Commentary on Romans 3:19-28

Many preachers, especially those in Lutheran and Reformed traditions, will feel at home with the familiar themes in these verses from Romans 3. In fact, this familiarity in itself is a preaching challenge: How can we bring to life its taken-for-granted claims among listeners who’ve heard it all before? 

Yet a quick comparison of various contemporary English versions of these verses reveals a striking array of translation choices—something more like an argument than a consensus. 

Maybe this is the week to take our listeners “behind the curtain,” so to speak, and explore with them how different translation choices can yield quite diverse—and enlightening!—theological insights.

One of these debated translation sites occurs in verse 22. There,  a genitive phrase connecting “faith”/”faithfulness” with Jesus can be translated either “through faith in Jesus” or “through the faithfulness of Jesus.” The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and New International Version (NIV)—two of the translations most likely to be read from the pulpit on Reformation Sunday—follow longstanding tradition: God’s righteousness “comes through faith in Jesus.” 

This way of understanding the phrase was mostly uncontested until Barth upset the apple cart with his choice of “faithfulness of Jesus,” not “faith in Jesus,” in the second edition of his commentary The Epistle to the Romans, published in 1920 (English translation 1931). This created a ruckus in German theological circles. Barth defended his choice. He sought to guard against any notion that our “faith in” Jesus somehow gains us access to God’s righteous, utterly gratuitous decision for sinners’ justification. Barth maintained that even our capacity to trust in God’s promise is sheer grace and gift. 

The Common English Bible (CEB), published in 2011, essentially follows Barth’s lead. Romans 3:25 reads, “God’s righteousness comes through the faithfulness of Jesus.” The CEB reflects a growing consensus that this is the better reading.

Of course, we don’t take to the pulpit to show off our scholarship and dangle interesting translational tidbits in front of the congregation. This difference in translation releases fresh theological insights, as Barth maintained. And this is what we want to explore with our listeners.

The CEB suggests, first of all, that in word and action, Jesus faithfully reveals the healing and liberating will and way of God. Jesus persists in enacting God’s healing mercy and liberating justice in the face of opposition and condemnation. He touches lepers, liberates those overtaken by forces of evil, and heals on Sabbath days. Ultimately, it is precisely Jesus’ unswerving fidelity to the righteous ways of God that leads to his crucifixion. 

Alternatively, a preacher might choose to explore the strikingly diverse translations of a rare New Testament word, hilasterion, in verse 25. Occurring just twice in the New Testament—here, and in Hebrews 9:5 in an allegorical treatment of the furnishings of the Jewish temple—hilarion literally means “mercy seat.” A literal translation of verse 25 would include the phrase “God put forward Jesus [as] a mercy seat.” 

Jewish readers of Paul would have had no trouble recognizing the reference. The mercy seat was the space at the top of the ark of the covenant. Overshadowed by the wings of two golden cherubim at either side, the mercy seat was the location to which the Divine Presence descended to communicate with the people of Israel through their priests (Exodus 22:25; 30:6).

Leviticus details the role of the mercy seat in ritual action undertaken on the Day of Atonement. The mercy seat, along with other tabernacle/temple furnishings, was sprinkled with the blood of animals sacrificed on the altar that stood in the temple courtyard. This sprinkling of sacred objects and spaces was a symbolic sanctification, the “covering” or setting apart of these objects and spaces from the “uncleanness” of the people of Israel (Leviticus 16:1–20a). After this ritual sanctification, the sins of the people were symbolically laid on a live goat, which was not sacrificed but driven out into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:20b–22).

Perhaps the ritual of sprinkled blood prompted both NRSV and NIV translators to replace  “mercy seat” with “sacrifice of atonement.” It seems an odd choice; the mercy seat was not an altar of sacrifice but the sanctified space of divine visitation. Did a compulsion to establish a transactional theology of sacrificial atonement superimpose itself on this text? The evocative metaphor of Jesus as the mercy seat, the blood-sanctified place of divine visitation, is completely eclipsed.

The CEB does a better job of letting the Old Testament background of the mercy seat come through, using the phrase “a place … where mercy is found,” although these translators, too, insert “of sacrifice” in the middle—again implying that the mercy seat is a place of sacrifice.

Barth chose “propitiation,” meaning “appeasement” or “offering that makes peace.” But then Barth turns to fully embrace and explore the startling metaphor “Jesus is the mercy seat.” Barth preaches! Jesus is the mercy seat, the once-for-all, blood-spattered place in the world where all of sinful humanity is met with God’s just mercy and merciful justice.

We, too, can turn loose this striking metaphor and explore the fresh theological insights it releases. Condemned to execution for his unswerving fidelity to God’s righteous ways, it is Jesus—God made one of us—whose blood spatters the mercy seat. Jesus is that blood-sanctified place where God is present, taking on human death to defeat death, so that we may inherit life. 

Exploring diverse readings of familiar verses can be illuminating for our listeners on multiple levels. We pull back the curtain on the back-stage work of translation, bringing into view the way communities of the past have struggled to hear the promptings of the Spirit. When our preaching invites listeners to consider fresh theological insights, we encourage theological curiosity, flexibility, and generosity. This is “re-formation” at its best.