Romans Chapter 4, Cotton Patch Gospel

[Sam]

This is Romans Chapter 4 from "The Cotton Patch Gospel"

1. Well, then, what am I going to say about the position held by Abraham, the head of our race? For if Abraham was made right by attending services, then he has status, but not with God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham put his trust in God, and for him this was considered goodness.” Now a working man does not consider his paycheck a gift from his employer but the discharge of a debt. But for the man who doesn’t put in time and yet is loyal to his employer who makes it right with the idle, his loyalty is considered “time.” It just like David said when he called a man lucky when God considered him as “making time” without attending services. He said.

People are lucky whose charges are dropped and whose violations are scrubbed; Lucky indeed is the man whose boss keeps no account of his errors.

Does this “luckiness” apply to the church member or to the non-church-member? Now we just said that for Abraham loyalty was considered as “time.” When, then, was it credited to him? After he was baptized or before he was baptized?7 It was not as a baptized man but as an unbaptized one. And he accepted the symbol of baptism as an OK on the “time”; he got for loyalty before his baptism. Thus he became the daddy of all those whose loyalty before they were baptized was credited to them as “time”; and, the daddy of baptism to those who not only are baptized but who also copy the loyalty of our father Abraham while he was still unchurched.

13. Now the contract with Abraham or his heir that he would be a world figure was not based on church activity but on service which arises from faithfulness. For if only those engaged in church programs are in on the deal, then faithfulness amounts to nothing and the contract is only a scrap of paper. For the church “program” gets God pretty upset. Now where there is no program there is of course no failure to carry it out.

16. The reason that this springs from faithfulness is to establish God’s undeserved favor back of the contract with every descendant, not only the one in the church program but also the one who shares in Abraham’s faithfulness. He is the daddy of us all, just as it is written, “I have made you the daddy of many different groups?” In the light of this, he really did give his loyalty to the God who makes the dead to live and who tells nothing to be something. And he kept the faith even when the cards were stacked against him. That’s how he became “daddy of many other groups,” exactly as was said, “Your heir will be such a daddy.” Without batting an eye, he faced his own impotence — he was one hundred years old at the time — and the fact that Sarah, his wife, was well beyond her menopause. Still he never concluded that the contract with God had been canceled, but stoutly maintained his faithfulness, giving God credit for being able to carry out his end of the bargain. And that’s why Abraham “was counted in as being in the swim with God.” Now this verse — “he was counted in” — didn’t apply just to Abraham, but also to us who were yet to be counted in through our faithfulness to him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. To bear our sins he was killed; to put us in the swim he was made alive.