Chapter 1: Introduction to the topic
Welcome in, guys. Last time we examined the nature of imputed righteousness with scripture, we established that although Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness, it was not in the same way that believers today are made the righteousness of God in Christ. That’s different. Before the dispensation of grace, righteousness was always described as my righteousness, his righteousness, or their righteousness, but never God’s own righteousness imputed to the believer. That’s unique. That’s a unique blessing that’s reserved for those in the body of Christ and is one of the mysteries that Paul revealed. Last time, we also contrasted Paul’s and James’s perspectives on justification. And let’s not forget that justification means being declared righteous. Paul shows us that Abraham’s faith apart from works was counted for righteousness. James, on the other hand, highlights that Abraham’s faith was made perfect and proven genuine by his works of obedience, most notably when he offered up Isaac. Two different audiences, two different messages, both true in their proper context.
Now, as we move on through Romans chapter 4 and beyond, it’s important to keep these distinctions in mind. Paul wasn’t setting Abraham up as our model for salvation today. Rather, he used Abraham’s testimony to show that Gentiles can be accepted by God through faith only, apart from Israel, the law, and the rituals that defined Israel’s relationship with God in time past. This acceptance of Gentiles through faith alone was a mystery revealed only through Paul. And what Paul did was use Abraham as the foundation to help those who knew the law understand how this could be possible. Today, let’s dig a little deeper into Paul’s testimony of his kinsmen in the flesh regarding gentile salvation. We’ll see exactly why he brings up David, a man under the law of Moses, on this topic.
Chapter 2: Analyzing Romans 4 and David
Romans 4:6-8: Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” Paul, who just before these verses spoke of the imputation of righteousness to Abraham because of his faith, now references David for the same reason, to speak of the blessedness of the man to whom righteousness is imputed by faith, not by works of the law. David speaks of forgiveness and non-imputation of sins within the same context as righteousness.
But we can’t ignore the fact that we’re talking about a man who lived centuries before the cross under the law, when forgiveness was conditional and ongoing, case by case, sacrifice by sacrifice. During the administration under which David lived, forgiveness depended on confession, repentance, and sacrifice under the Mosaic law. And even then, their sins were only covered. Just as Romans 3:25 states, sins that are past, not permanently taken out of the way, God’s forgiveness toward Israel never covered the future sins that they had yet to commit. Only the past ones, after the fact.
Unfortunately, some today read a lot into Romans 4:6-8 that just flat-out isn’t there. They look at it, and because the words righteousness, forgiven, and the phrase not impute sin are used, they assume this is a checklist for how salvation works today in the dispensation of grace. But just as with his prior demonstrations of truth from time past for Israel, here Paul uses this passage to make a point to those who knew the law concerning the salvation that had come to the Gentiles apart from Israel. And most who call themselves mid-Acts or right dividers are well aware, or at least they should be, that David could lose his salvation. The Holy Spirit of promise, which sealed us until the day of redemption, did not seal David until the day of his redemption. That meant he could lose it. He had to, Matthew 24:13, endure until the end to be saved. Anyone who reads Psalm 51 knows the utter despair that he expressed at the thought of God turning his back on him and how he cried out to God not to abandon him. In verse 11, he said, “Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy spirit from me.”
The reason Paul brought up David was to set up a contrast, as he often does—even under the law, forgiveness and non-imputation of sins were not recognized as first steps toward imputed righteousness, but they were temporary and depended on continual sacrifices. This is not the same as the 2 Corinthians 5:19 non-imputation of sins or the imputed righteousness that is in Christ. In addition, David’s words were not only from the perspective of forgiveness and imputed righteousness under the law. He was also speaking prophetically to a future time when Israel’s sins would be blotted out and no longer imputed. He wasn’t talking about anything that would happen during this “but now” dispensation of grace because that was still being kept secret and hidden in God at that time.
But this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who claims to rightly divide the word of truth. They should be well aware that David, the king of Israel, never wrote a thing to or about the body of Christ. Yet, it’s interesting. For some reason, this beautiful statement of fact for Israel’s future kingdom, prophetically made by David, is being used today as a model of salvation by some limited forgivers. They do so to try and prove that forgiveness and the non-imputation of sin automatically equals imputed righteousness. It does not. That’s a mishandling of scripture. That’s not what the passage says. And that’s not why Paul is quoting David.
Let’s read David’s exact words, which is what Paul references here, to see why. Come with me to Psalm chapter 32. Glad to see all of you here today who have downloaded the app and are taking part in this verse-by-verse study through the book of Romans. We’re setting some things straight, which should make this book a whole lot easier to understand. In verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 32, David writes, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.” Sounds very similar to how Paul quoted him. But note that David also added a qualification for this blessedness that Paul did not. Watch. David said, “In whose spirit there is no guile.” Paul never mentioned that. And he didn’t for the same reason he decided not to quote the whole chapter. It wasn’t part of the point he was making.
Let’s park here and talk a little bit about what Paul left out. According to David, the blessed man that Paul calls righteous is not only forgiven of his transgression, has his sin covered, and has no iniquity imputed to him. Neither can he have any guile in his spirit. The word guile is not just another word for deceit or trickery. It goes deeper. It’s a subtle cunning craftiness. Etymological sources say “beguile,” which is a Bible word with “guile” as its root, means to delude or to use artifice. Artifice speaks of skill, cleverness, ingenuity, which often involves trickery or scheming.
So David says there is no guile in the spirit of the blessed man to whom the Lord will not impute iniquity. This is important, guys. The righteous man David describes can’t have any guile. No guile. Yet Paul says, “Oh wretched man that I am.” No guile. Yet Paul says that every man is a liar in comparison to God. No guile. Yet Paul repeats that there is none righteous. But according to David, the man who has no guile in his spirit is the righteous man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, and who has no iniquity being imputed to him. That is not someone who is forgiven upon belief and therefore counted righteous because of that forgiveness. Nope. That’s a limited forgiver lie. Nor is it speaking of anything regarding the true mechanics of salvation during the dispensation of grace at all. This is kingdom doctrine. And kingdom doctrine is for whom? Israel. It’s part of the prophetic promises.
And any right divider worth their salt should know this. In Psalm 32, when David speaks of the blessedness of a man whose sins are forgiven and whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, he speaks as much as a prophet as he speaks as a man in need of God’s forgiveness and mercy for his own sins. While David personally experienced forgiveness one sin at a time under the law, his words look ahead prophetically to a time when forgiveness would not be temporary but permanent for the nation of Israel. A serious Bible student knows that the Psalms are full of prophecies. So, this shouldn’t surprise anyone unless they’ve been cherry-picking and using these passages here in Romans 4 for all the wrong reasons.
What David spoke of is what Peter called the times of refreshing—Acts 3:19. And what Peter called in verse 21, the times of restitution of all things, when at Christ’s return, Israel—their sins, the ones that were covered—will be finally blotted out. Their sinful Adamic nature will be gone when they receive their new sinless terrestrial bodies, fit for serving God on earth. That’s when they’re born again, and the nation Israel will finally walk in unbroken fellowship with God during the earthly millennial kingdom reign. Peter said, “This promise has been spoken by the mouths of all the holy prophets since the world began.” And he’s right. Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, David, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah, Joel, Zechariah—all the prophets spoke of the coming new covenant, a day when God would remember their sins no more. Jeremiah 31:31- you can read there through verse 34- and Ezekiel 36—find that in verses 25-27.
That prophetic blotting out of sins for Israel as a nation is future. Their program was postponed when God saved Paul and sent him to the nations with his gospel of grace. But Israel’s promises will be fulfilled after the body of Christ is caught up. And when the nation of Israel, as a people, endures in their faith until the end during the tribulation and receives Christ as their king at his second coming.
Now let’s prove this. Let’s prove it with God’s word. Look with me at the prophet Jeremiah, who foretells these promises being fulfilled. It’s in chapter 31. Look at verse 34: “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ For they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Did you catch it? This is important. Jeremiah said, “God will forgive their iniquity.” What did David say? David said, “Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.” See that?
Listen. David and Jeremiah are talking about the same people, which makes it rather amusing how limited forgivers falsely claim that not imputing is not the same as being forgiven. When, with our own eyes, we just read that it is. How do they miss this? Because they follow what some man, what some school puts out, and then they go repeat it like a parrot instead of studying God’s word for themselves. Oh, they say, “Study to show thyself approved,” but they don’t do it. They must think “Study to show thyself approved” means study what other men say.
All right, let’s do Jeremiah again. This time chapter 33 and verse 8: “And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity whereby they have sinned against me. And I will pardon all their iniquities whereby they have sinned and whereby they have transgressed against me.” So notice Jeremiah said, “God will pardon whereby they have transgressed.” And David said, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven.” Again, they’re talking about the same people. Let’s move to chapter 50:20: “In those days and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found, for I will pardon them whom I’ve reserved.” It’s all over scripture if you’re willing to study. Jeremiah said, “Their iniquities and sins are none. They can’t be found.” David said, “Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile.” Bingo. We got a match. Once again, they’re both talking about the same people. This is the prophesied removal of sins for Israel. And after Israel’s sins are finally blotted out according to their promises, then they can be called righteous.
Glad you stopped in today, because we’re laying down absolute proof of who the blessed man is that David is talking about. In 1 Peter 2:1 we read, “Wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile,”—there’s that word again. Peter mentions that requirement that David included for the righteous man, having no guile in his spirit. And in Peter’s second epistle, 3:13, he wrote, “Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” Are you seeing this? It’s all coming together. Peter was talking about the new heavens and the new earth where only that which is righteous dwells. And that fits perfectly with Isaiah 60:21: “Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever.” This is obviously why the blessed man dwelling in the kingdom is not just forgiven, but he is also righteous. Only the righteous can dwell there. And those righteous people have to have their prior sins forgiven before they can even have a chance to make it.
Now, let’s go back to the passage from David that Paul references and look deeper at his context by skipping down a couple of verses. Psalm 32:5: “I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” So, do we confess our transgressions unto the Lord to get him to forgive the iniquity of our sin? Of course not. Not during this dispensation. Ephesians 1:13 tells us exactly how we’re saved. And it contains no confession of any kind. Because in the dispensation of grace, which the book of Ephesians currently applies to, the world’s trespasses are not even being imputed to them. You’d be nuts to confess a non-imputed sin expecting something to happen. That’s why the very mechanics of salvation laid out in Ephesians 1:13 have zero to do with getting sins forgiven. The verse says that we trust Christ according to the gospel. Our gospel tells us that God’s not imputing sins. Sins were forgiven at the cross through Christ’s finished crosswork. The atonement that God has already accepted. Forgiveness happened when God said it did. Not you, not any man, not any school. Forgiveness happened when God accepted the atonement. David’s description of the blessedness of the man in the future kingdom of Israel does not match the mechanics of our salvation in Ephesians 1:13. It doesn’t even match the limited forgivers’ false version of the gospel whereby they claim forgiveness is granted upon belief. See, this is when you know they have completely run out of ammo after shooting and missing for so many years. Now they’re just embarrassing themselves by creating wild arguments that their own doctrine can’t even explain.
The blessed man David speaks of and that Paul references is a man in the law system of conditional forgiveness, not in the gospel of grace. Abraham and David are not our patterns for salvation. Paul only used their examples to connect with his Jewish audience, showing that faith has always been key to righteousness and justification, and to help them accept the believing Gentiles as being part of the household of God. Apart from blessing Israel and apart from the law. So why does Paul, writing to the Romans, bring up David’s prophetic words regarding righteousness? It’s all about his audience. As we’ve proven multiple times in this study, the church at Rome was a mixed group. Included were Jews who knew the law and prophets inside and out and Gentiles who were familiar with the law and Israel’s scriptures. Also included were pagan Gentiles, idol worshippers who knew nothing about Moses, Abraham, or the Old Testament. And Paul’s mission—what was it? His mission and the entire purpose of the book of Romans is to bring all these groups together under the mystery doctrine of the dispensation of grace.
Paul had to show these Jews that the law as they knew it had served its purpose and was now fulfilled in Christ. And Paul proved it. He did. He proved it with their own scriptures. By the way, this was something he needed to do because his kinsmen in the flesh would never accept a doctrinal claim unless he could demonstrate it from the foundation of the law and the prophets. That’s why the Jews at Berea searched the scriptures to see whether what Paul was telling them was true. By referencing Abraham and David, Paul built common ground to prove that justification by faith is not a new idea, but rather has always been God’s idea.
Abraham was justified by faith before the law while still a gentile. David, under the law and looking forward to Israel’s future reign as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, recognized the blessedness of forgiveness and the non-imputation of sin promised as a future fulfillment for Israel so that they could achieve their state of righteousness. Paul also had to convince those of Israel who were saved by his gospel that Gentiles who never had the law are now, Ephesians 2:14-15, joined with them in the one new man by faith in Christ apart from the law. See how this works? So when you read Romans 4:6-8, don’t miss the prophetic aspect of this text and Paul’s wisdom in referencing them for his audience. He wasn’t just proof-texting by bringing up these Old Testament passages that dealt only with Israel. He was presenting a gospel that unites Jew and Gentile in one body through the cross.
Another key point we must recognize about Paul’s Romans audience is the Jews he’s addressing. They’re not the same group as the little flock who followed Peter and the 12 in Jerusalem. These are not those of the kingdom who already believed Jesus was their Messiah. In fact, many of them either had never heard about Christ or they outright rejected the claim that Jesus was the promised one. And Paul made it clear that he would not build upon another man’s foundation. You’ll find that in Romans 15:20. And he also avoided preaching Christ where Christ was already named. That means the Jewish audience in Rome was for the most part completely new to the gospel of grace. The only exception was, of course, those like Priscilla and Aquila and a few others like them who traveled back to Rome after first hearing and believing Paul’s gospel elsewhere. The Jews of Rome to whom Paul wrote were not the Messianic believers of early Acts. They were steeped in the law, the synagogue system, and the traditions they had known all their lives. That’s why Paul went to such lengths to prove his points from the Hebrew scriptures. He was laying the groundwork for Jews who were hearing, maybe for the first time, that Jesus was the Christ and that the law as they knew it had been fulfilled. What he’s doing is he’s building a case that stands on their own fathers in the faith—Abraham, David, and Moses.
This is also why Paul’s gospel is so different from what the 12 preached to the little flock in Jerusalem. Paul’s unique apostleship was to the gentile nations and to the Jews, his kinsmen in the flesh who had not yet believed in Christ. So when you hear someone telling you that Paul preached to the little flock trying to get them saved, you’re hearing a big fat lie. His message was that Christ died for all, that forgiveness was accomplished at the cross, and that both Jew and Gentile are now brought together in one body by grace through faith, apart from the law, apart from Israel’s postponed prophetic reign.
And he’s going to tell them that in very plain speech in a few chapters ahead in this study. So stick around as we move through Romans. Keep in mind some of those Paul addresses are deeply rooted in law and the prophets but have not yet come to faith in Christ. But that didn’t discourage Paul from going after his kinsmen. And he is not reinforcing the message of the 12. No, he’s explaining something entirely new—the revelation of the mystery, the gospel of the grace of God. And when we understand the prophetic context of Romans 4:6-8, we can easily see Paul is not saying that forgiveness is equivalent to imputed righteousness. As you’ll hear from limited forgivers, the Jews in Paul’s audience would have known exactly what Paul meant with this passage in describing the blessedness of the man to whom God would impute righteousness without works. They would know that man only existed in Israel’s future kingdom according to their prophecies.
When you ignore the perspective from which Paul wrote to the Romans, you end up taking things out of context and applying passages to yourself that aren’t even about you. It’s odd. It’s rather odd that many right dividers understand who Paul is talking about in Romans 10 but completely miss that same concept in Romans 4, just like they did in Romans 1 with the wrath of God upon Israel, and in chapter 2 with a man who rested in the law of Moses. And again in chapter 3, when Paul talks about who got the oracles of God. And especially in Romans 3:25, where only past sins are remitted, which isn’t our salvation doctrine at all. And now here in chapter 4, some have missed it again. We’ve seen that Abraham was not our pattern for salvation, and neither was David. And a question you must ask is why so many right dividers claim that Paul suddenly jumps to speaking to Israel in Romans chapters 9, 10, and 11, but in all other chapters he’s speaking to Gentiles. Why would Paul write a letter that way?
Chapter 3: Addressing doctrinal errors
The answer is he wouldn’t. And we’re proving it. We’ve been doing so since we started this study. If you haven’t been with us since the beginning, do yourself a favor, go back and catch up. In our next installment, we’re going to tackle some of the logical fallacies that limited forgivers have brought forth concerning this passage in Romans, and we’ll respond to their assertion that forgiveness at the cross is equivalent to being blessed people in hell.
Chapter 4: Clarifying Paul’s audience
Nonsense. They get that silly argument from misreading Romans 4:7. And after that, we’ll finish this chapter and move on into chapter 5, carrying the same understanding of exactly who Paul’s audience is in this letter. He doesn’t switch from Jew to Gentile. Get that out of your head. The whole letter is to whom he said it was to. And he did so—he said that in chapter 1, verse 7.
Chapter 5: Future studies preview
Who’s it to? To all them in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints. See what happens when we just believe God—not a man, not a school, not a theory. When we don’t rely on theories, but we just rely on the facts, the truth of God’s word.
Chapter 6: Focusing on God’s truth
God stopped imputing your sins at the cross. When Jesus died for them all, he was buried and rose the third day to justify all who would believe on him.
Rest your faith in him right now. Today is the day of salvation. 2 Corinthians 6:2. Today is the day of salvation, not the day to get your sins forgiven. Get that out of your mind and stop chasing ways to get sins forgiven, and go ahead and be saved right now.
Join us again for the next Romans verse-by-verse. Grace and peace.
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