Romans 4:4-14

⁴If we receive wages for work that we do, those wages are not considered to be a gift. Instead, they are considered to be what we have earned. Similarly, if God erases the record of our sins because we did things to earn God's favor, we would not consider that God's erasing the record of our sin was a gift. Instead, we would consider it as what we had earned.

⁵But suppose that we do not do things to gain God's acceptance. Suppose that we instead trust in God, who erases the record of sins of wicked people. Then the erasing of the record of our sins because of our trusting in Christ is considered to be a gift to us, not something that we earned.

⁶Similarly, it is as David wrote in the Psalms about people being happy whose record of sins God has erased even though they have not done things to earn it. David wrote:

⁷God is pleased with people whose sins have been {whose sins he has} forgiven, and whose sins he has decided to forget DOU.

⁸God causes to be happy the people whose sins he no longer keeps a record of.

⁹As for our being happy because God has erased the record of our sins, ◄it is not something that only we Jews can experience./is it MTY something that only we Jews can experience?► RHQ No, it is also something that non-Jews can experience MTY. What is written in the Scriptures, that it was because Abraham trusted in God that the record of his sins was erased { God erased the record of his sins}, also shows that this is true.

¹⁰◄ Think about when God erased the record of Abraham's sins./When did God erase the record of Abraham's sins?► RHQ ◄Consider whether it happened after someone circumcised Abraham to mark him as one who belonged to God, or before someone circumcised him./ Did it happen after Abraham was circumcised to be marked as one who belonged to God, or before he was circumcised?► RHQ It happened before he was circumcised, not after he was circumcised.

¹¹Many years later, God commanded that Abraham be circumcised. Abraham's accepting that ritual simply showed that he knew that God had accepted him. He knew that God had erased the record of his sins because he trusted in God while he was still, in effect, a non-Jew because he had not been circumcised. So we can understand that Abraham became ◄a spiritual ancestor/like an ancestor► to all of us whose record of sins has been erased {whose sins God has erased the record of} because we believe in God's promise, even though some of us are not circumcised.

¹²Likewise, Abraham is the spiritual ancestor of all us Jews who are not merely circumcised but who, more importantly, believe in God's promise as our ancestor Abraham did, even before he was circumcised.

¹³God promised Abraham and his descendants that they would receive the blessings that he promised to give to the people in the world. But when he promised that, it was not because Abraham obeyed the laws that God later gave to Moses. Instead, it was because Abraham believed that God would do what he promised that he would do. As a result, God erased the record of his sins.

¹⁴If we think that it is those who obey God's laws who will receive what he has promised, it is useless for us to trust in him. And what he promised is worthless. Remember that it is stated in God's law PRS that he will punish people who do not perfectly obey them, and remember that wherever MTY laws exist, people disobey them LIT.