21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood — to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished — 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, 30 since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.

Paul has spent two and a half chapters building a case, and none of it is comfortable. He starts with the people who have never opened a Bible. Then he turns to the people who have, and finds they are no better off — worse, in some ways, because they knew and did it anyway. By the end of the argument he has quoted the Psalms back at his own people: there is no one righteous, not even one. He says the point of all this is so that every mouth may be silenced.

That is the room we are standing in when verse 21 begins. Everyone quiet. Nobody with a defence left.

"But now."

Two words, and the whole letter turns. Not "but you should try harder." Not "but there is still time to make it up." Just: but now. Something has happened. Something is different, and the difference is not on our side of the table.

Paul says the righteousness of God has been made known apart from the law. Made known — not achieved, not earned, not offered as a target to aim at. Revealed. Like a door you did not know was there being opened from the other side.

And then he adds a line that is easy to skim past: the Law and the Prophets testify to it. This is not God changing his mind halfway through history. The whole Old Testament was pointing here the entire time. The sacrifices, the promises to Abraham, the prophets who kept saying that God would do something himself — they were all describing this door before it opened.

Verse 22 says there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. Then Paul explains what he means by that, and he uses the same small word three times in three verses.

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

"All are justified freely by his grace."

The first "all" is the one we usually notice. It is the levelling verse, the one that puts the respectable person and the wreck of a person on the same line. Fall short is a plain image — an arrow that does not reach the target, no matter how well it was aimed. Some arrows land closer than others. None of them arrive.

But the second "all" is doing the same work in the opposite direction. If nobody qualifies, then nobody is disqualified either. The person who has been in church their whole life and the person walking in for the first time are receiving the identical thing, on identical terms, at the identical price. There is no express lane for the well-behaved.

That is harder to accept than it sounds. Most of us quietly believe we are a slightly better case than we actually are, and that our slight betterness should count for something. Paul is saying it counts for nothing here — not because God is harsh, but because the gap was never the kind of gap that effort closes.

"All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

Two words in that sentence sit right next to each other and pull in opposite directions, and holding both is most of the Christian faith.

Freely. Nothing paid, nothing owed, nothing to reimburse later. If you tried to hand God something for it, there would be nothing to hand him.

Redemption. That word did not come from a temple. It came from a marketplace. Redemption is what you called it when a price was paid to buy someone out of slavery or captivity and set them loose. It always involved money changing hands. Somebody paid.

So it is free, and it was expensive. Both are true, and they are true at different addresses. It is free where we are standing. It was expensive where God was standing. Verse 25 makes that plain in language nobody enjoys reading: God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood.

Grace is not God deciding that sin does not matter much. Grace is God absorbing it himself.

There is a question buried in verses 25 and 26 that most of us never think to ask, and it is not the question we would expect.

We assume the hard problem is: how do guilty people get made right? Paul is worried about a different one: how does God stay right while doing it?

He points at all the centuries before Christ, when God kept forgiving people, kept relenting, kept holding back. He calls it forbearance — sins committed beforehand left unpunished. And he treats that as a genuine difficulty. If a judge lets offender after offender walk out of his courtroom, we do not call him kind. We call him corrupt. Something in us knows that forgiveness which costs nothing and answers nothing is not mercy. It is just not caring.

So the cross, Paul says, was to demonstrate his righteousness. God was showing that he had never been indifferent. Every sin he had passed over was going somewhere. It was going to the cross.

Then comes the line the whole passage has been walking toward: so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Just, and the justifier. Both at once. Not softening the standard so we could reach it. Not enforcing the standard so we would be crushed by it. Meeting the standard himself, and then giving us the result.

Paul asks his own question in verse 27 and answers it in three words. Where is boasting? It is excluded.

Not discouraged. Not humbly set aside. Excluded — shut out, with no way back in. And the reason is simply that there is nothing left to boast about. You cannot be proud of a gift. You can be grateful for it, you can be undone by it, but you cannot take credit for it. The moment the whole thing came free, the scoreboard was switched off.

Then Paul does something with that which I did not see coming. He goes straight from boasting to nationality. Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too?

He is connecting two things I would have kept separate. If nobody gets in by performance, then nobody gets in by background either. If the door is faith, the door is the same door for everyone who walks up to it. Every wall we build between ourselves and other people is built out of comparison — and comparison is the thing that just got excluded. One God, one way in, one queue, and no one nearer the front.

The chapter ends with an objection Paul knows is coming. If none of this runs on the law, have you just thrown the law away? Do we nullify the law by this faith?

Not at all, he says. Rather, we uphold it.

The law was never a ladder. It was a mirror. Its job was to tell the truth about us, and it did that job perfectly — verse 20 said it was through the law that we became conscious of our sin. If I stop using a mirror to shave with and start using it for what it is actually for, I have not thrown the mirror away. I have finally taken it seriously.

To say the law cannot save is not an insult to the law. It is agreement with it. The law itself has been saying so from the beginning.

Somewhere in this passage there is a sentence with your name where the word "all" is. The whole argument only becomes personal when you stop reading it as theology about people in general and let it land as a statement about you.

Try holding both halves today. All have sinned — including you, and further than you have admitted to anyone. All are justified freely — including you, and more completely than you have let yourself believe.

Most of us can only hold one at a time. We either take our sin seriously and quietly assume God must be keeping a running total, or we take grace seriously and start going easy on ourselves about things we should not go easy on. Paul refuses to let go of either. God is just, and God is the one who justifies. Nothing was overlooked, and nothing is owing.

So here is what I would carry from this chapter. What are you still trying to pay for? And who are you still comparing yourself to, when the comparison has already been excluded?

All glory to God — forever and ever. Amen. 🤍

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