion, you say, "God, why did you let this happen? I've done my part. You owe me." But when you're filled with the gospel — the understanding that you were credited by faith — when something goes wrong, you're able to be patient and say, "This isn't necessarily tied to anything I did or didn't do, because I have a full account. God has credited me." And if someone criticizes you, when you're religious you get irritated, because you need to see yourself as a good person. But if you're rooted in the gospel, you're able to say, "Yeah, you might be right — but God has seen the worst of me and accepted me."
Take, for example, giving money. If you're religiously motivated, you ask, "How much should I give? I need to give enough to make sure God sees that I take my faith seriously." But if you move to the gospel, you say, "What I give is not to get something from God — it's in response to what God has done." You don't give to get. You're accepted regardless of what you give. And if someone makes a sideways comment about how you spend your money, the religious person gets defensive. The gospel-driven person says, "I know I have been credited as righteous by God, and that is what matters."
You may have heard this quote from Martin Luther: "Sin boldly." That's made some people uncomfortable. But the full quote was addressed to Philip Melanchthon, who was conscience-stricken and always felt like he wasn't measuring up. And Martin Luther said to him: "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly." His point wasn't "go nuts and do whatever you want." It was: "You will end up sinning. Don't be paralyzed by fear of making a mistake, because the grace of God is even greater than your sin — because you were credited with righteousness before you bring the behavior."
If we get this, it changes how we live.
Implication 2: We Are Secure Because It's About Jesus, Not Us
Verses 13–16: "It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless — because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all of Abraham's offspring."
What's guaranteed? The promise. Why is it guaranteed? Because it's based on Jesus — not on what you or I do.
I'm credited by Jesus' account. What I'm able to deposit into my own account, or what I've withdrawn, isn't what covers the debt. The debt has been covered because the infinite resources of Jesus have been placed there in my place. And what this means is that you don't need to live in fear, asking, "Did I get over the hurdle? Did I do enough? Have I made enough deposits to cover my withdrawals?" It's incredibly freeing.
Have you ever seen a parent with a little kid at the edge of a pool, ready to jump in? The child is scared. But then the child jumps into the arms of their mother or father in the water, and the parent holds them. Sometimes the parent takes them out into deeper water and the child gets more scared, but the parent is essentially saying, "You don't need to be afraid. I have you." That's the picture. If our righteousness comes from Jesus crediting it to us — if it's God's work and not ours — then you and I can have hope in what's ahead. But if it's based on us, there has to be some insecurity, because we never know if we've made enough deposits versus the withdrawals.
Implication 3: It Includes People Unlike Us
This one might take a moment to see, but it's there in the text. Because faith is credited by God, there are people unlike us who are credited with the same righteousness — the same standing — that we have. For some people, that's good news. For others, it's quite disconcerting.
Verse 16 again: "Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all of Abraham's offspring — not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all."
And verse 11–12 puts it this way: He is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, and also the father of the circumcised who follow in the footsteps of the faith of Abraham. Circumcised, uncircumcised — in Jewish culture, that's the difference between law-followers and Gentile outsiders. But Abraham is the father of both. Historically, to this day, multiple world religions trace their lineage back to Abraham. But here's what Paul is saying: God is ultimately the Father of different groups — people who don't all look or think or act the same way.
Here's what tends to happen in religious cultures and moralistic cultures alike: we say, "I'm one of the law-keepers" — or whatever today's equivalent is. We identify with a group, and we think that identifying with the "good people" somehow gives us credit. And then we get more zealous and want to keep out people who don't believe like us or see things the way we do.
Now, I want to be careful here. I think it's good to have real debate. There are non-negotiables of the faith worth holding. But what happens in a lot of circles is that what we're actually defending isn't a true non-negotiable of the faith — it's implications and inferences we've constructed because they make us feel credited with righteousness. If we can surround ourselves with people who believe just like us, act just like us, share our political affiliation — then somehow we feel like we're in the "in group" with God.
But notice how Paul goes out of his way to say to the Jewish people who made such a big deal of circumcision and being the in-group: Abraham was credited before circumcision, and he is the father of those who aren't circumcised. In other words, there are people who are in the fold of Jesus Christ who are not like you. They don't believe like you, they don't think like you, they don't act like you — and they are God's children just the same. I fear that in our current political climate, the church sometimes gets complicit in becoming the property of one particular political party. I'm not suggesting that there aren't political issues that matter and that faith informs. But for many people, it becomes: "These are God's people. I'm one of God's people. This is why I feel good." If God credits his righteousness to us apart from our works, then what matters is not identifying with the right group — it's receiving the credit that comes from God. And that changes how we live.
What Does It Mean to Believe?
So this chapter is about being credited with God's righteousness when we believe. But it leaves one final question: what does it mean to believe? What do we have to believe, and to what extent?
At its base, belief — as Paul has been teaching throughout Romans — is this: your righteousness is never enough. My righteousness is never enough. I need the righteousness where it's credited to me, and it comes from Jesus Christ. The way I receive it is by acknowledging that my righteousness is not enough and Jesus' is, and saying, "Jesus, you are my Savior."
Now, I want to speak to the extent of faith — because you often hear, "Have faith. Believe. Count on Jesus." And the question is: how much faith?
[Dr. Bjorklund gestures to a stool on the stage.]
I have this stool here for a reason. You and I make a decision of faith every day, multiple times. The decision we make is whether or not to put our weight in a chair, a stool, or a sofa. We make a decision based on some evidence: "This can hold my weight." Sometimes you might make a bad call — sit on a chair with a faulty leg and end up on the floor. But here's my point: it does not matter at all how much faith I have in this stool when I sit on it. What matters is that the stool is actually trustworthy. If I sit on the stool with little faith — with great fear, saying, "I'm not sure if this will really hold my weight" — it holds my weight just the same as if I sit on it saying, "This thing is solid, it will never fall."
Some of us gathered here think, "My faith isn't very strong. I don't know if I really believe. Maybe I don't have enough faith." Faith simply means you say, "I will sit on the stool" — whether or not you're entirely sure it will hold you. Once you sit on it, you're extending faith. And when you do that — when I do that — what we're saying spiritually is: "Jesus, I trust you, not me." To get there, we have to acknowledge our sin and say, "God, I trust Jesus Christ." Great faith, small faith — it's about the object, not about how strong my faith is.
This passage — as old as it feels, talking about Abraham and David and circumcision — is really beautiful. Because at its core, faith in Jesus Christ is one of the most liberating things you can do. When we have faith in Jesus Christ, we are credited before behavior. We don't have to have it all figured out. We don't have to sit perfectly on the stool. We just sit. And when that happens, we know that our security isn't based on us — it's based on Jesus.
We can live with hope, and we can live with love toward others, because we don't need to extract from them a sense of justification. That is the freedom of being credited with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And it's offered to each one of us if we'll believe.
Let's pray together.
God, I ask in this moment that you would help us to understand you better, to grow in our affection for you and in our devotion to you — because we understand that being credited with your righteousness is a beautiful thing. God, for some of us who are gathered today, we've known this for years, and this is a reminder of things we've believed. I pray we would cherish it more, speak of it more, and live in its outworking even more.
And God, for those who are gathered this weekend and have always thought that if they were just a little better, a little more religious, or a little less unacceptable, they could have credit from you — I pray you would free them to come, acknowledge their need and Jesus as their Savior, and figuratively speaking, sit on the stool and receive the gift of grace.
We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
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AI Use Disclaimer: This transcript was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) and has been lightly edited for clarity and readability. While every effort has been made to accurately represent the spoken message, minor errors or omissions may remain.
