What does it mean to be heir of the world?

Explanation:

Paul writes that through faith, God promises Abraham to be heir of the world. God never explicitly promises to Abraham that he would be heir of the world, but this promise is implicit in light of Adam’s fall into sin, and the three promises God does make to Abraham.⁴

We know that Adam sinned against God, for which God curses the world (Genesis 3:14–19). God then chose to bless Abraham, promising him many descendants (Genesis 12:2; Genesis 13:16; Genesis 15:5), the land of Canaan (Genesis 12:7; Genesis 13:14–17; Genesis 15:7), and that all nations would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 18:18; Genesis 22:18).⁵ These three blessings could be summarized as the notion that God promised to make Abraham heir of the world.⁶

Of course, we know that God made this promise to Abraham after Adam had sinned and had cursed the earth. Considered in this light, it’s not likely that God promised Abraham that he would inherit a cursed world. Rather, what Paul likely has in mind is that God promised an inheritance to Abraham, which has to do with recreating the earth, and Abraham received this promise because of his faith.

Counterargument:

It is hard to see how the promise for descendants, the land, and that the nations would be blessed through Abraham, amounts to Abraham being promised to inherit the world. Rather, Paul likely offers his own interpretation of God’s promises to Abraham, which we find in Gal 3:16, when Paul explains that God’s promise to Abraham and his seed refers to God’s promise to Jesus Christ. Thus, what Paul seems to be saying here is that through Abraham, Jesus would be born, and all believers in Christ are heirs of the world.⁷

Response to counterargument:

The notion that God’s promises to Abraham could be summarized in the statement that Abraham would inherit the world, is not an invention of Paul. Rather, other ancient Jewish writers summarize the promises to Abraham in precisely the same way. For example, in Sirach 44:21 we read that Abraham kept the law and was taken into covenant with God, as God promised to bless the nations through him, multiply his descendants, and that he would inherit to the ends of the earth.⁸ So Paul is aligning with the traditional Jewish notion that the promises of God to Abraham have to do with inheriting the earth. What Paul disagrees with his Jewish contemporaries over is the notion that the promise of inheritance has to do with Abraham keeping the law.

Explanation:

In order to understand what it means that God promised to make Abraham heir of the world, we need to understand Paul’s motives in this section. Paul has spent considerable effort explaining that all are under sin, so salvation is not by works, but is a gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The reason Paul spends so much effort making it clear that salvation is through faith, not works, is partly because he wants the Jewish Christians in Rome to understand the means and the scope of salvation. Salvation is through faith (means), and the Gentiles are included (scope).

Now, when we reach Romans 4:1–25, Paul uses Abraham as an example to make clear that Abraham was counted righteous, not by works, but by faith, through which God promises he would inherit the world. By explaining that through his faith Abraham would inherit the world, Paul is reiterating the themes he has already introduced. That is, he reiterates the fact that Abraham is justified by faith, and the scope of salvation has extended to the whole world, which includes the Gentiles. ⁹

Counterargument:

According to this argument, Paul’s two main motivations in this section are to establish justification by faith, and that the Gentiles are included in the promise. That the Gentiles are included in the promise is supposed to inform our understanding of what it means that Abraham and his descendants were promised to be heirs of the world. In fact, when we consider Romans 4:1, Paul specifically says that Abraham is our forefather according to the flesh. What he means is that Abraham is the father of the Jews, which implies that he has the Jews in mind when he writes that Abraham and his descendants were promised to be heirs of the world. So likely Paul has in mind promises that were applicable to the Jews, not the Jews and Gentiles. Thus, Paul is not saying that salvation extends to the whole world when he says that Abraham was promised the inheritance of the world.

Response to counterargument:

 In fact, Paul will go on to explain that the descendants include the Gentiles. Specifically, Paul writes in Romans 4:16 that the promise guaranteed to Abraham’s descendants is not only to those who adhere to the law, but all who share Abraham’s faith. He then quotes from Genesis 17:5, where we read that God made Abraham the father of many nations. In other words, all who have faith are the descendants of Abraham, and the promise to be heir to the world was to Abraham and his descendants. Of course, both Jewish and Gentile Christians have faith, so both are heirs of the world.

Now, Paul does not mean heir in the sense of world domination. Rather, he means heir of the world in the sense that these are saved through Jesus Christ, who redeems all of creation.

The weakness of this view is that it takes the promise to Abraham in the spiritual sense of recreation and restoration, when such an associate might not be Paul’s intended meaning. For the promise of many descendants and land could be construed as inheriting the world, but there is no spiritual significance to these. Of course, there is spiritual significance to blessing many nations. So maybe when Paul says Abraham was promised heir of the world, Paul has in mind the promise that Abraham would bless the nations.

Explanation:

Paul explains that God promised Abraham and his descendants would inherit the world. We can understand what he means by noticing how God’s promises to Abraham came to fruition. In particular, one of God’s promises to Abraham is that he would have numerous descendants. Now, hundreds of years later, there are Jewish people, who are Abraham’s descendants, living all throughout the then-known world. In other words, it seemed that Abraham’s descendants had inherited the world. Thus, Paul sees that God’s promise to Abraham was that his descendants would be spread throughout the world.

Counterargument:

The problem with this argument is that it fails to understand Paul in light of his historical context. That Abraham was promised to inherit the world does not originate with Paul, but with other Jewish scholars, and there is even an overtone that inheriting the world has to do with the life to come.¹⁰ Where Paul differs from his contemporaries is in the fact that Paul highlights this inheritance is the result of faith, not works.¹¹ So Paul is not simply noticing that Jewish people have spread throughout the world. Rather, he is utilizing known Jewish categories but reorienting them to align with the truth of Scripture and the gospel.

The weakness of this view is that it is not clear how the spread of the Israelites throughout the then-known world could be construed as inheriting the world. Many of the Israelites were spread throughout the then-known world in Paul’s time because they had been exiled by other countries. Further, the Romans had control over the land of Israel and Jerusalem. Thus, it is not clear that the Jews of Paul’s day had inherited the world in a material sense at all.