Romans 3:21

Romans 3:21

Romans 3:21 says, "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets." Paul is now changing his emphasis. For the better part of three chapters he emphasized the sinfulness of man, the guilt of man, the failure of man. We are not righteous. But now Paul is going to teach us about the only righteousness that is possible and the only righteousness that is available: the righteousness of God. If we are not righteous by our own deeds, then how can a holy God permit us to enter into heaven? That is the question, and that is the problem that confronts each individual of the human race, just as Paul says in verse 23, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." By our own actions, we have missed the mark and failed to attain God.

Someone might say, ‘I know how to be righteous, simply obey the Ten Commandments.’ That would be true if you obeyed them perfectly without ever failing. But all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. In spite of our weaknesses, God still loves us, and He came up with a plan whereby we can attain righteousness. But notice that this righteousness is attained without the law. Romans 3:22 tells us exactly how it is attained. It says, "Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all that believe: for there is no difference."

You do not attain unto the righteousness of God by your own works, because you cannot gain it through the law. Some people go about to establish their own righteousness, but they will never attain unto the righteousness of God unless they gain it by faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "This is the work of God: to believe on Him whom He has sent."

When you trust in Jesus and depend upon Him for the forgiveness of your sins, then you believe upon Him. If you do believe upon Jesus in that way, then the result of believing upon Him is given in Romans 3:24. It says, "Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." There are three wonderful words in this Bible verse: justification, grace, and redemption. If you are justified by God, you are declared by Him to be free of blame. You are considered guiltless and innocent. When God looks at you, He sees you as a holy and righteous person. You did nothing to gain this standing with God. You gained it as soon as you believed on Jesus. To emphasize the fact that there is nothing that we do to earn or to ensure this justification, the Bible says that we who believe on Jesus are justified "freely". There is nothing to pay because God already paid for it with the life of His Son.

We are told that justification is free, and we are also told that it is by His grace. God is a giving God, who gives freely; and the word "grace" speaks of the free gift of God. Man is too weak and sinful to be able to earn the righteousness of God, but God is so good and loving that He put into effect this justification that He gives to us freely by His grace. If God gives freely, man should also give freely. The selling of indulgences during the Middle Ages was a corruption of this great truth that justification is free. Those who make a career out of religion, and demand dues to be paid for the presentation of the truth, are making a similar departure from the great fact that justification is given freely by the grace of God.

If you have been justified by God, then a wonderful thing has happened to you. Justification speaks of the courtroom; it speaks of a legal proceeding. If someone has been justified in a courtroom, it means that the evidence has been presented, the arguments have been made, and the judge has made his decision, and proclaims: “I find no fault in this person. Let them go free.” Once that happens, they can never be tried again. For those who believe in Jesus, a very similar thing happens to them. It is as though they were brought before the judgment of God, and all the evidence about that person’s life is brought forth, including all of the sins and failures. You, the sinner, are standing before God, the holy all-knowing Judge. But you are not standing alone, because you have Jesus as your advocate. I John 2:1 says "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

When God considers your case, He no longer considers your sins. Instead, He sees the scars on the hands and feet of Jesus, and He sees the righteous life that Jesus lived, and then God pronounces you as a just person. You have been justified freely by His grace. And to make the image even more complete, remember that the rest of Romans 3:24 says; "...through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Redemption means to be set free through the payment of a price. We are set free from the guilt and condemnation of our sins. The price that was paid was the blood of Jesus that was shed. That is partly why we cannot earn it. He earned it, and He paid for it. He is the only one that can give justification. Redemption refers to the paying of a price in order to set someone free. There is an old hymn that has the line, "I have been redeemed by love divine." If you have been redeemed; it means that you have been set free by someone who paid a price.

There is another word in the New Testament that is also translated "redeemed", and it also presents the meaning of being set free by the paying of a price. Revelation 5:9 speaks of those in heaven who address the Christ and it says, "And they sung a new song, saying, You are worthy to take the book, and to open the seals of it, for you were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." The Greek word that is here translated as "redeemed" is the Greek word “agoradzo”. It literally means to buy out of the market place. Many years ago, as a young man, I was in Greece on the Island of Crete for 6 months. In the center of the town of Xania was the marketplace, and the Greek word that was inscribed in the stone over the front doors of that great open air market was the word “AGORA”’, which means market. Modern Greek has kept the word that was used 2,000 years ago, and in many ways that open air market was probably very similar to ones that must have existed during the days of the first century Christians. It was not like our grocery stores where everything is so neatly packaged under cellophane or tin. Many of the sights and smells would have been the same: the freshly caught fish and the octopi; the feta and goat meat; the chickens hung up with their feathers newly plucked. But one thing was missing from the modern agora that would assuredly have been present in almost any marketplace in the Roman Mediterranean world, and that was the existence of slaves for sale. Sometimes a benevolent person would pay the price for a slave and set them free out of compassion for them. That is the picture of redemption: a slave being purchased out of the marketplace, and then being set free. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

Romans 3:25 goes on to say, "Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God." The word propitiation refers to the fact that God has been satisfied in regards to His holy and righteous demands for justice. The faith that saves us is permitted to save us, because of the blood that was shed. There was the committing of sins, which you and I have done. There is the righteous demand for punishment from a just judge. And there is the satisfying of those demands in the death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The forbearance of God is mentioned for the second time in Romans. It speaks of the fact that God is patient. He is slow to anger and quick to forgive. Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Beware of people who spend a lot of time condemning the world and its injustices. God does not do that, because He is governed by the principle of divine forbearance. When someone has sinned, God is not quick to strike them down for their sins. He always gives a period of time when there is an opportunity to repent and to find forgiveness. May God have mercy on those who do not take their opportunity to repent. It will be a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God without a Savior.

Romans 3:26 says, "To declare at this time His righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believes in Jesus." What is justice? Justice is someone getting what they deserve. How can God justify a sinner, and still be just? True justice requires that there be a punishment for sins. Think of a practical example. If someone committed murder or some other crime and went before a judge, and the person was 100% guilty and all the evidence was there, but the judge let that person go free, then you would not have justice. You would have a miscarriage of justice, and there would be a common cry against such a failure to deliver justice. Romans 3:26 is saying that God devised a way that He could justify us who are guilty, and still satisfy the demands of justice.

That is the eternal importance of Jesus having suffered in our place, and it is again why salvation is entirely by faith and not by works. And so Romans 3:27-28 says, "Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." No one can ever boast about their good works, and think that because of those works that they are now more acceptable or more pleasing to God. You are acceptable to God because of Christ, not because of yourself. The opposite side of the coin is also true. No one should ever doubt the good favor in which God regards them, if their faith is in Christ. The favor of God is not merited through good works; it is given freely through faith in Christ.

Romans 3:29-30 says, "Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also. Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith." Paul has mentioned this point several times already in Romans: the fact that Jews and Gentiles are equals. There is no difference between them. All people of the earth are equal. There is no difference between them in regards to certain spiritual principles. This is a very basic truth, and should be obvious to anyone who thinks about God. To be prejudiced against another group of humans is to forget that there is one God. You do believe that there is only one God, don’t you? The same God who is here, where we are, is also there where they are. There is one God. The same God who has given us life has given them life. There is one God, and the one God is God of all the earth and of all the peoples of the earth; and He has created a means for salvation that is the same for all: faith in Christ. Justification is by faith, and not by the keeping of the law.

And Paul says in Romans 3:31, "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish the law." Paul is not trying to do away with the law; he is only clarifying the true purpose of the law. One thing about the law is for sure: it is not the means of being justified before God. But it does have its purpose. One of the purposes of the law is to teach us how much we need Christ as a Savior. "The law is our school master, to bring us unto Christ." A true understanding of the law was never contrary to the principle of justification by faith. Paul will spend Romans Chapter 4 illustrating and explaining more detail about the principle of faith. He will use two great examples from the Old Testament to do so: Abraham and David. Paul will show us how both of them were justified by faith and not by works. It is the Old Testament that gives us the law, but the same Old Testament gives us people like Abraham and David, and teaches us how they were justified by faith alone and not by their works.

Paul being inspired by the spirit of God to write this part of the Bible has made it very clear to us that justification is by faith alone. What is faith? How would you describe faith that results in salvation? "Faith" is one of the most common words of the New Testament. It is found hundreds of times. The word faith comes from the same word as the word to believe. If you have faith in Christ, then you put your confidence in Christ: you take God at His word. Instead of having faith in yourself and in your ability to justify yourself by good works, you put your faith in God to justify you freely through Christ and what He has done by paying for your sins.

There is a verse in the Bible that helps to explain the meaning of faith. In John Chapter 2, it says that a large crowd was attracted to Jesus because of the miracles that He did. The reaction of Jesus is given in John 2:24 where it says, "But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men," and then it says in John 2:25 that "he knew what was in man." When it says that Jesus did not "commit" himself unto them, it is the same Greek word that is usually translated "believe". He did not commit himself unto them: He did not "believe" in them. When you believe in God with the kind of faith that results in your justification, you commit yourself unto Him. You trust in Him to save you from your sins, because you know that there is no help in yourself to deliver you from your sin predicament.

We have gone through the first three chapters of Romans and we have seen what Paul has taught us thus far about the gospel of Jesus Christ. He has taught us that all humans need the gospel. We all need the gospel whether Jew or Gentile because "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Paul has also taught how we do not become justified and how we do not become delivered from our sins. It is not by the doing of good works. "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight."

He told us clearly that we cannot earn our justification, and then he told us in no uncertain terms that justification is free. He said, "we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." And finally, Paul told us that justification comes by faith. In Romans Chapter 4, Paul will use two of the great servants of God from the Old Testament in order to illustrate that justification is by faith. Justification comes by faith today, and justification came by faith even for those who lived during the times of the Old Testament. Paul will quote Old Testament scriptures to prove his point that justification is by faith alone.

Next we will look at the wonderful chapter on faith, which is Romans Chapter 4. The question for you today is: Have you committed yourself unto Jesus in order to believe Him for justification through Jesus Christ?

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