Commentary on Romans 3:19-28

Many Protestants across the globe celebrate Reformation Sunday to commemorate Martin Luther’s objections to the sale of indulgences as his foundational argument that salvation is a free gift from God. Luther also argued that salvation is by faith alone and that the Bible is the ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice. As I engage Romans 3:21–26 specifically, I want to highlight how expanding Luther’s idea of faith expands the idea that justification is received through faith in Christ alone but that the believer also participates in Jesus’s faith. Participatory faith must be a hallmark of every believer’s faith walk.

If I had to translate Romans 3:21–26, the following would be my translation:

21 But now apart from the law, the justice of God has been revealed/manifested (Antiochus Epiphanes) and is being witnessed (marturoumene) by the law and the prophets, 22 the justice of God (has been revealed/manifested) by Messiah Jesus-Faith onto all those believing ones. For there is no distinction. 23 For all transgressed and lack the glory of God, 24 having been made just freely by God’s (his) gift of grace through the buying back (apolutrosis) of the grace in Messiah Jesus 25 whom God publicly displayed as conciliation (hilasterion) through faith in his blood as a demonstration of God’s (his) justice because of God’s (his) deliberate dismissal of past transgressions 26 in the clemency of God before the demonstration of God’s (his) justice in the present time so that God Godself is just and God may make just the one (born) out of Jesus-Faith.

As I read Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, I believe that Paul thinks about Jesus as a conciliatory figure who solves disputes between humanity and God but also between humanity and humanity. Paul’s language of “buying back” (apolutrosis) and “public display” (proetheto) demonstrates that idea. For example, in Galatians 3:1, Paul states that Jesus was publicly displayed before the Galatian people’s eyes.

Paul repeats similar language here by writing that God publicly displayed Jesus as hilasterion, a word which I translate as “conciliation” instead of “sacrifice of atonement” as in most translations. The abstract idea of Jesus’s blood buying back humanity from the captivity of the sin system in a penal substitutionary method is too limiting.¹ Jesus buys us back out of a system that is both enslaving and incarcerating. Such language also describes the Roman Empire. The empire was noted for separating various people groups through forced migrations and hierarchies.

Thus, readers have to take the context of Romans seriously. Paul was writing to a group of people who were living with ethnoracial tensions among themselves. Jewish Jesus-followers were returning to the Roman church, while the Roman Jesus-followers were used to organizing the church without Jewish Jesus-followers being there. Paul was advising them to welcome each other just as Christ welcomed them. (See Romans 14.)

And here is the connection to participating in Jesus’s faith, which is so important in our contemporary context. In the context of the American imperial system, we witness ICE agents disappearing people off of the streets. In the context of the American imperial system, we witness murderers being set free when they kill unarmed 13-year-old Black boys. In the context of the American imperial system, we witness one-year-old babies being gunned down by police officers when parents are wrongfully accused of stealing diapers in Mississippi. What does it mean to return to these types of scenes in the sinful American system and attempt to liberate people from the depths, fears, and anxieties of a system that does not care whether the most oppressed lives or dies?

While contemporary Jesus-followers may not be able to “buy back” oppressed people out of these situations, we can attempt to redeem future victims out of a system that is wholly unjust. I would argue that Jesus’s public display is an example of how we participate in his faith by welcoming those who are oppressed in our midst. Our work of faith is to publicly display the justice of God. Particularly, as “Christians” who serve in governmental positions that hold up and establish the American sinful systems would argue against us, we who stand with the marginalized of society display “Jesus-Faith” in our walk of harmony and unity. Further, we can publicly display to the world the justice of God even as other “Christians” attempt to entrap and arrest us as we do this work.

I still believe we, as followers of Jesus, are justified by faith. Nonetheless, I would argue that expanding Luther’s idea means that we have to take seriously what participating in the faith of Jesus looks like in our current day and time. How can we continue to be the hands and feet of Jesus for our neighbors today?

Notes

1. A particularly helpful article is Jarvis Williams’s “Violent Atonement in Romans: The Foundation of Paul’s Soteriology,” in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 53, no. 3 (2010): 579. While I do not agree with Williams’s argument, he does a fine job of laying out the players and the argumentation from various angles. In my work, I attempt to bring James Cone and Delores Williams forward by arguing in more detail the imperial nature of Paul’s language while also noting connections between martyrdom and lynching. Further, I am taking seriously our current political climate and how it relates to Paul’s imperial climate.