But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been made known…(Romans 3:21).
These words, from the pen of the Apostle Paul, begin a short statement that could be the most important passage in the book of Romans. If Romans is the most important epistle in the New Testament, then these few verses are of incredible significance.
In my last post I commented that in chapters one through three of the book of Romans Paul articulated a polemic that was summarized by his conclusion that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Or as I said, we are all bozos on this bus! This is the “bad news”. But in Romans, Paul built his case concerning the human condition in order to introduce us to “the good news”. “Gospel” means “good news”. The good news is so multifaceted that it will take Paul the rest of the book of Romans to explain it. But it begins with this statement about the righteousness of God.
To be “righteous” means that something or someone has met a standard. In its original context it was not necessarily a religious word. If you were building a house, and the walls needed to be constructed at a 90-degree angle to the foundation, when the plumb line was parallel to the wall, the wall was “righteous”. If not, it needed to be made parallel. When the correction was made, the wall had been “justified”, i.e. made “right”. You might be able to fudge a little if your house is a small cottage. But if it is a fifty-story skyscraper, a one-degree variation from plumb can bring the whole building down!
In relationship with God, the standard is the nature of God himself, or in the words of Romans, his glory. In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul built a thorough case demonstrating that humanity is so far “out of plumb” with the glory of God that we have no ability to correct the problem. We are all UN-righteous…out of plumb…and as a result…out of relationship. Paul will also go on to explain that the real purpose for which God gave the Law was to help us understand how “out of plumb” we are, not to be a way to correct the problem through our own efforts. We all need a new way to be in the right relationship with God, apart from our own efforts. That is why the passage from which today’s text is taken begins with “But now….”. The good news is a message of hope.
How can we get “justified”? How can we be “made right”? The good news tells us that what we could never do…God did! There is a new standard (Paul will go on to show how this actually has always been the standard.) That standard has to do with what Jesus accomplished on our behalf on the cross. He has provided a way to be made right (justified) through the sacrifice of Jesus. I’ll pick it up here in my next text.
(For a more detailed explanation of Romans, go to this link: http://www.highlinecc.org/go/index.php/teaching)