Blessedness is not From Something Earned But From Something Received
David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
“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 4:6-8
Paul now moves from Abraham to David, from Genesis 15:6 to Psalm 32:1,2. ‘David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works’ (4:6). The language of crediting has slightly changed. God is still the person who in grace does the crediting but what He puts into our account is not ‘faith as righteousness’ but ‘righteousness’.
“Blessed are those
whose transgressions are forgiven
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord will never count against them” (4:7,8)
Three times in Hebrew parallelism David refers to evil deeds, once as ‘transgressions’ (lawlessness) and twice as ‘sins’ (failures). Sin is both stepping over a known boundary (transgression) and falling short of God’s standard (sin). And three times he tells us what God has done with them. Our transgressions ‘are forgiven,’ our sins ‘are covered’ and our sin ‘the Lord will never count against’ us. Instead of putting our sins to account against us, God pardons and covers them.
The key point is that people who are blessed are not those who have earned something from God; they are the ones who have received something from him. Their transgressions are forgiven and their sins are covered. God doesn’t hold anything against them. They will continue to sin in some way and God will continue not to hold anything against them. He accepts them and blesses them. These scriptures confirm what Paul argued in 4:4,5: God ‘justifies the wicked.’ He declares ‘innocent’ people who, in themselves, are not innocent.
By looking back over this early part of chapter 4, we can more easily see how our passage in 4:6-8 plays its part in the apostle’s argument. Paul dismisses out of hand the possibility that Abraham could have been ‘justified by works’ (4:2). But when he affirms how God ‘justifies the wicked’ (4:5), he uses three terms. First God credits to us faith as righteousness (4:3,5,9,22f). Secondly He credits to us righteousness apart from works (4:6,11,13,24). And thirdly He refuses to credit our sins against us, but pardons and covers them instead (4:7,8).
Justification involves a double counting, crediting or reckoning. Negatively, God will never count our sins against us. Positively, God credits our account with righteousness as a free gift, by faith, and altogether apart from works.
This is our inheritance in Christ, received by grace through faith, as we responded to the good news of the gospel.