2 Corinthians 1:20 For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.
What can be surer than a promise from God? That was Abraham’s hope. That was his faith. He was persuaded that God would be able to perform that promise. Paul uses both Abraham and David to illustrate the process by which a sinner is justified in the eyes of God described in detail in Romans 3. He showed how Abraham was an example of God imputing righteousness to a sinner. He used David as an example of forgiveness or how God would not impute sin to His people. Paul shows us the two parts of salvation that God has done for us in the obedience unto death of or Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That brings us to the last verse of this chapter.
Romans 4:25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
Christ Jesus our Lord was delivered because of our sins. Our sin was imputed to Him. It was laid upon His shoulders just as that cross was laid upon Him to carry. He bore the weight of that sin in the wrath of God for us. He earned righteousness exclaiming from the cross it is finished. That exclamation was a declaration to God the Father that His work was done. The propitiation was complete, sins were remitted, and righteousness remained. That righteousness would then and there be imputed to our spiritual accounts and because of our being justified then and there He was raised from the grave. God was satisfied and there remained nothing further to be done. God the Father was pleased in all that the Son had accomplished.
All that transpired at the cross of Christ was promised to Abraham and David. The promise was that of a future event. The promise was real to these two men. What we cannot say is that the justification, the forgiveness and righteousness, that would come by His cross was real in the days of Abraham and David. They waited for this promise, this promise they knew God would perform. This was no different than any other prophecy we see given by God. That is how we can read in verse 17:
Romans 4:17 (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.
Though the word of God could say righteousness was imputed to Abraham in his day, we know that God waited for the day of His propitiation, for Christ the Son of God, to come and be that bloody sacrifice. That sacrifice that would satisfy the wrath of a holy and just and good God. A sacrifice that pleased God and a sacrifice that ushered in the righteousness of God, a righteousness that had to be worked out. A righteousness declared by the very words of God when He cried from the cross “it is finished.”