In Romans chapter 4, we encounter a profound truth that challenges our natural tendency to earn our way into God's favor: righteousness comes through faith, not works. Paul takes us back to Abraham, the patriarch of faith, to demonstrate that God's plan of salvation has always been the same. Abraham was declared righteous not because of circumcision or religious rituals, but because he simply believed God. This wasn't about Abraham's perfection or his impressive resume of good deeds. It was about his trust in a God who brings life from death and calls into existence things that don't exist. The scandal of the gospel is that God justifies the ungodly, giving sinners a status of 'innocent' based entirely on Jesus' merit, not ours. This message dismantles our human categories of who's in and who's out, whether based on ethnicity, heritage, political persuasion, or moral superiority. We're all in the same boat, standing before God with empty hands and Monopoly money, trying to negotiate our eternal inheritance. But God's economy doesn't work that way. He credits our account with an inheritance we didn't earn, couldn't afford, and can never lose. This is the faith that saves us: believing that God raises the dead, specifically that He raised Jesus for our justification.