Romans 3:21-31

The first step to finding a solution is admitting you have a problem. You will not be willing to listen to directions until you admit that you are lost. You will not go to a doctor unless you admit that you're sick. The first three chapters of Romans have been aimed at establishing the problem, the problem of sin. Man is sinful and is, therefore rightfully under the wrath of God. That is the problem. Beginning with Romans 3:21 we have the solution. The first part of the book was the bad news. Now we come to the good news. This section is Paul's main proposition, the big idea which we will develop more fully as he goes on.

Before we get into the details of this passage, there is an important point to note which will help prevent the confusion which often comes from studying the Bible and especially Romans. The main thing we need to remember is that both in Greek and in English most words have more than one meaning. Very few words mean one thing and one thing only. Most words can have a variety of different shades of meaning depending on contexts. Sometimes words can almost mean something completely different depending on how it is used. And the more common a word is the more certainly this will be true.

This is certainly true of the word law which is used 52 times throughout the book of Romans. And if we examine the word, it will be clear that Paul uses the word to mean different things. So in verse 21 of our passage, Paul speaks of the righteousness of God without the law which is witnessed by the law and the prophets. Clearly, these are two different ideas. And in the second half of the verse, it is pretty clear that by the law, Paul means the Pentateuch, the law of Moses, while the Prophets refer to the rest of the Old Testament. But if you go back a few verses, Paul uses the word law to refer to a series of quotations which come from across the Old Testament—there law simply means' God's revelation, the whole of God's word, the Old Testament. 

In the verses leading up to this, Paul has been speaking of the impossibility of anyone, Jew or Gentile, finding salvation through their own efforts, by their obedience to what is right—whether to God's written word for the Jews or God's general revelation to the Gentiles. Coming on the heels of that, Paul's statement in verse 21 about the righteousness of God without the law seems to mean without obedience to the law. So law here means all the law of God, all moral law.

Down in verse 27, Paul speaks of a law of faith and a law of works. And here he seems to be using the word law in a general sense to mean a system or a plan or a rule. The law of faith means the system or plan of salvation through faith and not through legalism.

All these different meanings of law are obviously interconnected but they are all quite different and so it is important to bear this in mind as we read the Bible.

Now, back to the passage at hand. As I said before, Romans 1:18-3:20 is the diagnosis. It brings us to this central problem, the problem of salvation. Paul summarizes the situation in verse 23: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Every human being who has ever lived fits into this category. None of us are what we ought to be. 

Think about walking outside on a clear, cloudless night, somewhere out in the country and staring up into the sky. For many of us, the sight of the night sky is impressive and even breathtaking. It is glorious. But that glory is the glory of God; it reflects the glory of God because God is the one who created it and bestowed on it its essential nature. The heavens declare the glory of God; they shine brightly with the borrowed light of their creator.

Mankind was supposed to do that, as part of God's creation. But mankind was to show God's glory in a special way because he was made in the image of God. In some respects, man (though infinitely unlike God) was also more like God than any created thing, except perhaps the angels. When you look at a human being—not simply externally but in their actions and behavior—you ought to see the full glory of God shining in a miniature reflection. And you still do—to a certain extent. But because of sin, that image has been marred. Man shows far more of the disfigurement of sin than he does of God's beauty. Because of sin, man has fallen short of the glory of God. That is the problem of Romans 1-3.

But we have been thinking of the problem mostly from Man's side. Our problem is that we are sinners and therefore cut off from God; our problem is unrighteousness because of which the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against us. But this passage also shows us the problem from God's side. At least, in a sense. I realize it is something of a misnomer to speak of God as having a problem. But there is a sense in which God did have a problem in this situation and it is in verse 26: how can God be both just and also be a justifier?

In Ezekiel 18:32, God is speaking of the punishment which comes on the wicked and he says: “For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”  God has no desire that anyone be lost. Peter puts it that God is not willing that any should perish. 

Think of the situation in which the government has to punish one of its citizens for some crime or another. The judge or the executioner may actually feel a sense of joy and satisfaction in executing the sentence. The feeling of having power over others is pleasing to the ego. There may be a feeling of revenge and personal satisfaction in seeing the wrong-doer punished. Or the officials may look at the whole thing with indifference; as just part of their job about which they do not care one way or another. But there is a verse of Scripture that describes the attitude of a specific civil leader in relation to the punishment of a criminal. That is 2 Samuel 18:33. “And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” Absalom had committed murder, incest, and treason. He had attempted to kill his own father, and yet David has such love for his son that in death he had nothing but grief for him. David had no delight in his death, as much as he personally had been wronged by him.

And in a sense that is the attitude of God. We said that man's attitude to God is ungodliness—a rejection of God's fellowship and a denial of his authority. But while God's attitude to man was wrath, it was also love. Paul talks about this later in Romans. God loved us—even while and even though we were sinners. Love was and is the driving force of the Divine/human relationship. In that relationship, God always takes the first step and the primary thing which drives God is His love. 

We see that in this passage. There are two words we need to notice. One is in verse 25: forbearance. The word means to hold back. The point is that God doesn't always immediately punish sinners. He holds back their punishment. God isn't quick to want to bring judgment. He is not willing that any should perish. The other word we need to note is in verse 24: grace. It is what God gives to us that we do not deserve. God is gracious—He is a giver. None of that changes the justice of God, but justice is not the final and fundamental fact about God. God desires to be able to give of Himself. God seemingly made mankind solely so that He could fill them, so He could give them Himself. God is, fundamentally, a gracious God.

That is one of the main points we need to remember in talking about the gospel--God always takes the initiative. It isn't that when man sinned and fell under God's wrath, man went to God and begged and pleaded for salvation and until God reluctantly agreed to provide it. God wasn't like the unjust judge in the parable who had to be pestered to death before he agreed to settle the matter. God took the initiative.

But this is the problem—it is the contrast between the righteousness of God and the unrighteousness of man.  If God were righteous and man were righteous, there would be no problem. That is how things stood before the Fall. Man's relation to God was godliness and God's relation to man was love. But then sin happened and here we are. God's desire was to alter this picture. God did not want to pour out His wrath on mankind.

There is a tension between justice and mercy. We see this in the story of David and his children, which we already mentioned. David loved his children sincerely if not very wisely. When David's son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar, David was angry about the sin. David was righteous enough to recognize the sin and feel wrath. But he apparently did absolutely nothing about it. When Absalom, in revenge, assassinated Amnon, David was assumably angry, but he also did nothing and it only took a little persuasion for him to welcome Absalom back with open arms. David's refusal to stand for justice and righteousness among his own children caused untold harm to them and to the entire nation. David's attitude of mercy is admirable, but it would have been better for everyone concerned if he had also had an attitude of justice.

God is just and God could not simply ignore what was right in order to fudge over man's sin. God could not simply pretend that man was righteous when he wasn't. God could not simply justify man's sin. And I know it may sound strange to say that God cannot do something, since the Bible says that with God nothing is impossible. But look at Hebrews 6:18: “That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” This text says that it is impossible for God to lie. The context has to do with God making a covenant so we can add that it is impossible for God to break a promise. In short, it is impossible for God to deny Himself; for God to be anything other than who He is. As Paul said earlier, God will be true though every man is a liar. God is righteous and He cannot cease to be righteous.

And even if we could entertain the possibility that God could cease to be righteous, that also would not solve the problem. There's an Adventure in Odyssey episode where Eugene is traveling across the country on a bus when he sees his friend Bernard broken down alongside the road, so he stops to help him. But since he doesn't have the part necessary to fix Bernard's truck, all he accomplishes is becoming stranded alongside him. Man would not become more righteous by God becoming less. C. S Lewis said the sane cannot help the mad by going mad themselves.

And just think for a moment about this--what if it were possible for God to cease to be righteous? Think about everything we see in the world, everything that mankind has done to itself and to the world, and imagine what it would be like if there was a being of unlimited power and unlimited knowledge who fell into this category of unrighteousness. What if there existed a being with the power of God but the unrighteousness of man? So far from solving man's problem, that would be, quite literally, the biggest problem of all.

So the problem remains. God is righteous and man is unrighteous. God cannot cease to be righteous and man, on his own devices, cannot cease to be unrighteous. So how can God be just and be a justifier?

Certainly not by the law. That is verse 21. The Righteousness of God is without the law—that is, it cannot be affected by the law, it does not arise from within the matrix of the law. This doesn't mean that the righteousness of God is against the law. God cannot be an outlaw against His own law. But the law—whether we mean the Mosaic law, general morality, civil law, or even the ethical commandments of Christianity—does not and cannot create righteousness. That isn't what a law does. That isn't the nature of the animal. 

The law is important. This righteousness without the law is witnessed by the law and the prophets. The whole Old Testament points forward to this point. The Old Testament law had its place. The New Testament law has its place. Ethics and morality have their place. Even civil and ecclesiastical laws have their place. They have an essential role in reality. But their role is not to solve this problem. (Humans have a habit of trying to fit a round peg into a square hole and, when it fails, they come to the conclusion that it is also useless for a round hole. This is a mindset we must avoid.) 

The problem is solved through three words which form a sort of triangle. 

In verse 25 we have the word propitiation. This is probably not a word you used in conversation during the last week unless you were talking about New Testament theology. But the idea behind this word is relatively simple: it means the putting away or covering of wrath. 

Think of the story of Philemon. Onesimus had seemingly, in some way, wronged Philemon and stood in debt to him. As such, there was a necessary break between the two men. But Paul wrote the book of Philemon to convince Philemon to be reconciled to Onesimus and, moreover, offered to pay whatever debts Onesimus had accrued. That is propitiation. Propitiation is the means by which wrath is put away and reconciliation is rendered possible.

But the Greek word translated as propitiation here has an important history. It is used in the Greek Old Testament to refer to the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, what we usually call the Mercy-Seat. When I was a boy, I sort of had this mental image of the Mercy-Seat as being an actual chair or seat mounted to the top of the ark. And while that isn't literally true, that is almost the idea—the Mercy-Seat was the place where mercy was given; it was the meeting place of God and man. In a sense, mercy sat enthroned upon that ark. The NET Bible explains it: “The value of this place was that Yahweh sat enthroned above it, and so the ark essentially was the “footstool.”” (Note on Exodus 25:17) It was a portal: it was a place where something from beyond this world touched this world. It was the place where mercy was actualized. There was a sacramental significance to the Mercy-Seat.

That is the significance of this word propitiation. It is the point at which wrath gives way to mercy; the dividing line between punishment and pardon; it is the moment at which an enemy becomes a friend; the place where a prodigal becomes a son once again. For the Jews of the Old Testament, their propitiation was the mercy-seat. It was there, through the shedding of the blood of sacrifices, that God and man were reconciled. It was a hidden, secret place, that only one carefully chosen man could access and him only once a year. Though the priest offered atonement for all the people, not all the people could access the mercy seat. The propitiation was something sacred, secret, and sealed.

But there is another Mercy-Seat. There was another place where mercy was enthroned. There was another place where Heaven met with Earth. And it was on a rough wooden cross set up on sun-bleached hillside among a throng of common people somewhere outside Jerusalem. That Mercy-Seat was public and mundane. Verse 25 says that Jesus was “set forth to be a propitiation.” The death and resurrection of Jesus is our Mercy-Seat; it is the place at which God's wrath is turned to mercy. It is the point of atonement; the point at which and the means by which the guilt of sin is removed; it is the point of “peace on earth, and mercy mild/God and sinners reconciled.” Jesus is our propitiation.

That is what God has done for us. We talked earlier about God's grace. Grace was already the driving force in Creation. But God's grace took upon flesh and dwelt among us. As Jesus is the incarnation of God, so He is the incarnation of Grace. 

That is one point of a triangle. The next is what God does in us. God's work is always active. We should never think that Jesus died on the cross merely to give us something to write hymns about. It was aimed at accomplishing something in us. And that is justification. Verses 25-26 state that because of the propitiation which is in the blood of Christ, God grants the remission of sins that are past so that God is both just and a justifier. 

There is a lot that can be said regarding the idea of justification; for our present purposes, we can simply say that justification means the remission or forgiveness of our past sins and a change of status from unrighteousness to righteousness. It is a clearing of the slate and a removal of final punishment of sin (though some punishment may remain).

That is the second point of our triangle. Propitiation is what God did for us and justification what He does in us. But there is a problem. We see it in 1 Timothy 2:5-6. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” Jesus was given a ransom, as a propitiation for all; the atonement is universal. But not all men are justified. There was a time when Paul was not justified. Just because Jesus died did not automatically justify everyone in the world. Paul was so insistent about this doctrine of justification because he knew it was possible for some to fail in obtaining this justification. That is the problem—if God desires all to be justified; and if a propitiation exists for all to be justified, then why are not all justified? What is the conditional side of this?

And that is faith, the third point of our triangle. Verse 22 says that the righteousness of God is unto all and upon all them that believe. All have sinned. All need salvation. God has provided salvation for all. What makes the difference is faith. It is only of those who have faith in Jesus that God is the Justifier.

But what is faith? I think we can use a very simple explanation here. Think of the picture of Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” Going to open a door cannot cause a person to be there. Wishful thinking and a positive attitude are not faith. There must be, objectively, something or someone in whom we put our faith. There has to be somebody at the door in order for there to be a knock. But we have to make the decision to go to the door and open it if that objective reality is ever to come inside. That is faith—it is deliberately responding to and embracing the objective reality of God's offer; it is taking God at His word and acting upon it. God has provided a Propitiation by which we can have Justification but only if we, in Faith, make use of the offer.

This then is the solution to both God's problem and man's. This is the only way in which the problem of sin can be solved. The only way to stop the wrath of God from being revealed from heaven is to remove the unrighteousness of man against which it is revealed. That is what salvation does. Through the propitiation which is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is justification that removes the unrighteousness of man, so that God can be just and be the justifier of those that have faith in Jesus.

This is the solution and it is a universal solution. Look at verse 22 again: “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.” If salvation came through wealth, then not everyone would have an equal chance of finding it. If salvation came through the intellect or the emotions, then everyone would start in a slightly different position regarding its pursuit. If salvation came through ethnicity or nationality, it would obviously be very specific and limited. But the need for salvation is universal (v. 23). And the God who provides salvation is universal. (That is verse 29; there is one God over both the Jews and the Gentiles.) And because salvation has its origination in God and not in man, salvation is universal—that is, it is not limited to specific people or specific groups. The atonement is universal, and the possibility of faith is universal. God doesn't have one plan of salvation for the Jews and another for the Gentiles. God didn't make one gospel for the rich and another poor. There is not one church for Americans and another for the rest of the world. The righteousness of God comes through faith in and the faithfulness of Jesus unto all that believe for there is no difference. God has one plan of salvation for all people; the righteousness of God which is of faith, and not by the works of the law. The plan of salvation is the law of faith not the law of works—and it excludes all boasting, at least all boasting in our own works and accomplishment, for salvation does not come through our works but through God. This is the central proposition of Romans.

That brings us to the end of this passage but before we close we have to look at verse 31, which sits in a somewhat odd position at the end of the passage, not directly tied to anything before. Once again, Paul uses the form of asking a question and then answering it. The question is: “Do we then make void the law through faith?” You may remember that at the beginning of this article we looked at the fact that the word law can mean many different things. And the interpretation of verse 31 depends on what you think law means here. 

It may mean the Mosaic law and in a broader sense the entire Old Testament—in which case, Paul is asking: is this gospel of faith inconsistent with the Old Testament revelation? Has God contradicted Himself? Do we have to throw out the Old Testament in order to accept the New Testament? And the short answer Paul gives is no. The New Testament continually established and reinforces the Old. Paul always saw the gospel as the logical fulfillment and consummation of the Mosaic Economy. Paul elsewhere refers to the gospel as a mystery. In a good mystery story, you don't know who the murderer is until the last chapter; but once you do know, everything in the book begins to make sense and you can read it over and over again and see how all the clues fit together. That is how the gospel is with the Old Testament—once you know know the New Testament, you will begin to see how everything it teaches is already hinted at and foreshadowed in the Old. The Gospel was not a novelty, still less a last-second expediency to deal with unforeseen events, but the logical consummation of God's plan from the beginning. This is a point that Paul will examine in Chapter 4.

However, Law can have a more general meaning and simply mean morality as such. And in that case what Paul is asking is: does faith nullify morality? If we are saved by faith does that mean we can just live however we want? Does the Gospel mean a breakdown of ethical authority? Does grace make the law obsolete? And, to this also, Paul's answer is no. The gospel establishes the law and does it in a way that neither legalism nor covenantal nomism ever could--because, though the propitiation provided by God, there is a communication not merely of legal righteousness but actual righteousness. God doesn't merely wipe away the guilt of sin but actually creates an organic connection between Himself and the individual, so that the righteousness of God, not merely as a legal fiction but in reality, is revealed from faith to faith so that the just shall be enabled to live by faith. This is a point to which Paul will return much later in Romans.