Romans chapter 3

vs 21

So the law and the prophets testify to God's righteousness. Or is it that they testify that God's righteousness will be revealed apart from the Law.

I'm leaning more towards the first one, but really only because of the way the TNIV translates it.

vs 22

So instead of the righteousness being revelaed through the law, it is being made known through Christ. And not only is the righteousness of God being made known, but it is available, given to believers. It's awesome to think that rather than our own righteousness, we have God's righteousness.

vs 23

What an odd verse break up, but this is a good memory verse I guess. I think it could have started just as easily at the 'no difference' bit, but hey, this is how it was done.

What the verse breakup between 23 and 24 does do is makes us focus on this first point in its entirety - that everyone, no matter who, has fallen short because of sin. Paul just spent the last few chapters making this absolutely clear to us.

vs 24

Wow, this verse has a lot of buzz words.

Justification comes only through Christ. Justification is the legal status of innocence proven by a court. That's pretty much what righteousness means.

It comes through redemption - redemption is the buying of something. So specifically, this righteoussness that is revealed apart from the law comes because of Christ. We aren't righteous, but Jesus buys that righteousness for us.

It comes by his grace - grace is undeserved favour. Basically an unearned gift.

So we end up with our righteousness basically being bought for us by Jesus and given to us free of charge.

Of some consideration is the word 'all' which is in the TNIV translation. The problem is that the word 'all' isn't in vs 24 in the greek. What the TNIV people are doing is repeating it in vs 24, because they obviously believe that the 'all' from vs 23 remains the subject.

Regardless of whether you translate it with an extra 'all', the fact is that if vs 24 still has the subject of 'all', then that might change how you want to interpret vs 24. See, no evangelical has a problem with vs 23 using a universal 'all' because all people are sinful in their theology. But when you start talking about 'all' also being justified, then you're into universalism, and that's not evangelical.

Of course, most of any argument there should be dispelled by the contents of vs 22, which makes it clear that you've gotta have faith. vs 25, we will see, also makes this clear.

vs 25

Is it the atonement that is to be received by faith, or is it the sacrifice of atonement? That is, is Christ being sacrificed to us, or is he being sacrificed for us? Unfortunately the other translations only bone this verse up all the more, making it even less understandable. Assuming for us, then it is the atonement we receive, not the sacrifice.

I guess you could argue that vs 24's 'all' (or reference to vs 23's 'all') is an in potentia all, because if everyone accepted Christ's atonement by faith, then they're in.

vs 25-26

On to the demonstration of justice then. Because of the verse marker, all we're going to learn about this demonstration of justice from vs 25 is that it has something to do with the previous sins being unpunished. The idea Paul wants to bring out, I suppose, is that Christ's death is sufficient to cover the sins of previous (and future) generations, so that those who came before have been waiting in abeyance until the temporal nature of this salvation was assured.

The sins that came before could not be punished, because this would have meant that Jesus' death was actually unjust - for those who could not accept it in time.

I'm not sure if 'just and justifies' is a wordplay.

vs 27

It's hard to boast about what you've done when it hasn't actually accomplished what you're boasting about.

vs 28

Paul wants to make it clear that it is not some mix of following law and faith in Christ that gets you over the line - it is faith only. He does this by putting forward the argument that justification can come through faith without the law.

vs 29

This also has the impact of showing that God can be the God of gentiles because he does not have expectations about the law for the purposes of salvation.

vs 30

Both are justified, and not through circumcision (that is, through an old covenant). They are justified through faith in that God, who has made clear the reason why we should have faith in him - because he has provided a sacrifice that atones for our sin.

vs 31

I get the feeling that this should have been chapter 4 verse 1. Let's find out if Paul is going to continue with this motif that our faith upholds the law.