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NOTES for Rom 3:21-31

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21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
22 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:
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
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God's righteousness has been revealed independently of the Law received by Moses from above. Even after twenty centuries, this thought is staggering and difficult to grasp; how much harder it must have been for the first recipients of Paul's epistle to digest. Yet the paradox is deepened by the fact that God's righteousness does not abolish the Law, whose testimony, together with that of the prophets, it accepts. A person can receive justification freely through faith, but faith itself is also a gift that surpasses knowledge of the Law. What stands higher does not abolish what falls short of the highest level; rather, one can ascend by the lower steps toward higher summits.

Paul neither separates nor sets against one another the circumcised who live by faith and the uncircumcised who have faith: God justifies both. Faith comes first, not its external expressions, which are important but not of primary importance.

Other notes

 
For Rom 3:21-31
21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
22 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:
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
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Reflecting on the Torah and the Kingdom, Paul turns to one of the key biblical...  Read more

Reflecting on the Torah and the Kingdom, Paul turns to one of the key biblical concepts: the concept of righteousness. He says that with the coming of Christ into the world the situation in this respect changed radically: now righteousness has been revealed in all its fullness together with the Kingdom that the Messiah brought (vv. 21-22). Previously righteousness was attained with God's help, but still through human effort; now it has entered the world through Jesus and has become part of that life of the Kingdom which He brought with Him and to which everyone can now be joined, if only he is ready to trust Jesus (v. 24). And this righteousness brought into the world by Jesus is incomparable with the righteousness revealed even by the greatest righteous people of the former age: the fullness of righteousness means freedom from sin, and before the coming of Jesus Christ into the world no person was free from it (v. 23).

It is not accidental that the apostle connects this fullness of righteousness with the concept of redemption reflected in the Torah (vv. 25-26): just as one who ransomed a slave gave him freedom from slavery, which the slave would never have attained by his own efforts, so also Jesus, revealing to the world the fullness of righteousness, freed from the power of sin those who sought this righteousness but could not completely free themselves from sin by their own strength. And the fullness of righteousness brought into the world by Jesus is inseparable from the fullness of the Kingdom: it frees the faithful from every sin, because it is incompatible with any sin just as the Kingdom is incompatible with any evil (v. 25). It is no accident that Paul calls what Jesus did for His faithful a "sacrifice of mercy": the corresponding Hebrew word meant precisely the readiness to give the one toward whom mercy is shown something that he plainly has not deserved, something to which he has no right either by law or by an agreement concluded between the parties.

If this is so, if righteousness cannot be attained by any "works of the Torah" (v. 28), then the Torah itself becomes truly universal: righteousness is acquired only through the faithfulness that binds the one seeking righteousness to God through Jesus Christ (vv. 27-28). Here there is no difference between Jew and Gentile: the former Gentile who has trusted Jesus and through Him received the Kingdom receives the same fullness of righteous life as the Jew who from childhood was accustomed to following the Torah (vv. 29-30). But this by no means diminishes the significance of the Torah: the Torah is not simply a text; the Torah is the spiritual law that determines a person's relationship with God for as long as the person himself exists. Such a Torah remains unshakable even after the coming of Christ into the world, because it remains the foundation of a person's spiritual life not only in our world, not yet transformed to the end, but also in the Kingdom.

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For Rom 3:21-31
21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
22 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:
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
Hide
The Torah, at least the inner Torah, in the apostle's words, only reveals to a person his own sinfulness; by it "sin is known." But where is the way out? What can free a person from sin? Paul answers: righteousness...  Read more

The Torah, at least the inner Torah, in the apostle's words, only reveals to a person his own sinfulness; by it "sin is known." But where is the way out? What can free a person from sin? Paul answers: righteousness that is greater than the Torah. The Torah and the Prophets bear witness to God's righteousness; in Paul's time this was the name for what we today would call Holy Scripture. Only the manifestation of this divine righteousness ("the righteousness of God") can free a person from the power of sin. Here Paul remains faithful to the rabbinic tradition: the Torah was never an end in itself; it was needed as a means of establishing a person on the path of righteousness.

But into the traditional rabbinic understanding of the problem of Torah and righteousness the apostle introduces a new, messianic interpretation: he speaks of the manifestation of the Messiah's righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, and of faithfulness to Christ ("faith in Jesus Christ") as the only possibility for a person to share in this righteousness. God's righteousness has been revealed to the world by Christ; the blood He shed becomes for those faithful to Him what sacrificial blood was for believing Yahwists of the pre-Christian era.

At that time the blood of a sacrificial animal offered for the sin of a particular person cleansed that person from the consequences of the sin he had committed and opened to him the possibility of sharing in God's righteousness in the relative measure that was open to people before the coming of Christ. Now the Messiah Himself opens to everyone who has entrusted himself to Him the whole fullness of God's righteousness possible for a human being, a fullness made available to the world through His path and His sacrifice.

It is no accident that the apostle speaks of redemption, of ransom: the Savior's death on the cross, the blood He shed, became payment for human sin in the same way that the blood of the animals slaughtered at the altar had previously become payment for human sins. As animals then gave their lives in order to open a path to God for a person, so now the Messiah gives His life in order to open for a person the path into the Kingdom.

But then both purification and sharing in God's righteousness were partial; now they become complete. And this is not because the "works of Torah" can somehow help a person, but because God's righteousness has been revealed to the world by the One who Himself bears it in all its fullness. Yet the Torah is not devalued by this, at least if we are speaking of the inner Torah. Faithfulness to Christ is unthinkable without the path of righteousness and outside it, and therefore it is unthinkable without the inner Torah as that spiritual dynamic without which there is no path of righteousness. That is why the apostle says that everything he has said about salvation through faithfulness to Jesus Christ by no means devalues the Torah, but only establishes it all the more.

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For Rom 3:28-4:3
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
1 What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found?
2 For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.
3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
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God is one for all, and therefore He saves everyone: both Jews and Gentiles, circumcised and uncircumcised, clean and unclean (for He does not turn away from the leper). He saves all by faith, not by works. But what does this faith consist in?...  Read more

God is one for all, and therefore He saves everyone: both Jews and Gentiles, circumcised and uncircumcised, clean and unclean (for He does not turn away from the leper). He saves all by faith, not by works. But what does this faith consist in? It turns out that for God to become salvation for us, we must not only listen to His words but also do them. What a paradox! On the one hand - only faith; on the other - by not doing God's will, we risk ending up under the wreckage of our own life.

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