“It was nice to see the lights on in your place. We’re always glad to have the ‘Wee Bits’ visit.”
“The ‘Wee Bits?'” I asked.
“Yes,” said our talkative neighbor by our cabin in northern Arizona where we vacationed last week. “We call you the ‘Wee Bits’ because of your sign, you know.”
Then it dawned on me. Over our cabin door hangs a sign added long ago acnknowledging my mother’s family’s Scottish roots. It reads “Wee Bit o’ Heaven.” Hence, the members of our family (and anyone else who uses our cabin) are now together known as the “Wee Bits.” That sign has become our family identity, at least to the more permanent residents of that little cluster of homes in Oak Creek Canyon.
One of the great issues for Paul in the letter to the Romans is what constitutes family identity for the people of God. In chapter 4, he takes that up in regard to Abraham, especially concerning the question of whether it’s a matter of fleshly, physical ancestry.
In Romans 4:1-12, Paul is concerned to show that belonging to the people of God is not by physical descent from Abraham, but by sharing in the covenantal status into which Abraham entered in Genesis 15. Paul especially focuses on Genesis 15:16, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
The focus in interpretation of this chapter often moves to verses 4 and 5 and the insistence that Paul’s central point is that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us through faith and is not attained by works. However, in the larger context, Paul’s purpose is to show that faith is the gateway or door by which anyone, whether physically descended from Abraham or not, may enter into the same righteous covenantal relationship Abraham himself had with God.
Just as our Arizona neighbors see anyone who enters under the “Wee Bit o’ Heaven” sign as a “Wee Bit,” God sees anyone who comes to him with faith like Abraham’s as part of Abraham’s family.
Therefore the key message of our text is in verses 11 and 12, that both uncircumcised and circumcised are children of Abraham, through faith. That’s the insistence in verse 12. Hebrews don’t come into covenant one way and Christians another. Everyone comes by faith. And we are all one family. As Paul will reiterate again at the end of 4:16, Abraham is the father of us all.
Ultimately for Paul, the point is that Jesus died and rose, not just to forgive us our sins and secure us a place in heaven, but to bring us into that great family of faith, that gracious Covenant which God is making with the world in order to redeem the world and transform it into His kingdom. Then this whole earth will also be a “Wee Bit o’ Heaven.”