Romans 1:16-17, 3:22b-31

Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-31

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

…

^22bFor there is no distinction, ²³ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴ they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶ it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

²⁷ Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸ For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. ²⁹ Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, ³⁰ since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. ³¹ Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Romans 1:16-17 states the theme of the letter, a portion not in the reading, Romans 1:18-3:20, states the alienated plight of humanity, and Romans 3:21-30, begins Paul’s explanation of the path God has chosen for humanity to find a way that brings healing, reconciliation, peace, and liberation.

Romans 1:16-17 is a statement of the theme of the letter. Paul had never visited Rome, and thus he was writing to a church with which he had no personal history (although chapter 16 certainly indicates that he was acquainted with many of the people in the church at Rome). After an especially lengthy salutation (1:1-15), Paul succinctly articulates the theological convictions that he intends to explore more fully in the body of the letter.

Paul writes this letter because he wants to explain the gospel. The letter is so important to an understanding of Pauline thought for this reason.  No other letter captures the center of his teaching quite like this one.

 ¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel (εὐαγγέλιον); it is the power of God for salvation (σωτηρίαν), health, well-being, and deliverance; “Salvation” in the everyday sense in the Greco-Roman world connoted health or well-being. However, in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Scriptures of Israel, this noun was used to translate Hebrew words that conveyed God’s acts of deliverance or rescue, and this is a better analog for the way that Paul uses the word to characterize the concrete effects of the cross. The theme of Paul’s gospel is that God offers salvation to both Jew and Gentile based on faith. Such salvation is to everyone who has faith, trust in God in a way that excludes any thought of deserving this salvation or good news. Faith is trust in God’s grace, not in one’s own merit.  It is the act of receiving into ourselves the love of God, and this in all humility, gratitude, and joy.  It has both a negative and a positive aspect.  Positive in the sense of a trust in God’s limitless goodness, negative in the sense that one becomes aware of one’s own lack of righteousness and indeed despair at ever being able to achieve righteousness by one’s own effort.  Faith is an attitude toward God that involves an attitude toward the self. It shuts out all trust in one’s own deserving.  This attitude of faith, Paul is going to insist in this letter, is the sole condition of salvation.[1] Such salvation is to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Paul makes it clear the good news has universal impact. The emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome in 49 AD, and thus, Gentiles gained influence in the structure of the church. In 1:18-3:20, Paul will stress the universality of the gospel by showing the universal need for its message. He will want us to see clearly the truth of the human condition as one of alienation from each other, ourselves, nature, and God. He will want to show in this letter that God has not abandoned humanity in this lost condition. Rather, the event of Christ opens the way to peace with God and life in the Spirit.  ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness (δικαιοσύνη) of God is revealed (ἀποκαλύπτεται). It becomes clear that Paul gives a new interpretation to “righteousness.”  The Old Testament seems to imply that God treats as righteous those who were already righteous.  For Paul, however, God treats as righteous (justifies) the one who is still a sinner.  In other words, justification does not refer to anything positive or negative about the person who is justified.[2] It would at least appear that justification is a purely objective act of God. God attributes righteousness to the believer because God is righteous. The emphasis is on the justifying act or the attributing of righteousness to the believer. The righteous quality of the character of God is the source of treating the one who has faith as righteous. The gospel reveals this righteousness. Such righteousness does not have its foundation in the ability of a person to obey the Law but arises out of the event of faith within the believer. This event acknowledges the truth of what has happened in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The event character of the gospel is clear. An event in history in the person of Jesus Christ transforms our view of God, humanity, and the nature of the dealings God has with the world and the world has with God. 

As the covenant righteousness of the Creator this righteousness of God is the dawning of the new creation, even though for Paul the eschatological manifestation or epiphany to all the world is still to come. [3]The creaturely reality itself is a process oriented to a future consummation. True, the righteousness of God will be revealed in the end time, but the gospel of Jesus Christ already demonstrates it. The implication is that the righteousness of God is ambiguously present in the world. It means that the praise of the creatures toward God is an anticipation of the eschatological praising of God that will occur at the end. In substance, what the apostle says about the righteousness of God being revealed through the gospel is close to what Jesus said about the breaking in of the reign of God and its salvation. The gospel is not just making known the once-for-all act of salvation in Jesus Christ, but that the act of proclamation is itself an act of salvation on the part of God.[4]

Such righteousness is through faith for faith, expressing in rhetorical way that faith is the beginning and the end of the gospel he preaches. Even as it is written in Habakkuk 2:4, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” Paul is showing the unity that exists between the Old Testament and himself in his understanding of righteousness. He accomplishes this unity through the fresh revelation of the gospel that brings the Old Testament to its fulfillment. Obviously, God has done something new in Jesus Christ that allows Paul to look upon the ways of God in the Old Testament in a new way. While Paul will use some of the traditional rabbinic method, he will not rely upon their approach in terms of content. What Paul will need to show is that this gospel meets the universal need of humanity. He will need to show that the human situation as disclosed in the gospel is universal, and that therefore the offer of faith in Christ meets a universal need. Now, although Paul used the terminology and thought patterns of the first century AD, I would suggest that preachers and theologians have the same important task today, even if some of the terminology must change.

The letter explains the kerygma, the fundamental beliefs as Paul expressed them in his preaching and teaching.  What follows, therefore, becomes extremely important in understanding the primitive Christian faith.  This letter is an explanation of the gospel Paul preached, the news that this gospel can free people from the bondage of sin and death, for it is an expression of God’s power.  This gospel is an expression of God’s righteousness, which is by grace.  It is only by faith one is justified, only by faith is one righteous.  No works of the law or racial decent can justify anyone. The gospel proclaims the action of God for the salvation of everyone, based on the righteousness that comes through faith.  Romans 1:18-11:36 seek to explain, amplify, and add to, the theme.  Paul does this by discussing the unity of all person’s in sin (1:18-3:20), the significance for salvation of Jesus Christ (3:21-4:25), the new life available to the person in Christ (5:1-8:39), and the place of the Jewish people in the history of salvation (9:1-11:36).

This gospel is above all a message of hope.  This gospel is a message of God actively realizing that hope in people.  This gospel is a message of faith.  This gospel is a message of universal hope for deliverance.  There can be no doubt where Paul stands on these issues.  People do not have to wonder if the world is “thin,” disclosing its reality only by means of math and science, for God has offered a revelation in the unique event of Jesus Christ. People do not have to wonder if their lives are empty and meaningless, for God filled the course of the life of Jesus with meaning. People do not have to wonder if the universe and therefore their lives are without purpose, for the destiny of all things is to reflect the glory or beauty of God. People are not left hopeless, for there is a gospel of deliverance.  People do not have to wonder if God cares, for God has used divine power to accomplish salvation, liberation, and healing.  People do not have to “earn” salvation, for deliverance comes through a personal trust in the event of salvation, Jesus Christ.  People do not have to wonder if any gender, economic class, or race of people is exempt from the alienated plight of humanity, for sin and evil cut through the heart of everyone. Therefore, people also know that no one is excluded from this gospel, for its call is to everyone.

Martin Luther recounts his understanding of this passage and the significance it had in his life.

I greatly longed to understand Paul’s epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the justice of God,” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which, through grace and sheer mercy, God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.[5]

Part II of the argument in Romans, 3: 22b-31 is part of a larger segment, 3:21-5:21, that deals with the way God has provided for Jew and Gentile alike to find liberation, healing, and reconciliation in Christ. 

            In Romans 3:20, Paul uses the phrase “Righteousness not by works of the law,” contrasted with “righteousness apart from the law” in 3:21. Paul also uses the phrase in 3:20 “through the law is knowledge of sin” in contrast with “but attested by the law” in 3:21. Paul’s argument is not against the law as such, but against an assumption that the righteousness of God is the divine commitment to the people of the Law so that one could no longer conceive of a righteousness outside of the Law and thus outside the covenant people. The objective Paul has placed before himself is that the sacrificial death of Jesus provides a different criterion for the understanding of the righteousness of God. For Paul, by definition, God has a concern for the Gentile, and this means a concern for those “apart from the law.”[6]

The only way out of the sinfulness and bondage of one's own life is to turn to God and receive the gift of justification. Righteousness is the condition for salvation or life. This tight condition exists between righteousness as the condition and life as the result of that condition because the condition is already the gift of God. As condition, the word has a forensic sense, a favorable standing to the one judging. In Judaism, it became an eschatological term, in that they long for this pronouncement of a favorable standing with God at the end of history. In Paul, righteousness is already imputed to humanity in the present, as in Romans 3:21-5:1. God already pronounces the eschatological verdict on the person of faith in the present because the eschatological event has already happened. God already does not count our sin against us. What was for Judaism a hope is for Paul both a hope and a present reality. This new relationship with God has its center in justification. It is an interpretation and application of his eschatology. What humanity requires in order to go free in the judgment of God and to know itself discharged from the divine sentence has already occurred in Christ. This power for salvation accompanies the believer as a constantly fresh and relevant thing.

            Since the Reformation, it is difficult to read Romans 3 without first thinking of the doctrine of justification by faith. Most Christians have heard Romans 3:23 enough that they have it memorized, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Those in the Protestant tradition have mastered reading this text as a statement of humanity’s total depravity and its need to have faith in the rectifying work of God. While this text certainly speaks to both these human elements, it is also a powerful revelation of God’s righteousness that disturbs and redeems a sinful world.

            Paul wants to establish the condition of people apart from God’s specific revelation in Christ.  The point of the argument in Romans 1:18-20 is that people are lost, under sin, and thus guilty before God and liable for judgment.  People thus live in alienation, before God, other people, within themselves, and nature.  This being the natural condition of people, obviously there is need for some good news.  This point deals with the question, “In what can Jew and Gentile have faith in order to save them?”  Paul’s answer is Jesus Christ who saves through faith in him, not the Law.  Abraham is the supreme example of that trust.

            After showing no one, whether Jew or Gentile, can perform the law available to them, whether the written code or the law of conscience, in a way that makes one right with God, Paul now shows that God has a plan of reconciliation.  His gospel is good news precisely to the alienated human situation elaborated in 1:18-3:20. A sacrifice for sin provided by God in accordance with the law is the means God has chosen of extending his righteousness to all who believe or have trust in it, including those outside the Law. Paul can put this forward as an assertion because the pre-Pauline formula expressed in verses 25-26 is a fundamental element of the confession of the first Christian churches. As such, the recipients of the letter would accept it without argument. This plan is the principle of faith.  As is shown in v. 31, some may construe this as an entirely new plan, but Paul does not see it this way.  In the next section, in Chapter 4, Paul will show that Abraham, the first member of the covenant with God, was not justified either by law or circumcision but by faith.  Thus, God’s plan of justification by faith has never changed, and this has been God’s plan through the ages.  The point is, through Christ, God has made this plan more available than ever before.  

In 3:22b-31, Paul wants to define justification. He begins by describing the faith fellowship with Christ that is the source and goal of the Christian life. The only way out of the human dilemma described in 1:18-3:20, that the law cannot make one right with God, self, or each other, Paul wants to discuss the gift of rightness with God through faith fellowship with Christ. 

^22bFor there is no distinction. This way is universal, to Jew and Gentile, showing that an important element of the mission of Paul is to remove barriers rather than erect them. Then, in a memorable statement, ²³ since all have sinned (ἥμαρτον) and fall short of the glory (δόξης) of God. Jews, like the Greeks, are "under the power of sin," which is one of, if not the fundamental human problem Paul addresses in Romans; it is this matter that Paul takes up in verses 21-28. Falling short of the glory of God suggests the beauty of pre-fall harmony that humanity had with nature. Sin interrupted the peaceful relations God intended with humanity, that human beings would have with each other, and that nature itself would possess. The harmony intended between the finite and Infinite, between the temporal and the eternal, will be again in the future unveiling of Jesus Christ. Ironically, the very Law through which many Jews erroneously believed they could achieve righteousness gives testimony to God's righteousness.

Romans 3:24-26 may be part of a pre-Pauline formula. It consists of one long sentence.

Given that humanity now falls short of the glory God intended for it in creation, ²⁴ they are now, in a transforming event, justified (δικαιούμενοι). The language of justification is forensic in nature; it draws on the language of the courtroom to refer to the re-establishment of a right relationship between the believers. The event of justification is the decisive demonstration of the righteousness of God, shown specifically in the death of Christ. Yet, even this demonstration is provisional in that its decisive and definitive fulfillment still awaits the future act of God. 

The notion of justification has a long history within the church. The early Greek apologists and theologians thought of atonement bringing justification by faith. They connected justification and baptism so closely that some doubted the possibility of pardon for post-baptismal sin. They also believed strongly in the value of good works. While Augustine relies on careful exegesis, he may have strayed from the teaching of Paul. He will emphasize the necessity of grace, but he will go on to argue for an infusion of grace. Faith becomes of a gift of grace that, when infused into people, enables them to perform good works acceptable to God. Aquinas will elaborate on this theory of grace. Thus, rather than focusing on grace as a favor God extends to humanity, he stressed grace as a gift. The infusion of grace makes one worthy for eternal life. It “makes just” the sinner. Aquinas then argued that one can deserve something from God, in the sense of an heir receiving an inheritance. Yet, Paul argued against this view of the relationship between God and humanity, for humanity does not receive eternal life because it deserves it, but rather, because God grants this favor or grace through faith. Luther opposed Aquinas in teaching that justification is only imputed righteousness, stressing that justification does not free us from sin, for we will bear its stain throughout earthly life. He argues against the notion faith unites with love in order to justify, for if so, faith becomes love and therefore good works contribute to our justification. Luther will conclude by attacking all views of justification that include merit. Calvin stressed that no one can fulfill either the ceremonial or moral law so completely as to make themselves just or righteous. Thus, God imputes justification to humanity. God considers humanity righteous. Yet, the danger in both Luther and Calvin is that faith becomes an almost meritorious cause of justification that leads to unreal faith. Such a view had the potential of developing an antinomian character.  

Paul himself seems to distinguish three stages in the Christian life: justification, by which one enters into by faith; sanctification, by which one enters the Christian community through new life; and finally salvation, which is the future life in which we hope to share.  Paul separates each of these stages in thought.  Time does not separate justification and sanctification, since sanctification begins at the moment of justification.  Indeed, many of the differences as expressed above are the result of the confusion of these ideas.[7]

Justification occurs by his grace (χάριτι) as a gift, unmerited, spontaneous kindness toward us, through the redemption (ἀπολυτρώσεως) that is in Christ Jesus. “Redemption” is a financial image in which the self-offering of Jesus Christ for us speaks of an event that will take place only with the appearance of Christ. Yet, this strand of thinking is relatively slender. [8] God sets us free from the guilt, power, and consequences of sin in and through Christ. However, this setting free does not occur by God paying a ransom to Satan. For Paul, the work of Christ involves defeating Satan rather than buying him off. Redemption suggests the image of humanity as hopelessly bound to sin and death, when one came who, out of pure love and great cost to himself, has come to set us free. The emphasis in the image of redemption is the cost God paid for human redemption. The wrath of God on sin and death is just, but so is the offer of rectification for humanity by the event of Christ as the gift of grace. The gospel Paul preached was the setting right of human relationships with God by an act of generosity that depends on no payment any human being can make.[9] Thus, Paul puts forward the divine solution: despite our entrenched individual and corporate failings, everyone -- both Jew and Greek, receive the gift of justification and redemption. Although this sacrifice is in continuity with the divine promises to Israel, its saving effect is as a ransom and expiatory sacrifice for humanity, participation in which is through faith. Paul probably thinks of the death of Christ in terms of the sin offering on the Day of Atonement. In brief, Christ’s death was effective in dealing with human sins because he represented the sinners and by his death destroyed their sins. That is, Christ ended the condition of human beings as under the alienating power of sin. In the history of Jesus Christ, God has shown us grace. Divine grace is mercy and love. 

Barth[10] says the creation of this situation is a new creation, not a mere new eruption, extension, or unfolding, of that old “creative evolution” of which we form a part, and shall remain a part, until the end of our lives. Between the old and the new creation is the end of this human being and of this world. The “Something” that the Word of God creates is of an eternal order. It does not emerge from what we know. It does not develop out of what we knew. Compared with our “something” the new creation remains nothing. The righteousness of God in us and in the world is not a form of human righteousness competing with other forms. When we think of the mercy of God as an element in history or as a factor in human spiritual experience, one emphasizes its untruth. As Barth[11] reflects on the redemption offered in Christ, he says that Jesus of Nazareth is one amongst other possibilities of history, but the possibility that possesses all the marks of impossibility. His life is a history within the framework of history, a concrete event amid other concrete events, an occasion limited by the boundaries of time, and belonging to the texture of human life. However, his history is pregnant with meaning. In the history of Jesus humanity is filled with the voice of God. One who gazes upon this earthly fragment of the world, and perceives in the life of Jesus, and beyond it, the redemption that shall come. One who hears the creative voice of God, and looks for no other, but awaits this redemption from this voice of God. 

Christ is the one ²⁵ whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement (ἱλαστήριον, propitiation) by his blood. By means of an unfathomable sacrifice -- the sacrifice of Jesus -- God demonstrated "his righteousness." This sacrifice required the offering of blood, specifically, Jesus' blood. The redemption effected by Jesus comes about through his being offered as a “sacrifice of atonement” by God that demonstrates God’s faithfulness and results in the justification of the one who has faith in Jesus. Further, expiation suggests that the death of Christ is sacrificial in that it pays the penalty of sin before a God who is righteous and cannot accept an unholy people. If we look close at the image in the passage, we will avoid some fruitless paths. God is active in the offering of this sacrifice, not the recipient of it. God put forward the sacrifice. God and Christ are one in the cross. The acceptable quality of the death of Christ arises because of his life, in which he offered himself willingly. The sacrifice involving blood in the Old Testament was to be ritually pure and precious. Yet, people could offer such sacrifice without any desire to obey the rest of the covenant with the Lord. We find prophets saying that God has grown tired of sacrifices that did not represent the transformed course of their lives. Thus, the people can get to the point that anything they offer to the Lord becomes unclean, for a sacrifice can become unclean and thus not acceptable if the one who offers it is not truly repentant (Haggai 2:13-14). The point is, we must not abstract the death of Christ from the course of his life. His death does not have expiatory power just because it is the shedding of blood. Christ’s death was acceptable because of the righteous and faithful quality of life, that is, he did so willingly. We find this notion of the atoning and sacrificial character of the death of Jesus becoming the basis for the traditional theological designation of the priestly office of Jesus.[12] Jew and Gentile need a righteousness not their own. Paul could call the death of Christ an expiation here. This is a specialized, more metaphorical form of the expiatory concept by the understanding of Jesus as the expiatory sacrifice, as here. This idea takes its point of departure from the language about the blood of Christ poured out for us, which probably has its root in the tradition of the Lord’s Supper.[13] We need to stress that God put forward this sacrifice.[14]  Expiation ties in with the idea of a natural link between acts and their consequences. In expiation, the doers are released from the damaging consequences of their acts. The sacrifice of Christ turns away the eschatological judgment and wrath of God mentioned in 1:18, which is itself the consequence of the human situation as sinner and therefore source of the alienation with God, each other, and even inner alienation. Yet, expiation is possible only in certain cases and presupposes divine permission. The word describes the death of Christ as the place of expiation that God had prepared. Thus, the death of Christ is the new event in the history of the relationship between God and humanity that sets aside the act of human sinfulness and the consequence of eschatological judgment, which humanity richly deserves. When we link our lives through faith to his death, we receive the peace and freedom of no longer living under the act-consequence prison. Thus, the death of Christ has expiatory efficacy for individuals as they for their part link their own deaths to the death of Christ. Clearly, God and Christ are one in the cross, the cross being totally the action of God in Christ.[15] God has a plan of reconciliation. The restraining of eschatological wrath aims at the demonstration of the covenant faithfulness of God in the atoning death of Christ by which God sets aside the destructive effects of divine wrath and is thus an attribute of divine love. The picture is that God, in holiness, cannot stand sin in the divine presence and thus has “anger” toward humanity.  Nevertheless, God also, in divine love for people, gave Christ as the one sacrifice that would make our sacrifices acceptable.

I have had many difficulties with this notion of the expiatory death of Christ for us. I do not think I have resolved them. I can share what I am thinking at this point in my life. I keep turning around the significance of the death of Christ in my mind and heart. I think my main difficulty is that my self-evaluation is that I have done a pretty good job at heeding the encouragement of mom to be a good boy. Thus, I do have not lived with the notion that I justly stand under the threat of the eschatological judgment of God. That raises another issue. I am mostly concerned with what I do with my life here, in the brief time and limited space that in inhabit and influence. It is hard for me to take seriously what my life will look like after death. Maybe we “fade to black” as some would say. Maybe there is reward or punishment. Paul seems sure of all this because of the resurrection of Jesus, and I know I should be, but I must say that such matters do not influence the course of my life. However, I understand I lie. I put forward an image of myself that I want others to see in hopes that they will see me as a good man. Yet, that public image I present is far better than my inner world of thought as well as my actions done in secret. When I consider the expiatory character of the death of Christ with the broken character of my personal life that needs mending, of a life sick enough to need healing, and a life imprisoned by unfulfilled desires of the heart, then I know I need a path that lifts me out of the act-consequence prison. In this sense, the grace and love of God toward humanity is an event embodied in Jesus Christ. The death of Christ for us is the assurance of forgiveness. Divine forgiveness has become event in this death. Forgiveness of fault, of my falling short of what God intended my life to be, and of how I have inflicted my brokenness upon others, is the only way out of the act-consequence system that can become a violent and repetitive cycle. Here is a reason why forgiveness is so important in Christian teaching. In human relationships, act-consequence is usually a good thing. Yet, it can also imprison people in an endless cycle of violence, inflicting human judgment for sins committed generations ago. The way out of the violent cycle is the difficult journey of forgiveness, in which the offended party surrenders what may be justice in order to restore peace and right relationship. Thus, I keep circling around that event. Some days I find it harder than others, but I live with the hope that my life lived in fellowship with the risen Lord through the Spirit of God at work in my will also mean a life with God in eternity. 

Sadly, the early Reformation saw this passage as the basis for holding that human sin obliterated the image of God in humanity. The good news is that as powerful and as pervasive as is human misery and alienation, it has not obliterated the fact that God made us in the divine image. It would be granting to human action far too much power to suggest otherwise. In another sad development in Christian theology, this passage became the basis for saying that the death of Christ is a ransom paid to the devil and that the anger of God needed to be appeased. 

The sacrifice of Jesus in accord with the Law is of such a nature that it extends the righteousness of God to all who believe, including those outside the Law. The sacrifice is effective through faith (διὰ [τῆς]πίστεως). Note here again the indeterminate genitive case, but this time with the addition of the definite article τῆς found in some ancient manuscripts, which lends additional support to the alternative reading. Allowing then for this textual ambiguity, God achieves atonement for sin via faith -- Jesus' faith (or faithfulness) along with the faith that believers place in God's plan of "redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Yet, as Barth tirelessly points out, humanity keeps trying to develop its own path. The way of Law in Romans is the way of religion, morality, mysticism, self-righteousness, pharisaic humility, and piety in our time. Yet, it remains an illusion.[16] God declares righteous those who are ungodly in the sense of the Jewish Law. The “ungodly” are those who do not belong to the ancient covenant people and are not righteous before God by works of the law. God declares the ungodly in this sense as righteous because of faith. By faith, those who are ungodly in terms of the law are righteous before God. Given all of this, humanity has no right to boast, for God has provided everything needed for salvation. For Paul, the Law has its limit in its Jewishness, while faith is open to Jew and Gentile alike. Yet, in all of this, Paul believes that faith will establish the Law rather than abolish it.[17] God did this to show his righteousness (τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ) because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed. We are not to construe this overlooking of past sins as some sort of casual indifference by God. Rather, the abiding patience of God toward sin and sinners displays divine grace. Expiation suggests a natural link between acts and their consequences. In this case, those who commit themselves to the way of misery and alienation are released for this endless succession of act and consequence. This brings about forgiveness and puts the believer in the proper condition for being in the Divine presence. 

This divine forbearance had a purpose. ²⁶ It was to prove at the present time that God is righteous (δίκαιον, just) and that God justifies (δικαιοῦντα, which can mean to set right, to pronounce just, to vindicate, and to treat as righteous) the one who has faith in Jesus (τὸν ἐκ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ or, alternatively, 'who has the faith of Jesus).  

Here is a place where we need to pause to consider a translation difficulty from the Greek to the English. Regarding the faith of which Paul writes, a debate has proceeded for nearly 2,000 years over how one should translate Paul’s reference to the salvific effect of the “pistis christou.” It might be “faith in Christ,” a translation many think of as the more traditional, which emphasizes the action of the believer. Nevertheless, the grammar can also support a translation as “faith of Christ,” which refers to Christ’s own faithfulness to God. In starkest terms, the difference in the two translations is whether it is the faith, or perhaps better, the faithfulness Christ exhibited toward God that brings salvation to the world or it is the faith of individual faithful persons in Jesus’ faithfulness toward them that brings salvation.[18] The former interpretation is a more inclusive reading that ultimately may permit the understanding that Christ’s action has power over Christian and non-Christian alike. Linguistic arguments on both sides are weighty and persuasive. They are not, however, new. In fact, the Alexandrian scholar Origen, working early in the third century, recognized the issue and concluded that he would be open to both senses of the term. In the contemporary context, this “both/and” reading strategy may well be the best.[19] If one adopts that strategy, the simple phrase “from faith” would be full of meaning, for it would convey that Paul and the Romans are now one family because of the faithfulness of Christ to God which enables all who are faithful to Christ to come into relationship with God. 

There is an element of human response to God’s in-breaking power in this dominion of sin, but Paul’s reference to faith has more than a human dimension. God is the one doing the justifying or rectifying the human condition. Only God can pronounce anyone righteous. Paul has made it perfectly clear in 1:18-3:20 that humanity is vulnerable in its state of enslavement to sin. If we focus on the sequence of Paul in this passage, the righteousness of faith precedes the declaration of righteousness. That justification has the forensic sense of pronouncing righteous is a lasting Reformation insight. One can rightly cling to the basic Reformation insight that only faith fellowship with Jesus Christ, with no secondary aims, is the object of the divine sentence of justification respecting believers. The implications of faith for life are certainly included here, yet our righteousness before God does not consist primarily of these, but of faith.[20]

The language of verses 3:25-26 is very dense, abstract and difficult to pin down precisely. Using the terms “ransom” and “expiation” suggests that Paul was thinking of Christ’s death as a sin offering, probably in terms of the sin offering on the Day of Atonement. Barth[21] says this analogy with Jesus is especially appropriate, because the mercy seat is no more than a particular, though very significant, place. At this place the Kingdom of God is come near, so dear that here the coming and redeeming power of God are recognized, here God dwells with people and the divine communion with humanity is unmistakable. According to Pannenberg, “Ransom” has its origin in the Palestinian community and its notion of expiatory sacrifice, and this passage reflects that connection. In brief, Christ’s death was effective in dealing with human sins because he represented the sinners and by his death destroyed their sins, that is, brought to an end human beings as under the power of sin. For those in Christ, God need take no further action against their sin. Being “in Christ,” they share in his death and thus can have firm hope of sharing fully in his resurrection.[22] While all this may well have been in the mind of Paul, to oversimplify a bit, Paul’s point seems to be that the redemption effected by Jesus comes about through his being offered as a “sacrifice of atonement” by God that demonstrates God’s faithfulness and also results in the justification of the one who has faith in Jesus. God provided a solution through the redemption of Christ Jesus, and this act serves as a proof of his righteousness in the present time. As an attribute of God, Paul makes grace the central expression of divine goodness.[23] Although God has passed over former sins, he did so in order to show his own righteousness and to demonstrate that he justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Paul’s argument indicates that God previously overlooked sins. The law was present to reveal Sin, but until Jesus, there was not a solution to Sin’s death-grip on humanity.

To summarize verses 21-26, Paul says that the decisive demonstration of the righteousness of God is the death of Christ. The active event of the revelation of the righteousness of God in the atoning death of Christ results in the justification of believers. Note the sequence in these verses of fact of the righteousness of faith precedes the declaration of righteousness. The point is participation by faith in the atoning efficacy of the death of Jesus. God declares righteous those who are so based on faith. Faith is itself righteousness that counts before God. The point here is that the Law could come to an end because of the vicarious death of Christ for sin, God demonstrating covenant righteousness in this act, and we can respond only by faith, not by works of the Law, which makes us now righteous before God (verse 28).[24]

²⁷ Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. The passage ends with a short and punchy set of rhetorical questions and retorts whereby Paul refutes some possible objections to the case he has made. There is no boasting in faith because to do so denies that faith exists.  Faith is the human response to the event of Jesus Christ, even human despair regarding the truth of the human condition.  Humanity has no right to boast. By what law (νόμου, better may be “principle”)? By that of works? No, but by the law (νόμου) of faith. ²⁸ For we hold that a person is justified (δικαιοῦσθαι) by faith apart from works prescribed by the law (νόμου). Humanity is the passive object of the justifying act of God. Paul makes a clear distinction between faith and Law.  The way of the Law is limited to the Jews and to those who could observe every part of the Law, both of which leave room for the individual to boast in his Jewishness and in his accomplishments.  The way of faith, however, is available to both Jew and Gentile and does not rest on obedience to any form of law, and therefore removes any foundation for boasting. ²⁹ Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, ³⁰ since God is one; and he will justify (δικαιώσει) the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. The ground for salvation must be universal if God is to be one.  However, salvation by Law and circumcision is not universal.  Only justification by faith fulfills that requirement. ³¹ Do we then overthrow the law (Νόμον) by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law (νόμον). His theological case does not nullify the Law but rather supports it. The Law can do this by being part of the history of salvation in that the Law reaches its goal in the death of Jesus.[25] Law here refers to the whole covenant between God and Israel. Here we see that there was no conflict between God’s love and justice.  God is righteous, but God is also the one who declares the believer righteous.  The Jew looked at the Old Testament and saw law, obedience to Law, works, circumcision, and descent from Abraham.  Paul wants them to look deeper, and they will see not law, but promise; not works, but faith, of which circumcision is only a seal, and descent from Abraham is spiritual rather than physical. Despite this contrast, faith does not destroy the Law.  Rather, it is upheld by faith.  Paul will deal with this point in Chapter 5-8.  Now Paul takes the example of Abraham to show how even he was justified by faith. In the context of chapter 3, this verse has layers of meaning. First, as this chapter explicitly states in verses 19-20, the law does not have the power to justify. Thus, one cannot be rectified before God by doing the works of the law. Second, humanity can only be justified by God alone. 

Emphasizing the event of the revelation of God’s righteousness in this passage does not negate, however, the needed event of a human response. God reveals divine righteousness to humanity, and faith is crucial — both the faithfulness of Jesus to serve as an expiation and the faith exhibited by humanity to trust in the event of God’s saving act. Faith is double-sided. The transforming event that occurs at a moment in the past through Jesus Christ becomes a call for the transforming event of faith. There could be no human response without the work of God to offer an escape from the dominion of sin. God has provided a gift by grace, and this gift invites a response. Just as Abraham is reckoned righteous for believing in God in Romans 4 so also Paul claims that God will reckon righteous those who believe in the One who raised Jesus from the dead. In this cosmic drama, where sin reigns in the old age, God’s power has broken in and offered freedom to all. There is good news. The dominion of sin is over. For those who have faith, God has offered a way out — a move from the sphere of sin and Death to the sphere of Christ. While Romans 3 certainly reveals the depravity of humanity under the power of sin, it also bears witness to this offer from God who has the power to make things right.

Throughout this chapter, the focus has been on God. Is God unjust to inflict his wrath? By no means! Everyone is worthy of God’s wrath, because all — both Jew and Gentile — are under the power of sin. The good news of the gospel is that God has revealed divine righteousness through the faithfulness of Jesus to serve as an expiation by his blood. Those who have faith in Jesus can be justified by God only because they have accepted the witness to the event of the revelation of God’s power. God is faithful throughout this passage. Indeed, Romans 9-11 will more explicitly take up the defense of God’s continued faithfulness.

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[1] John Knox, IB.

[2] Sanday & Headlam.

[3] Pannenberg Systematic Theology, Volume II, 457-58.

[4] Pannenberg Systematic Theology, Volume III, 646.

[5] —Martin Luther, quoted in Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 49-50.

[6] James Dunn, Romans.

[7] Sanday and Headlam, in their ICC commentary on Romans.

[8] Church Dogmatics, IV.1 [59.2, 274.

[9] John Knox, IB.

[10] Romans, 102.

[11] Barth Romans, 103-04.

[12] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 219-20.

[13] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 248-49.

[14] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 277.

[15] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume II, 411.

[16] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume I, 440.

[17] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 224.

[18] In Pauline Theology IV (eds. Richard Hays and E. Elizabeth Johnson [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997]), Professors James D. G. Dunn and Hays argue forcefully, Dunn for the former, and Hays for the latter.

[19] (see Mark Reasoner, Romans in Full Circle: A History of Interpretation [Knoxville: Westminster John Knox, 2005], 41; see also Paul Achtmeier, “Apropos the faith of/in Christ” in Pauline Theology IV referenced above)

[20] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 229-31.

[21] Romans, 105.

[22] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 275.

[23] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume I, 433.

[24] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 62-63, 224.

[25] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 255-56.