NOTES for Rom 3:21-31
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.