Romans 3:19-23

The Jews, under the Law, claim to stand in a different position than any other people. Those who protest Paul’s indictment are silenced by their failure to fulfill the law that gives them privilege. "The Law speaks to those who are under it." Pride in the law will not exempt them from the judgment. The Gentiles trust in Wisdom. Failure to follow the wisdom accumulated is equated to failure to follow the law which was given. Both have missed the way. Paul also points out that through the law, comes knowledge of sin. It shows us our duty but does not enable us to do it. It teaches us our sinfulness but does not grant us the ability to avoid it.

Some people have exalted regulations to the point where they have become an insufferable burden. Other people have repudiated every kind of traditional moral code. Judged by their fruits both "puritanism" and its opposite have failed. Paul suggests a different approach. 1) Conscience is developed as we discriminate between good and evil. 2) A code provides a standard to test our own conduct and shows the contrast between our obligations and actual performance. 3) Religious values show our failures and create an understanding of sin. 4) A code cannot deliver us from sin. We need a new motive to choose right over wrong. Paul is explicit about the failure of the Law. The secular world has no sense of sin and the prestige of science turns us toward the physical world. If those outside the churches are to regain any awareness of what sin means, it can be only because Christians have taught them. If we fail to take sin as a personal failure, we will dismiss the severity of divine judgment.

Righteousness is beyond the law, but has the witness of both law and the prophets. It comes through faith in Christ and is open to all. We receive a new standing which God in his mercy grants us. Christ’s death is our redemption and the righteousness and mercy of God are perfectly revealed. The law of nature has not benefitted the Gentile, nor has the law of Moses benefitted the Jew. Man needs a new revelation and has received it in Christ. It is indicated by two qualities. 1) Humility is excluded because we can claim no credit for anything we have done. 2) Universality is required because God is equally concerned for members of all races. Everyone can enter into the new life "by faith". The law and the testaments of the Old era are not without value. Their partial perceptions are gathered up in the new righteousness and perfected and fulfilled. The Law was partial by its nature. The Jew’s failure was in taking it to be complete.

Paul shows the righteousness of God in the life of Christ. It is a life free from failure and fear. It is no longer obsessed with past sins and unregulated impulse. It is a life in which we have peace with God and know progressively the richness of experience to which his free service introduces us. The former alienation from God is swept away. Apprehension is replaced with humble trust and the liberty conferred by dependence on God. Paul emphasizes that the righteousness of God is conditioned by faith and faith alone. Our emphasis on merit, achievement, inheritance and precedence all count for nothing. The universal moral failure of mankind ridicules any effort to treat one group, nation or race as having special claims upon God’s favor.

We are justified by God’s grace as a gift. Justification is an act of God and manifests his essential nature. No amount of conscientious effort will merit a claim upon God. The offer of justification becomes effective only when its offer meets with the response of faith. Paul is convinced that only a personal commitment to Jesus Christ – a relationship based on trust, resulting in fellowship, and bearing fruit in obedience – can supply the requisite response of faith. Our faith prepares the way for what only God can do. We are justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Paul assures us that God is able to receive men and treat them as righteous before the final judgment. Jesus brings us out of our alienation from God into an effective fellowship with him, and provides the means by which his mercy – blocked by our own sin – can achieve in us, his miracles of transformation.

Two important inferences from this doctrine of our redemption are Humility and Unity. Paul was particularly concerned with humility because he was vulnerable to the pride of the Pharisees. He had enjoyed the privileged position of a respected follower of the Jewish faith. If the principle of works is insufficient, there is no basis for boasting. If the principle of faith is sufficient, humility is required for the undeserved gift. When boasting is excluded, there is gratitude as well as humility.

The only way to circumvent all Paul’s arguments is if God’s rule is limited to certain people and then the rest are not bound by his will. Such a belief would deny that God is the creator of all mankind. It is true that God chose to work through one special race. It was their privilege and responsibility to bring his revelations to all mankind. Upon their failure to do so, he expanded his revelations to the rest of the world through the Apostles. Unfortunately, Most of us believe in some form of "favored" status. It explains our tendency to look within ourselves.

If there is no unity of meaning and purpose at the heart of things, we may as well abandon any effort to interpret the strange world in which we live. Paul’s Gospel assumes the unity of God and the universality of his rule. Jew and Gentile alike are treated as no longer guilty because they accept what God has done for them. The Jew, who might expect his circumcision to count, will be accepted because he believes, and the Gentile will be accepted too, though he can plead nothing except the fact that he believes.