Scripture Studies - Romans 3:19-24

¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. ²⁰ Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

²¹ 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. — Romans 3:19-24

Onto the Gospel

We continue, by the mercy of God, through the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, and find ourselves arrived at the nineteenth verse of the third chapter—a place in this Epistle which may be likened unto the hinge of a great door, upon which the whole argument of the letter does turn. For on one side of this hinge lies all the darkness of the preceding chapters—the catalogue of Gentile wickedness, the exposure of Jewish hypocrisy, the solemn and terrible verdict that “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom. 3:11)—and on the other side lies the dawn: the most magnificent declaration of the Gospel that ever was committed to the pen of mortals.

Let us recall the Apostle’s grand design. In the first three chapters of this Epistle, Paul has been leading us, step by laborious step, toward a great statement of the Gospel message. In chapter one, he convinced the Gentiles of their sin; in chapter two, he convinced the Jews of theirs; and in the opening verses of chapter three, he answered the objections that his readers might raise. All of this was preparation—foundation laid in darkness, that the edifice of grace might ascend into the light. Paul must first bring us to the very bottom of our hopelessness before he can lift us to the heights of God’s mercy.

And so now, in these first two verses of our present text—verses 19 and 20—the Apostle delivers his final summary of the human condition. And then, with two words that changed the course of human history, he opens the door to the Gospel itself.

The Silence of the Guilty (vss. 19-20)

The Apostle begins with a statement of judicial finality: “Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law” (vs. 19). In other words, whatever law you have been given—whether it be the written Law delivered to the Jews through Moses upon the mountain of Sinai, or whether it be that unwritten law which God has inscribed upon every human heart, that inherent sense of right and wrong which is enforced by the conscience—whichever of these laws you have received, that is the law by which you shall be judged. You are under its authority; you are subject to its demands; you shall give account for your obedience or disobedience to its precepts.

And the result?: “...so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world held accountable to God” (vs. 19). Every mouth—mark the totality of it—every mouth. Not merely the mouth of the profligate Gentile, nor merely the mouth of the hypocritical Jew, but every mouth that draws breath upon the face of the earth. All have a law to which they are accountable; all have failed to observe that law; and therefore all stand condemned, and all are silenced. There is nothing left to say. The prisoner at the bar of divine justice opens his mouth to speak—and finds that he has no defence. The evidence is overwhelming, the verdict inescapable. The whole world is “held accountable to God” (vs. 19).

And here is the consequence, and it is devastating: “No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law” (vs. 20). No one! Not one soul among the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve! The Law has not the power to declare anyone righteous; rather, the Law does the very opposite—it proves to us, with terrible clarity, that we fall short of the standard which it lays before us. Or, as the Apostle expresses it with admirable precision: “Through the law we become conscious of our sin” (vs. 20).

This, then, is the purpose of the Law. The Law was never given as a ladder by which people might climb into the favor of God. It was given as a mirror—a mirror in which the soul might behold its own deformity. It was given to awaken the conscience, to expose the transgression, to drive the sinner to his knees in humility, and to compel him to throw himself upon the mercy of the court of God’s justice. The Law says to each of us: “You are a sinner; your deeds are insufficient; your righteousness is as filthy rags; you cannot save yourself.” And having stripped us of every pretence of self-sufficiency, it points us toward the only remedy: the grace of God.

Note well the universality of this condemnation. Paul does not say few shall be declared righteous; he does not say most shall fail; he says “no one will be declared righteous” (vs. 20). It is a sentence as absolute as it is terrifying. And mark this also: it avails nothing if you are reckoned righteous by your neighbors, or esteemed an upstanding citizen by your community. If those around you applaud you, and yet God condemns you, how does that profit you? For it is not the verdict of those around you that determines your eternal destiny, but the verdict of God. As Paul expresses it: “in God’s sight” (vs. 20). That is the tribunal that matters. That is the bar before which we must stand. And before that bar, no one—“not even one”—shall be declared righteous by the works of the Law.

If the Epistle ended here, our condition would be hopeless beyond description. God’s perfect righteousness, and His perfect sense of justice, demands an accounting for our sins, and absolutely no one is excepted or immune from that accounting. Paul has brought us to the very bottom of the pit—to a place of utter desolation, where every mouth is stopped and every hope is extinguished. Charles Hodge, that great theologian who presided over Princeton’s Theological Seminary for a quarter of a century, describes this needful preparation with luminous precision: “To be prepared for the reception of the gospel, we must be convinced of sin, humbled under a sense of its turpitude, silenced under a conviction of its condemning power, and prostrated at the footstool of mercy, under a feeling that we cannot satisfy the demands of the law, that if ever saved, it must be by other merit and other power than our own.”

That is where Paul has left us at the close of verse 20: prostrated at the footstool of mercy, silenced under the condemning power of the Law, with no merit and no power of our own. If the book of Romans ended here, we should have no hope—just as the Bible itself, had it ended with the book of Malachi, would have left us in a darkness from which there was no escape. But it does not end here. There is more to God’s revelation. And with the next two words in the text, everything changes.

Turning Point to Dawn (vs. 21)

²¹ But now...

“But now...” Two words. Two syllables. And yet in those two syllables is contained the turning of the ages—the hinge upon which the door of heaven swings open. After the long and relentless prosecution of human sin through two and a half chapters; after the indictment of the Gentile and the exposure of the Jew; after the terrible verdict that no one is righteous, not even one—after all of this darkness, Paul utters two words, and the dawn breaks forth.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, that faithful minister of London’s Westminster Chapel for over twenty-five years, said of this verse: “There are no more wonderful words in the whole of Scripture than just these two words, ‘But now.’” And well he might say so. For with these words, Paul passes from the old era of sin’s domination to the new era of salvation through Christ. After laying before us the bad news—the damning, crushing, hope-destroying bad news—the Apostle lays before us the good news: the Evangelion, the Gospel, the glad tidings concerning Jesus Christ. The human predicament has been radically transformed.

In the verses that follow—verses 21 through 26 of chapter 3—Paul gives us his grand declaration of the Gospel message. These verses summarize, in effect, the entire Christian faith. They summarize what we, as believers, hold concerning the work of Christ. And the importance of this passage cannot be overstated. Grant Osborne, the American New Testament scholar, called these verses “the core of any discussion of the doctrine of salvation.” Hermann Olshausen, the noted German scholar of the nineteenth century, named this passage “the citadel of the Christian faith.” Martin Luther himself declared it to be “the chief point, and the very central place of the Epistle, and of the whole Bible.” And Leon Morris, the renowned Australian New Testament scholar, ventured further still, and called it “possibly the most important single paragraph ever written.”

The What, When, and How of the Gospel (vss. 21-22)

In verses 21 and 22, Paul begins his grand statement of the Gospel, stating: “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe....” In these verses, Paul lays before us the What, the When, and the How of the Gospel. Let us examine each in turn.

The “What” of the Gospel— The heart of the Gospel, as Paul here declares it, may be distilled into two phrases drawn from verses 21 and 22: “The righteousness of God” is “given through faith in Jesus Christ.” That is the What of the Gospel. In the preceding chapters, Paul has exposed to us a problem that every soul on earth does share: that in and of ourselves, as measured against the perfect standard of God’s righteousness, “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom. 3:10). Here, Paul introduces the solution to that serious problem: the “righteousness of God” is available to us through “faith in Jesus Christ.” That is the sum and heart of the Gospel.
The “When” of the Gospel— Paul adds a phrase of great significance: “...to which the Law and the Prophets testify” (vs. 21). By these words, the Apostle instructs us that this Gospel is not a novelty. It is not an invention of Paul’s, nor of Peter’s, nor of any of the Apostles. Nor is it something that Jesus stumbled upon as He walked the roads of Galilee. Nay—the Gospel is a plan that Christ participated in devising, within the eternal councils of the blessed Trinity, from before the foundation of the world. Paul teaches us this in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where he states that God chose us in Christ “before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph. 1:4). Peter confirms the same, when he teaches that we were redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ,” who was “chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake” (1 Pet. 1:18–20). And our Lord Himself declared it, when He spoke unto the righteous: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Matt. 25:34).
And this eternal plan was not hidden in silence until the coming of Christ. Throughout the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets bore witness to it. Isaiah, speaking in the voice of God’s redeemed people, prophesied: “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness” (Isa. 61:10) Garments of salvation! A robe of his righteousness! The Church as a bride adorned!—all Gospel truths, testified to in the pages of the Old Covenant. God Himself declared His gracious nature unto Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin” (Exod. 34:6–7). And Isaiah wrote with astonishing explicitness of the Messiah’s sacrifice: “After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). “Justify many” and “bear their iniquities”—the very essence of the Gospel, testified to in the Old Testament, precisely as Paul has told us.
The “How” of the Gospel— And now the third element: the How. How may a sinner obtain this righteousness of God? Paul answers: “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Rom. 3:22). Through “faith in Jesus Christ”—that is the instrument by which the righteousness of God becomes ours.
But of what does this “faith” consist? To understand this faith rightly, we must return to the Law of God, as given to Moses, and consider how, in that Law, God established that forgiveness for sin could be obtained through a substitutionary sacrifice—through the shedding of the blood of a lamb, or goat, or bull, offered upon the altar as atonement for transgression. These sacrificial laws pointed forward, as shadows point to the substance that casts them, to the one great sacrifice that Christ would make upon the cross. Through Christ’s sacrifice, we obtain forgiveness; for Christ was the perfect and unblemished Lamb, whose blood was sufficient to atone for all the sins ever committed by all the sinners who ever drew breath. And the reason His sacrifice possesses such vast and limitless power is that Christ Himself was perfectly righteous: He had no sin, and therefore His offering was without spot or wrinkle, sufficient to cover the transgressions of the whole world. As the Apostle John testifies: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

The “faith” of which Paul speaks, therefore, is not a vague and general belief in the existence of a Creator—for many possess such a belief, and it saves them not. Nay; Paul says specifically “faith in Jesus Christ” (vs. 22). And what he means by this is that a soul must come to believe that he needs the salvation offered through Christ; that he must acknowledge before God that he has not lived up to the divine standard of righteousness—that is, that he is a sinner; and that he must recognize that Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross is the only way by which he may become reconciled to God. This is the necessary, the saving “faith”: not merely a faith that God exists, but a faith that Christ died for our sins, and that His blood is the atonement for our transgressions.

And this faith, and the righteousness that comes through it, are available to any and every soul. They require no great intellect, no noble birth, no pious upbringing. They require but one thing: humility. A humility that bows before God and says: “I am not worthy. I have fallen short. I have not lived up to Your righteous standard, O God.” This saving faith is not limited to one chosen race, nor to one class of persons, nor to those who perform good works from time to time, nor even to those who belong to a particular religion, denomination, or sect. It is available to all who were fashioned by the hand of God: Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, bond and free, learned and unlearned, powerful and meek. Or as the Apostle expresses it: this righteousness is “apart from the law”—it comes not by the keeping of commandments, but by the faith of the penitent heart.

The Universal Need and the Universal Remedy (vss. 22-24)

²² ... 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.

Here the Apostle joins the two halves of his argument in a single, glorious sentence. On the one hand: “all have sinned.” On the other: “all are justified freely by his grace” (vs. 24). The disease is universal; and so is the remedy. The condemnation falls upon every soul without distinction—or as Paul states, “there is no difference between Jew and Gentile” (vs. 22)—and the justification is offered to every soul without distinction, through faith in Christ. “All have sinned,” and therefore all are offered justification; and “all are justified” in the selfsame way: by God’s grace, “through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (vs. 24).

But what is this justification of which the Apostle speaks? The word is weighty, and we must not pass over it lightly. Douglas Moo, the distinguished American scholar and authority on the Epistle to the Romans, defines it as being “acquitted by God from all charges that could be brought against a person because of his or her sins.” Johann Peter Lange, the renowned German theologian, describes it more fully as “a judicial act of God by which He freely acquits the penitent sinner, and adopts him as His child on the ground of Christ’s perfect righteousness, and on condition of a living faith.”

The meaning of this great word may be remembered by a mnemonic which, though humble in its sound, is remarkably precise in its substance: to be justified is to be treated by God just-as-if-I’d never sinned. And this is a point of the utmost importance, for justification is far more than a mere pardon. If a person robs a bank and is sentenced to twenty years in prison, and the judge thereafter pardons him, the person walks free—but he will always have the rightful designation of being a bank-robber. He is still guilty of his crime; he has merely been spared the punishment. But justification is a thing altogether different and altogether greater. In justification, God does not merely pardon the sinner; He confers righteousness upon him. The sinner is clothed with the righteousness of Christ, through faith in Christ, so that God views him as possessing Christ’s own righteousness. He is not merely released from prison; he is declared innocent. He is not merely let off; he is made clean.

This distinction matters profoundly, for if we were merely pardoned, we should still be guilty—and guilty sinners cannot have fellowship with an infinitely righteous God. But if we are “justified,” then we are clothed in Christ’s righteousness. We no longer stand naked before the judgment-seat of God; we stand arrayed in a robe not our own. God looks upon us and sees not our sin, but the righteousness of His Son. And because we are so clothed, we enter, not into the destiny that we deserve, but rather into the glory that Christ deserves. We inherit the inheritance that belongs to the Son of God. Not because of anything we have done, but because we are covered—wrapped, hidden, enveloped—in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ our Lord.

That is why Paul declares, in verse 22, that this righteousness is “given.” It is not earned. It is not merited. It is not purchased by our works, nor won by our striving. It is “given”—conferred upon us, freely, by the grace of God, “through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (vs. 24). And in that one word—“given”—is contained the whole wonder of the Gospel: that the righteousness which we could never achieve for ourselves is bestowed upon us as a gift, by a God whose grace surpasses all the imaginations of the human heart.

Excursus: The Robe of an Alien Righteousness

A Meditation upon Genesis 27 in Light of Romans 3:22–24

There is a wonderful picture—and indeed, a foreshadowing—of this doctrine of justification in the Old Testament, and it is found in the oddest of places: in the episode that took place in the lives of Jacob and Esau, the sons of Isaac and Rebekah, as recorded in the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis. When first I read this episode as a youth, I confess that it struck me as a most bewildering history. Everyone involved therein seemed to act with a kind of sanctified madness. And indeed, the story is, upon its surface, a strange and perplexing tale—until one perceives how it pertains to us as Christians, and then it becomes a thing of breathtaking beauty.

Let us recall the episode from Genesis 27. Jacob and Esau were twins, and their father Isaac was drawing near to his death. Isaac determined to bestow his inheritance blessing upon Esau, who was the elder son—a blessing which was, in that ancient culture, akin to the reading of a last will and testament among us. Because Esau was the firstborn, he stood to inherit the family estate—the “family farm,” as it were. And so Isaac called Esau unto him and said: “I am now an old man and don’t know the day of my death. Now then, get your equipment—your quiver and bow—and go out to the open country to hunt some wild game for me. Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat, so that I may give you my blessing before I die” (Gen. 27:2–4).

Now Rebekah, who favored Jacob, heard this; and knowing also that Esau had, years before, sold his birthright to Jacob (as recorded in Genesis 25), she devised a plan to obtain the blessing for her younger son. She commanded Jacob: “Go out to the flock and bring me two choice young goats, so I can prepare some tasty food for your father, just the way he likes it. Then take it to your father to eat, so that he may give you his blessing before he dies” (Gen. 27:9–10). And so, while Esau was abroad in the fields hunting, Jacob slaughtered a goat, and Rebekah prepared a stew. But that was not all. For Esau was an outdoorsman—brawny, hairy, smelling of the wind and the earth—while Jacob was smooth of skin and a keeper of the tent. Isaac, by this time, was nearly blind, and would know his sons only by touch and by scent. And so Rebekah did a remarkable thing: “Then Rebekah took the best clothes of Esau her older son, which she had in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob. She also covered his hands and the smooth part of his neck with the goatskins. Then she handed to her son Jacob the tasty food and the bread she had made” (Gen. 27:15–17).

She clothed Jacob in Esau’s garments, so that he would smell like his elder brother. She covered his hands and his neck with hairy goatskins, so that he would feel like his elder brother. And thus disguised, Jacob entered his father’s chamber, bearing the stew, and presenting himself as Esau. Isaac asked: “How did you find it so quickly, my son?” And Jacob—God forgive him—replied: “The Lord your God gave me success” (Gen. 27:20). Isaac caught the scent of Esau’s clothing, and thought, Ah, the smell of my son. He touched Jacob’s hand, and felt the hairy skin, and thought, Yes, this is my firstborn. And so he conferred the blessing upon Jacob—the inheritance, the birthright, the favor of the father—upon one who, in himself, did not deserve it.

It is, as I have said, a strange and bewildering tale. But consider now how it pertains to us. On the Day of Judgment, we shall stand before God the Father, looking to receive an inheritance that we do not deserve. We have not earned it. We have no claim upon it by our own merit. But we shall be clothed—not in the garments of Esau, but in the righteousness of Christ. Just as Jacob was covered in the attire of the firstborn, so we shall be covered in the righteousness of the Firstborn from the dead, the Son of the living God. And because we are so clothed, we shall receive an inheritance that we have done nothing to deserve—the kingdom of heaven, the eternal glory, the presence of God forevermore. God the Father will look upon us, and see Christ. He will perceive, not our sin, but His Son’s righteousness. And because of that, we shall enter the kingdom of God.

Now, the analogy is not perfect, for unlike Isaac, God is not blind. God knows full well that it is we—sinners, undeserving, inadequate—who are clothed in Christ’s righteousness. But in His infinite grace, He allows us to enter into glory anyway: not on the basis of anything that we have done, but solely because we have faith in what Christ has done for us. This is justification. This is the robe of an alien righteousness. This is the Gospel.

The Bible is a marvelous book. The whole of it—Old Testament and New, Law and Prophets and Gospel—is, from beginning to end, about Christ, and the work of Christ, and anticipation of the work of Christ. And so even this strange and seemingly bewildering episode in the history of Jacob and Esau points us, in its own peculiar way, to the central truth of the Christian faith: that we are justified—treated as righteous, reckoned as innocent, clothed in a righteousness not our own—freely, by the grace of God, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus our Lord.

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