Romans 3: all have sinned, and God justifies through the redeeming death of Christ

Paul wrote Romans, most likely from Corinth during the stay of three months in Greece described in Acts 20:2-3, around AD 56 or 57. Several clues point there: Phoebe of Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, is commended (16:1), and Paul is about to carry the collection to Jerusalem (15:25-26). Romans is the one letter Paul wrote to a church he had not founded or visited. He plans to pass through Rome on the way to Spain (15:23-24) and wants the Roman believers to know the gospel he preaches.

The Roman church was made up of Jewish and Gentile believers, in house gatherings. The historian Suetonius reports that the emperor Claudius expelled Jews from Rome because of disturbances over 'Chrestus', which many take to refer to conflict over Christ, and Acts 18:2 says Aquila and Priscilla had left Rome for this reason. The date of the expulsion is debated (about AD 49 is the common view). When Jews returned after Claudius' death in AD 54, tensions between Jewish and Gentile believers followed, and chapters 14 and 15 address them. Scholars differ on how far this setting drives the whole letter. Some see the letter as chiefly a summary of the gospel and an introduction to the Roman church; others as chiefly a pastoral answer to a divided church. The two are compatible.

Chapter 3 closes the long argument that began at 1:18. Paul has shown that the Gentiles, who have the witness of creation, are guilty (1:18-32), and that Jews, who have the law, are guilty too (2:1-3:8). This chapter finishes the indictment and turns, with 'But now' in verse 21, to the gospel. The chapter is the hinge of the letter, and many readers regard 3:21-26 as the centre of Paul's teaching on salvation.

Romans is a letter, but one built as a sustained argument. Paul uses a style from ancient teaching called the diatribe, in which a speaker answers an imagined opponent: 'What then?', 'Certainly not!' (the Greek me genoito, literally 'may it never be'). The questions of 3:1-9 and 3:27-31 are of this kind. They are not Paul's own doubts. They are objections a Jewish hearer might raise, and the reader must follow who is speaking.

The central block of 3:10-18 is a catena, a chain of Scripture quotations on one theme, a method used by Jewish teachers. Paul draws on Psalms 14 and 53, Psalms 5, 10, 36 and 140, Ecclesiastes 7:20 and Isaiah 59:7-8. These were written about wicked people in their own contexts, and Paul reads them as describing the condition of all humanity under sin. He brings them together to shut the mouth of the person who thinks that Israel's possession of the law makes it exempt.

Several phrases are disputed, and the class names the options. 'Works of the law' (3:20, 28) is read in the older Reformation tradition as any human effort to earn acceptance by law-keeping. Scholars of the so-called new perspective, such as E. P. Sanders, James Dunn and N. T. Wright, have stressed the social function of the law, circumcision, Sabbath and food laws that marked off Israel from the nations, and read Paul as chiefly attacking the use of these as a boundary. Many today hold that the phrase includes both: Paul's point covers the law as a whole, and its effect is that no one can claim a place by it. 'Faith in Jesus Christ' (3:22, 26) translates a Greek phrase that can also mean 'the faithfulness of Jesus Christ'. The class follows the usual translation, faith in Christ, while noting that the other reading is serious and that either way the gift comes through Christ.

Verses 1–8

If Gentiles and Jews are equally guilty, what advantage has the Jew? Paul says: much in every way. First, they were entrusted with the oracles (logia) of God, the Scriptures. If some were unfaithful, does their unfaithfulness cancel God's faithfulness? 'Certainly not!' God will be proved true though everyone is false, as David's confession in Psalm 51:4 shows: God is right when he speaks and blameless when he judges. A harder objection follows: if human wrongdoing shows God's righteousness, is God unjust to punish? Paul rejects it, because God judges the world and must therefore be just. He rejects the slander that he teaches people to do evil so that good may result.

Verses 9–18

Are Jews better off? Not at all. Both Jews and Greeks are 'under sin' (hyph' hamartian), under its power, not just guilty of acts. The catena follows. Verses 10-12 say no one is righteous, no one understands, no one seeks God; all have turned aside together. Verses 13-14 name the throat, tongue, lips and mouth. Verses 15-17 name the feet and the way of peace they have not known. The last verse (18) names the eyes: there is no fear of God before them. The portrait covers the whole person from speech to walk to sight.

Verses 19–20

The law speaks to those under it, so that every mouth may be stopped and all the world answerable to God. By works of the law no flesh will be justified before him, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. The law reveals sin and does not remove it.

Verses 21–22

'But now' (nyni de) is one of the great turns in the New Testament. Apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. The 'righteousness of God' (dikaiosyne theou) is the key phrase. It includes God's own saving justice and faithfulness to his promises, and the status of righteousness he grants to believers. This righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, with no distinction.

Verses 23–24

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely (dorean) by his grace through the redemption (apolytrosis) that is in Christ Jesus. 'Justify' (dikaioo) is a legal word: to declare righteous, to acquit. 'Redemption' recalls buying back a slave or captive, and the Old Testament's picture of the exodus (Deuteronomy 7:8). It is given 'freely', as a gift.

Verses 25–26

God put forward Christ as a hilasterion 'in his blood', received through faith. The word has been translated 'propitiation' (a sacrifice that turns away wrath), 'expiation' (a sacrifice that removes sin), 'atoning sacrifice' and 'mercy seat'. In the Greek Old Testament it names the lid of the ark where blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:14-15), and Hebrews 9:5 uses it that way. C. H. Dodd argued for expiation; Leon Morris and others for propitiation, since the context of 1:18 speaks of wrath. Most scholars hold that the mercy-seat background and the wrath context are both present. The purpose is to demonstrate (endeixis) God's righteousness, because in his forbearance he had passed over former sins. The question this raises is how God could be just if he did not punish sin. The cross answers: God is both just and the one who justifies the person who has faith in Jesus.

Verses 27–31

Boasting is excluded, not by a law of works, but by a law of faith. A person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. God is one (the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4), so he is God of Gentiles as well as Jews, and will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Does faith overthrow the law? No: it upholds it. Chapter 4 shows how, with Abraham.

Romans 3 states the doctrine of justification by faith with the clarity that shaped the Reformation. All people are sinners, and the law cannot save them because it only exposes sin. God's righteousness comes as a gift in Christ, received by faith, not earned. This one way applies to Jew and Gentile because there is one God. The chapter also teaches that God does not set aside his justice to forgive: he deals with sin in the death of Christ, so that he is both just and the one who justifies.

The same teaching runs through the rest of the Bible. Genesis 15:6 says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness (Romans 4 builds on it), and Habakkuk 2:4 says the righteous shall live by faith (quoted in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11). Paul's teaching in Galatians 2:16 and Ephesians 2:8-9 agrees with this chapter, and James 2:14-26 does not contradict it: James speaks of the faith that shows itself in works, Paul of the faith that receives God's verdict.

The chapter also joins several themes of the Old Testament. The sacrificial system and the Day of Atonement find their meaning in Christ's death. The universality of sin is taught from Genesis 3 on. And the promise that the nations would share in Israel's blessing finds its ground here: one God, one way of justification.

The passage is fulfillment. Paul says the righteousness now revealed apart from the law was attested by the Law and the Prophets (3:21), and he names Jesus Christ as the one in whom God has acted. The most striking Old Testament link is the word hilasterion (3:25). Because the Greek Old Testament uses it for the mercy seat, the cover of the ark sprinkled with blood on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:14-15), the mercy seat functions as a type: the place where God met his people and where blood dealt with sin. The cross is where God publicly set forth Christ as the place of atonement. Hebrews 9:5 and 9:11-14 develop the same pattern.

A second connection is the Servant of Isaiah 53, of whom the prophet says that the righteous one, my servant, will make many to be accounted righteous (Isaiah 53:11). Paul does not quote this verse here, so the link is an echo, though it is widely recognised. Romans 4:25 says Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification, language close to Isaiah 53.

The passage presents Christ as the one whose blood makes the difference, the one through whom redemption comes, and the one in whom faith rests. The justice of God and the mercy of God meet in him. Faith in him is the means by which Jew and Gentile alike enter the same standing.