Romans 3

The writer of Genesis says God planned to draw people to himself by selecting one man, Abraham, whose descendants became the nation of Israel. Through the nation of Israel, God wanted the world to become acquainted with him and with his expectations for citizens of his spiritual kingdom. God gave the Jews laws to introduce himself to them. And he invited them to live under the blessings of those laws and in devotion to him. God told Abraham, “All the families on the planet will be better off because of you and your family. You are going to make this world a better place” (Genesis 12:3). God promised to do this through the Jewish people. New Testament writers claim that the Jews failed to obey God. So, God fulfilled this promise by sending the Messiah, his Son Jesus, born into a Jewish family.

Paraphrase of Psalm 51:4.

From Psalm 14:1-3.

This phrase is from Psalm 5:9. It’s more literally, “Their throat is an open grave.” It’s unclear what Paul meant by that. But Jews became ritually unclean when they came into contact with the dead or with a grave. They weren’t allowed to worship at the Jerusalem Temple until they had gone through cleansing rituals. This included waiting seven days and taking ritual baths on days three and seven (Numbers 19:11-13).

From Psalm 140:3.

From Psalm 10:7.

From Isaiah 59:7-8.

From Psalm 36:1.

A more famous translation says “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (King James Version). The “glory of God” could refer to the standard he sets for people who seek his approval and praise. But it could also refer to his presence, and the right to stand with him. The implication is that though he created humans, no one is fit to stand in his presence. Perhaps it’s much like John the Baptist once said of Jesus, “I’m not worthy to untie the straps on his sandals” (Luke 3:16).

A more literal translation, heavy on abstract theological terms: “Justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (King James Version).

“Grace” sounds like a vague word that’s hard to define. In fact, it’s a specific word that can be hard to define: charis. When Bible writers use it to describe God’s expression of grace to people, the word comes in different shades: mercy, kindness, love. We have to look for context clues if we want to understand how the writer used the word. One interpretation of God’s grace is this: “Grace is God accepting us the way we are and exactly where we are in our life, yet it’s also his unwillingness to leave us there.” That may cover all the shades of “grace.” We should probably add that Paul says we can’t earn the right to any of it (Romans 9:16). In the Casual English Bible, we typically substitute “kindness” for “grace,” because the word “kindness” is more easily grasped and is a key feature of grace. But in Paul’s letter to Romans, we go back to “grace” because this is Paul’s greatest surviving work and the world’s first book of theology. If you can handle Romans, you can wrap your welcoming arms around God’s grace.

Jewish law taught that sin was a capital offense that required blood to atone for the sin. In Old Testament times, animals were permitted as substitutes to atone for the sins of humans. Jewish law quotes God putting it this way, “Blood is what brings a body to life. . . . It atones for your sin—it gets rid of your guilt so you can stay on good terms with the LORD. Blood is the price of your sin” (Leviticus 17:11). New Testament writers present Jesus as the final sacrifice, ending the sacrificial system “one time for all time” (Hebrews 10:10).

Some Bible experts say that Paul wasn’t teaching that Jews should stop observing the laws and traditions Moses gave them. Instead, he was saying that God, all along, had the rest of the world in mind too. For Jews and everyone else, what matters most isn’t the law of the Jews. It’s the law of faith, which is what the Jewish laws were about as well—helping Jews learn to trust in God. Paul explores that further in Romans 4, when he reminds his readers that God approved of Abraham, the father of the Jews, not because Abraham obeyed the laws of Moses. Abraham lived several centuries before Moses. God accepted Abraham because of his faith.