“What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?” -Romans 4:1
Paul now moves from cogent arguments in chapters 1-3 to “confirmation by example” in chapter 4. This is also a good time to recall that the chapters and verses we use today were helpfully added later in church history—around 1277 AD by Stephen Langton, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury—and what the Romans who received the epistle would have read was a single cogent letter. The point being, we don’t want to get distracted by the divisions of chapters and verses and miss the continuity of Paul’s thought.
Moving from the theological framework to the specific example of the Father of Israel, Abraham, would be the most natural way to progress. How does the way God dealt with Abraham teach us about God’s plan for today?
And this is a key point too often dismissed in modern Christianity. Christianity is an inheritance of the Jews and Jews have their inheritance in Abraham. Thus, Abraham is our forefather. There is a continuity to our faith. We have a heritage and that heritage has purchase on our worship and works.
It is important for us to remember the Christian tradition was not manifest in a vacuum. It wasn’t developed in the philosophical schools of Greece or Egypt. Nor was it thought up by a rag-tag group of dissenting Jews. It has it’s roots in Abraham, whom God called out of Ur of the Chaldeans, the metropolitan hub of ancient Paganism, and gave him a new name.
“You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham.” -Nehemiah 9:7 (Cf. with Genesis 11:28-12:5)