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By Grace Alone through Faith Alone (Romans 3:21–26)

Sermon for MHBC (18 October 2020). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website.

Let me tell you a little bit about the preaching plan for the next few weeks. During the Reformation, the reformers formulated five doctrinal footholds on which the Protestant Church stands. These footholds ran counter to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the medieval period. These footholds are known as the five solas. Sola is a Latin word for “only.” The five “onlys” are: (1) Scripture alone, (2) Faith alone, (3) Grace alone, (4) Christ alone, (5) God’s glory alone. Of course, we talked about soli Deo gloria last week. These five “onlys” were in contrast to the Roman Catholic teaching. Instead of Scripture plus tradition, the reformers said Scripture alone. Instead of faith plus works for salvation, the reformers said faith alone. Instead of grace plus merit, the reformers said grace alone. Instead of Christ plus the Roman Catholic Church, the reformers said Christ alone. Instead of God’s glory and the saints glory, the reformers said to God alone be glory.

Today, I want to look at two of these: grace alone and faith alone. R. C. Sproul wrote, “The doctrine of justification by faith alone is the central affirmation of historic evangelicalism.”[1] Luther referred to this doctrine as “the article with and by which the church stands, without which it falls.”

The idea that we do not earn our salvation but are freely given it through faith in Christ is unparalleled among the major world religions. Virtually every other religion says, “Your life will be weighed by the good and the bad you did. If you did more good than bad, you will enjoy heavenly bliss. Despite the fact that many people even have that impression of Christianity, that is not what the gospel teaches. In fact, that is the opposite of the gospel.

Just listen to Rom 3:20: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” What is the law good for? Condemnation. The law is unable to justify us. Take note of that word justify. It means to declare righteous. In a minute, we are going to talk about righteousness. These are the same root words. So we can say, “By works of the law no human being will be made righteous in the sight of God.” Now that’s a big problem. How can a person be made righteous before a holy God? The answer to that question is the distinctive aspect of Christianity. Unlike every other major religion, Christianity says we receive salvation not through our efforts, but by grace and through faith. Paul lays that out in Rom 3:21-26. That’s where we want to go now.

Luther called this the central passage in all of Scripture. Remember what Paul said in v. 20: “No one is made righteous by the law.” Now look at v. 21: “But now (something new has happened; something has broken into history; there has been a decisive change in the world) the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it.” Remember “righteousness” is the same root in the original as the verb “justified” in v. 20. So when Paul talks about the righteousness of God, he is talking about God’s action in making his creation right.

And he says the moment has come when God is doing just that. And he is doing it apart from the law. The law points to it, but it isn’t it. So when you read the OT, it is pointing you to what God is going to do to put creation right.

Verse 22 further explains this righteousness of God. “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction.” How does God’s justifying or righteous-making action happen? Through faith. And faith isn’t some sort of abstract hope in the future. It is trust in a person. Faith in Jesus Christ. That’s what the end of the verse means when he says “for all who believe.” Faith and believe are the same root words here. But I also need to comment on the translation here. Most modern translations have “faith in Jesus Christ.” But the in is an interpretative choice. The original language is more ambiguous. The KJV reflects it with “faith of Jesus Christ.” That’s important because interpreters debate whether this means faith in Jesus or Jesus’s faithfulness. Now this isn’t anything terribly concerning for doctrine or for even understanding the passage, but it seems to me that what Paul is saying is that it is through Jesus’s faithfulness and our trust in that faithfulness that God justifies us.

Then notice why he says God’s saving action is through faith. “For there is no distinction.” Faith levels the playing field. And it’s necessary to have a level playing field according to v. 23. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The reason there is no distinction is because all without exception have violated the law of God. They have failed to give God his due glory. Paul is just picking back up with something he said in ch. 1: humans chose to worship creation rather than the Creator. That’s true of all of us.

That’s the bad news. As a collective, human beings have rejected the living God. Think about it this way. We have inherited an illness from Adam and Eve. In our DNA is not just the occasional tendency to sin, but the natural and default inclination to rebel against God. As Augustine famously put it, we are not able not to sin. Now whether you agree with Augustine or not, Paul is pretty clear on indicting all of us when he says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So that’s bad news, but look how quickly Paul turns to the good news.

Verse 24: “and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Remember justified means make righteous. We see it again and again in this passage. So, yes, all humans have sinned, all have fallen short, but they are made righteous. How? Through good works? No. Through clean living? No. By his grace as a gift. And this is accomplished through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. NT scholar John Barclay writes, “God’s action in Christ is no calibrated reward for the godly, or merciful protection of the faithful few, but a gift of utter incongruity, showing no correspondence with the worth of its recipients.”[2]

Isn’t this amazing? Grace is a word we use so often that we might forget to pause and linger over how astounding it really is. I love the way Frederick Buechner puts this. “There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do.”[3]

Look, I don’t know your story. I don’t know what you’ve done, what mistakes you’ve made. I don’t know what you struggle with today. I don’t know what life has thrown at you. I don’t know how you feel about yourself or how you perceive yourself. I don’t know what others say about you. But I know God looks at all that and says, “I still have a gift for you. You aren’t excluded. You aren’t left out. I can make you righteous.”

Have you ever read 1 Corinthians? Talk about problems in the church­: that church had problems. They had serious issues. They were doing things that were so far outside the bounds of Christian teaching that Paul says, “Even pagans don’t do those things.” But in spite of all of that, do you know how Paul addresses the Corinthians Christians? He calls them “sanctified in Christ” and “saints.” Both sanctified and saint mean holy. Such is the breathtaking nature of the gospel that a church full of corruption, drowning in sin, is still called holy. Why? Because their holiness is derived. They are sanctified in Christ Jesus. We are justified by his grace as a gift through the redeeming work of Christ. It’s amazing.

Now how does this work? That’s in v. 25: “whom (that is, Jesus) God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” Before we finish the verse, let me comment on the word “propitiation.” It’s an important theological word, but not super helpful. A propitiation is something that placates someone’s wrath. The idea is that Jesus stands in our place so that God looks upon us favorably. In fact, this word is used in the Greek translation of the OT to refer to the mercy seat on the top of the Ark of the Covenant. That is where priests would sprinkle the blood from sacrifices. That was the means by which God dwelled among Israel. That’s what Jesus does for each of us. So rather than seeing my mess, he sees a saint. I’m not a saint. But in Christ, my status before God is a saint despite what I’ve done, what I do, or how I feel.

What are you carrying this morning? What guilt or shame do you have? What are you hiding? What are you battling? Look what God has done for you. If you are in Christ, look what he says about you. Look what Christ has done for you. You are made righteous by grace alone through faith alone.

Why has God acted through Christ? Pick back up in v. 25: “This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” Sometimes the God of the Bible is portrayed as wrathful and malevolent, but that’s not how Scripture presents him. He’s patient. Notice Paul’s descriptor “his divine forbearance.” This is a level of patience unheard of among humans. But God is righteous, so Christ is a demonstration of his righteousness since sin had to be addressed. Yet, rather than blowing everything up. God demonstrates his righteousness by acting through Christ.

Then there’s v. 26: “It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just (that’s the same root from justified/righteous) and the justifier (again same root) of the one who has faith in Jesus.” He does this to maintain his own righteousness but also to be the one who makes righteous. It is a unilateral action. We don’t contribute to it. Being made righteous or justified is offered by grace alone through faith alone. We should say something about faith. Faith isn’t just hoping that things will work out. It is trust. It is reliance. Faith in Jesus means relying on what he has accomplished. That means we reject any notion that we make ourselves right with God, and instead, we marvel at what Christ has done. We marvel over the fact that yes we are sinners, but we are justified sinners who are now called saints not because we’ve lived holy lives, but because Christ has made us holy.

After looking at this passage, I hope you will see the remarkable kindness of God in this. He is not weighing our good and bad actions on scales. Before the foundation of the world, he set forth a plan in his infinite wisdom to make us righteous. He freely chose to do that. He executes that plan in the work of Christ.

This is captured so well in Eph 2:5-9:

even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So let us boast in the beauty of the gospel. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet, God has acted decisively to bring us back to himself, to make us righteous. He has lavished his grace and kindness on us. We are made righteous by grace alone through faith alone.


[1] What Is Reformed Theology? 61.

[2] Paul and the Gift, 474.

[3] Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, 34.