<p>4:16&nbsp;<i>Therefore it is of faith, that it may be according to grace; to the end that the promise may be sure</i>- God&rsquo;s promises are sure from His end, in that He will not break them. But the promised inheritance of the Kingdom would never be a very sure promise if it depended upon human acts of obedience to come true. But because salvation is by our faith in God&rsquo;s grace, declaring us right quite apart from our works- therefore we are sure of entering that Kingdom, and in this sense it is grace which makes the promise sure. The certainty of our future hope and present salvation is therefore precisely in the fact that it doesn&rsquo;t depend upon our works. All the time we think it does, the promise of salvation will not appear to us to be at all &ldquo;sure&rdquo;.</p><p><i>To all the seed</i>- the fact salvation is by pure grace to sinners means that any person of whatever ethnic background may believe in it and accept it. The result of that is that there should be no spiritual difference between ethnic groups such as Jew and Gentile in Rome. And today, our common experience of utter grace, each of us accessing it by faith, should be the basis for a powerful unity.</p><p><i>Not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham</i>- There is an intended ambiguity in the phrase &ldquo;the faith of Abraham&quot; (Rom. 4:16); this 'ambiguous genitive' can mean those who share &quot;the (doctrinal) faith&quot; , which Abraham also believed; or those who have the kind of belief which Abraham had. Like Abraham, we are justified by&nbsp;<i>the</i>&nbsp;faith in Christ; not faith in Christ, but more specifically&nbsp;<i>the&nbsp;</i>faith in Christ (Gal. 2:16). The use of the definite article surely suggests that it is our possession of the same doctrinal truths (the Faith) which Abraham had, which is what leads to faith in Christ and thereby our justification. The&nbsp;<i>life</i>&nbsp;Paul lived was by&nbsp;<i>the</i>&nbsp;Faith of Christ; not simply by faith, as a verb, which is how grammatically it should be expressed if this is what was meant; but by&nbsp;<i>the</i>&nbsp;Faith (Gal. 2:20).</p><p><i>Who is the father of us all</i>- see on Rom. 4:1.</p>