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Romans 4:23<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him,<\/span><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n Truth to Learn<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The Old Testament declares important truths for Christians.<\/p>\n Behind the Words<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n In Greek there are two different words translated \u201cnot.\u201d One is ou<\/span><\/em> and the other is m\u0113<\/span><\/em>. The second of these, m\u0113<\/span><\/em>, indicates a conditional negation or when denial is a matter of thought, not fact. The word ou<\/span><\/em>, on the other hand, indicates absolute negation as a matter of fact. In the current verse, the word \u201cnot<\/span>\u201d is translated from the Greek word ou<\/span><\/em>. Hence, it is a matter of fact, not opinion, that \u201cit was not written for his sake alone.\u201d<\/p>\n Meaning Explained<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Since the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the predominantly Jewish Christians in Rome, they certainly were familiar with their ancestor, the patriarch Abraham. Paul has been demonstrating in a series of logical arguments that justification (God\u2019s declaration of our righteousness) does not come from obeying a series of laws or church ordinances. Rather, justification comes of God\u2019s free will (not our free will) to those who believe the promise(s) made by God as recorded in the Bible.<\/p>\n In Abraham\u2019s case God promised that he would be the father of many nations and that he would have descendents as the sand of the sea or as the stars of the heaven, and Abraham believed God. As we have seen in the past few verses, this belief occurred even when Abraham was past child producing years, and he held firm to this belief for more than 20 years even as his body was getting older and less able to produce children.<\/p>\n Moses documented all of this in the book of Genesis, chronicling the life of Abraham in chapters 12 through 25. The specific reference in the current verse is to Genesis 15:5,6<\/span><\/strong> where it says:<\/p>\n And He brought him outside and said, \u201cLook now toward the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to count them.\u201d And He said to him, \u201cSo shall your seed be.\u201d And he believed in Jehovah. And He counted it to him for righteousness.<\/span><\/p>\n What Paul now tells us in the current verse is that Moses\u2019 documentation of this event absolutely was not for Abraham\u2019s sake alone (the fact that Abraham was declared righteous because of his faith). In fact, it was not written for Abraham\u2019s sake at all, given the fact that Abraham had been dead more than 300 years when Moses wrote it. When this was written about Abraham, it clearly elevated Abraham in the eyes of all who read about this, more so than if it had simply been handed down as an oral tradition. So, in a sense, it may have had some benefit to Abraham but more so to his descendents who now had \u201cbragging rights\u201d about their ancestor.<\/p>\n Paul\u2019s point, however, is that there is another (more important) reason that this was written about, and he will state that in the next verse.<\/p>\n Application<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The things written in the Old Testament were not written just for the Jews. These things were also written for Christians who are the spiritual descendents of Abraham.<\/span><\/p>\n In God\u2019s service, for His glory,<\/strong><\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2010 Will Krause. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n <\/span>If this message or this link was forwarded to you by a friend and you wish to receive future verses directly to your inbox, you can call the church phone \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Romans 4:23 Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, Truth to Learn The Old Testament declares important truths for Christians. Behind the Words In Greek there are two different words translated \u201cnot.\u201d One is ou and the other is m\u0113. The second of these, m\u0113, indicates a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[612,647,648],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abraham","tag-imputed","tag-written"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5geA-nO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"signature\"](\"\/signature.gif\")
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