Romans3chapter 3

Romans 3:1-2

What advantage then hath the Jew, or what profit is there of circumcision, asks the question chapter 2 has just seemed to raise, if an uncircumcised Gentile can be counted righteous, what is left of Israel's distinction at all. Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God answers plainly, a real and abiding advantage, though the first one Paul names is not blessing but stewardship, Israel entrusted with God's own revealed word ahead of every other nation. The bench reads this as the opening move of the argument running through chapter 11, God's covenant with Israel is not erased by human unfaithfulness, a thesis chapter 9's opening restates in Paul's own great heaviness.

Romans 3:3-4

For what if some did not believe, shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect, raises the objection Israel's own history of unbelief seems to invite, that human faithlessness might cancel God's own faithfulness to his promises. God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar answers with the first of the chapter's several refusals, setting God's truthfulness against the whole human race's potential falsehood without hesitation, an argument drawn from Psalm 116:11. As it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged quotes Psalm 51:4, David's own confession after Nathan's rebuke, applied here to show that human sin, far from threatening God's righteousness, only displays it more clearly when God judges rightly.

Romans 3:5-6

But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say, Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance, presses the objection further, if human sin makes God's righteousness shine brighter by contrast, would it not be unjust for God to punish the very sin that served his own glory. I speak as a man flags the objection as a human argument Paul voices only to answer, a device the diatribe style uses throughout the letter. God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world answers with the second refusal, arguing from the settled fact of a coming final judgment, one every hearer already assumes, back to the conclusion that God cannot be unjust, since an unjust judge could not judge the world at all.

Romans 3:7-8

For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner, restates the same objection in the first person, sharpening it into a personal excuse any sinner could offer for his own wrongdoing. And not rather, as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say, Let us do evil, that good may come, reveals that Paul's own gospel of grace was already being twisted into exactly this slander in his own lifetime, opponents claiming his doctrine of justification by faith alone licensed sin. Whose damnation is just answers the slander in five words, refusing to argue the point further and simply pronouncing judgment on whoever actually reasons that way, a warning Paul repeats in stronger form at 6:1-2.

Romans 3:9

What then, are we better than they, No, in no wise, closes off any escape the previous chapters might have left open for the Jewish reader, the same impartial verdict falling on Jew as on Gentile after both charges have been laid out in full. For we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin summarizes chapters 1 and 2 in a single sentence, hyph' hamartian, literally under sin's power, a condition rather than merely a record of separate deeds. The bench reads this verse as the section's thesis statement, the conclusion the catena of quotations that follows exists to prove from Scripture itself rather than from Paul's own argument alone.

Romans 3:10-12

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one, opens a catena of Old Testament citations, Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 supplying the first three lines, proof that Paul's charge of universal sin is Scripture's own verdict and not a novel argument. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God continues the same psalm, denying not merely right action but right desire, no one by nature searching after God on his own initiative. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one closes this first movement of the catena on the same universal note it opened with, no exception named anywhere in the run.

Romans 3:13-14

Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips draws from Psalm 5:9 and Psalm 140:3, moving the indictment from the heart's condition to the mouth's output, speech pictured as an open grave releasing decay and a serpent's venom hidden under a smiling lip. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness closes this pair with Psalm 10:7, the same organ that could bless made instead an instrument of curse. The bench notes the catena's movement is deliberate, throat, tongue, lips, mouth, each named in turn, building a single composite portrait of fallen speech from four separate psalms.

Romans 3:15-17

Their feet are swift to shed blood: Their feet are swift to shed blood moves the catena from speech to action, drawing on Isaiah 59:7-8, violence pictured as a body eager to run toward harm. Destruction and misery are in their ways names the wreckage such feet leave behind wherever they travel, and the way of peace have they not known states the corresponding absence, a road never learned rather than merely a road abandoned. The bench reads Isaiah's own context behind these lines as itself an indictment of Israel's leadership before Paul ever applies it to the whole human race, the prophet's charge widened here to its furthest possible reach.

Romans 3:18

There is no fear of God before their eyes: There is no fear of God before their eyes closes the catena with Psalm 36:1, and the bench reads it as the root the previous seven lines all grow from, no reverence for God behind the corrupted heart, the poisoned speech, or the violent feet. Six Old Testament citations from three different psalms and one prophet have now built a single case, showing that Paul has not invented a doctrine of universal sin but has simply let Israel's own scriptures state it in their own words. What the law and the prophets said all along, Paul now applies as the verdict standing over every man before grace ever reaches him.

Romans 3:19-20

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law explains why Paul aimed the catena specifically at Israel first, the Old Testament's own charges landing on the very people who possessed the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God, the whole human race left with no defense once its most privileged member is silenced. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin, states the law's actual function against any reader tempted to seek justification by keeping it, not a ladder to righteousness but a mirror that shows sin for what it is. The bench reads this verse as the hinge of the entire epistle, three chapters of indictment closing here before verse 21 turns to the answer, the righteousness of God that comes some other way.

Romans 3:21-22

But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested opens the answer the whole letter has been building toward, chorio nomou, a righteousness that arrives by a different route than law keeping altogether. Being witnessed by the law and the prophets insists this new way was never foreign to the Old Testament, the very scriptures that condemn under the law also testifying in advance to a righteousness coming apart from it, Abraham's own justification by faith in Genesis 15:6 chief among the witnesses chapter 4 will call. Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference, names the means, faith directed toward Christ, and the scope, every believer without distinction between Jew and Gentile, the same impartiality the chapter has argued from its opening verse.

Romans 3:23

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God restates the section's universal verdict in its most quoted form, hysterountai, a present tense falling short describing an ongoing condition rather than only a past record of deeds. The glory of God named here is read by the bench as the glory Adam was made to reflect and lost in the fall, every descendant since born short of that original design rather than merely guilty of isolated acts. The verse's brevity is itself the point, a single sentence carrying the weight three chapters have spent building, set at the exact center of the argument between the indictment and its answer.

Romans 3:24

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus names the verse's own answer to the sin just confessed, dorean, freely or without cause, the same word John 15:25 uses of hatred given without reason, grace here given just as gratuitously in the opposite direction. Redemption, apolytrosis, carries the picture of a ransom paid to release a captive, the marketplace word for buying a slave's freedom, applied here to Christ's own work. The bench notes the three words stacked in one verse, justified, grace, redemption, together state the doctrine the rest of the letter will only unfold rather than add to, forgiveness that costs the sinner nothing because it cost Christ everything.

Romans 3:25-26

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood turns on one Greek word, hilasterion, the same word the Septuagint uses for the mercy seat covering the ark, so that Christ himself becomes the place where God and sinner meet over the very blood that answers sin. The bench holds two readings of the word's force honestly, propitiation, God's own wrath toward sin turned aside, and expiation, sin itself covered and removed, both named with their holders since the single Greek word can carry either emphasis and English has no one word for both. For the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God explains why such a demonstration was needed at all, God's own righteousness in question after ages of not fully punishing sin, until the cross settled the account those earlier sins had left open. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus, states the paradox the whole verse exists to resolve, God remaining just while still justifying the guilty, a tension the cross alone answers rather than a contradiction the cross ignores.

Romans 3:27-28

Where is boasting then, It is excluded, asks the question the whole doctrine just stated answers by its very shape, a righteousness received as a gift leaving no room for the boast a righteousness earned would allow. By what law, of works, Nay, but by the law of faith names the principle that excludes it, not one legal system replacing another but the very nature of faith as reception rather than achievement. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law states the section's conclusion in its clearest form, the verse Luther's own conscience finally rested on after his long search through the law's demands.

Romans 3:29-30

Is he the God of the Jews only, is he not also of the Gentiles, Yes, of the Gentiles also, draws out the doctrine's necessary consequence, a God who justifies by faith rather than by law cannot belong to one nation only, since faith is available wherever the gospel reaches. Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith grounds Gentile inclusion in the oldest confession Israel had, the Shema's own claim that God is one, since one God over all peoples can only have one way of justifying all peoples. The bench reads this as monotheism's own logic completing what chapters 1 through 3 have already argued from human sin, the same God, the same standard, and now the same faith, reaching both Jew and Gentile alike.

Romans 3:31

Do we then make void the law through faith, God forbid, yea, we establish the law, answers the objection every reader of the previous ten verses would naturally raise, that justification apart from law keeping must mean the law no longer matters at all. The bench reads the establishing two ways held together rather than chosen between, the law's own righteous verdict against sin confirmed rather than denied by a gospel that takes that verdict seriously enough to answer it with Christ's blood, and the law's true purpose, always to point toward faith rather than to save by its own works, finally fulfilled rather than abolished. The verse closes the chapter looking forward rather than back, since chapter 4 will prove the very point from the law's own pages, Abraham himself justified by faith before the law was even given.