Exposition of Romans 3:27-31

Internalize the word. Allowing the word of God to dwell richly within you will allow the Holy Spirit to bring to your mind those truths of the gospel that the people you share with need to hear.

Assignments

Read Romans 4:1-8.

My Testimony About God’s Hand

Before we get into our lesson I want to provide an update on my health:

I am still feeling weak, but am improving slowly

This week has been really difficult

But God showed himself in a powerful way

And as I was reflecting on what God has done, I realized just how timely this all was for us right now, not only for the work we are undertaking, but also in the message of Romans that we have this week. So, I want to take a moment to give my testimony about what God has done this week.

My relapse began about three Thursdays ago

I asked for prayers and my relapse seemed to level out

I hoped I was possibly in the clear and improving

By Wednesday, though, things took a turn for the worse

At this point something important happened. Brother Cliff told me that last week he felt like he was supposed to anoint and pray for me. So he took me home on Sunday because I was too weak to stay for potluck and he anointed me and prayed over me. And I want to say without hesitation that I believe this act of faith paved the way for what came next.

On Monday I was sent into the infusion center

While at the infusion center I crashed

My BP went dangerously low and I passed out

They called in the crash unit and sent me to the ER

When I got to the ER they did a full workup to check my heart and the doctors were quite perplexed about what happened. All of my indicators were completely healthy. So they discharged me after I finished my infusions.

And here’s where things get interesting:

I had a consult with the surgeon at 2:00 to discus removing my gallbladder

I didn’t want to go in, but something kept pressing on me to go

When I arrived the office was surprised because they knew what happened

Because of all this, the surgeon spent more time with me than the usual 10-min consult

While going through my history he asked me what I do

This peaked his curiosity to know more about what a minister does

He inquired about what disciplines I study: Bible, “life questions”, epistemology, etc

At this point he asked me what I think about the purpose of “life”. I answered that I believe “the purpose of life is to know God and be at peace within his creation” (John 1:18; Ephesians 2:17; Ecclesiastes 12:13). This touched him where he was, and we spent the next hour and a half talking about the gospel. After this conversation, he thanked me, gave me his card, and told me that I had blessed him and that he needed to have this conversation today.

Suddenly everything made sense.

Without my relapse, I wouldn’t have crashed at the infusion center. I have been praying and asking God this whole year to spare me another relapse because I know relapses do cumulative damage. But if I hadn’t crashed at the infusion center, my consult with the surgeon would’ve been done in 10 minutes. This chain of events is what opened the door for me to share the gospel.

This is as Scripture says:

Acts 14:22 CSB

22 strengthening the disciples by encouraging them to continue in the faith and by telling them, “It is necessary to go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”

God’s Kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world, which fail when their people are weak. This is why the nations rage against one another and put up such bold appearances of strength, because they know that if they appear weak they invite destruction. But God says that “when we are weak, then he is our strength”. God’s Kingdom does not fail when we are weak. And this is why you and I are so often called to enter weakness to bring God’s Kingdom to those who are searching for hope in this life.

You and I are called to act, not based on how strong we think we are, but based on who we think God is!

And I can say that for this small church family, our actions speak louder than our words: we believe God is the God of wonders and faithful love! We believe he can do what we cannot. And so we are stepping out in faith because we trust in God’s faithful love.

Your work in painting the hallway, in planting the community garden, in learning the apologetic skills on Wednesday evening that you need to give a reasoned defense for the faith you have in Christ, and in going door to door to share the gospel, speaks volumes about who you believe God is.

And so I commend you for this faith!

Let’s keep it up!

The Principle of Faith

To understand what is happening in this diatribe we will benefit from an illustration:

One of the most unique things that strikes most Christians when they cross the Pacific from churches in America to churches in Asia is that "they sing the right hymns to the wrong tunes". So when everyone gathers for worship and everybody else goes “up”, you go “down”. The result of all this chaos is that for a few weeks you feel like the odd one out until you get catch on to the tune everybody else is singing.

I think this very much describes what’s happening here.

Jewish Christians have been singing to the tune of righteousness by works, which goes something like this:

“God gave Israel the Torah. Israel is required to keep Torah. Those who do so will be vindicated as God’s people when he acts in history to judge the nations and rescue Israel from their clutches. The way to know right now who will be vindicated in the future is if they are keeping the Torah right now.”

Unfortunately, sometimes when enough visitors join in worship, or when a few really vocal individuals join into a small group, they can inadvertently change the tune of the hymn being sung. Get a few bold individuals into a group, and you can see how easy it would be to divert Christian thinking into the tune of righteousness by works.

So Paul is correcting their pitch to something more like this:

“God gave Israel the Torah to expose their sin. Israel is required to humbly turn their hearts back to God. Those who trust God and live by his faithful promises will be vindicated when God judges the nations and rescues his people from their clutches. The way to know right now who will be vindicated in the future is whose hearts trust in God.”

Although similar, you can see where these tunes clash: one places confidence in one’s self, and the other in God.

And this relationship to God based in faithful-love is what the prophet Hosea called for:

Hosea 2:16 NIV

16 “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’

So we will see the clash between these tunes reaches its climax later in chapters 9-10:

Romans 9:30–33 CSB

30 What should we say then? Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained righteousness—namely the righteousness that comes from faith. 31 But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law. 32 Why is that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. 33 As it is written, Look, I am putting a stone in Zion to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and the one who believes on him will not be put to shame.

Romans 10:1–3 CSB

1 Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation. 2 I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 Since they are ignorant of the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness.

Romans 10:4–7 CSB

4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes, 5 since Moses writes about the righteousness that is from the law: The one who does these things will live by them. 6 But the righteousness that comes from faith speaks like this: Do not say in your heart, “Who will go up to heaven?” that is, to bring Christ down 7 or, “Who will go down into the abyss?” that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.

Romans 10:8–10 CSB

8 On the contrary, what does it say? The message is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. This is the message of faith that we proclaim: 9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.

Romans 10:11–13 CSB

11 For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame, 12 since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him. 13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Given all this, I simply cannot sufficiently emphasize the importance of this principle. Failing to understand and incorporate this principle of faith into our relationship with Christ will result in destructive spiritual decay, it will strip the gospel we preach of its power, and can even result in our being excluded from the Kingdom of God if we then seek to establish our own righteousness.

Now I think it will be helpful to make a few exegetical observations.

Exegesis

First, you’ll see in verse 27 the phrase “law of faith”; the underlying Greek word here is nomos, which Paul normally uses to refer to the the Mosaic law. But Paul’s use of the word here calls instead for faith. And since verse 28 appears to be an elaboration of verse 27, I prefer the NET’s translation “principle of faith” over “law of faith”; the point being made is not that we have a new law replacing Moses, nor is the point that Moses’ law called for faith since the Law said “Keep my statutes and ordinances; a person will live if he does them. I am the Lord” (Lev. 18:5; cf. Gal. 3:12). Instead, Paul’s point is that the principle of faith excludes even the possibility of putting one’s confidence in oneself.

Second, some scholars have seen in verse 30 how Paul says that God will justify “the circumcised by faith” and “the uncircumcised through faith”, alternating the use of the Greek prepositions “ek” and “dia”, and they infer from this the idea that there are two separate modes of salvation by faith. This conclusion directly undermines the entire point that Paul will draw from this section in the next four chapters, namely, that there is one God of both Jews and Gentiles, who saves the world through faith in Jesus Christ. This is simply an example of placing too much interpretive weight on grammatical form.

Last, this diatribe opens with the inferential particle “οὗν”, which is used to draw a conclusion from what has been said in verses 21–26.

So now let’s get into our text.

Where is Boasting?

In summarizing and expanding his main point, Paul gets to the heart of the issue: in whom do you trust? This may sound like a small issue, but nothing is more important in the context of relationships than trust. And in the context of our relationship with God, our confidence must be entrusted wholly to him alone. Indeed, this is the good news that Jesus brings: we can place our full confidence in God’s love.

So Paul raises the question here that forms the thematic arch for his next arguments in chapters 4-5. And he challenges the perception that we can earn our place in God’s heart. What gives you confidence to stand at peace in God’s presence?

Romans 3:27 CSB

27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By one of works? No, on the contrary, by a law of faith.

“Where, then, is boasting?” (v. 27): This is the perfect question to pose at this juncture in Paul’s teaching because it not only challenges the Jewish conception of righteousness, but also the broader conceptions of world religions as well:

Romans 2:12 CSB

12 For all who sin without the law will also perish without the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.

Romans 2:23 CSB

23 You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?

You see? One of the essential premises of Jesus’ good news is that we are set right with a holy God. God doesn’t turn a blind eye to wickedness and injustice. He will balance the scales of justice when he restores peace to his creation.

So who is God? Is he the kind of God before which fallen people like us can stand in confidence on our own two feet? Can we square up with God and demand a place in his presence because we are so good? Is that how we are going to be saved?

Leviticus 10:3 NASB 2020

3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the Lord spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.’ ” So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.

Leviticus 19:2 CSB

2 “Speak to the entire Israelite community and tell them: Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

The perfect nature of God is why faith is the only way for us to be reconciled with God.

So this really is the perfect question to pose at this juncture because challenges how we think we are going to stand in God’s presence. Will you stand before him based on your own righteousness, or will you stand before him based on his righteousness?

“It is excluded” (v. 27): The righteousness that comes by faith is an outworking of the nature of God in contrast to human nature. We have hope because God is good, so he does not simply destroy us all, but because God is holy we are insufficient to stand before him on our own merits since we are sinful.

“By what kind of law?” (v. 27): Paul asked in verse 1 “what advantage has the Jew?” We see here an insight into their advantage: they understood the essential principle from the law that they could not boast in God’s sight. So, if there is no boasting in God’s sight because he is holy and we are not, then we cannot place our confidence to stand before him in the works of the law.

This points forward to Paul’s use of David’s psalms:

Romans 4:7–8 CSB

7 Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins are covered. 8 Blessed is the person the Lord will never charge with sin.

“By one of works?” (v. 27): I found this point to be illustrated well by the last Rocky Balboa movie:

Rocky is retired and in his sixties, well beyond professional fighting age. But he gets this “burning in his bones” to fight one last fight. So he has to go before the boxing commission to get approval for a fight. They put him through a battery of physical and mental tests, all of which he passes. No small feat. Yet the boxing commission denies his request. This causes Rocky to launch into a diatribe. He tells them that they have no right to deny someone something that they have worked hard for to earn their place. “What right do you have to stop me from standing toe to toe with somebody if I’ve done all I’m supposed to do to earn my place?”.

Of course, Rocky’s point is well taken, as is Paul’s: if someone does what they have to do to take their place, then they have sufficient justification to be confident in themselves. And, even more than this, to deny them their right is an egregious injustice, which will be Paul’s point in 4:4. But, since it is evident from both the nature of God and the testimony of the law, being that we have all sinned against God, then we have no grounds to boast. So “the law” cannot be the grounds upon which we stand to be justified in God’s sight.

“No, on the contrary, by a law of faith” (v. 27): Paul means to show them that there is an essential principle upon which the law itself is based. That they were able to understand from the law that there was no room for personal boasting means that their righteousness is based on something deeper than the law itself.

And it is here that I prefer the NET’s rendering of this verse:

Romans 3:27 NET

27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded! By what principle? Of works? No, but by the principle of faith!

The law of Moses called for something prior to itself to establish one’s righteousness. The case that Paul will make in chapters 4-5 is that the law itself calls for the righteousness that is based on faith. And faith necessarily excludes all personal boasting since faith places confidence in something outside of oneself.

Romans 3:28 CSB

28 For we conclude that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

“For we conclude” (v. 28): Some translations will say “we reckon”. Paul is summarizing his point, which is the language of “recapitulation speech”. This kind of rhetoric is how we know that 3:21-31 is summarizing and expanding on 1:17. We are being given the conclusions of the gospel’s central principle that “the righteous will live by faith”.

“A person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (v. 28): At this point we have one last opportunity to drive home the contrast between these two fundamentally different paradigms of righteousness.

The righteousness of works leads to our being judged based on one’s works, in which case no one is righteous:

Romans 2:13 CSB

13 For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.

Romans 3:10 CSB

10 as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one.

Romans 3:20 CSB

20 For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.

By contrast, faith leads to being justified based on the work of the one to whom you entrust your confidence.

1 Corinthians 1:30 CSB

30 It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption

This essential claim will now be established by divine nature.

Romans 3:29–30 CSB

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 one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

“Or is God the God of Jews only?” (v. 29): Paul at once goes on to challenge anyone who would dispute his conclusion: are you really going to say that God is only the God of the Jews?

“Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too” (v. 29): Is he not the one true God, the creator of the whole world? And, as our Creator, will he not also provide his faithful love to the whole human race? Yes, he will!

“Since there is one God” (v. 30): Contained within this point is still yet another worth drawing out even further: monotheism has certain essential presuppositions that form the basis of the Christian understanding of redemption, which demolish the ideas of those who would claim a permanent privileged status for Jews.

God’s oneness is his most essential attribute:

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 CSB

4 “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Jesus identified this as the most important turning point of the Jewish law (Mark 12:29-30).

“Who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith” (v. 30): Because God is perfect in all of his ways, showing no favoritism to anyone (Romans 2:11), and because God is not the creator of only the Jews, but of the whole world, then he will display his righteousness to everyone through Christ without distinction:

Romans 3:22 CSB

22 The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction.

Just as it is written that God presented Jesus as an atoning sacrifice for our sins to be received through faith so that God would be both righteous and the one who makes us righteous.

Therefore, if Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, then the time has come for all the nations to be invited into relationship with God through Jesus’ faithful love.

This raises one final question that will plant the seeds that we will draw on later in chapter 7.

Romans 3:31 CSB

31 Do we then nullify the law through faith? Absolutely not! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

“Do we then nullify the law through faith? Absolutely not!” (v. 31): To return to our opening illustration, this means that Paul can triumphantly conclude his argument: are we now singing a different hymn altogether? Are we abolishing the law? No, of course not! We are setting it to a far better tune, a tune that in fact God himself has written for it. God’s beautiful hymn of redemption was never meant to be played to the tune of “righteousness by works” in the way that the Pharisees and other religious philosophers had done. It was always designed to be sung to the tune called "faith".

“On the contrary, we uphold the law” (v. 31): Unfortunately, Paul is often imagined to hold a negative view of the law, but his letter to Rome very much refutes that error. The law is good and was always God’s perfect law. Jesus has not abolished the law. Instead, the law is fulfilled in a way nobody ever imagined before: through faith. This is the tune that makes the best sense of the words.

Declared Righteous By Faith

This gives us the essential structure of the superior righteousness that comes by faith. By faith we entrust our confidence to God, who is unshakably good and righteous in all that he does. We entrust him with our most precious gift: our life.

This shifts the focus of the Christian faith away from “us”, and places its emphasis on God. And this is good, because we are deeply broken beings. Broken because we rebelled against God and decided to have life on our own terms. Instead of trusting God, and letting him lead us in the full benefits of life, we sought our own way. And, although not everyone rebelled against God in the same way that Adam did, nonetheless, all of us still rebel against the truths that are carved on our hearts by God’s finger!

What we discover in Jesus is the world-changing news that God has come to us in a way that we can understand in the meek and lowly person of Jesus Christ. He has shown us a way to be reconciled to our Father that does not depend on our own strength, but, instead, depends upon his strength! And once that news settles in, it changes everything for us forever!

This is the news that overcomes the world:

1 John 5:4–5 CSB

4 because everyone who has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith. 5 Who is the one who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

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