WARM-UP Questions

1. What do you think are the common misunderstandings of what it means to ‘have faith in God’?

READ Romans 4:1-3

1. What is Paul hoping to achieve by referring to Abraham as an example of ‘justification by faith’?
2. What part of Scripture is Paul quoting in verse 3? What does he mean by ‘credited to him as righteousness’? How is that true for us?

READ Romans 4:4-15

1. What are the three possible sources of justification that Paul rules out? Can you give his reasoning and logic for each of them, one-by-one?
2. In what way does believing in God involve a transfer of trust away from ourselves and to God? Are there any areas in your life, or times, in which you have found this particularly challenging?

READ Romans 4:16-25

1. How was it evident to Abraham (and Sarah) that they were helpless without God? How is that true for all of us in some way?
2. Why do you think it is often in the most trying of times that we grow in our faith? Can you think of an example in which this was true? How did you grow?
3. What are the dangers of thinking that we can contribute to our own salvation even in the smallest of ways? How can we be on guard against this as individuals and as a church?
4. Did the quality of Abraham’s trust in God ever waver? Why was Abraham’s (and our) justification not dependent on the quality of our trust but the one in whom we trust?
5. In what way was Abraham ‘fully persuaded’ that God could and would do all that he promised? How can we share the same assurance of God’s promises?
6. What are the rhythms of our life that can help us to be reminded and grow in our confidence of God?
7. Who can we made righteous by faith? How is our faith like Abraham’s? How is it different?
8. How can we be actually even more confident than Abraham was?
9. When it comes to justification, how does it matter that Jesus was raised from the dead?

APPLY (this week): Choose a verse from Romans 3 or 4 to memorise and meditate on this week. Focusing on it word-by-word and create a prayer based on that sentence.

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Video

• ‘Faith – Romans 4:1-9’ by Ray Galea
• ‘Faith – Romans 4:8-15’ by Dan Lee

Audio

• ‘Romans 4’ by Christopher Ash
• ‘1 Voice’ by Stephen McAlpine
• ‘Romans 4:1-12’ and ‘Romans 4:13-25’ by Kevin Anderson
• ‘Romans 4:13-25’ and ‘Romans 4:13-25’ by Kevin Anderson
• ‘God Justifies Freely’ by Jim Spence

Helpful Books and Articles

• ‘Study and Exposition of Romans 3:21-31’ by Greg Herrick
• ‘What is Justification? What does it mean to be justified?’ from gotquestions.com
• Romans (Read, Mark, Learn Series) by William Taylor (St Helens Bishopsgate
• Romans (The Story of God Bible Commentary Series) by Michael Bird

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