“To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” (Romans 3:26)
This verse is the last verse in a group of six. It begins in verse 21. “But now the righteousness of God without the law is demonstrated, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;” (Romans 3:21). Right living, the way God wanted man to live was declared and spelled out in the law by God Who is righteous. God’s righteousness is now manifested without the law. Righteous means to be perfect in every way. David wrote, “The LORD is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works.” (Psalms 145:17) And Moses declared, “He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.” (Deuteronomy 32:4) God’s ways, works and nature are perfect, righteous and just. Man is not. The law didn’t make man righteous, but he could behave righteously by following the law. But he couldn’t follow the law exactly, he failed at the law. This is the reason that God made provision for a covering with the rituals and sacrifices until forgiveness would come with redemption.
Now that Jesus, the Messiah has come and paid the price for the penalty for sin, man can be righteous without the law. The law in its decrees and rituals testified of the Jesus the Redeemer Who would take away sin. And the prophets also prophesied about Him. The second verse of this string of verses says, “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:” (Romans 3:22) Because of Jesus we don’t need the law to be righteous. We are made righteous by faith in Jesus. We can live righteously without the law telling us how to be righteous because we have a new heart that is in tune with God. “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them. (Ezekiel 36:26 27) In other words and as clearly as I can communicate this, we still obey the law, but we don’t need it written to us and commanding us because it’s in our new nature to do righteously. “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” (1Peter 2:24) We are dead to sin. It no longer controls us. We are free to live righteously.
If you are not jumping up and down and dancing, you are dead! My human spirit is just doing cartwheels! This is just so wonderful news. Sometimes it’s hard to understand exactly what Scripture is saying because the writers lived in a different time and spoke strangely. Add to it that it was originally written in another language also adds to the difficulty. In translating to Spanish and Polish, I find that the manner of speaking makes a difference in the meaning. But the Holy Spirit can decipher all the linguistics and make it plain to us.
Now the next Scripture after Paul’s six verse sentence gives us the reality that we often forget. We are always “trying” to be good. We cannot. We live in this carnal flesh and in this sinful world. But the Holy Spirit by His right and legal possession helps our spirit man influence our soul (mind, will and emotions) to do right. When we can’t and yield to Him, He does the work. How many times do we just say, “Lord I can’t. But You can through me.” And somehow, we gain strength to do right. “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.” (Romans 3:27) By faith we yield to the Holy Spirit, to God and He does the work in us. And we do what is righteous but have no room to pat ourselves on the back. It was a work of God.
So therefore, the law made man act righteously but didn’t make him righteous. Only through faith in the redemptive work of Jesus who took our sin away, changed our sin nature to God’s nature and gave us a heart that follows after God do we not only act righteously but are righteous.
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