Romans 4:16-20

¹⁶So it is because we trust in God that we will receive the things that he has promised. It is not because we perfectly obey God's laws. He wants ◄to erase the record of our sins/to declare us no longer guilty► without our earning it. As a result, what God now promises, he guarantees to give to all people who are Abraham's spiritual descendants. He promises to do that not only for us Jewish believers, who have God's laws and trust in him as Abraham did, but also for those non-Jews who do not have God's laws but who trust in him as Abraham did. Abraham is the spiritual ancestor of all of us believers.

¹⁷What is written {What Moses wrote} in the Scriptures about what God promised Abraham shows that this is true. God said to him, “It is in order that you (sg) may be the ancestor of many ethnic groups that I have chosen you.” Romans 4:17b-22 God guaranteed that he would give Abraham many descendants. Abraham confidently believed that God would do that,

¹⁸even though there was no physical reason for him to hope that he would have descendants, because he and his wife were too old to bear children. But God is the one who causes dead people to live again, and who talks about things that do not yet exist as already existing. God said to Abraham, “You will have so many descendants that they will be as impossible to count as the stars.” And Abraham believed that, and he believed that he would become the ancestor of many ethnic groups.

¹⁹He did not doubt that God would do what he promised, even though he knew that his body was already as incapable of begetting children as if he were dead MET because he was about a hundred years old. And even though he realized that Sarah had never been able to become pregnant IDM,

²⁰he did not doubt at all that God would do what he had promised. Instead, he trusted in God more/very strongly, and he thanked God for what God was going to do.