Romans 4:23-24

“ Now it was not written for him only, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, when we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. ”

The apostle extracts the permanent principle contained in Abraham's case to apply it to us. The δέ, now, marks this advance. Δἰ αὐτόν, for him (strictly: on account of him), does not signify to his honor (Beza, Thol.). The idea is that the narrative was written not merely to relate a fact belonging to Abraham's history, but also to preserve the knowledge of an event which should take place in ours. So it will be on the condition expressed by the following participle τοῖς πιστεύουσιν, for us who believe, the meaning of which we have rendered freely in the translation (when we believe). Every time this condition shall be fulfilled, the same imputation will certainly take place; such is the meaning of the word μέλλει, is to.

But what in our position now will be the object of faith? Faith in the biblical sense can only have one object. Whether Abraham or we be the parties in question, this object, always the same, is God and His manifestation. But in consequence of the unceasing progress, which takes place in the divine work, the mode of this manifestation cannot but change. In the case of Abraham God revealed Himself by the promise of an event to be accomplished; the patriarch required therefore to believe in the form of hope, by cleaving to the divine attribute which could realize it. In our position now we are in presence of an accomplished fact, the display of the almighty grace of God in the resurrection of Jesus. The object of faith is therefore different in form and yet the same in substance: God and His manifestation, then in word, now in act. What closely binds the two historical facts brought into connection, though so distant, the birth of Isaac and the resurrection of Jesus, is that they are the two extreme links of one and the same chain, the one the point of departure, the other the consummation of the history of salvation. But it must not be imagined that, because it falls to us to believe in an accomplished fact, faith is now nothing more than historical credence given to the reality of this fact. The apostle at once sets aside this thought when he says, not: “when we believe in the resurrection of Jesus,” but: “when we believe in God who raised Jesus; ” comp. Colossians 2:12. He excludes it likewise when he designates this Jesus raised from the dead as our Lord, one who has been raised by this divine act to the position of representative of the divine sovereignty, and especially to the Headship of the body of the church. He gives it to be understood, finally, by unfolding in the following verse the essential contents of this supreme object of faith.