Throughout the first half of the Epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul reflects on different qualities of the Law: on its holiness and at the same time its oldness, on faithfulness before the Law, and on the fact that precisely by the Law "the world is guilty before God." Why is it so important for him to explain this to a community converted from the Gentiles? After all, this is not quite their story. It is the story of the people of God, the story of the Israelites, their difficult path and their relationship with God. All this seems as if it should have nothing to do with the Roman community.
In essence, Paul is trying to give the newborn Church an important warning. He sets out, for the future, a kind of set of markers, signs of danger: do not walk the path taken by the people chosen by God. Yes, you did not seek righteousness, and you received it by Grace; you accepted Christ as an unexpected and very happy gift; you are happy that you are forgiven. But do not forget that it is dangerous to seek righteousness through the law, as the Israelites did. Then one can fail to notice the Lord's gift and, in attempts to observe one's own rules, quietly reject Grace without realizing it.
How often our own hearts burn when we have just experienced an encounter with Christ. We are happy with this unexpected joy of forgiveness in God, with the miracle of His love for us. But later, and this is so natural, the sense of His presence seems to be erased within us, and we begin trying to reproduce the conditions in which that gift was received. We do this because it seems to us that only in this way can we return to God, and that is how our own rituals, rules, and a kind of Law arise. But the only way to meet Christ again and again, and this is exactly what the apostle tells us today, is faith, not the search for righteousness.
