Monday 23rd March
Read Romans 3:21-24
“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (NIVUK)
We come now to what some have described as the most significant paragraph in history. Paul has established beyond doubt that everyone is worthy of judgment because everyone has sinned. Regardless of race, religion, riches or indeed any reason at all, everyone is beyond redemption because no-one reaches for God. Even the best person ever, one who obeyed the law better than anyone in history, is not remotely good enough.
‘But now’ transforms the narrative. When all hope is lost. When humanity has no way back. God’s rightness is revealed when we have no ‘rightness’ to offer. We struggle to accept just how forlorn we all truly are. Until we accept that we can’t work our way out of sin we can’t grasp how desperately we need to be saved.
F.F Bruce in commenting on this passage observed that the Roman poet Horace gave instructions to his fellow authors of tragedy discouraging them from ‘bringing a god onto the stage to solve a plot problem, unless that problem required a god to solve it’. Luther argued, rightly, that the problem outlined by Paul at the beginning of his letter was a problem that absolutely required God to solve it!
This paragraph describes exactly how God solved the problem of humanity’s sin. Humanity could not solve it; it required God to reveal the solution.
Right humbling indeed.
