More of Romans 3

The main theme of Romans 3 is righteousness. We tend to think of righteousness as a description of a person’s behavior or character; if you read this chapter carefully, though, you will notice that Paul does not speak of righteousness as if it is behavior, but more as if it is a status. He says that a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known. Later he says that “we maintain that a man is justified [made righteous] by faith apart from observing the law;” in other words a person’s righteousness does not depend on what he does—not on his observance of the law.

I can remember Sunday School teachers defining “righteousness” as a right relationship with God. I like that idea; and the relationship with God that it best describes is a relationship of approval: your status is “righteous” when God approves of you. Mankind has always assumed that we had to earn God’s approval by keeping the law, but Paul explains that we can never earn God’s approval no matter how hard we try. Instead God bestows His approval graciously on anybody who trusts in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Romans 3 again

Another thing about Romans 3 is that it keeps emphasizing that we're all the same, especially equating the Gentiles and the Jews. Verse 9 says that Jews and Gentiles are all under sin; verse 22 says there is no difference, meaning there's no difference between Jews and Gentiles, that we all sin and fall short of God's glory and we're all justified by His grace. Paul does say, though, that the Jews have an advantage: they KNOW what God demands, because He told them; verse 1 says they've been entrusted with the very words of God. Having an advantage doesn't mean you win. . .it just means you get a head start.

Romans 3

I started memorizing Romans 3 a month or so ago, because I love its message so much. As far as I'm concerned, the essence of the gospel is explained so well in this one little chapter.

Basically, Paul starts out by saying that God didn't give us His Law so that we could perfect ourselves by keeping the law: He gave it so that we could see how far short of perfection we fall. That's what verse 20 means, ". . .rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." I think of it like this: what we were doing was wrong all along, but it was not formally wrong till there was a law against it. You know, they can't charge you with a crime if there's no law against it yet. There was a time when baby car seats were not the law--that meant you could carry your baby in your arms in the car and the police wouldn't stop you and write you a ticket. But it was still dangerous: if you'd crashed your car, the baby still would have been hurt or even killed. The pre-1970's world went along totally oblivious to the danger of babies riding in cars; but the law made us conscious of the danger by holding the threat of a ticket over our heads. The law made of conscious of the sin of carrying a baby loose in a car that's speeding down the highway.