The Gospel Accourding to Paul #12. Romans 4:9-15

Romans 4:9–15 | Big Faith and Real Growth

In this episode of Sage Spirituality, Joil Marbut continues the journey through Romans 4:9–15, unpacking Paul’s gospel-centered argument that righteousness has always come by faith, not law or religious markers. Using Abraham as the foundation, Paul reminds both Jews and Gentiles that God’s promises are received through faith alone—a truth that can feel almost too good to be true.

From there, the conversation widens into what big faith really looks like. Faith is not a feeling or passive belief, but an active trust that grows through testing, obedience, and surrender. Joil explores how God uses trials to strengthen faith and offers practical wisdom on cultivating growth through the “three C’s”: crowd, consumption, and commitment.

The episode also tackles an important and often sensitive topic—distinguishing between healthy spiritual authority and spiritual abuse—offering clarity, compassion, and biblical grounding. This is an invitation to deeper trust, wiser discernment, and courageous faith that steps fully into God’s promises.

Thank you for joining us at the table.
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Transcript

Intro: 0:05

You're listening to Sage Spirituality, reaching back, leaning in, and seeking out a deeper experience with God with your host, Joil Marbut.

Joil Marbut: 0:20

I want to welcome you back to this journey through the gospel according to Paul. We're walking through the book of Romans bit by bit, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and we're focusing on Paul's just absolute deep wellspring of the gospel. Paul's taking his time here and dividing the Word of God or dividing theology so that Jews and Gentiles, legalistics and licentious, can both understand and fully embrace the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So before we jump into our text today, what I want to do is I want to ask you for a favor. Will you share? Will you subscribe? And will you rate our podcast? You help us so much when you do that. We get messages from around the world, people listening to Sage Spirituality, and they're part of this community. They're at the table with you because of your faithfulness. So today we're going to jump in again to Romans 4, and we're going to go Romans 4, 9 through 15. And the Apostle Paul wrote this: he said, Does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. How then was it accounted? While he was circumcised or uncircumcised, not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe. Though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised. Verse thirteen, for the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect, because the law brings about wrath. For where there is no law, there is no transgression. Now, Paul is again focusing on the Jewish contingency inside of the church in Rome. You see, the Jewish people would look at Abraham as an absolute perfect example. He was their spiritual father. He was their founding father, if you will. And they started connecting him because of circumcision, they started connecting him with the law. Yet Paul is pointing out that Abraham was accounted logismo. I don't know if if you haven't listened to the last episode, go back and listen and understand that Greek word logismo. It wasn't accounted to him as righteousness after he was circumcised, but before. You see, God dealt with Abraham 400 years before we had the Mosaic law. God was dealing with Abraham on the basis of faith. And Paul is pointing out that realistically Jesus' coming takes us back to that beginning, back to that place where we're all children of Abraham. Abraham is our father of the faith. And when we look at this, it's and we hear the gospel, and just like the Jews and probably the Gentiles, when they were listening to this presentation that sounded just too good to be true, and it was based on one thing that was key, and it was our faith by grace through faith that we receive what God's promised us, eternal life. And when we talk about this so many times, just like those people in Rome, just like those brothers and sisters in Rome 2,000 years ago, we struggle with this good news because it is so good, we just can't wrap our head around it. Some people want the perks of the promise, but they don't want the commitment. Remember that we have talked about faith, and faith is not just some kind of warm assent or warm fuzzy feeling, but faith is active. It brings change into our life, it brings fruit into our life. And right here, Paul is pointing out again, I love the way he does this in verse 11. He says that faith, actually, the works of faith are signs and seals. It's just an indicator to allow us to see what's going on. Now, I think this brings us to a place in this conversation today, probably not unlike what happened with Jesus in Luke 17, 1 through 6, where his followers came to him and said, Lord, increase our faith. I think a lot of times in our life we could look at it and say, Man, I wish my faith was bigger. I wish my faith was was, I wish I had giant faith. I know people have said, I wish I had bulldog faith or mountain-moving faith, or I wish I had faith like uh a Smith Wigglesworth or some great man or woman of God that had performed amazing uh works for God's glory. But you know, when we talk about our faith growing, our faith does indeed grow by being in proximity to the Word of God, brings it forth, it makes it sprout. But how does it grow? Well, first, I think it's very important for us to understand that God wants to increase our faith. George Mueller, the great missionary, said this. He said, God delights to increase the faith of his children. We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, to be willing to take them from God's hand as a means. I say and say it deliberately: trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats are the very food of faith. We should take them out of his hands as evidence of his love and care for us and developing more and more that faith which he is seeking to strengthen in us. That's such a beautiful understanding. God wants to increase our faith, but God has his way of making our faith grow. So that brings me to this question. If I want my faith to grow, how does my faith grow? Well, right here, as George Mueller said, and knew from experience, it's by being tested. It's by being tested. The Apostle Peter said this in 1 Peter 1 6 through 8. It is it in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been given grieved. You have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory, all glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. James, the Apostle James, kind of concurs with the Apostle Peter, and he says in chapter one, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Both of these texts point toward the same landing spot. That God will grow our faith, and He will grow our faith through testing. He will grow our faith through testing. Now we should not rely on our feelings. There are many times I don't enjoy having my faith tested, I don't enjoy going through trials, but I realize God is using those things, and I can't trust my emotions or my feelings. The prophet Jeremiah said it in Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? The apostles tell the prophets telling us, do not trust in your heart. Don't trust the things you see. Don't trust your feelings. Trust God. Know that God's in control and know that God is working even in the difficult times. You know, when we're being tried, it's exercising our faith to trust God where we are. That means if we're in the valley of the shadow of death, we're trusting God. If we're in a place that we don't understand, we're trusting God. If we're in an extremely, extremely challenging situation, we trust God. It's by trusting God that we're building our faith, that our faith is growing just like a muscle that's pushed under stress, little by little will grow and get more and more powerful. You know, when we are being tested, it's also important for us to submit. It's submit to our spiritual authority. In one of our future podcasts, we'll cover Romans 13, where Paul points out that all authority is God-given. And, you know, so many times some people I've known they never grow because every time they feel like things are getting heavy or things are getting tight in the church they're in, they just leave and find another place that's easier. So many times they say, I'm stepping out in faith, or we're looking to, you know, God's moving us somewhere else. But for some reason, God's always moving them to an easier place. Yet when we look at the Bible, it seems very clear to me that God, when he was moving people, he was always moving them in the opposite direction toward more challenging situations and more challenging times. I can give a personal testimony. I remember when I made the decision to go into full-time ministry, I took an 85% pay cut. It was crazy. On paper, it made no sense whatsoever. I was working more hours, making less money, but I learned to live on faith, truly live on faith. Faith is never based on feelings. Now, if we are going to submit to our spiritual authority, we have to be able to distinguish the difference between spiritual authority and spiritual abuse. T Cannon, she's a survivor of spiritual authority. And she described two different scenarios. She said, if I go to the dentist for a root canal and experience discomfort from the procedure, that's pain, but not abuse. Yet if I go to the dentist for a root canal and the dentist jabs me over and over with the numbing anesthesia to get a thrill, that's abuse. In the same way biblical doctrines can be offensive, but if taught in a biblical way, they are for our good. Abuse happens when a person wields biblical doctrine or spiritual authority to manipulate, dominate, deflect, or direct the narrative in his or her favor, whether it's meant to inflate an ego or gratify a lust or protect a reputation. I know that there are people that have been hurt by spiritual leaders, by leaders that have used scripture in a wrong way. They haven't been Christ-like. Their life did not embody the servant leadership of Jesus. And can I just take a second, if that's you right now, and you've been hurt by a pastor, by a church, or by an organization, or anything like that, and you're you're just struggling, can I apologize? Can I apologize on behalf of the church, the real church, and real Christians? Can I apologize right now for that pain that you felt? Yet all pain that we feel is not spiritual abuse. Kim Pennington, a PhD in Christian ethics and philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, she was talking about this and she said, are you having a disagreement with someone? That's not spiritual abuse. You have to look for long-term patterns of behavior. You know, if you're just having a disagreement with your pastor or you're having a challenging time with some of the preaching or something, it's just making you feel uncomfortable because maybe it is true doctrine and true gospel and true theology. That's not spiritual abuse. But if there's a long-term pattern you can distinguish. If you look at a pastor and there's a constant turnover and people are constantly coming in and going out, leaders are leaving, etc., etc., then you can realize there's something wrong. Now, I will challenge you now, because part of our spiritual growth in faith is learning to obey God even when we don't feel it. And I would encourage you to forgive. And you forgive simply because God has told you to do it. It doesn't mean that you justify their actions. It doesn't mean that you don't hold them accountable, but you do forgive. Even when you don't want to do it. You know, I love the in Matthew 22, we're mandated to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself. And we know that how that story plays out. That's where we get the parable of the Good Samaritan. And when we talk about who is it that we're supposed to love, I love this idea. When Jesus gave that parable of the Good Samaritan, realistically he was telling the Jews, the person you're commanded to love as your neighbor is the one you hope God's not telling you to love. So I challenge you today. I'm challenging you today to take a step of faith. Forgive, pray for them, and get to a place where you can love them, even though they've hurt you. I'm convinced the reason that the enemy wants to convince you to follow your heart and choose not to love. Because when we choose not to love, it takes away the most Christ-like element from our lives. The most Christ-like thing we can do is love our enemies. Not just loving those that love us, but loving our enemies. Now I want to take a step real quick, and I want to give you a very practical way. This is not inside of this text, but it's something I've lived by for a long time, and these are three C's of growing your faith. Three C's of growing your faith. Your crowd will determine how your faith is growing. 1 Corinthians 15, 33 says, Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Proverbs 27, 17, iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. As one of my mentors told me, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. Or in another way, show me your five closest friends and I'll show you what you'll become. The people around us that are closest to us are determining our level of faith. Surround yourself, not by legalistic holier than thou people. Find people that will challenge your faith and push you to become a more faithful servant. Second thing is your consumption. What are you consuming? Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. The Center for Biblical Engagement has done unbelievable studies on the power of the Word of God. But the Word of God only has effect in your life if you're reading it at least four days a week. If you're reading your Bible once a week or once a month, you're gonna have there's not gonna be any change. But if you start reading your Bible four, five, seven days a week, for me, it's every day. I do not miss reading my Bible because I realize that I have to consume the Word of God to grow. You know, we can look at our addiction to smartphones. And in the National Library of Medicine, there was an article published in 2021. Uh, the title is Excessive Smartphone Use and is associated with health problems in adolescents and young adults. They say that depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, and alcohol use comes from excessive smartphone use. That people that are addicted to their cell phones have problems with cognitive emotion regulation, impulsivity impaired cognitive function, addiction to social networking, shyness, low self-esteem. The medical problems are sleep depravity, reduced physical fitness, unhealthy eating habits, pain in migraines, reduced cognitive control, and changes in the brain's gray matter volume. If you want to know if you're addicted to your cell phone, then do yourself a favor and shut it off for a day and see how it makes you feel. And if you feel anxious, you feel jittery, you feel like, man, I I you know I'm I'm kind of naked here. I don't have my phone. Then I would challenge you to put yourself into a process of detaching from that consumption so that you would be able to focus more on the eternal things of God. There are two billion Christians in the world, yet less than 30% will read the entire Bible. Can you imagine that? Three out of ten Christians around the world, I would imagine those numbers are much lower in the United States. There's some places where Christians are persecuted and they literally put their life on the line to read the Word of God, and it's such a treasure to them. In fact, 82% of American Christians only read their Bibles on Sundays while they're in church. The final C it's your crowd, your consumption. And the third is your commitment. Psalm 37, 5 says, commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he'll act. Proverbs 16, 3 says, commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. Martin Luther King Jr. said in a real sense, faith is total surrender to God. When we talk about faith, we eventually have to come to a place where our faith is reflected through our commitments and made stronger. Missionary E. Stanley Jones said this: if you don't surrender to God, don't think you don't surrender. Everybody surrenders to something. Everybody surrenders to something. This is going to be illustrated by a daredevil, Clifford Claverly. Clifford Claverly was a tightrope walker from Canada, and he made a decision to walk across a high wire at Niagara Falls. And he walks across the highwire, but he doesn't just walk across with a pole. He walks across pushing a wheelbarrow. All right? So he pushes the wheelbarrow all the way across. And he gets to the other side and the crowd goes wild. And he says, Now that you've seen what I can do, do you believe I can do it again? And everybody says, Yes, we believe that. He says, Do you think I can do it with another person in the wheelbarrow? Everybody says, Yes, just thinking, man, it's going to be awesome. And then Calvary says, Who wants to climb in? It got really quiet. Nobody volunteered. You know, eventually, in our faith, we're going to have to make a decision to trust God, to get into, to put our money where our mouth is, to climb into the wheelbarrow, make a commitment, a true commitment to God. Not only to believe, but to serve, to be a part of his kingdom, to serve in our church, to make a commitment day in and day out to read the Word of God, to pray, to grow our faith so we can be everything He created us to be. I want to thank you again for being here with us at Sage Spirituality. I look forward to you coming back with us here at the table, where we're going to reach back in church history and lean into Scripture and go deeper in our relationship with God.