Nana Yaw Aidoo
In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul argues that both Gentiles and Jews have sinned (Rom. 3:9, 23) and that the only solution to the problem of sin is not circumcision or the keeping of the old law but faith in and through Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:21-26). Towards the end of the argument he was making in this section of the letter, the apostle anticipates an objection from the Judaizing teachers that by his teaching on justification by faith, he was voiding the old law or making it of no effect and then supplies the answer; “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law” (Rom. 3:31). That is to say, by teaching justification by faith, he was teaching what the law and prophets taught and thus was establishing the law or making it stand [for a detailed discussion of Romans 3:31, see my article in the September 2022 issue of the Gospel Preceptor].
What Paul is Doing in Romans 4
Determined not to merely assert that his teaching on justification by faith wasn’t something new, the apostle then proceeds to use Abraham as an exemplar and to set forth the implications of Abraham being justified by faith. That is his main concern in Romans 4. Nelson S. Hsieh breaks Paul’s argument in Romans 4 into five parts:
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Abraham was justified by faith not by works (vv. 1–3), which Paul states in a general theological principle (vv. 4–5) and which is confirmed by David in Psalm 32 (vv. 6–8).
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Abraham was justified by faith not by circumcision, therefore, the blessing of justification by faith extends to the uncircumcised (Gentiles) since chronologically Abraham was justified before he was circumcised (vv. 9–12).
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“The promise” made to Abraham and his seed is realized by faith, not by law (vv. 13–17).
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Abraham was justified by faith not by law because Abraham believed “the promise” even in his seemingly hopeless situation (vv. 18–22)
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Therefore, post-Abraham and post-Law believers are also justified by faith (vv. 23–25) (99).
The Promise of Romans 4:13
As the careful Bible student would notice, one of the themes that Paul develops and uses in proving the truthfulness of justification by faith in and through the life of Abraham was the theme of the promises (cf. Gen. 12:1-3) that God made to Abraham. Due to the usage of the word for in Romans 4:13, the apostle’s argument is easy to follow. The reason why Abraham can be both the father of the uncircumcised and the circumcised is that he received the promises before there was any law on circumcision. Hence, to inherit those same promises one does not need the law but faith (Rom. 4:10-15).
However, while developing this theme, the apostle makes the statement that Abraham was to “be the heir of the world.” What is strange about this statement is that nowhere in Genesis 12 (or anywhere in the Old Testament) does God make such a promise to Abraham. What then does the statement mean?
Some Say It is The Promise of a Renovated Earth
Interestingly, due to the slight difficulty surrounding the text (cf. 2 Pet. 3:15-16), some “new/renovated earthers” have suggested that by making this statement, Paul meant that we’ll live on this earth forever. Take, for example, these comments by Lipscomb University professor Emeritus, John Mark Hicks:
Though often neglected, salvation also includes the liberation of the cosmos from its bondage to decay and destruction. The whole cosmos groans, along with humanity, for relief from the frustration to which the world has been subjected. God saves the cosmos by renewing it, by ushering in a new or renewed heaven and earth.
This hope is rooted in God’s promise to Abraham. The land, which includes the whole cosmos, according to Romans 4:13, is the inheritance of Israel. Abraham is the heir of the cosmos. The creation now belongs to a descendant of Abraham, the Son of David, the Son of God. As co-heirs with Jesus, we, too, are heirs of the cosmos.
Based on this promise to Abraham, according to Peter, “we wait for the new heavens and new earth, where righteousness will dwell” (2 Peter 3:13). God promised Abraham an inheritance, and that inheritance is a new heaven and a new earth. The Christian hope includes a new earth.
Too often Christians have thought they must escape the creation and fly away in glory to some eternal celestial heaven. If we mean that we want to escape the “present evil age” or escape the decaying, destructive powers of death, then I understand that point. I, too, want to escape that. God will dissolve all the evil and destroy the powers that enslave the creation. But the biblical story is not ultimately about escape but redemption…
… The Abrahamic promise was first given to ethnic Israel but, by faith and because of the Messiah, it includes the nations as well. Perhaps on the new heaven and new earth the redeemed of ethnic Israel will dwell in Palestine—in the land between the rivers of Egypt and Babylon—and the rest of the earth will belong to the people of God among the nations as they again reign on the earth with God. The kingdom of God will fill the earth.
The earth is the inheritance of God’s people as Jesus promised: “The meek shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). One day the reign of God will fill it from the east to the west, from the north to the south. The whole earth, unlike its present condition, will be “Holy to the Lord” (Zechariah 14:20). (214-216).
Evidently, Romans 4:13 is a key text for the renovated/new earthers. For these people, when God promised Abraham land, he had the whole earth in mind. In the words of Professor Hicks, “The land, which includes the whole cosmos, …is the inheritance of Israel.” And since Christians are by faith descendants of Abraham, we too are heirs of that same promise.
Some Restoration Movement greats also believed this same doctrine. On Wednesday, November 22, 2023, John Mark Hicks in a Facebook post quoted from an article by G.C. Brewer in the April 4, 1946 issue of the Gospel Advocate (p. 314) in which he wrote:
[Humanity] was given dominion over the earth, but transferred their allegiance to Satan, and the curse came, bringing suffering, sorrow, and death. But Christ came to remove the curse and to bring “joy to the earth.” When the earth is redeemed, it will first be renovated by fire. Then there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Then the meek shall inherit the earth . . . Paul says (Rom. 4:13-16) that the promise to Abraham was that he and his seed should be heirs of the world, and he says this promise must be made sure to all his spiritual seed. We, then, who are by faith children of Abraham and heirs of the promise (Gal. 3:28-29) are yet to inherit the world, though it must be the new earth.
As G.K. Beale summarized, “Paul’s statement here is a straightforward universalization of the Abrahamic land promises” (as quoted by Hsieh 100).
Some Problems with the Promise Being a Renovated Earth
However, I see four problems with the foregoing position.
First, it gives too much comfort to pre-millennialism.
While discussing Romans 4:13, Greg Herrick wrote:
The establishment of the millennial kingdom at Christ’s second advent is the final great fulfillment of this [Abrahamic] covenant in human history. At that time (and indeed on into the eternal state), one will be able to say that our father Abraham has become the heir of the world.
Now, this in and of itself doesn’t make the position wrong. However, pre-millennialism is error, and thus, any interpretation of any biblical text that gives comfort to this error ought to be seriously reconsidered.
Second, this interpretation puts Paul in solidarity with the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical teachings of Second Temple Judaism.
The expansion of the land promise idea is as a matter of fact a product of second-temple Judaism. A certain kind of Judaism developed especially in what is called the intertestamental period, that believed that what God promised Abraham wasn’t merely Canaan but the entire world. Consider the following texts:
1 Enoch 5:9: “But for the elect there shall be light and joy and peace and they shall inherit the earth.”
4 Ezra 6:55-59: “All this I have spoken before you, Oh YAHWEH, because you have said that it was for us that you created this first-born world. …If the world has indeed been created for us, why do we not possess our world as an inheritance? How long shall this endure so?”
Sirach 44:21: “Therefore, the Lord certified for Abraham with a solemn pledge that he would bless nations through his descendants, that he would make him increase like the dust of the earth, exalt his descendants like the stars, and give them an inheritance from sea to sea and from the [Euphrates] river to the end of the earth.”
Again, this in and of itself doesn’t make the interpretation wrong. Truth is truth irrespective of where it is found (cf. Acts 17:28; Tit. 1:12). However, there is a reason these materials aren’t canonical, and thus doctrines found in them out to be viewed with considerable caution.
Some who suggest that the Bible ought to be interpreted in the context of other ancient texts especially that of second-temple Judaism, would consider the expansion of the land promise in these texts to be the actual interpretation of what God promised Abraham. However, as I have already mentioned, this was just one sect in second-temple Judaism. Various other second-temple Jewish groups held to the original understanding as we read in the Sacred Writings. Nelson Hsieh quoted Judaism scholar W.D. Davies who after surveying various second-temple Jewish literature concluded that there was “a continuity between these sources and the Old Testament” (102).
Third, before Abraham spoke of the promise in Romans 4:13, he had already written that Abraham believed God (Rom. 4:3).
What from God did Abraham believe about the promise of land? Multitudes of Old Testament texts show that Abraham understood the land promise to refer to Canaan and nothing else but Canaan (cf. Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 17:8; Psa. 105:11) because that was what God told Him. Thus, if Abraham believed God, then the patriarch must have believed that what God was giving to him and his descendants as an inheritance was the land of Canaan and not something more than that.
This flow of thought will be extremely important for understanding Rom 4:13 because the content of the promise that Abraham believed must be truth that was revealed to him. Those who argue that the “promise” in Romans 4 is an expanded worldwide land inheritance (which was never promised to Abraham in the OT) thus have an immediate problem: How can Abraham have believed in a truth that was never revealed to him? (Hsieh 99).
Finally, the view doesn’t take into consideration the various uses of cosmos (the Greek word translated as “world” in Romans 4:13) in the writings of Paul.
While the word cosmos can mean the physical earth, it can also mean the inhabitants of the earth. When Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 1:15 that Christ came into the cosmos to save sinners, he evidently had this physical earth in mind. However, when he wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that God was in Christ reconciling the cosmos to Himself, who would suggest that this means God was reconciling this physical earth to Himself? And so, with these two meanings of cosmos possible, to conclude that cosmos in Romans 4:13 means nothing but this physical earth is a failure to consider the various uses of the word in the writings of Paul. Since cosmos has two meanings in the writings of Paul, something other than the word ought to be considered in the interpretation of Romans 4:13. That thing is context. More on this later.
I believe that these reasons should cause any student of Scripture to give a second look to any interpretation that makes the promise of Romans 4:13, the promise of a renovated earth.
The Promise Is That Abraham Would Be the Father of Many Nations
At this point, all of what I have said matters little if I do not show what Paul meant by Abraham being the heir of the world. One thing I have found very useful as a student of God’s word is the advice to view every text in light of its immediate context. I remember reading somewhere that to understand what a text means, I need to read twenty verses before the text and then twenty verses after the text. I believe in this principle so much that I have taught it to others, even calling it the “vision 20-20 principle.”
When this principle is applied to Romans 4:13 it becomes apparent to the honest Bible student that Paul “defines ‘the promise’ not in terms of Abraham inheriting land, but in terms of Abraham becoming the father of many nations and having innumerable descendants” (Hsieh 107). That is exactly what Paul says in verses 17 and 18. Romans 4:17-18 read directly after Romans 4:13 reads like this:
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…. (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.
When one allows the context to define the promise of Romans 4:13, what Paul had in mind becomes clear. Abraham being heir of the world was simply another way of saying that Abraham would be a father of many nations. Nelson S. Hsieh makes this apt observation:
In Romans 4, Paul is drawing upon the chronological order of Genesis 15 to make his point about Abraham’s justification. In Genesis 15, Abraham is worried since he still has no children and Eliezer of Damascus will be his heir (vv. 2–3). In response, God says that Eliezer will not be Abraham’s heir (v. 4); rather God promises Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars (v. 5). Abraham believed that promise (v. 6a), therefore Abraham was justified by his faith in that promise (v. 6b). Paul’s point is exactly the same in Rom 4:13–22—Abraham’s justification was not by law, but by faith in God’s promise of innumerable descendants. Thus, the phrase “that he would be heir of the world” should be related to the promises quoted in Rom 4:17–18. In Romans 4, Paul makes clear that Abraham’s justification was based on his faith in two promises: the promise that he would be the “father of many nations” (v. 17, where Paul quotes Gen 17:5) and the promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars (v. 18, where Paul quotes Gen 15:5). These promises were made to Abraham in the OT, so they give Abraham concrete revealed truth to believe—and because Abraham believed these promises (vv. 20–21), he was justified by faith (v. 22, where Paul quotes Gen 15:6). Therefore the main problem with the expansion of the land view is that it makes no sense for Abraham to be justified through faith in a promise never revealed to him. The expansion of the land view leaves Abraham with no concrete revealed truth to have believed since God did not reveal to him that he would inherit the entire physical territory of the world. Put another way, faith is certainly more than intellectual assent, but faith must have concrete intellectual content that is to be affirmed and trusted. If the promise given to Abraham is the promise of becoming the father of many nations and having innumerable descendants, then Abraham had concrete promises to believe. But if the promise that Abraham must believe is the promise of inheriting the entire physical world, it would have been impossible for him to believe since such a promise was never revealed to him in the OT. Thus, it would be impossible for Abraham to be justified by faith, undermining Paul’s entire point in Romans 4. A person can only believe truth that God has revealed…. If Paul had quoted from OT passages that promised an inheritance of the land of Israel (e.g. Gen 12:7; 13:15; 17:8), then “heir of world” in verse 13 would refer to inheriting land. But Paul quotes from OT passages that promised worldwide descendants (Gen 15:5; 17:5). Thus, “heir of the world” describes the fact that Abraham, though initially childless, would eventually inherit the world in the sense of becoming the father of innumerable persons from all the nations of the world. Though initially childless, Abraham would beget a worldwide family that he could truly call his own, i.e. his inheritance (107-8).
What About the Seed of Abraham?
The only objection I see that could be leveled against this position is that Paul wrote that the promise was not just to Abraham but also to his seed. Does this mean then that the spiritual descendants of Abraham would also be fathers of many nations? This is a valid objection that cannot be overlooked. However, I think that the solution is in the use of the pronoun, he. Paul does not say, “that they should be heirs of the world.” Rather he says, “that he should be heir of the world.” And as Hsieh rightly notes, this “is describing the inheritance of a single individual, not an inheritance for Abraham’s descendants” (106). The antecedent of he is Abraham and not his seed. There might be some willing to argue that the seed is Christ. Though that is possible, it is highly unlikely when one follows the reading.
Conclusion
The sum of all that I have written is this. When in Romans 4:13, Paul said Abraham was to be the heir of the world, the apostle did not have a renovated earth in mind. That is an assumption unwarranted by the context. Rather, he meant that Abraham was to inherit “innumerable spiritual descendants from all the nations of the world” (Hsieh 110). Put in the words of Scripture, he was to be a father of many nations (cf. Rom. 4:11-12). The worldwide nature of that inheritance is what makes Abraham the heir of the world. The Scriptures, rightly handled, do not teach that the saved will live on a renovated earth forever. What they teach is that the faithful’s “everlasting home” is where God currently dwells (cf. Eccl. 12:5-7; John 14:1-3).
Works Cited
Herrick, Greg. “Study and Exposition of Romans 4:13-22.” Bible.org, 2004, https://bible.org/seriespage/study-and-exposition-romans-413-22.
Hicks, John Mark. Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation. 2020, manuscript in author’s possession.
Hsieh, Nelson S. “Abraham as ‘Heir of the World’: Does Romans 4:13 Expand the Old Testament Abrahamic Land Promises?” Master’s Seminary Journal, vol. 26, no. 1, 2015, pp. 95-110.
