(Leviticus 16:11-19; Romans 3:1-26)
Three years ago, while I was at a conference in Chicago, Sara took the girls to the Shedd Aquarium. She figured we’d go back sometime when I could go too, so she bought a family membership. She was right, of course—I love aquariums—and the day we all went, we got there to find, not a line for admission, but a crowd stretching down the steps and well out into the park. It looked like we were going to be there a long time, but Sara worked her way up to the doors and discovered that the Shedd has a separate members’ entrance; a few minutes later, we were in.
That was essentially the popular Jewish view of salvation in Paul’s day, except of course that the great crowds wouldn’t get in at all. That’s what they understood their advantage with God to mean: access to him and his favor from which everyone else was excluded. Paul, of course, thoroughly destroys that idea in chapter 2, leaving his opponents to say, “If that’s the case, then there’s really no advantage to being a Jew at all, is there?” Was God’s blessing on his chosen people just a cruel joke?
To this Paul says, no, the Jews had a great advantage: God had given them his word and his promises. They didn’t have to figure out the big questions of life on their own—as a nation, they knew the creator of the whole world, and he had told them who he was, how he wanted them to live, and what his purpose was for them. They knew that someone all-good, all-wise and all-powerful had charge of their destiny, and everyone else’s, and that he would always be faithful and true no matter what; and they knew he had promised to bless them. The thing was, he had also promised to judge them if they were unfaithful to him, if they did not keep his commands; God could not simply ignore sin or wave it away as unimportant. As Paul shows, for God to do that, even for his own people, would be to violate his own righteousness.
Paul drives his point home, that Jews are under sin just as much as Gentiles, with a long catalog of denunciation from the Old Testament, which he concludes with the observation that “whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law”—the Jews are not exempt from this—so that “the whole world may be held accountable to God,” and no one may have any excuse to make for themselves. And then he says this, which crystallizes the dilemma in his argument: “No human being will be justified in God’s sight through works of the law, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” Implicit here is the recognition that no one can keep the law perfectly, and the understanding that the righteousness of God demands no less.
And yet, while God cannot be false to his own character, and thus cannot simply accept human sin and let it stand—to do so would be a betrayal of his justice—at the same time, he cannot be false to his character and simply leave the world to its sin, with no hope of salvation; to do so would be a betrayal of his love, which seeks to make us righteous—to restore us to right relationship with him. If we could make ourselves perfect, this wouldn’t be a problem, but we can’t; we have all sinned, and we all continue to sin, despite our best efforts. We are all each day falling short of the glory of God, and it’s beyond our strength to change that. For God to be true to his character, then, he somehow had to make us perfect himself.
Thus we have verses 21-26, which are the second thematic passage in Romans. We had 1:16-17, which state the theme of the letter, and then this long section through 3:20 which tells the story of the Fall, thus setting forth the problem to be solved. Here Paul tells us God’s solution: Jesus Christ. God’s saving righteousness does not come to us through the law, which depends on our effort; rather, it is entirely by his own action. The law could not permanently appease the wrath of God against sin, nor could it permanently remove human guilt—it was just a temporary measure until Jesus should come, who could and did permanently remove our guilt and pay the penalty for our sin by dying in our place on the cross. He took all our evil and all our unrighteousness on himself on the cross, and he took it down with him into death, so that in him we might be made forever right with God.
It’s important that we understand this. To say we are Christians isn’t to say we’re good people, it’s to confess that we aren’t, but God loves us anyway. To say that we’re Christians isn’t to say we found the truth, it’s to admit that we weren’t looking for it, but he found us anyway. To call ourselves Christians isn’t to say that we have the right to judge others, it’s to humbly acknowledge that we deserve judgment, but received mercy anyway. To proclaim ourselves Christians isn’t to praise ourselves, it’s to declare that all our praise is for Jesus, who knew we were unworthy and saved us anyway. For any of us to say “I am a Christian” isn’t to claim to be better or more moral or holier than anyone else, it is to affirm with Paul, “Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” The glory, the credit, the honor, the praise, are to Christ alone.