Romans 3 explained: Everyone on Level Ground

God stays faithful (vv. 1-8)

Paul says being Jewish still matters, above all because Jews were trusted with God's words, and the failure of some to keep faith does not cancel God's faithfulness. He then rejects the twisted idea that if human wrong makes God look better, God is unfair to punish it, or that people may as well do wrong so good can come of it, a slogan some were falsely saying he taught.

Everyone under sin (vv. 9-18)

Paul concludes that Jews and non-Jews alike are under the power of sin, and he backs this with a chain of lines from the Psalms and Isaiah. Those lines first described particular wrongdoers, but Paul gathers them, moving from throat and tongue to feet and eyes, to picture the whole human person gone astray.

What the law cannot do (vv. 19-20)

The law, meaning the commands given through Moses and the Jewish Scriptures, leaves no one able to claim innocence: it shows people their wrongs but cannot make anyone right with God. Readers differ on what 'works of the law' means: many, especially Protestants, have read it as any effort to earn God's approval, while many recent scholars think Paul especially has in mind the practices that set Jews apart, such as circumcision, food laws and the Sabbath.

A free gift for all (vv. 21-24)

Now, Paul says, God has made known a way to be put right with him apart from the law, one the Scriptures pointed to, offered freely to everyone because everyone has fallen short. The Greek phrase usually translated 'faith in Jesus Christ' can also mean 'the faithfulness of Jesus Christ', and scholars are divided over which Paul meant.

Jesus and the mercy seat (vv. 25-26)

Paul calls Jesus a 'hilasterion', the same word the Greek Old Testament uses for the gold lid of the covenant chest, where blood was sprinkled once a year to cleanse the people's sins. Translations say 'sacrifice of atonement' or 'propitiation' (turning aside anger), and Christians differ on whether the stress falls on calming God's anger or on wiping sin away; either way, Paul says this shows God is just even in having held back punishment for past sins.

No room for boasting (vv. 27-31)

If being right with God comes by trusting rather than by keeping the law, no one has grounds to boast, and since there is one God of Jews and non-Jews alike, he puts both right in the same way. Paul insists this does not throw out the law but upholds it, a claim he unpacks later in the letter.

Key verse: Romans 3:23

Where Christians differ

Christians differ over what being 'justified by faith' means here: many Protestants hold that God declares a person righteous through faith alone, while Catholic and Orthodox Christians understand it as God actually making a person righteous through a faith lived out in love, though a 1999 joint statement by Catholics and Lutherans found much common ground.

Something to think about

If everyone falls short in some way, what does that change, if anything, about how you judge other people or yourself?