But Now

Romans 3:21 But Now.

There are only two religions in the whole world: the religion of human achievement and that encompasses every human religion, they're all the same; and the religion of divine accomplishment, and that alone is Christianity (Mc Arthur)

The Predicament But Now There are two aspects to these words: First A turning point and second a testing point (Jones). Here Paul makes a dynamic turn, from revealing our hopeless unrighteous condition before God (Rom 1:18-3:20) to revealing our hope of His glorious redemption by faith in Christ (Rom 3:21-31). Since Ro 1:18 he has been showing how we don’t have righteousness (3:10ff), and therefore we are under sin and judgment and destined for final wrath and fury. The mouth of the whole world is stopped, and everyone is accountable and without excuse (3:19-20). The law of God has met with the rebellion of man; and the result is condemnation, not justification.. No one is righteous . . . (Piper) Paul has been for three chapters condemning man. He has brought men to the judgment bar of God and they have given all of their defenses, and when they're all out, every mouth is stopped, dead silence, nothing more to say. . . . So the plight of man is dark and dismal and despairing. He's bound for hell and there's no remedy in his world. (Mac Arthur) God makes people righteous, Since the problem is that we are facing God’s wrath as a result of our unrighteousness, the solutions cannot come from us, Nothing we do can change the fact that He is angry with us. We need God to step in, which is what he does (St Helen) . . . But Now is the major turn in his letter. It is the hope that we need. It is the help that has come. It is the harbor we can come to. When we had no way, God made a way to be right with him by faith in sinless life, sacrificial death,

God saying I got a way out for you. Second, it is a testing point. When you are faithfully serving God and the devil attacks you and suggests to you that you are not a Christian, and that you have never been a Christian because of what is still in your heart, or because of what you are still doing, or because of something you once did- when he comes and thus accuses you, what do you say? Do you agree with him? Or do you say to him, “Yes that was true, but now . . “ Or when you feel condemned as you read the Scripture and you feel that you are undone that you can’t measure up, do you remain lying on the ground of hopelessness, or do you lift up your head and say, “But now?” This is how faith answers the accusations that come against us to condem us, depress us, and sideline us. We should lay hold of these wonderful words and live out by faith whose we are and who we are. (Marytn Lloyd Jones).

The Provision the righteousness of God The gospel is entirely God’s. It is a righteousness prepared and provided by God. He made it available. God is the planner of it. God is he initiator of it. (Jones) This righteousness of God A glorious attribute of God He is right righteous and true in everything he does. (Sinclair Ferguson) God’s solution to the problem of sin and condemnation in Rom 1:18–3:20 is for God to send his Son Jesus to die for sin and to give us his own righteousness if we will trust in his Son. This is called justification by faith: God’s reckoning his righteousness as our righteousness if we will trust in his Son. (Piper) : What does righteousness mean? It simply means to be right with God, to be right, to have things right, to have things the way they ought to be. It is not the righteousness of man; it is the righteousness of God. It is the righteousness of God manifested because the righteousness of man doesn't make it. This "righteousness of God." differs from any other kind of righteousness. This kind of being right — the word "righteousness" means "to be right,” to be righteous, to be good as over against evil, to be holy as over against unholy, to be pure as over against to be dirty and filthy — is to be right before God, right with God. And this is a righteousness that comes from God that's different than any other kind of righteousness (MacArthur).

The Pronouncement has been manifested "Manifested" -"brought to light", i.e. revealed in the gospel Message (Dunagan) Here is a matter of revelation. It is more than it has now been discovered. It means it is something in the secret counsels of God from of old (Eph 1:4-5). But where it has always been true it is only now being “manifested”. The gospel is not an afterthought. God had planned to save people by grace. It is the making of this known that is recent. (Morris) It is God intervening with a fresh revelation focusing on Christ and his cross . . . So then, over against the unrighteousness of men, Paul sets the righteousness of God. Over against God’s wrath resting on evil doers (1:18, 2:3, 3:5) he sets God’s grace to sinners who believe. Over against judgment, he sets justification. (Stott).

The Procurement apart from the law "apart from the law" -"not by the Law, but by another way" (Con). Nobody gets right with God through the performances of the law . . . no one can get right with God by the works of the law. (Piper) The law cannot bring salvation. It can show us the problem (Rom 7); it can make clear that all are sinners. But it can do no more (Morris) if you desire this right standing with God it is apart from the Law. It is apart from anything you could do to earn it. When asked “Why will God accept you?” It is because of who he is and what he has done. But many will respond that they haven’t sinned that bad or they have been better than most people. Their attempts to stand in their own righteousness will not enable them to stand before God. Many have a perception that God accepts them for what they have done or what religious thing that are am doing, “I go to church”. This idea destroys the gospel. Salvation is ours by God’s free gift of grace (v 24) without ours works “of the law” without us earning it. (Ferguson) He says this righteousness is apart from the law. It is apart from any man-made human effort. What does it mean? It's apart from man's effort to keep a system of rules. It doesn't happen that way. We don't gain or maintain this righteousness by the things that we are able to do in our own strength. The law works wrath. (Rom 4:15) In other words, it just shows that God has a right to be angry because you can't keep it. So you want to spend your life trying to make yourself right with God from your end and all you're going to do is justify God's wrath because you can't keep the Law, you can't live up to the law. Men do not get right with God by something they do. Rightness with God is not of yourselves it is a gift of God. (Eph 2:8, 2 Tim 1:9 , Titus 3:5, Phil 3:9) (Mac Arthur)

The Portrait although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it

The gospel is not God’s new plan, but a plan that was promised beforehand (Rom 1:2). The free gift of God’s righteousness comes to us “apart from the law,” but “witnessed by the law.” In other words, God brings about this gift of righteousness without using the works of the law to do it. He did it in the life and death of Jesus. But that very law taught this would be so and called people to hope in God’s mercy. “being witnessed by the law and the Prophets,” is that the message of justification by faith was there already and pointed forward to a time when somehow God would demonstrate his righteousness in passing over former sins . . . of all Old Testament believers (25–26). (Piper) The Old Testament witnesses to Christianity and shows the intimate connection between them. The Old Testament revealed, through a number of types and shadows, the marvelous teachings of the new covenant, there are four distinctive Old Testament witnesses to the identity, character, mission and teaching of Jesus Christ the Son of God: (1) the verbal prophecies; (2) typical persons; (3) the tabernacle in its plan of construction and in various devices within it; and (4) the grand ceremonial functions of Jewish religion (Coffman)

Pictured in Law although the Law . . . bear witness to it The Law here probably refers to the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. It has the stories of the creation and fall of man into sin and the future rescue of man through the “seed of the women” (Gen 3:15). It has the story of Noah and God’s deliverance for all those in the ark, symbolizing the deliverance that we have in Christ (Heb 11:7). It is where we have the story of Abraham and God’s blessing upon him which will be a blessing to all mankind through his descendant, Jesus (Gen 12). It has the story of the Egyptian captivity, bondage and redemption of the Israelites by God’s power. It has the story of the Passover which pictures Jesus, the lamb slain . It has the ten commandments and the various instructions for the feast and festivals of Israel (Passover, the Day of Atonement, all of which speak of Jesus) as well as the instructions for the building of the Tabernacle which paints a beautiful picture of how we enter into a relationship with Jesus. The tabernacle, and later the temple patterned after it, typified the ultimate scheme of redemption as it would be revealed in Christ. Every aspect of the tabernacle pictured Christ from the measurements and materials to the colors and the furniture. All of it pointed to Christ. The religious services themselves also pointed to Christ, things like the thank offering, the sin offering, the Passover, the Day of Atonement, etc. Thus, Christ is the true atonement; he is our Passover, having been slain at the very hour the paschal lambs were being slain; and the exact correspondence between type and antitype is so extensive as to be utterly amazing. The God-inspired preparation for Christ's entry into the world was so abundantly adequate that it seems almost incredible that Israel should not have recognized the King when he came. (Coffman)

Proclaimed by the Prophets the Prophets bear witness to it Hundreds of prophecies foretold the coming of the Messiah in such detail and clarity that hardly any phase of our Lord's life and character was omitted. The time and exact place of his birth, the particular tribe of Israel through whom he would be born, the fact of his betrayal by a friend, even the very amount of the betrayal price, the details of his crucifixion, that he should be buried but not see corruption, that he would speak in parables, that he would be despised and rejected by human beings, and that not a bone of him should be broken - and on and on, literally hundreds of such facts as these were faithfully predicted in the Old Testament prophecies. (Coffman) Isaiah probably saw it more clearly than any other Old Testament writer. In Isaiah 53, he predicts the suffering life and substitutionary death and bodily resurrection of the Servant of the Lord (Jesus) and says, “As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied; by his knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, and he will bear their iniquities.” (v 11) To affirm the witness of the prophets, Paul in Rom 1:17 quotes Hab 2:4, “In [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous shall live by faith.’” (Piper) Peter in Acts 10:43 says all the prophets testify about Jesus. In Acts 3:18 He says all the prophets foretold about Christ. Jesus himself in his discussion with the two on the road to Emmaus declared that all he prophets and all the scriptures point to things concerning himself (Luke 24:27).

Personified in God’s People Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Jonah, Aaron, and Melchizedek, to name only a few, all typified in one way or another, of Jesus Christ, and all reflected in one degree or another the coming glory of Messiah. (Coffman) Two examples of how the Old Testament witnessed to justification by faith. In Rom 4:3 Paul refers to Abraham and quotes Gen 15:6, “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’” . . . in verse 6 he refers to David and says, “Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works, [and then he quotes Ps 32:1]: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered.’” So David and Abraham (or Genesis and Psalms) witness to the righteousness that comes by faith, even though they don’t yet know the fullness of how it will come about through the life and death of Christ. So we have Genesis, Psalms and Habakkuk all testifying to this great truth that the righteousness that God accepts is by faith and not by works. They don’t know yet fully how God can be just while justifying sinners by faith, but they trust. (Piper)