Romans 4:23–25

Romans 4:23 — "Not written for his sake alone" Paul here makes a hermeneutical claim of the first order. The phrase "it was written" (ἐγράφη, egraphē) echoes his earlier citation of Genesis 15:6 — "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness" — and now Paul insists that the past tense of Scripture carries a future-facing intentionality. The sacred text was not composed as mere archival memory of one man's spiritual biography. This is Paul's assertion of what Catholics recognize as the sensus plenior — the fuller sense of Scripture, wherein God's authorial intention transcends what any human author could have consciously articulated. The written record of Abraham's faith has a constitutively prospective character: it was preserved for us.

This verse quietly subverts any reading of justification by faith that would keep it safely sequestered in Israel's past. The word "alone" (μόνον, monon) does crucial work: it denies that Abraham is merely an interesting precedent. He is a type — a figure whose meaning overflows his own historical moment and finds its fulfillment in those who come after.

Romans 4:24 — "For our sake also, to whom it will be accounted" The future-tense "will be accounted" (λογισθήσεται, logisthēsetai) is striking. Paul is not merely speaking of believers already justified; the statement remains open, encompassing all who will ever believe. Faith is defined here with precision: it is belief "in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead." This is the first time in Romans 4 that the object of justifying faith is so explicitly Christological and resurrection-centered. Earlier in the chapter, Abraham's faith was described as trust in the God "who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (4:17) — now that divine power is identified concretely with the Resurrection of Jesus. Abraham's faith and Christian faith are shown to have the same ultimate object: the life-giving power of God, now revealed definitively in Easter.

The title "our Lord" (τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν, tou kyriou hēmōn) is a confessional acclamation. Paul is not merely identifying Jesus historically; he is situating the reader within a community of worshippers for whom the Resurrection is the living ground of faith. This is not intellectual assent to a proposition but entrustment to a person who has conquered death.

Romans 4:25 — "Delivered up for our trespasses, raised for our justification" This verse has the rhythmic, balanced structure of early Christian liturgical tradition — many scholars identify it as a pre-Pauline formula that Paul cites and endorses, much as he does in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5. Its parallelism is deliberate and theologically freighted:

• Delivered up (παρεδόθη, paredothē) for our trespasses — The passive voice echoes the "suffering servant" of Isaiah 53:12, who "was handed over to death" and "bore the sin of many." The same verb appears in the Septuagint of Isaiah 53:6, "the Lord handed him over for our sins." The death of Jesus is not an accident or a tragedy overcome by God; it is the willed act of both the Father and the Son for the expiation of human sin.

• Raised (ἠγέρθη, ēgerthē) for our justification (δικαίωσιν, dikaiōsin) — The Resurrection is not merely God's vindication of Jesus as an individual; it is the constitutive event of our justification. The word dikaiōsis (justification) appears only twice in the entire New Testament, both in Romans (here and in 5:18), and its placement here is climactic. Justification is not completed at the cross alone — it requires the Resurrection. A dead Christ could forgive sins as a martyr might be said to atone; but only the risen Christ can impart the new life in which justification consists. The Resurrection is, in Thomas Aquinas's formulation, the causa exemplaris et efficiens of our justification: both its model and its efficient cause (Summa Theologiae III, q. 56, a. 2).

Typological sense: The passage operates on two levels simultaneously. Literally, Paul draws a direct application of Abraham's narrative to Christian believers. Typologically, Abraham's justification before circumcision prefigures baptismal justification — received before any full observance of the law, entirely as gift. The Church Fathers (notably Origen, Ambrose, and Augustine) read Abraham's willingness to trust God's promise of resurrection-life (through Isaac on Moriah) as a participation in the same faith that Christians exercise toward the Father who raised Jesus.

Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to this passage that illuminate its depth beyond a purely forensic reading.

Justification as real transformation, not mere declaration. The Council of Trent (Session VI, Decree on Justification, 1547) insisted that justification is not merely the remission of sins but "the sanctification and renewal of the interior man." Romans 4:25 supports this reading: if the Resurrection is the cause of our justification, then justification involves participation in risen life — not only acquittal but genuine ontological renewal. The Catechism (§1989–1990) teaches that justification "is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man." This is possible precisely because Christ was raised, and his risen humanity becomes the source of our transformation.

The Paschal Mystery as unified act. The Church's liturgical and theological tradition refuses to separate cross and resurrection. The Catechism (§654) states: "Christ's Resurrection is the fulfillment of the promises both of the Old Testament and of Jesus himself during his earthly life. It is the fulfillment of God's plan of salvation... it justifies us by giving us access to God's righteousness." Paul's double formula in verse 25 is thus read not as two separate transactions but as one indivisible Paschal event seen from two angles.

Scripture's prospective character. The Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum (§§12, 16) teaches that the Old Testament was ordered toward the New, and that "God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old, and the Old made manifest in the New." Paul's argument in verse 23 — that the Genesis account was written for us — is a canonical instance of this principle. The Church reads all of Scripture with this hermeneutic of fulfillment.

The universal scope of faith. The Fathers of the Church (especially St. Ambrose in De Fide and St. Augustine in De Spiritu et Littera) emphasized that Abraham's pre-circumcision justification demonstrates that saving faith was never the exclusive possession of ethnic Israel, but was always intended for all nations — a point that resonates with the Church's mission ad gentes.

Contemporary Catholics can easily reduce faith to a cultural inheritance — something received at baptism, confirmed in adolescence, and thereafter quietly assumed rather than actively exercised. Paul's argument in these verses is a direct challenge to that passivity. He insists that what justified Abraham was a living, costly, bodily act of trust in a God who raises the dead — and that the same act is required of us. To believe "in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead" (v. 24) is not to affirm an article in a creed while otherwise organizing one's life around different certainties. It is to reorient one's entire existence around the conviction that death is not the final word.

Practically, this passage invites Catholics to ask: In what do I actually place my trust when I face loss, failure, illness, or death? The Resurrection is not only a past event to commemorate at Easter; according to Paul it is the present and ongoing ground of our justification — the reality that makes us right with God now. Entering fully into the Paschal Mystery through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, is the concrete way the Church makes verse 25 a living reality rather than a doctrinal formula. Each reception of the Eucharist is an act of the same faith Abraham exercised: trusting that God's word of life is more real than the evidence of death.