Romans 4:13-14

“ For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not made to Abraham, or to his seed, by the law, but by the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise annulled. ”

The for bears on the understood objection which we have just explained: “For it need not be imagined that the promised inheritance is to be obtained by means of the law, and that the people of the law are consequently assured of it.” Paul knew that this thought lay deep in the heart of every Jew. He attacks it unsparingly, demonstrating that the very opposite is the truth; for the law, far from procuring the promised inheritance for the Jews, would infallibly deprive them of it.

The possession of the world, of which the apostle speaks, had been promised to Abraham and his posterity in three forms. 1. In the promise made to the patriarch of the land of Canaan. For, from the prophetic and Messianic point of view, which dominated the history of the patriarchal family from the beginning, the land of Canaan was the emblem of the sanctified earth; it was the point of departure for the glorious realization of the latter. In this sense it is said in the Tanchuma: “God gave our father Abraham possession of the heavens and earth. ” 2. Several promises of another kind naturally led to the extension of the possession of the promised land to that of the whole world; for example, the three following, Genesis 12:3: “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed;” Genesis 22:17: “Thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;” Genesis 22:18: “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The two expressions: in thee, and in thy seed, alternate in these promises. But they are combined, as in our passage, in the verses, Genesis 26:3-4, where we also again find the two ideas of the possession of Canaan, and the blessing of the whole world through Israel. 3. Above all these particular promises there ever rested the general promise of the Messianic kingdom, the announcement of that descendant of David to whom God had said: “I have given thee the uttermost parts of the earth for an inheritance” (Psa 2:8). Now Israel was inseparable from its Messiah, and such an explanation led men to give to the preceding promises the widest and most elevated sense possible. Israel had not been slow to follow this direction; but its carnal spirit had given to the universal supremacy which it expected, a yet more political than religious complexion. Jesus, on the contrary, in His Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, had translated this idea of dominion over the world into that of the humble love which rules by serving: “Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.” The apostle does not here enter on the question of how the promise is to be fulfilled; he deals only with the condition on which it is to be enjoyed. Is the law or faith the way of entering into the possession of this divine inheritance, and consequently are the people of law or of faith the heirs?

The word inheritance, to express ownership, reproduces the Hebrew name Nachala, which was used to designate the land of Canaan. This country was regarded as a heritage which Israel, Jehovah's first-born son, had received from his heavenly Father.

To prove that the inheriting seed is not Israel, but the nation of believers, Jews or Gentiles, Paul does not use, as Meyer, Hodge, and others suppose, the same argument as he follows in Galatians 3:15 et seq. He does not argue here from the fact that the law was given subsequently to the patriarchal covenant, and could make no change in that older contract, which was founded solely on the promise on the one hand, and faith on the other. The demonstration in our passage has not this historical character; it is, if one may so speak, dogmatic in its nature. Its meaning is to this effect: If the possession of the world were to be the reward of observing the law, the promise would thereby be reduced to a nullity. This declaration is enunciated Romans 4:14, and proved Romans 4:15. The inference is drawn Romans 4:16.