Justified By Grace

Justified by Grace: Embracing God's Free Gift

Bible Passage: Ro 3:21–31

The Rescue of God: Called Out, Gifted, Redeemed, Adopted

Introduction

So here we are in week 4 of our series on Romans. We’ve spent time reflecting on the wider context of the letter and walking through the foundations of Paul’s gospel story. Paul has been showing that both Jews and Gentiles stand in the same place before God.

Romans 3 contains one of the most famous lines in the Bible:

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

I discovered this week that you can actually buy a mug with that printed on it. Imagine giving that as a gift to someone you love.

“Happy birthday. Here’s your coffee mug. Just a daily reminder that you’ve fallen short of the glory of God.”

It’s not exactly inspirational kitchenware, is it?

But Paul isn’t trying to be discouraging. He’s trying to level the ground. Jew and Gentile. Religious and non-religious. Moral and immoral. Everyone stands in the same place before God.

The law shows us our condition, but it cannot cure it.

It is like a mirror. When you get out of bed in the morning and look in the mirror, you see the bed hair, the tired eyes, the things that need fixing. The mirror shows the problem, but it cannot fix the problem.

The law is like that. It is good. It guides. It teaches us what life with God should look like. It acts like a guardian helping us live well. But it cannot deal with the deeper issue inside us.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried something like a “kids in charge day” at home, where the children get to make the decisions for the day. What we eat. What we do. When bedtime is. The rules disappear and the children take charge.

We tried it ones… It sounds fun in theory. In reality, you very quickly discover something… that the rules and structures are really important. Removing structure doesn’t produce wisdom or love or self-control. It just reveals how much those things are needed.

Rules don’t change the heart. They reveal the heart.

That’s what Paul is saying about the law. The law shows us what is wrong, but it cannot fix what is wrong.

Romans 3:19 says the law leaves “every mouth silenced” and the whole world accountable to God.

And that’s the crisis moment in the story.

All the sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

There’s No way out. There’s No ladder up. We are trapped

But then Paul turns the corner. The letter of Romans begins to turn on two small words ‘But Now’ Romans 3:21: “But now…”

Humanity cannot fix the problem of sin. But God has acted. And what Paul explains next is justification.

So let’s turn to our bibles, Romans 3:21-31 and let me read it for us.

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[h] 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,[i] 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.

So this is a beautiful paragraph of scripture, but is also one of the most challenging and most technical that we’ve come across.

2 Peter 3:16 ‘ He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand,’ - we are in good company, Peter tells us some of this is hard!!

Today I hope to simply this a bit for us, and I have four points that I want to share with you. Firstly….

1. Called Out - We are Called Out People

The church is not primarily an organisation or a gathering. It is a people who have been called out.

The word ekklesia (the Greek word for Church that we find throughout the NT) literally means the called-out ones.

God has dug us out of something:

out of sin

out of death

out of darkness

out of captivity

Salvation in the New Testament is rescue language. God calls people out of darkness into his kingdom.

And the passage we read is really about showing you how we came to that place.

2. Made Right - Righteousness is Gifted

At the beginning of the letter of Romans in Romans 1:17, Paul tells us that the gospel reveals ‘the righteousness of God’. And so in our passage we read, he is coming back to this point, why is the Righteousness of God such good news…

Righteousness links to the idea of ‘Right Standing of God’

And also Paul is coming on to explain a question that maybe we might have ‘How can a just and Holy God declare me to be righteous?’

I want you to look at the passage again on the screen, the passage we read - it’s over two slides.

You can see it mentions, righteousness, just of justification eight times in just a few verses.

Paul is telling us something central: The cure for humanity, that brings you and I to a place of freedom, involves righteousness (right standing with God) being given/gifted.

Not achieved. Not earned. Given.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

So God does something astonishing.

He gifts us his righteousness.

We are “justified freely by his grace”.

God does not ignore the problem. God provides what we could never produce.

However, Paul is not only talking about private forgiveness.

He is talking about who belongs to God’s covenant family — the people God has promised to rescue and restore.

He is talking about who belongs to the new family God is forming through Jesus.

3. Set Free - Redeemed

But this raises a question.

How can God do this and remain just?

How can God gift righteousness without ignoring sin?

So this is where I want to focus on our third point, called out, made right/gifted, and our third point ‘set free / REDEMEPTION’

Romans 3:24 answers ‘how are we made righteous?’ : “through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Redemption is marketplace language. It connects the slave language that would have been very common in the Roman context. Freedom language. Ransom language.

It assumes captivity.

Humanity is enslaved.

Sin enslaves. Death enslaves. Evil enslaves.

And freedom costs something.

A large portion of Roman society lived in slavery. Many were captured in foriegn wars and brought to Rome as human machines. They would have been sold in slave markets across the city, to merchants that would have needed cheap labour.

Men, Women and Children who knew what it would have meant and what it would have felt like to be sold in the slave markets, now were hearing Pheobe read these words from Paul. ‘theres a redemption that comes through christ’

God stepped in to pay our ransom, to pay our freedom. When we were trapped like a slave in the market, Jesus stepped in to pay my ransom.

Paul says God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood - he gave his life - so that you can have life.

This echoes the story of Passover. Which the Jewish hearers of this would have really heard.

In the exodus story you see the idea that Israel was in slavery in egypt, and God was interveneing to save them. He brought 10 plagues on egypt and the last of these was the death of the first born. But Israel were given instructions to kill a lamb and to mark their doorposts with the blood of the lamb so that death would pass over them.

The people are protected not because they are better, but because they are under the blood of another.

Redemption.

What the law could not do, the sacrifice did.

Paul is saying Jesus fulfils all of that.

Not symbolically. Decisively.

The cross is victory.

Christ defeats sin. Christ defeats death. Christ defeats the powers that enslave humanity.

Redemption of Jesus is liberation.

But also Redemption is not only about freedom from slavery. It is about being brought into a new people.

How can a just and holy God declare us righteous?

God’s righteousness is revealed through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for the sake of all who trust in him. This is not God lowering his standards or pretending sin does not matter. The cross is not God overlooking evil. It is God dealing with evil decisively and once for all.

When Paul announces that Jesus Christ is Lord, he is declaring that the one true God has been faithful to his covenant promises. God has done what he said he would do. He has confronted the sin that has corrupted his creation and acted to restore justice, peace, and truth.

So when God declares us righteous in Christ, he is not ignoring our sin. He is demonstrating his own faithfulness. He is showing that through Jesus’ death and resurrection, evil has been defeated, sin has been dealt with, and a new humanity is being formed.

Justification, then, is not simply about individual forgiveness.

It is God publicly announcing that he has kept his promises and that those who belong to Jesus now share in his righteousness and his restored creation.

In the eighteenth century there was a man named John Newton whose life was marked by contradiction. As a young man he lived recklessly, was disowned by his family, pressed into naval service, and eventually found work on slave ships. He became involved in the transatlantic slave trade, helping transport enslaved people across the ocean in conditions of unimaginable cruelty. Later in life, Newton would look back on those years with deep grief and shame.

In 1748, during a violent storm at sea, Newton believed he was about to die. In desperation he cried out to God for mercy. That moment did not instantly fix everything, but it began a slow transformation. Over time he left the slave trade, became a pastor, and eventually supported the abolitionist movement, encouraging people like William Wilberforce to keep working to end slavery.

Years later, reflecting on his life, Newton wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace.” When he wrote, “that saved a wretch like me,” he was not exaggerating for poetic effect. He was telling the truth about who he had been and what God had done.

Newton’s story is not tidy. His repentance was real, but it took time. His past could not be erased. The evil he participated in remained evil. And yet grace met him there and began to remake his life.

Paul says that God has revealed his righteousness through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. God has not ignored evil, and he has not lowered his standards. Instead, he has dealt decisively with sin through the cross and resurrection.

Romans 3 tells us that God did this to demonstrate his righteousness so that he might be both just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

That means Newton’s story is not ultimately about Newton. It is about God’s faithfulness. The same God who confronted evil in the cross of Christ could declare even a slave trader righteous and begin transforming his life.

This is justification. Not God pretending sin does not matter, but God dealing with sin fully in Jesus and then declaring righteous those who trust in him.

Justification, then, is not simply about individual forgiveness. It is God declaring who belongs to his family.

It is God publicly announcing that he has kept his promises and that those who belong to Jesus now share in his righteousness and his restored creation.

And this is why grace really is amazing. Because if God can bring redemption out of a life like Newton’s, he can do the same with ours. He is still putting lives back together. He is still forming a new humanity shaped by mercy.

That is the good news Paul announces in Romans 3.

Sin enslaves humanity Christ redeems humanity Faith includes humanity God forms one family

4. Brought Home — A New Status, A New People

Salvation does not stop at forgiveness.

It ends in belonging.

God does not just free captives and leave them outside. He welcomes them home, He brings them into his family.

Paul will develop this fully in Romans 8, but the seeds are already here in Romans 3

Status changes: condemned → free slave → redeemed orphan → child

We are now in Christ.

Salvation is not only individual restoration. It is relational restoration.

And Paul makes this explicit in the rest of Romans 3.

Because once righteousness is a gift, once redemption is accomplished, once adoption becomes reality, something else happens:

Boasting disappears.

Romans 3:27: “Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded.”

No one earns their way in. No one stands above another. No one belongs more than someone else.

Justification creates unity.

Paul immediately asks: “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too?” (Romans 3:29)

And this helps us understand what Paul means by “works of the law.” He is not mainly arguing against people trying to be good.

He is challenging the idea that Jewish identity markers like the law, circumcision, or ritual obedience define who belongs to God’s people. Faith in Christ is now the marker of belonging.

That’s why boasting disappears. No one has privileged access to God anymore. Jew and Gentile stand on the same ground.

This is the horizontal dimension of justification.

Justification is a vertical reality our right standing with a father who loves us. But Justifcation has a horizontal dimension that impacts all of humanity.

If righteousness is a gift through faith, then salvation does not belong to one ethnic group, one tradition, or one kind of person.

There is: one God, one rescue, one faith, one family.

Justification does not just reconcile us to God. It draws us together into one new humanity.

The victory of Christ does not just forgive individuals. It creates a people.

We are not only children of God. We are brothers and sisters.

Conclusion

Romans 3 ends by asking whether faith cancels the law.

Paul says no.

Grace does not discard God’s purposes, God’s promises, or God’s faithfulness. Grace fulfils them.

The law exposed sin. Christ defeats sin. The Spirit transforms lives.

And this leads directly into Romans 4.

Because the next question Paul answers is: Has it always been this way?

Was righteousness always received by faith?

So next, Paul turns to the life of Abraham and shows that faith has always been the way people are made right with God.

That’s where we go next…

BAND UP

Romans 3 leaves us here:

We were called out of darkness. We were given righteousness. We were set free by Christ. We were brought home into one family.

This is the rescue of God. This is the victory of Christ. This is salvation.

This is the good news