At any given moment in the book of Romans, the author Paul is trying to convey at least one of three things: first, God’s faithfulness to the covenant he made with Abraham (Genesis 12 & 15); second, the new Exodus, our once for all deliverance from all that would enslave us and separate us from God; and third, the establishment of the one church that belongs to Jesus (composed equally of Jew and Gentile). When Romans gets dense and difficult, these three serve as a good compass to bring us back to what is ultimately the simple good news according to Romans.
By the time Romans 3 is drawing to a close, Paul has spent the better part of three chapters detailing for us the problem that is the human race. And God is absolutely faithful to his saving plan for the human race (Romans 3:3), but what is that plan exactly? The final verses of Romans 3 (3:21-31) have sparked the Church’s imagination for all these centuries. One could fill whole libraries with what faithful readers of Romans have had to say about just these 11 verses.
The gist of it is: even though “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” God in his righteousness has been faithful to his saving plan that was set in motion with Abraham, and Jesus has been faithful to his role as being the very sacrifice by which that saving plan comes to fruition. Through the death of Jesus, God has put his righteousness (immovable commitment to his covenant promises) on full display, sparking the very same righteousness and faithfulness within us.
In his death, Jesus redeemed us, which is an Exodus term. At its most literal, redemption in scripture means to free a slave. Everything that wants to enslave us and separate us from God (explored quite well back in Romans 1:18-32) had put us in its crosshairs to utterly destroy us, and Jesus stood in the way, taking all that hatred, injustice, and violence into himself, into his own body, thus saving us from bearing it ourselves and making us free to be united with our creator.
All of this is grace, that is, a gift freely given. Grace is the Bible’s word for God reaching into human history and into human lives to bless and redeem before it ever occurred to us to ask God to do the reaching in the first place.
Romans 3 concludes now with the question of who now may boast that they take priority in God’s Church. The answer is, simply: no one. Boasting and jockeying for superiority is done, full stop. The grace of God is far too expansive for such petty ways of living in community. The righteousness and grace of God, the faithfulness of Christ, has created a new kind of community, one based not on heritage or power, but on living from the faithfulness of Christ (“from faith, for faith” as Paul had put it back in 1:17).
Faithfulness to covenant, the new Exodus, and one unified Church in Jesus Christ. Romans 3:21-31 has given us all of these. And the best part? These all already happened. God was already faithful. The new and definitive Exodus already happened. The singular Christ-centered community has already been established. There is nothing for us to overcome. Jesus already did all of it. What’s for us is to wake up from the bad dream of sin and idolatry, things which actually lost their power over us long ago, and to be ever alert to what is already true and real. That will be the faith from which we live every day.
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