Falling Short: Romans 3:21-24
My last post kind of left you hanging by a strand of pearls that Paul had strung together. Paul painted a very dismal picture of humanity when we are left to our own devices. The verses (pearls) that Paul strung together in Romans 3:15-18 declares all (Jews and Gentiles) guilty because we cannot keep God’s law or the moral law.
Then verses 21-22 bring us hope with a huge BUT NOW! Here are the verses: 21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;…This “but now” declares that the righteousness of God is now through faith in Jesus Christ His son. Since we cannot achieve our own righteousness through works of the law, God provided our righteousness through believing in Jesus.
Verse 23 is huge and if you have been in church for any length of time you know it well: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. What does falling short mean? It means we have missed the mark (or fall short of) of God’s glory. Think about trying to hit a bulls-eye on a target. Some of us are a pretty good shot and some of us are a horrible shot. But no matter how good we are, we will always miss the bulls-eye. Spiritually speaking, some of us are really “good” and some of us are not so “good”. But all of us miss the bulls-eye of God’s glory because our goodness is never good enough! What does glory mean? It is a correct estimation of God’s power, dignity, honor – all of His attributes. Friends, we greatly under estimate God’s glory. The actions this under estimation produces within us is sin and we are all guilty!
We are not left hopeless though. Verse 24 says: being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. That is a whole lot of “Christiany” words jammed into one verse. Justified simply means that we are declared righteous by God. Justification is something that we could never do on our own! That is exactly what Paul has been telling us since midway through chapter one. Grace is God’s kindness toward us that He gives with “liberality and joy” (from Greek lexicon). So God justified us – not begrudgingly or out of duty. He did it with joy! We so often beat people up with Romans 3:23 and never share with them how God joyfully pulls our sorry old selves up out of the pit, cleans us up, and declares us righteous!
Notice the word gift in verse 24. God gifts us with His grace. Think about what a gift is. It is something that has intentionally been picked out by someone to give to another. How is this different from just “giving” someone something? First is the intention – you can give something away anytime. For example, if someone says to you they like a jacket you are wearing, you may be the kind of person who just takes it off and gives it to them. However, you hadn’t intended on giving it to them until they said they liked it. When you “gift” something, you go to a store and pick out the gift with intention. The second difference between a gift and giving is in the presentation. When you give something away, you generally do not wrap it up and “present” it. However, we take great care in wrapping a gift and presenting it to the recipient. God “gifted” His grace in the package of His Son with the intention of declaring us righteous! And He does it with great joy!
I am overwhelmed by God’s liberal grace toward us. But that is our God – whatever He does is done in abundance and with great joy. He is not stingy with His grace and it is not His will that any of us should perish. Rather, His will is that we ALL come to repentance through Christ Jesus.
