John Calvin Commentary Romans 4:16

"For this cause [it is] of faith, that [it may be] according to grace; to the end that the promise may be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all" — Romans 4:16 (ASV)

It is therefore of faith, etc. This is the winding up of the argument; and you may summarize the whole of it in this statement: “If the heirship of salvation comes to us by works, then faith in it vanishes, and the promise of it is abolished. But it is necessary that both these should be sure and certain; therefore, it comes to us by faith, so that its stability, being based on the goodness of God alone, may be secured.” See how the Apostle, regarding faith as something firm and certain, considers hesitancy and doubt as unbelief, by which faith is abolished and the promise abrogated. And yet this doubting is what the schoolmen call a moral conjecture, and which, alas! they substitute for faith.

That it might be by grace, etc. Here, in the first place, the Apostle shows that nothing is set before faith but mere grace; and this, as they commonly say, is its object. For if faith were to consider merits, Paul would absurdly infer that whatever it obtains for us is gratuitous. I will repeat this again in other words: “If grace is everything that we obtain by faith, then every regard for works is laid in the dust.”

But what follows next more fully removes all ambiguity: that the promise then only stands firm when it rests on grace. For by this expression, Paul confirms this truth: that as long as people depend on works, they are harassed with doubts, because they deprive themselves of what the promises contain. Hence, also, we may easily learn that grace is not to be understood, as some imagine, as the gift of regeneration, but as a gratuitous favor. For as regeneration is never perfect, it can never suffice to pacify souls, nor can it, of itself, make the promise certain.

Not to that only which is of the law, etc. Although these words in another place mean those who, being absurd zealots of the law, bind themselves to its yoke and boast of their confidence in it, yet here they simply mean the Jewish nation, to whom the law of the Lord had been delivered.

For Paul teaches us in another passage that all who remain bound to the dominion of the law are subject to a curse; it is therefore certain that they are excluded from the participation of grace. He does not, therefore, call them the servants of the law who, adhering to the righteousness of works, renounce Christ; rather, they were those Jews who had been brought up in the law and yet professed the name of Christ. But that the meaning of the scriptural phrase may be made clearer, let it be worded thus: “Not to those only who are of the law, but to all who imitate the faith of Abraham, though they had not the law before.”

Who is the father of us all, etc. The relative “who” has the meaning of a causative particle, for Paul meant to prove that the Gentiles had become partakers of this grace, inasmuch as by the same divine declaration by which the heirship was conferred on Abraham and his seed, the Gentiles were also constituted his seed. For Abraham is said to have been made the father not of one nation, but of many nations; by which was presignified the future extension of grace, which was then confined to Israel alone.

For unless the promised blessing had been extended to them, they could not have been counted as the offspring of Abraham. The past tense of the verb, according to the common usage of Scripture, denotes the certainty of God’s counsel; for though nothing was less apparent then, yet as God had thus decreed, Abraham is rightly said to have been made the father of many nations.

Let the testimony of Moses be included in a parenthesis, so that this clause, “Who is the father of us all,” may be connected with the other, “before God,” etc. For it was also necessary to explain what that relationship was, so that the Jews might not boast too much in their carnal descent. Hence Paul says, “He is our father before God”; which means the same as if he had said, “He is our spiritual father.” For Abraham had this privilege not from his own flesh, but from the promise of God.