Two words turn the whole letter on its hinge. For nearly three chapters Paul has built a case with no exit, Gentiles without excuse and Jews without exemption. The verdict was that no one is righteous, and the law could only diagnose the disease and never cure it. Then Paul writes, 21"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law." Something has happened since the verdict was rendered.
What could not be found in a single human being is now revealed from outside every human being. Paul is careful. Moses and the prophets already bore witness to this, a righteousness that is given, long before Paul had a word for it. Then he levels the ground again. 23"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Jew and Gentile, moral and immoral, devout and indifferent all missed the same target, and all now stand equally near the same gift, 24"justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Declared right before God, freely, with no claim on either side of the old distinction.
Then Paul reaches for a word many readers pass too quickly. God put Christ forward 25"as a propitiation by his blood." A Jewish reader would have known that word at once. The Greek Old Testament uses it for the mercy seat, the golden cover over the ark of the covenant, the one place where the high priest sprinkled blood once a year and where God had promised, "There I will meet with you" (Exodus 25:22). For centuries that meeting place stood behind a veil, hidden from every eye but one man's, once a year, at the cost of an animal's life. Paul says Christ is now that meeting place, set forth publicly, in daylight, at the cost of his own blood. The place where God and sinners meet.
He adds that 25"in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins." God had been patient with sin for centuries before the cross, forgiving Abraham, forgiving David, sparing generation after generation, and that patience could have looked like carelessness, as though God overlooked what justice demanded. The cross answers that question in retrospect. He could pass over former sins because he already knew what the cross would cost.
Now the dilemma Paul names outright. How can God be both just and the one who justifies the unjust? His answer is that justice and mercy meet fully in one act: 26"so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." What Christ bore was ours, and what we receive is his.
Paul closes by drawing out what that leaves no room for. 27"Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded." A gift received leaves nothing to boast in but the giver. And the gift belongs to no single nation, because God is one, the same God justifying Jew and Gentile by the same faith. Even so, Paul will not let his readers think the law has been thrown out. By this faith, he says, 31"we uphold the law." The law's deepest purpose, exposing sin and driving a person to look outside himself for rescue, is honored in the gospel. The diagnosis was always meant to send us somewhere, and now we know where.
Name one thing you have quietly tried to earn that God has already given. Receive it as a gift, and boast in nothing but the one who gave it.
Prayer
Father, we have no righteousness of our own to bring you, and we are glad we no longer have to pretend otherwise. Thank you for setting forth your Son as the meeting place where your justice and mercy hold together without either giving way. Forgive every quiet attempt to earn what you have given, and let us receive it by faith and boast in you alone. In Jesus' name, amen.