Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #7 in Romans 3,  and we will read Romans 3:3-4:

For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.

We will stop reading there.  We are continuing to look at the advantage that God said the Jews had, which was “much in very way,” but it chiefly had to do with the fact that the oracles of God were committed to them.

Then the question was raised, “For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?”  The answer was, “God forbid.” 

But before we move on to that, let us look a little more at the question about whether the unbelief of many in the Jewish nation of Israel make the faith of God without effect.  And the answer is that it did not make the faith of God without effect because when we look at God’s salvation program, He planned to save a people for Himself, and it had everything to do with the faith of God.  It was a direct result of the faith of God that certain sinners became saved, and the point that the Lord moved Paul to make at the end of chapter 2 was really showing His faithfulness through the work of Christ in salvation to change (certain) people inwardly to become spiritual Jews through the circumcision of the heart.  It was accomplished through salvation when their sins were washed away, or “cut away,” if we use the Old Testament picture of circumcision.  Then they became a Jew inwardly, in the heart and spirit.  And that is where God’s faithfulness is seen.

And regarding the outward nation that acted as God’s representative on earth for their time period, they had their blessing – chiefly the oracles of God that were committed unto them, despite the fact that they did not believe and did not enter into the kingdom of heaven, the Promised Land.  They would not receive the promise given to Abraham and his seed because the seed in view is Christ, in the first instance, and all those that are in Christ that are counted for the seed.  Also, the biblical language speaks of them being as the stars of the heavens for multitude, made up of Jews and Gentiles that were saved spiritually through the hearing of the Word of God in God’s magnificent salvation program.  They are the ones that would become spiritual Israel.  The others were physical descendants of Abraham, but the promise was never to them, ultimately.  It was to the spiritual descendants of Abraham, and that is what we see if we turn to Romans 4.  We will find this same Greek word that was translated as “without effect.”  It says in Romans 4:13-14:

For the promise, that he should 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 they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect:

It was of no effect, or without effect.  It would have had no power of any kind of it were through the Law because none can keep the Law.  So it was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith, and we learned a long time ago that faith is another name for the Lord Jesus Christ – He is the fullness of the essence of faith.  He is the faith that the book of Jude says was “once delivered to the saints.”  The word “delivered” is the same word used in the Gospel accounts regarding Jesus being delivered up to Pilot to be crucified. 

It is the faith once delivered, and that is not true of the Word of God, the Bible, because the Word of God, the Bible, has been handed down for generations.  And it is not true of the faith of the church fathers, as that, too, was repeatedly handed down.  In order for this statement to be true, we have to apply it to a single occasion or instance when the faith was delivered.  The Bible tells us concerning the atoning work of Jesus Christ (performed at the foundation of the world) that it took place one time, as we read in Hebrews 9:26:

For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

We can see in this verse that He “must often have suffered since the foundation of the world,” and that was the one occasion when payment was made for the sins of all the elect.  The payment was the death of Christ, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

There was also another occasion that took place once in the end of the world when He entered into the world to demonstrate what He had done at the foundation of the world.  By using that word “once” there, the Lord is throwing the casual reader off track, and those that are guided by their own imagination and carnal mind (because they are unsaved) will certainly go astray and miss this truth.  And this truth was even hidden from the elect of God during the church age, but it was sealed until the time of the end.  Then at the time of the end, God opened up this glorious and beautiful truth to the understanding of His people regarding the fact that Christ died twice.  He suffered twice, but He only made payment for sin once, and that was at the foundation of the world.  The second time was when He entered into the world, as it says here, “…but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifices of himself,” and that word “appeared” is the word that means to make “manifest.”  So once He made manifest the atonement, and once He actually performed the atonement in its fulness when He paid for the sins of His people.  And that is the “faith once delivered” to the saints, because the saints are the elect, and it was done for our sakes.  He stood before God to receive the wrath of God in our stead.  This is the amazing nature of the Gospel of God, and the amazing love of Christ that He would do this.

Here we read in Romans 4:13:

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world…

Now we should not miss what is being said here.  This is another confirmation and biblical proof that is evident when we understand the Bible properly.  When we go through the history of Genesis, we do not see statements like, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”  It does not say it is a parable or proverb.  It does not use any kind of language to let us know that Genesis is to be understood spiritually, on the deeper level.  And yet, we have understood what is said in Genesis 17 spiritually, regarding the promise to Abraham and his seed.  Let us go back there to Genesis 17:8:

And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

Here it says that God will give the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.  We, of course, have noticed the reference to it being “an everlasting possession,” and we taught that this means the land of Canaan represents the new earth.  It is being used as a type and figure, and it is a historical parable where God is pointing to this land in the Middle East, and He is setting it up as a type and figure to represent the new heaven and new earth.  That is what we have said, and Romans 4:13 confirms it, and it confirms, once more, that we must look for the deeper spiritual meaning.  Christ spoke in parables, and without a parable He did not speak, and this applies to the whole Bible.  It applies to all Scripture because He is the Word, and when Jesus entered into the world and taught as He did, it was always in parables.  Well, we should not be surprised that when the Word that was made flesh was always teaching in parables, He was teaching the listeners (and readers) that this is the way we must understand the whole Word of God:  “In the volume of the book it is written of me…”   So of course God was teaching the proper manner in which to study the Bible, and what must be done by the student of the Bible.  You must look for the hidden truth, the parabolic meaning.

And, here, it says in Romans 4:13:

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

So it is saying that Abraham and his seed were, indeed given the promise that they would be heirs of the world.  You will not find that in the Genesis account unless you understand that “Canaan” is equal to the “world.”  It is a figure of the world itself.  And that goes right along with what Jesus said in the Beatitudes: “The meek shall inherit the earth.”  It is very consistent, and we have harmony with all Scriptures when we apply this biblical principle.

You know, we are well beyond being influenced by the churches any longer.  We do not follow their teaching in any way, especially because they are the end time apostate churches.  Yes – there were faithful teachings to some degree during the church age.  And there were faithful men of God that were true saints, and they were faithful theologians for that day.  However, because God had sealed up a great deal of information, they only saw many truths partially.  They saw through a glass darkly.  But at the time of the end the Lord opened up the Scriptures and revealed an enormous amount of doctrinal information, and we are seeing these doctrines more clearer and in a fuller way.  We can certainly say that God is giving us the fulness of information that He would have us to know, although it is not that we know everything.  There are tremendous amounts of information we do not know, and it will more than likely take future eternity for us to learn.  But as far as what God had measured out a degree of knowledge for us to know in this world, we are approaching much fuller clarity in our understanding of these things as we get ever closer to the end of the world.

What we should see here in Romans 4:13 is the promise was to Abraham and his seed that they should be the heir of the world.  Again, Christ is the seed, in the first instance, and we are heirs in a secondary way in Him, and it is not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.  And that would be the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We can look at another verse to make sure that is correct.  Let us go to Galatians 3:13-14:

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

(The Gentiles are the nations, as he was to be the father of many nations.)   Here, we see it is through Jesus Christ that the promise is received, and in Romans 4:13, the promise of being heir is through the righteousness of faith.  It is saying the exact same thing because it is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Let us go back to Romans 3:4, which follows the question, “For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?”  Then it says in Romans 3:4:

God forbid…

And that is a strong negation.  “Absolutely not,” is what is being said.  Now I have to point out that in the Greek text, the word “God” is not found.  You will not find it in the original Greek.  The translators added this word.  In the New Testament, the word “God” is the Greek word “theh'-os,” and that word is also used in this verse, as it goes on to say in Romans 3:4:

God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar…

That is the word “theh'-os,” the Greek word for “God.”  But the opening statement, “God forbid,” is actually two words, and it would be pronounced  “may,” and “ghin'-om-ahee,” which means “let it not be,” or “may it not be.”  And “may” is the negative particle, and “ghin'-om-ahee” means “to be,” so combined they mean “not to be.”  Interestingly, these two words together are used fourteen times in the New Testament, and they are translated as “God forbid” fourteen times.  Actually, they may be used together in other places that are not translated that way, but fourteen times in the New Testament where we read, “God forbid,”  it  is these words, “may,” and “ghin'-om-ahee.”   And the word “God” is not in the text. 

Ten times it is found in the book of Romans.  For example, it says in Romans 3:6:

God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?

It is also found in the last verse, in Romans 3:31:

Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.

So we see this phrase ten times in Romans.  Lord willing, as we go through this book, we will encounter this.  Four times it is used in other epistles.  It is used once in 1Corinthians 6:15:

Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.

It is found three times in Galatians, but we will just look at one of them.  It says in Galatians 3:21:

Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid…

Interestingly, it is found fourteen times, and it is always in Paul’s epistles.  You know, God utilized the writing characteristics of the man he inspired and moved to write.  That is evident when you look at 1John and 2John, and you see certain familiarities in the use of words.  Then you look at Paul’s epistles, and you find certain characteristics that could identify with Paul, and this could be one of them, as he expressed a strong negative.  He put these two words together fourteen times in the epistles that Lord used him to write.  Paul did not translate it as “God forbid.”   That was the King James translators who did so when they saw this strong particle used in this way, and they wanted to emphasize the strength of it, so they used God’s name.  I do not think that was correct, and I think we should correct it in our Bibles.  Just write, “Let it not be,” or “May it not be,” and that would be a better translation than “God forbid.”