The Implications of Justification by Faith: Romans 3:27-31

In the previous sermon on Romans 3:21–26, we saw God's breathtaking solution to humanity's great problem — not lack of education or democracy, but lack of righteousness. God provides the righteousness we cannot earn, received through faith in Jesus Christ. Now Paul turns to the consequences. What difference does justification by faith actually make? He gives us three "side effects" of the gospel — and every one of them is deliberately designed by God for our good.

1. The Gospel Humbles Sinners and Excludes Boasting (verses 27–28)

Ever since God gave the law to the Jews on Mount Sinai, the temptation was to boast about it. The law was a tremendous privilege — something they ought to have praised God for, as the Psalmist does in Psalm 147:19–20: "He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation." The law was meant to produce praise, not pride. But all too often the Jews prided themselves on having the law, seeing themselves as a cut above every other nation.

Paul demolishes that mentality. If you are not saved by keeping the law but by faith in what a Saviour has done, then boasting becomes utterly ridiculous. All the law does is show up our sin. All we do with it is break it and disobey it. Being saved by faith means trusting someone else to save you because you cannot save yourself. That is what the gospel is — crying out to Jesus Christ to do for us what we can never do for ourselves.

Boasting about being a Christian is like boasting about being rescued from drowning. Imagine someone thrashing about in the sea down at Salthill — out of their depth, losing their stroke, in danger of going under. The lifeguard goes in and saves them. Can you imagine that person afterwards saying, "Well, you know, when the lifeguard dragged me out, my unconscious body was lying in an unusually helpful position"? It is ridiculous. You were helpless. You were drowning. All you contributed was the problem.

Or imagine someone after emergency surgery to save their life saying, "If I do say so myself, my perforated ulcer was located in just the ideal place to make it unusually easy for the surgeon to repair." It is a ludicrous thing to say. You have nothing to boast about. The surgeon did it all. All the credit belongs to him. He rescued you in your helplessness, and you would be dead if it were not for him.

That is what Paul is saying here. All the praise, all the credit belongs to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The redeemed saints in heaven see this with perfect clarity. In Revelation 7:10 they cry, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." That is why our worship services are all about God — all the worship, all the prayers, all the focus is on him and not on us. Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if we announced a new item in the service each Lord's Day morning where we give ourselves a pat on the back and a round of applause, and each take a bow for becoming a Christian? The very idea shows how absurd it is to take any credit.

And yet we may do it more than we realise. One of the most common ways is when we self-righteously look down on people who are not Christians. We would never say it out loud, but have you never thought something along these lines: "God, I thank you that I am not like other men — robbers, evildoers, adulterers"? That is the voice of the Pharisee in Luke 18. If you see a drunk man tottering down the street in the middle of the afternoon, what goes through your mind? Compassion and sorrow over the sin destroying his life? Or disgust and a little voice that says, "You're not like that. What a loser"? If you see a homosexual couple walking hand in hand down Shop Street, how quickly are we ready to condemn that sin while turning a blind eye to all kinds of heterosexual sin which is equally an abomination in God's eyes?

Do we expect people to clean up their act before they come to church? Or are we ready to accept them as they really are — sick people who desperately need a doctor, just as we were once sick people who desperately needed a doctor? We forget so easily that we are justified by faith apart from observing the law. All we are and all we have, we owe to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. The gospel humbles sinners and excludes boasting.

2. The Gospel Unites Believers and Excludes Discrimination (verses 29–30)

Paul continues speaking to Jews about their tendency to boast in their privileged position. He does it brilliantly by arguing from one of their most fundamental beliefs — something every Jew recited daily and Orthodox Jews still recite today. It is called the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one."

Paul's logic is devastating. Do we all agree there is only one God? Yes, absolutely — every Jew believed that. Well then, if there is only one God, he must be the God of all peoples, not just the Jews. There is not one God for the Jews and then another for the Greeks, another for the Romans, another for the Japanese. There is only one God, and that means there is only one way of salvation for all people — justification by faith. Verse 30: "Since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith."

All human distinctions are obliterated by the gospel. Jew or Gentile, male or female, young or old, rich or poor, educated or uneducated — there is no difference in Christ. We are all united by faith in the same Saviour. As Paul wrote to the Romans at the start of this letter, they were one church — Jews and Gentiles together, loved by God, called to belong to Jesus Christ.

The Lord's Supper is a visible picture of this unity. There is one loaf that we all share because we are one body united to Christ. As one scholar puts it, all who believe in Jesus belong to the same family and should be eating at the same table. It is not one table for Jews and another out in the foyer — not quite such a nice table — for the Gentiles. In Covenant Christian Fellowship, it is not one table for the Irish-born people and another upstairs in the hall for non-Irish — not quite such good bread, maybe a bit mouldy. It is not one table for those raised in Christian homes and a different table for those converted from very pagan backgrounds. It is one table for everyone. There are no second-class Christians in God's sight. We are all sinners, all guilty, and all justified through faith in the same Saviour.

This was vital for the church Paul was writing to, where tensions between Jews and Gentiles caused real stress. Paul will address these issues in detail in chapters 14 and 15, but here he lays the theological foundation. The gospel brings everyone together.

We need to be reminded of this constantly. There are so many denominations, tribes, wings and groupings within the Christian church. It is easy to look down on those who do not see things exactly the way we do. There is no place in Covenant Christian Fellowship for looking down on other Christian churches because they do things differently — and no place for them to look down on us either. Our traditions and distinctive principles matter, but they are not what saves us from hell. Exclusive psalm-singing is not going to save anybody — only faith in Jesus Christ can do that.

Within our own church family, we are all sinners saved by grace through faith. That ought to produce humble love — the kind of love that has no place for feuding, quarrelling, or nursing grudges. The devil is constantly prowling around looking for opportunities to drive wedges between believers. There are few things he hates more than a harmonious, united church family. Because we have that, we need to be alert and prayerful that God will not let him introduce division into our fellowship.

3. The Gospel Upholds the Law and Excludes Antinomianism (verse 31)

Paul anticipates a third objection, especially from Jews: "If we are justified by faith apart from the law, then surely the law is useless. The Ten Commandments are redundant. We can throw them in the bin." For the Jew, the law was their most treasured possession — Psalm 119:72: "The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold." Jewish Christians in Rome would naturally ask: if Paul is right about justification by faith, what is the point of the law?

This is not just an ancient Jewish argument. It is a big temptation for Christians today. The devil loves to twist the gospel. If he cannot stop you hearing it, he will try to distort it. He might whisper something like this: "Isn't the gospel wonderful? You're saved by faith in Jesus alone. It has nothing to do with keeping God's commandments. Jesus kept them for you. You don't need to keep them. You can break all the commandments you like and still go to heaven. It doesn't matter if you sin because your righteousness comes from Jesus, not from you." There is just enough truth mixed in with the error to make it dangerous.

But Paul emphatically rejects that thinking: "Do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law." The gospel does not do away with the law. Just because we are not saved by keeping it does not mean it does not matter.

How does the gospel uphold the law? First, the law testifies to the gospel. It is all there in the Old Testament — promised beforehand, preparing the way for Christ. As Paul showed in Romans 3:10–18 with eight Old Testament quotations, the law reveals our sinfulness and shows us why we need the gospel.

But what Paul especially means here is what he develops later in Romans: only those justified by faith are able to keep the law's requirements. Before you become a Christian, you cannot submit to God's law — Romans 8:7 says "the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." But after you believe, God puts his Spirit in you. You become a new creation with new desires and new abilities. As Paul says in Romans 8, "those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires." You are not saved by keeping the law, but you have been saved in order to keep the law.

Now that you are a Christian, you study God's law all the more carefully so you can build your life on what it says. How does God want me to live? What kind of husband, wife, mother, father, employee, employer, citizen should I be? God's law is the owner's instruction manual for a happy and fulfilling life. And now, for the first time, empowered by the Holy Spirit, you are able to understand it and obey it. As John writes in 1 John 5:3: "This is love for God: to carry out his commands. And his commands are not burdensome."

Living Out These Implications

Let us resolve never to boast except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ who has saved us. Let us put an end to all discrimination, self-righteousness, and feuding with fellow Christians for whom Christ died. And let us uphold the law in true gospel fashion — studying every word of it, building our lives on it, and putting it into practice more and more by the power of the Spirit. These are the three great consequences of justification by faith — side effects that are entirely good for us.

Listen to the full sermon above or explore more from the Romans series.

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