15  How to Be Right with God (3:21-25a)

But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. (3:21–25a)

Job asked the most important question it is possible to ask: “How can a man be in the right before God?” (Job 9:2). He then said,

Because God is the kind of God He is, Job wondered how a person could ever hope to approach Him, much less become right and acceptable before Him. Can a mere human being have a right relationship with a God who is perfectly holy, infinite, and mighty? Bildad echoed Job’s question, saying, “How then can a man be just with God?” (Job 25:4).

Upon hearing John the Baptist’s fearful warnings about God’s judgment, “the multitudes were questioning him, saying, Then what shall we do?’” (Luke 3:10). The crowd that Jesus had miraculously fed the day before asked Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” (John 6:27–28). The rich young ruler asked Jesus, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?” (Matt. 19:16). After hearing Peter’s sobering message at Pentecost, some of the listeners said to him “and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37). As he lay blinded on the road to Damascus, Saul cried out to Jesus, “What shall I do, Lord?” (Acts 22:10). The Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).

Throughout history men have asked much the same questions as did Job and the others. The very reason that religion is so universally common to mankind reflects man’s attempts to answer such questions. As noted in the last chapter, people cannot escape feelings of guilt, not only for doing things they know are wrong but for being the way they are. Man’s sense of lostness, loneliness, emptiness, and meaninglessness is reflected in the literature and archaeological remains of every civilization. So are his fear of death, of existence, if any, beyond the grave, and of divine punishment. Nearly every religion is a response to those fears and seeks to offer a way of reaching and satisfying deity. But every religion except Christianity is man-made and works-centered, and for that reason, none of them can succeed in leading a person to God.

Scripture makes clear that there is indeed a way to God, but that it is not based on anything men themselves can do to achieve or merit it. Man can be made right with God, but not on his own terms or in his own power. In that basic regard Christianity is distinct from every other religion. As far as the way of salvation is concerned, there are therefore only two religions the world has ever known or will ever know—the religion of divine accomplishment, which is biblical Christianity, and the religion of human achievement, which includes all other kinds of religion, by whatever names they may go under.

When threatened by the fierce and powerful Babylonians, the people of Judah asked Jeremiah to intercede for them before God, “that the Lord your God may tell us the way in which we should walk and the thing that we should do.” To reinforce their seeming sincerity, they then “said to Jeremiah, ‘May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us, if we do not act in accordance with the whole message with which the Lord your God will send you to us. Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the Lord our God.’” But when Jeremiah brought them God’s answer, which was to stay in their own land and trust Him to save them, they rejected His word and went to Egypt (Jer. 42:1–43:7).

Their response is typical of myriads of people who ask how to get right with God. They seem very sincere, but when they hear about the true and only way, which is through trust in Jesus Christ, they are unwilling to comply. Their response makes it evident that they are seeking salvation on their own terms, not God’s.

All men are equally incapable of coming to God in their own power. They can be saved only by the provision of God’s grace. Since Adam and Eve fell, faith responding to the offer of God’s grace has always been the only means of salvation, of providing a right relationship to God. Man cannot be saved even by God’s own divine law given through Moses. That law was never, under any covenant or dispensation, a means of salvation. Its purpose was to show how impossible it is to measure up to God’s standards by human effort. The moral standards commanded and the ceremonies prescribed in the Mosaic covenant were never intended and were never able to save. A sincere desire to obey the law and a proper observance of the rituals were pleasing to God, but only as they reflected faith in Him.

One of the major and repeated themes of the book of Romans is righteousness. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the common Greek root behind righteousness, justification, and their various verb and adjectival forms is found more than sixty times in Romans. The present passage (3:21–25a) is one of many in the epistle that focus on God’s righteousness, by which all righteousness is measured.

The only righteousness man possesses or attains within himself is unrighteousness, because that is the character and substance of his fallen nature. Man’s “righteous deeds,” Isaiah declares, “are like a filthy garment,” referring to a menstrual cloth (Isa. 64:6).

The light of righteousness comes only from above. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, prophesied of Jesus that He would be “the Sunrise from on high [who] shall visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death” (Luke 1:78–79). As the godly Simeon held the infant Jesus in his arms, he declared, “My eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel” (Luke 2:30–32). John describes the Lord Jesus Christ as “the true light which, coming into the world enlightens every man” (John 1:9). Jesus Christ was God incarnate, bringing in His own self the light of salvation to the world.

Ancient Greek and Roman poets loved to write overly dramatic tragedies in which the hero or heroine was rescued from impossible situations by the last-minute intervention of a god (the deus ex machina literary device). However, the more reputable among them opted not to bring a god onto the stage unless the problem were one that deserved a god to solve it.

The supreme human tragedy is man’s sin, and only the true God can solve it. Only the perfectly righteous God Himself can provide the righteousness that men need to be acceptable to Him.

God’s righteousness is different from all other kinds of righteousness in many ways. First of all, it is different because of its source, which is God Himself. “Drip down, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds pour down righteousness; let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit, and righteousness spring up with it. I, the Lord, have created it” (Isa. 45:8).

Second, God’s righteousness is different in essence. It is a comprehensive righteousness that fulfills both the precept and the penalty of God’s law, under which all men stand judged. The precept of God’s law is the perfect fulfillment of it, in other words sinless perfection, which only the man Christ Jesus has ever fulfilled. He kept every requirement of God’s law without even the most minute deviation or shortcoming. Although He endured every temptation to which man is subject, He was completely without sin (Heb. 4:15). Yet, in order to fulfill the penalty of the law for sinful mankind, God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24; cf. Heb. 9:28).

Third, God’s righteousness is unique in its duration. His righteousness is everlasting righteousness, existing from eternity to eternity. Throughout Scripture His righteousness is referred to as everlasting (see, e.g., Ps. 119:142; Isa. 51:8; Dan. 9:24). The person, therefore, who receives God’s righteousness receives everlasting righteousness.

In the Iliad of Homer, the great Trojan warrior Hector was preparing to fight Achilles and the invading Greeks. As he was about to leave home, Hector wanted to hold his young son Astyanax in his arms and bid him farewell for what ended up being the last time. But Hector’s armor so frightened the infant that he shrank back to his nurse’s caress. The father, laughing out loud, then removed his bronze helmet and took up his little child in his arms. The boy discovered the father of his love behind all that armor.

That is akin to what Paul does in his letter to the Romans, beginning with 3:21. After having shown God the judge and executioner, as it were, he now shows the God of love, who reaches out His arms to sinful men in the hope that they will come to Him and be saved.

In 3:21–25a Paul gives seven additional elements of the righteousness that God divinely imparts to those who trust in His Son, Jesus Christ. It is apart from legalism (v. 21a), built on revelation (v. 21b), acquired by faith (v. 22a), provided for all (vv. 22b-23), given freely through grace (v. 24a), accomplished by redemption (v. 24b), and paid for by atoning sacrifice (v. 25a).

RIGHTEOUSNESS IS APART FROM LEGALISM

But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, (3:21a)

But translates an adversative, indicating a contrast, in this instance a wonderful and marvelous contrast—between man’s total depravity and inability to please God and God’s own provision of a way to Himself. Except for the introduction (1:1–18), the epistle has portrayed an utterly dark picture of man’s wickedness and hopelessness apart from God. In that introduction Paul gave a brief glimpse of light when he spoke “of the gospel, [which] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith”’ (1:16–17).

Now, after backing all sinful mankind, Jew and Gentile alike, into the totally dark and seemingly inescapable corner of God’s wrath (1:18–3:20), Paul begins to open the window of divine grace that lets in the glorious light of salvation through the righteousness that God Himself has provided.

First of all, Paul says, the righteousness that God imparts to believers is apart from the Law. Nomos (Law) is used in the New Testament in a number of senses, much like its English equivalent. In a negative sense, it sometimes refers to legalism, the strict, self-dependent trust in one’s own efforts to perform to the level of divine morality (see Luke 18:9). Sometimes it refers to the commandments and ceremonial rituals prescribed by God in the Old Covenant through Moses. Sometimes it refers simply to divine standards in general. Sometimes it refers to the entire body of Scripture that God had revealed before the time of Christ, what we now call the Old Testament. Sometimes it is a synonym for a general principle or rule. In interpeting the New Testament, therefore, the specific meaning must be determined from the context.

Because they capitalize Law in this passage, it is evident that the translators of the New American Standard Bible understood nomos to refer to God’s divine revelation, either in the narrower sense of the Mosaic law or the wider sense of the entire Old Testament. But I believe that in this passage Paul primarily has in mind the sense of legalism, of men’s attempt to become acceptable to God by means of their own human efforts.

But the apostle’s main point is the same, whichever of those senses he had in mind for Law. He is declaring that the righteousness God gives to believers is entirely apart from obedience to any law, even God’s own revealed law. God’s righteousness is in no way based on human achievement, on anything that man can do in his own power.

The Jews’ own Scriptures did not teach salvation by obedience to God’s law, much less by obedience to the many man-made laws and traditions that had been devised by the rabbis and elders during the several hundred years before Christ. Nevertheless, members of the Jewish majority in Jesus’ and Paul’s day placed their trust in those man-made regulations. In fact, most of them had more faith in rabbinical traditions than in God’s divinely revealed law in Scripture. Before his conversion, Paul was himself the epitome of Jewish legalism (see Phil. 3:4–6).

The spirit of legalism was carried over into the church by many Jews who had taken on the name of Christ. They were referred to as Judaizers, because they attempted to add to the gospel the legalistic requirements of the Old Testament, such as circumcision and obedience to the Sabbath laws. Paul admonished believers in Colossae, “Let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day” (Col. 2:16). He reminded the believers in Galatia that they were “justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal. 2:16). Later in that epistle he wrote, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you … For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything” (Gal. 5:1–2, 6). To the Romans he declared, “We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (Rom. 3:28).

Even under the Old Covenant, good works based on God’s own standards were worthless as far as salvation was concerned. Paul says, “David also speaks of the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works” (Rom. 4:6) and then proceeds to quote from Psalm 32:1–2.

God holds before men the standards of His righteousness in order to demonstrate the impossibility of keeping them by human effort. Because of that inability, “the Law brings about wrath” (Rom. 4:15), God’s judgment on man’s sin. “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; … Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, The righteous man shall live by faith’” (Gal. 3:10–11). “By grace you have been saved,” Paul told the Ephesians; “and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works” (Eph. 2:8–9). Countless other New Testament passages (see, e.g., Phil. 3:9; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 3:5) repeat the basic gospel truth that rightness with God can never be achieved by human effort.

Whether the law of God is the Mosaic law of the Jews or the law written in the hearts and consciences of all men, including Gentiles (Rom. 2:11–15), obedience to it can never be perfect and therefore can never save. That is a devastating truth to everyone who seeks to please God on his own terms and in his own power—which is why the gospel is so offensive to the natural man.

Now, however, Paul declares that the righteousness of God, the divine and eternal righteousness by which men can be made right with God, has been manifested. As he will explain in the following verse, that righteousness has been manifested “in Jesus Christ for all those who believe” (v. 22).

RIGHTEOUSNESS IS BUILT ON REVELATION

being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, (5:21b)

Before he presents the means for men to receive God’s manifested righteousness, however, Paul declares that it not only is apart from legalism but is also divinely revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets.

That truth was obviously directed primarily at Jews, whose whole religion centered in the Law and the Prophets, a phrase commonly used to encompass all of God’s written Word, what we now call the Old Testament. In other words, the apostle was not speaking about a new kind of righteousness but about the divine righteousness that is spoken of throughout the Jewish Scriptures.

Not only do the Law and Prophets proclaim God’s perfect righteousness but they affirm what Paul has just stated—that, without exception, men are unable to achieve that righteousness in their own way or power.

The Jews had great reverence for their Scriptures, but most of them failed to realize that, although divinely revealed, those Scriptures in themselves had no power to save. “You search the Scriptures,” Jesus told a group of Jewish listeners, “because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me” (John 5:39). In other words, the Law and the Prophets did not show men how to achieve their own righteousness but pointed to the coming Messiah, the Savior and Son of God, who Himself would provide the righteousness that God demands of men. Although the full revelation of salvation through Christ was not given in the Old Testament, that had always been the way of salvation to which that testament pointed.

The Mosaic laws were not given as a means of achieving righteousness but of describing God’s righteousness and showing the impossibility of men’s living up to it. The Mosaic sacrifices were not prescribed as a means of atoning for sin but of symbolically pointing to Jesus Christ, who Himself became the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The commandments, rituals, sacrifices, and godly principles taught in the Old Testament were, and still are, a part of His divinely inspired Word. But they could never remove sin, forgive sin, atone for sin, or give a new and righteous life to a sinner—no matter how zealously and sincerely he tried to abide by them.

RIGHTEOUSNESS IS ACQUIRED BY FAITH

even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ (3:22a)

To avoid any possible misunderstanding, Paul mentions again that he is speaking of the absolute and perfect righteousness of God, not the relative and imperfect righteousness of human achievement.

His point here is that the perfect, saving righteousness of God not only is received apart from legalism and built on revelation, but is also acquired only by faith. That has always been the only way of salvation as far as man’s part is concerned. The very point of Hebrews 11 is to show that there has never been a means of salvation other than faith in the true God.

That is also a repeated theme of Paul’s Roman epistle. In chapter 4 he says, “To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness” (v. 5), and, “The promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith” (v. 13; cf. v. 20). He begins chapter 5 by declaring that “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

There is, of course, such a thing as false faith, even in the name of Christ. John reports that many people who had a superficial faith in Jesus did not have saving faith. “Jesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine’” (John 8:31). In other words, obedience to His Word is evidence of true faith, whereas continual disobedience is evidence of false faith. “Faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself,” James declared (James 2:17). In other words, disobedient faith is spurious faith. It is “by itself,” that is, unrelated to faith in God. False faith may be faith in good works, faith in ritual, faith in a religious experience or system, faith in one’s own goodness, or simply a nebulous faith in faith that is so common in our day.

A person is saved through faith in Jesus Christ alone, apart from anything else. But Scripture makes clear that saving faith is immeasurably more than simply making a verbal declaration of believing about Him.

The late A. W. Tozer perceptively commented:

The saving faith in Jesus Christ that the New Testament teaches is much more than a simple affirmation of certain truths about Him. Even the demons acknowledged many facts about Him. One of the demons who possessed the man from Gadara said to Jesus, “What do I have to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” (Mark 5:7). The demon who gave the slave girl the power of divination described Paul and his friends as “bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation” (Acts 16:17).

Saving faith is a placing of oneself totally in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ, and it has certain indispensable elements that the New Testament clearly teaches.

Saving faith in Jesus Christ involves the exercise of will. Paul told the Roman believers, “Thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed” (Rom. 6:17). Salvation begins (from the human standpoint) with a person’s willful obedience in turning from sin to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Saving faith also involves the emotions, because, as in the verse just mentioned above, it must come from the heart as well as from the mind. A person cannot be saved by good feelings about Christ, and many people throughout the ages and in our own day have substituted good feelings about Christ for saving faith in Him. But on the other hand, a person whose life is transformed by Christ will be affected in his emotions in the deepest possible way.

Saving faith also involves the intellect. No one can think his way into heaven, but neither can he receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior without some comprehension of the truth of the gospel (see Rom. 10:17ff.).

Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of God’s righteousness, and it is because of that truth that He can impart divine righteousness to those who trust in Him. During His earthly incarnation, Jesus demonstrated God’s righteousness by living a sinless life. In His death Christ also demonstrated God’s righteousness by paying the penalty for the unrighteous lives of every human being.

The seventeenth-century English minister Joseph Alleine wrote:

John Wesley went to heaven on March 2, 1791, at the age of eighty-eight, after having preached the gospel for about sixty-five years. One of his favorite hymns to sing on his deathbed was:

RIGHTEOUSNESS IS PROVIDED FOR ALL

for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (3:22b-23)

The provision of salvation and the righteousness it brings is granted for all those who believe. Anyone will be saved who believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, for there is no distinction.

Preaching in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, Paul declared, “Through Him [Christ] everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses” (Acts 13:39). In his letter to the church at Galatia, the apostle said, “A man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 2:16).

Jesus Himself said, “The one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). Anyone who believes in Jesus Christ—whether a murderer, prostitute, thief, rapist, homosexual, religious hypocrite, false teacher, pagan, or anything else—will be saved. Just as no one is good enough to be saved, no one is so evil that he cannot be saved.

That is the wonderful point of Romans 3:22. All those who believe will be saved, because in God’s sight there is no distinction. Just as everyone apart from Christ is equally sinful and rejected by God, everyone who is in Christ is equally righteous and accepted by Him. Even the “foremost of all” sinners, as Paul called himself (1 Tim. 1:15), was not too wicked to be saved.

There is no distinction among those who are saved, because there is no distinction among those who are lost, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Hustereō (fall short) has the basic meaning of being last or inferior. Every human being comes in last as far as the glory of God is concerned.

RIGHTEOUSNESS IS GIVEN FREELY THROUGH GRACE

being justified as a gift by His grace (3:24a)

By the same token, no one is ahead of anyone else as far as salvation is concerned. Being justified refers back to the “alls” of the previous two verses—all those who have believed, of whom all were sinful. Just as there is no distinction among those who need salvation, there is no distinction among those who receive it, because they all are justified as a gift by His grace.

Dikaioo (justified) means to declare the rightness of something or someone. Justification is God’s declaration that all the demands of the law are fulfilled on behalf of the believing sinner through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Justification is a wholly forensic, or legal, transaction. It changes the judicial standing of the sinner before God. In justification, God imputes the perfect righteousness of Christ to the believer’s account, then declares the redeemed one fully righteous. Justification must be distinguished from sanctification, in which God actually imparts Christ’s righteousness to the sinner. While the two must be distinguished, justification and sanctification can never be separated. God does not justify whom He does not sanctify.

Yet God justifies believers as a gift by His grace, not because of any good thing in the one who is justified.

By definition, a gift is something given freely, unearned and unmerited by the recipient. God’s greatest of all gifts is that of salvation through His Son, given completely out of His divine grace. “If righteousness comes through the Law,” that is, through human fulfillment of God’s divine standard, Paul declares, ^uthen Christ died needlessly” (Gal. 2:21).

The law reveals God’s righteousness and exposes man’s unrighteousness. Grace, on the other hand, not only reveals God’s righteousness but actually gives His righteousness to those who trust in His Son. That gift of grace cost God the suffering and death of His own Son on the cross, so that, for the believer, there is nothing left to pay.

RIGHTEOUSNESS IS ACCOMPLISHED BY REDEMPTION

through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; (3:24b)

Apolutrōsis (redemption) is a strengthened form of lutro&smacr; is, which carries the idea of delivering, especially by means of paying a price. It was commonly used of paying a ransom to free a prisoner from his captors or paying the price to free a slave from his master.

Because of man’s utter sinfulness and inability to bring himself up to the standard of God’s righteousness, the redemption of a sinner could come only by that which is in Christ Jesus. Only the sinless Savior could pay the price to redeem sinful men.

RIGHTEOUSNESS WAS PAID BY ATONING SACRIFICE

whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. (3:25a)

Because man cannot become righteous on his own, God graciously provided for his redemption through the atoning sacrifice of His own Son, Jesus Christ.

That sacrifice was not made in the dark or even in the hidden and holy recesses of the sacred Temple, but openly on the hill of Calvary for all the world to see. God displayed His Son publicly as a propitiation.

Hilastērion (propitiation) carries the basic idea of appeasement, or satisfaction. In ancient pagan religions, as in many religions today, the idea of man’s appeasing a deity by various gifts or sacrifices was common. But in the New Testament propitiation always refers to the work of God, not of man. Man is utterly incapable of satisfying God’s justice except by spending eternity in hell.

The only satisfaction, or propitiation, that could be acceptable to God and that could reconcile Him to man had to be made by God. For that reason, God in human flesh, Jesus Christ, “gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6). He appeased the wrath of God.

That ransoming propitiation made by Christ was paid in His own divine blood. To believers scattered throughout the Roman Empire, Peter wrote, “You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:18–19).

The Hebrew equivalent of hilastērion is used in the Old Testament in reference to the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies, where the high priest went once a year, on the Day of Atonement, to make a sacrifice on behalf of his people. On that occasion he sprinkled blood on the Mercy Seat, symbolizing the payment of the penalty for his own sins and the sins of the people.

But that yearly act, although divinely prescribed and honored, had no power to remove or pay the penalty for a single sin. It could only point to the true and effective “offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all…. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb. 10:10, 14).

Those who are sanctified by the offering of Christ are those who receive that sanctification through faith in Him. To the Colossian believers Paul wrote,

In his beautiful hymn, Horatius Bonar wrote,