Letter to the Romans 3

¹ Well then, is a Jew any better off? Is there any advantage in being circumcised?

² A great advantage in every way. First, the Jews are the people to whom God’s message was entrusted.

³ What if some of them were unfaithful? Will their lack of fidelity cancel God’s fidelity?

⁴ That would be absurd. God will always be true even though everyone proves to be false[*a]; so scripture says: In all you say your justice shows, and when you are judged you win your case.[*b]

⁵ But if our lack of holiness makes God demonstrate his integrity, how can we say God is unjust when – to use a human analogy – he gets angry with us in return?

⁶ That would be absurd, it would mean God could never judge the world.

⁷ You might as well say that since my untruthfulness makes God demonstrate his truthfulness and thus gives him glory, I should not be judged to be a sinner at all.

⁸ That would be the same as saying: Do evil as a means to good. Some slanderers have accused us of teaching this, but they are justly condemned.

⁹ Well: are we any better off? Not at all: as we said before, Jews and Greeks are all under sin’s dominion.

¹⁰ As scripture says: There is not a good man left, no, not one:

¹¹ there is not one who understands, not one who looks for God.

¹² All have turned aside, tainted all alike; there is not one good man left, not a single one.

¹³ Their throats are yawning graves; their tongues are full of deceit. Vipers’ venom is on their lips,

¹⁴ bitter curses fill their mouths.

¹⁵ Their feet are swift when blood is to be shed,

¹⁶ wherever they go there is havoc and ruin.

¹⁷ They know nothing of the way of peace,

¹⁸ there is no fear of God before their eyes.[*c]

¹⁹ Now all this that the Law says is said, as we know, for the benefit of those who are subject to the Law, but it is meant to silence everyone and to lay the whole world open to God’s judgement;

²⁰ and this is because no one can be justified in the sight of[*d] God by keeping the Law: all that law does is to tell us what is sinful.

²¹ God’s justice that was made known through the Law and the Prophets has now been revealed outside the Law,

²² since it is the same justice of God that comes through faith to everyone, Jew and pagan alike, who believes in Jesus Christ.

²³ Both Jew and pagan sinned and forfeited God’s glory,

²⁴ and both are justified through the free gift of his grace by being redeemed in Christ Jesus

²⁵ who was appointed by God to sacrifice his life so as to win reconciliation through faith. In this way God makes his justice known; first, for the past, when sins went unpunished because he held his hand,

²⁶ then, for the present age, by showing positively that he is just, and that he justifies everyone who believes in Jesus.

²⁷ So what becomes of our boasts? There is no room for them. What sort of law excludes them? The sort of law that tells us what to do? On the contrary, it is the law of faith,

²⁸ since, as we see it, a man is justified by faith and not by doing something the Law tells him to do.

²⁹ Is God the God of Jews alone and not of the pagans too? Of the pagans too, most certainly,

³⁰ since there is only one God, and he is the one who will justify the circumcised because of their faith and justify the uncircumcised through their faith.

³¹ Do we mean that faith makes the Law pointless? Not at all: we are giving the Law its true value.