Romans 3: Justified freely!

Captain Luke Cozens reminds us God’s grace is enough.

Key text

• Romans 3:21–31

I was incredibly confident as a teenager – I loved speaking in front of people, and I generally thought I knew best! Unfortunately, this also sometimes meant I thought I was better than others and didn’t always give them a chance to do things. God wants us to be confident in him – to be sure we’re saved and can do what he asks of us – but he wants us to have a confidence that welcomes others and doesn’t put ourselves above them.

Pause and reflect 

• Do you tend to be more confident or self-doubting?
• When might your confidence become arrogance?
• When might you need to be more confident in God?

In his letter to the Romans, Paul is trying to set out how God’s salvation works and how we can get this kind of confidence. He’s already explained that none of us gets it right – we all sin. Even Paul’s own people, who had been given God’s Law, haven’t got it right – the Law just showed how bad things were. But here he says there is a way for us to be right with God – to be ‘righteous’ (v20) – just like the Old Testament said we could (see vv21 and 22). Everyone who follows Jesus is right with God – he has nothing against us and we’re always welcome with him. If you follow Jesus, there’s no way out of God’s good books!

The twist is that we can’t earn it for ourselves. Christianity doesn’t have a set of instructions for how to get into those good books – we’d only fail at them anyway. Instead, we are ‘justified freely by his grace’ (v24), which we have ‘received by faith’ (v25). Like a teacher who gives an A* – or a 9 in today’s GCSE grading – to anyone who asks, God gives us this status of righteousness. ‘Grace’ means it is given even though we haven’t earned it. Instead, Jesus has earned it for us, and anyone who is with Jesus gets Jesus’ righteousness too. That’s where faith comes in – the gift comes through being with Jesus: trusting him, following him, being one of his people.

Pause and reflect

• Are you ever tempted to think that you’ve earned your righteousness?
• Are you ever tempted to think you’re terrible or not worthy of good things?

In verses 25 and 26, we hit a challenge.

So many of the films and TV shows I’ve watched recently have been about people getting away with things they shouldn’t have. The Big Short talks about bankers getting away with crashing the economy, Five Days at Memorial suggests a doctor got away with killing patients, and The Hack talks about journalists getting away with the hacking of people’s phones. We hate it when people get away with these things – it suggests the people in charge don’t care about what is right.

God can’t just let us off for the sins we have done. Every unkind word and every selfish choice that we make damages other people and this world. If God just ignored that, then his own righteousness would be in question. There has to be some kind of consequence – some cost to be paid. However, God chose to pay that cost himself through Jesus. Anyone who wants to accuse God of not caring about sin just needs to look at the cross.

Pause and reflect

• Are you ever too quick to dismiss the real consequences of your sins?
• Are you ever drawn into feeling bad about them over and over again, long after God has forgiven you?

God’s righteousness is a gift, not something to be arrogant about. I remember a story I saw on Facebook where a 21-year-old explained how they had managed to buy a massive house at such a young age, only for someone to look up the details and point out their parents gave them the money – there’s no point boasting about something you didn’t earn for yourself.

In verses 27 to 31, Paul says the same is true for our salvation. Jesus earned it for us, so there’s no point boasting about it. Being saved doesn’t make us any better than anyone else. In fact, being a Christian means that we’ve openly admitted we’re not good enough – we need God to save us.

Paul says this also applies to his people. They can’t claim that they get right with God in a special way by following the Old Testament rules – they need Jesus too. That doesn’t mean we can ignore the Old Testament; it just shows that the Old Testament points to Jesus. Jesus is the only way for anyone to get right with God.

So what does all this mean? First, we should be confident. Nothing can take us away from God’s love or put us in his bad books. If you follow Jesus, you can be fully confident that you are good enough, that you can do anything God asks you to do, that no one can tell you you’re not worthy. But that doesn’t mean we can be arrogant or self-confident. The kind of confidence we have has to be open to everyone – not ‘I’m better than you’ but ‘God gave me full confidence and you can have it too’!

Pause and reflect

• What would it look like for you to live with full confidence that you are right with God?
• How can you encourage others to experience this salvation and confidence for themselves?