Written Also for Us
23 Now it was not written that it was accounted to him for his sake alone, 24 but for our sake also, to whom it will be accounted, who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.
The Genesis sentence is declared to have been written for the letter's readers, and the chapter ends in a two-line creed.
Now it was not written that it was accounted to him for his sake alone, but for our sake also.
The hermeneutical claim is explicit: Genesis 15:6 was recorded with future readers in view. Scripture's histories are not archives; they are addressed Romans 15:4. The sentence about Abraham's crediting was written down for us — the accounting it describes was never a one-man arrangement but the standing pattern, waiting on the page for every reader who would need it.
And the transfer condition is stated: to whom it will be accounted, who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead Romans 4:24.
The description of God is chosen with the whole chapter behind it. Abraham believed the God who gives life to the dead Romans 4:17 and proved it over a worn-out body and a dead womb; the reader believes the same God, whose life-from-the-dead act is now historical and public — he raised Jesus our Lord. The faith is continuous; only the tense of the resurrection has changed. Abraham trusted it forward; the church trusts it backward; the object is one God with one signature act.
Then the chapter closes in what reads like a fragment of the church's earliest confession, two clauses in strict parallel: who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification Romans 4:25.
Delivered up — the verb of Isaiah's servant, handed over; and the passive quietly names the actor the letter has already shown setting forth his Son Romans 3:25. For our trespasses: the death answers to the debit side of the ledger this chapter has been keeping.
And raised for our justification — the clause that binds the empty tomb into the doctrine. The resurrection is not an epilogue to atonement; it is the public entry of the acquittal — the demonstration that the payment stood, the surety released, the verdict published. A dead Christ could leave the account forever ambiguous; the raised Lord is the receipt. Which is why the letter's confession of saving faith will name exactly this: believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved Romans 10:9 — and why the next chapter can open with a settled verdict: being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God Romans 5:1.
settled What this mark means