Romans 3 Devotional
by Pastor Lawrence Bowlin

This chapter is ground zero for understanding the biblical doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. In the first three chapters the apostle Paul has set out to prove that no one can keep the law of God whether Jew or Gentile, for all have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God because of their evil deeds. Consequently, in God’s divine court of law, all of us are considered guilty and worthy of condemnation. But, Paul says, in vv.21-22 “now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” The Law of God was never intended to save people from their sin, but merely to convict people of sin in order to drive them to the savior. And in vv.10-18 Paul strings together a series of OT verses to demonstrate how we all stand convicted by the Law of God proving that none of us is righteous in God’s sight.

On the other hand, Jesus Christ was, and is, righteous in the sight of the Lord; being born under the law, he fulfilled it perfectly without sin or shame. And Paul says in v.25 that God put forward Jesus as a propitiation by his blood in order to appease the wrath of God against sinners through his blood shed on the cross. But in order for them to be justified in the sight of God, they must exhibit faith in Christ’s sacrifice to take away their sins and to give them Christ’s righteous standing before God. These must also personally disavow any claim to good works that would gain them any favor in God’s sight and instead claim the good works of Christ as their own, basing their hope of salvation on the goodness of Jesus and not on their own goodness. That is why the Reformers emphasized that justification is by grace through faith alone, for although good works naturally flow ffom faith, our good works are not to be rested in as the ground of our salvation. It is by God’s grace alone that we are saved through faith in the righteousness of Jesus, and even faith itself is a gift from God.

Because justification is an act of declaration by God to those who believe in Jesus Christ, believers no longer fear the condemnation of the law, nor do they fear the Day of Judgment since Jesus has already been judged by God in our place and received God’s commendation by raising him from the dead. Justification is not merely a pardon for our sins, it is a declaration that we have not sinned and are not guilty in God’s sight. That can only occur if Christ exchanges places with us and takes on our sin and guilt on the cross and gives us his righteousness and clean conscience before the Lord in glory. There is no truth more glorious than this one: Christ died for sinners and made them saints not because of anything good in them but because of his own goodness and grace.