<p>4:3&nbsp;<i>What did the Scripture say..?</i>- The Bible as a living word continues to speak with us, in part of an ongoing dialogue between God and man.<br /></p><p><i>And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness</i>- The Greek word for &ldquo;counted&rdquo; occurs very often in this section. Significantly, Rom. 3:28 says that we are to conclude s.w. &ldquo;count&rdquo; that we are justified by faith rather than works. We are to view ourselves, impute to ourselves, as God does. His view of us is to be our view of ourselves. The Septuagint uses this word with regard to sacrifices symbolic of Christ&rsquo;s death on the cross being &ldquo;reckoned&rdquo; to a person (Lev. 7:18; Num. 18:27,30); and of Shimei asking David not to &ldquo;reckon&rdquo; his guilt to him, to judge him not according to the obvious facts of the case (2 Sam. 19:20). The Old Testament is at pains to stress that Yahweh will&nbsp;<i>not</i>&nbsp;justify the guilty (Ex. 23:7; Is. 5:23; Prov. 17:15). This is where the unique significance of Jesus comes in. Because of&nbsp;<i>Him</i>, His death and our faith in it, our being in Him, God can justify the wicked in that they have died with Christ in baptism (Rom. 6:3-5), they are no longer, they are only &ldquo;in Christ&rdquo;, for them &ldquo;to live is Christ&rdquo;. They are counted as in Him, and in this way sinners end up justified.</p><p>Abraham's weakness at the time of the Genesis 15 promises is perhaps behind how Paul interprets the star-gazing incident in Rom. 4:3-5. He is answering the Jewish idea that Abraham never sinned (see on Rom. 4:2). He quotes the incident, and God's counting of righteousness to Abraham, as proof that a man with no &quot;works&quot;, nothing to glory before God with, can believe in God to &quot;justify the ungodly&quot;, and thereby be counted righteous. Understanding Abraham's mood as revealed in Gen. 15:1-4 certainly helps us see the relevance of all this to Abraham. And it helps us see Abraham more realistically as the father of us all... and not some Sunday School hero, well beyond our realistic emulation. No longer need we think &quot;Abraham? Oh, yeah, Abraham... faith... wow. But me... nah. I'm not Abraham...&quot;. He's for real, truly our example, a realistic hero whom we can cheer and pledge to follow. For Abraham is an example to us of God's grace to man, and a man in all his weakness and struggle with God accepting it and believing it, even when he is &quot;<i>un</i>godly&quot;, rather than a picture of a white-faced placid saint with unswerving faith:&nbsp;<br />&quot;What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, hath found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not toward God. For what saith the scripture? And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned as of grace, but as of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness&quot; (Rom. 4:1-5).</p><p>It is in the very struggle for faith that we have that we show ourselves to have the family characteristic of Abraham. That moment when the &quot;ungodly&quot;, doubting, bitter Abraham believed God's promise is to be as it were our icon, the picture we rise up to: &quot;Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Know therefore that they that are of faith, the same are sons of Abraham&quot; (Gal. 3:6,7).&nbsp;The struggle within Abraham at the time is brought out by Paul in Rom. 4:18-24, which seems to be a kind of psychological commentary upon the state of Abraham's mind as he stood there looking at the stars in the presence of God / an Angel (&quot;before him God whom he believed&quot;, Rom. 4:17): &quot;Who in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy seed be. And without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb; yet, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform. Wherefore also it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned unto him; but for our sake also, unto whom it shall be reckoned, who believe on him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead&quot;.</p><p>It may be that Abraham realised his own spiritual weakness at this time, if we follow Paul's argument in Rom. 4:3,5: &quot;If Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory... (but) Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness... to him (alluding to Abraham) that worketh not, but believeth (as did Abraham) on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith (like Abraham's) is counted for righteousness&quot;. Surely this suggests that Abraham felt&nbsp;<i>ungodly</i>&nbsp;at the time, unworthy of this great promise, recognizing he only had moments of faith, and yet he believed that although he was ungodly, God would justify him and give him the promise, and therefore he was counted as righteous and worthy of the promise. There is certainly the implication of some kind of forgiveness being granted Abraham at the time of his belief in Gen. 15:6; righteousness was imputed to him, which is tantamount to saying that his ungodliness was covered. In this context, Paul goes straight on to say that the same principles operated in the forgiveness of David for his sin with Bathsheba.&nbsp; It would actually appear that Paul is writing here, as he often does, with his eye on deconstructing popular Jewish views at the time. Their view of Abraham was that he was perfect, &quot;Godly&quot; in the extreme- and Paul's point is that actually he was not, he was &quot;ungodly&quot;, but counted righteous not by his acts but by his faith.&nbsp;</p>