Romans 3

Romans 3:1–4: The Text

Romans 3:1–4: Key Questions

• What are the “oracles of God” the Jews were entrusted with? Does that just mean the Old Testament Scriptures?
  Interpretations

  The word translated “oracles” is the Greek lógia, meaning the utterances or sayings of God. At its broadest it covers the whole of the Old Testament as God’s self-revelation entrusted to Israel: the law, the prophets, and the writings. Most interpreters read it this way here, with a particular weight on the covenant promises, since Paul’s immediate concern in verses 3–4 is whether God will keep his word. So the answer is yes, it includes the Old Testament Scriptures, but Paul’s emphasis is narrower than “the Bible they had.” He is pointing to the fact that Israel was the people to whom God actually spoke, and to whom he made binding promises. That is the advantage: not merely possessing a text, but being the custodians of God’s own committed word. (Moo, Schreiner, Cranfield)

  Taken together, the oracles of God entrusted to Israel include:

  • The written Scriptures (Torah, Prophets, Writings), the core and most obvious component.
  • The promises God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the covenant words spoken before anything was written down.
  • The Law given to Moses at Sinai, which existed as spoken word before it became text.
  • The prophetic words delivered orally, many of which were never recorded.
• Are all Jews saved, given that they are the covenant people of God?
  Interpretations

  No / individual faith required (Reformed): Physical descent from Abraham does not guarantee salvation. The covenant was never a blanket guarantee for every individual born into the ethnic line. Paul will make this argument explicitly in Romans 9: “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.” (Notice the vocabulary shift: Paul’s word back in 3:1 is “Jew,” the ethnic-national label, but when he actually takes up the question of who the true covenant people are, he reaches for “Israel,” the covenant-insider term tied to election and promise. The referent is the same people; the word he chooses tracks the question he is asking.) Election runs through the covenant community but is not coextensive with it. Note what this view is and is not claiming: “Israel” still means the ethnic nation, and the saved are a believing remnant within it. Gentiles are not in view here; the question is simply which Jews are saved. (Moo, Schreiner, Calvin)

  All ethnic Israel will be saved eschatologically: Some interpreters, drawing on Romans 11:26 (“all Israel will be saved”), argue that Paul has in view a future mass restoration of ethnic Israel at the end of the age. The present hardening is temporary and purposeful; the covenant promises to the nation have not been revoked. This view holds that 3:3 is raising the question that 11:25–32 ultimately answers. (Dispensationalism, some Reformed)

  Israel is redefined as the new covenant community: “Israel” in Paul refers ultimately to the true Israel, those who have been joined to Christ by faith. Physical descent is relevant to the historical unfolding of the promise but does not determine membership in the community of salvation. The covenant promises are fulfilled in Christ and in all who are in him, Jew and Gentile alike. This goes further than the first view: it does not merely narrow the saved to a remnant within the ethnic nation, it redefines the word “Israel” itself so that believing Gentiles are now included in it. The first view keeps Israel and the church distinct; this one deliberately joins them. (Wright, some Reformed covenantalists)

  It is worth being precise about what is actually disputed here. Essentially everyone agrees on the two substantive points: descent does not save, and Gentiles are brought into the people of God. The disagreement in this third view is purely terminological: do you call that believing body of Jews and Gentiles “Israel”?

  • Yes, redefine the term: N.T. Wright most prominently, along with much of the older covenant-theology and amillennial tradition that reads the church as “true Israel.”
  • No, keep “Israel” ethnic: a large and, in recent decades, growing body, including Schreiner and a cautious Moo, who argue Paul never flatly equates “Israel” with the church, and that “Israel” throughout Romans 9–11, including “all Israel will be saved” in 11:26, keeps its ethnic referent.
  My Interpretation

  No. Being born into the covenant line does not guarantee salvation. Paul will develop this more fully in Romans 9, but the point is already implicit here: not every individual within Abraham’s line was saved.

• If individual Jews can be lost, does that mean God broke his promise to Israel?
  Interpretations

  No / the promise was never to every individual (Reformed): God’s covenant faithfulness is not measured by whether every physical descendant is saved. The promise was to Abraham and his seed, ultimately fulfilled in Christ, and through him to all who have faith. It operates at the level of God’s covenant purpose, carried through the remnant and through Christ the true Israelite, not at the level of guaranteeing every member of the nation. Individual unbelieving Jews have not nullified God’s word; they have simply shown that the promise was never for them individually apart from faith. (Moo, Murray, Schreiner)

  The covenant carried conditional terms: A distinct angle: the Mosaic covenant attached blessings and curses to obedience. On this reading Israel’s unbelief triggered the covenant curses rather than nullifying God’s fidelity. God was faithful to exactly what he said, warnings included. The apparent failure is itself an expression of the covenant’s own terms, not a breach of them.

  These curses are not vague. They are written into the covenant itself. Deuteronomy 28 sets blessings for obedience (28:1–14) against a long catalog of curses for disobedience (28:15–68): disease, drought, crop failure, defeat in battle, siege, and the climactic curse of being uprooted from the land and scattered among the nations (28:36–37, 64–68). Leviticus 26 runs parallel, with discipline escalating “seven times over” until exile, while the land enjoys its sabbaths (26:14–39). They were ratified at the covenant renewal of Deuteronomy 27–30, pronounced aloud from Mount Ebal (27:11–26) and set before Israel as “life and death, blessing and curse” (30:15–20).

  Scripture itself reads the exile this way. Daniel confesses, “the curse has been poured out on us, and the oath which is written in the Law of Moses… for we have sinned against Him” (Daniel 9:11). The Assyrian exile of the north (722 BC) and the Babylonian exile of Judah (586 BC) are the curses of Deuteronomy 28 being executed, not God breaking faith but God keeping his word down to the warnings. One qualification: this conditional framing belongs to the Mosaic administration given at Sinai. The Abrahamic promise underneath it is still held to be unconditional and fulfilled in Christ.

  My Interpretation

  No. God fulfilled his end of the covenant. Israel had real and lasting advantages: they were entrusted with the oracles of God, given the covenant, the promises, and the revelation. The failure was on the human side, not God’s. God’s faithfulness to his promises is not contingent on human faithfulness in return.

• What does Paul mean by “let God be true though every man a liar,” and what does it establish about the nature of God’s faithfulness?
  Interpretations

  Paul is asserting that God’s truthfulness is non-contingent. It is not a response to human faithfulness, nor can it be compromised by human failure. “Let God be true” is not a wish but an affirmation: whatever else may collapse, God’s word is bedrock, and every human being is a liar by default. The quotation from Psalm 51:4 seals the point. It places Paul’s argument in the setting of David’s confession, where David acknowledged that his sin was ultimately against God and that God was just in judging it. Human failure does not embarrass God; it confirms that his judgment is righteous. (Calvin, Moo, Schreiner)

  My Interpretation

  It establishes that God’s word stands on its own regardless of human failure. Every person may prove unfaithful, but that does not put God’s character or his promises in question. His faithfulness is not a response to ours. It is grounded entirely in who he is.

• Paul ends verse 4 by quoting Psalm 51:4, but the wording does not match the Hebrew. In the Psalm, God is the one who judges; in Paul, God is the one being judged. What happened to the verse?
  Interpretations

  The shift is real, and it sits in the Greek. David’s original confession in Psalm 51:4 says God is “justified when You speak” and “blameless when You judge.” The Hebrew verb in the second clause is zākāh, to be clear or pure, with God seated as the judge pronouncing the verdict. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek (the Septuagint, which Paul is quoting here), the second clause was rendered with nikāō, to prevail or win, and the verb for judging, krínesthai, in a form that can be read as middle (“when You judge”) or passive (“when You are judged”). Paul follows that Greek wording and leans on the passive sense: not God handing down a verdict, but God taking the stand and winning the case brought against him. The picture moves from a courtroom where God is the judge to a courtroom where God is the defendant who prevails. So Paul did not so much rewrite the Psalm as adopt the Greek translation whose wording fit his argument exactly, that even when humanity puts God on trial, God comes out vindicated. (Meyer, Bengel, Cranfield, Moo)

  My Interpretation

  My read is that the verse has been reworded to describe what happens when God is judged by people. The difference between the two versions is the whole point. In the original Psalm, God is the one doing the judging, “blameless when You judge.” Here it is turned around so that God is the one being put on trial, “when You are judged,” and the result is that he prevails. Notice that in both versions God stays the subject. The action is centered on him, not on the people judging. That is what guards the point: God is not acted upon or altered by a human verdict the way a normal defendant is. Human beings can presume to put him in the dock, but their judgment lands on nothing. It does not touch his character, his truthfulness, or his promises.

  So when sinful people sit in judgment over God, arguing that their unfaithfulness somehow makes him unfaithful, the verdict rebounds: God is proved true and they are proved the liars. That fits exactly what Paul has been saying since verse 3. Human unbelief cannot put God in any dock that threatens him. He is unaffected by the judgment of men, and the very attempt to judge him only ends up vindicating him.

Romans 3:5–8: The Text

Romans 3:5–8: Key Questions

• If human unrighteousness serves to magnify God’s righteousness, does that make God unjust to judge it?
  Interpretations

  Paul treats this as a reductio ad absurdum. If God cannot justly judge sin because it somehow served his purposes, then no judgment is possible at all and God becomes morally indifferent. The objection destroys itself. It mistakes God’s providential use of evil for divine approval of it: God can ordain that human sin serves his purposes without that sin being anything other than genuine rebellion deserving genuine punishment. The two truths operate at different levels and do not conflict. Verse 8 suggests this was not merely hypothetical but a charge actually being made against Paul, one he deflects here and answers fully in Romans 6 (“shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?”). (Moo, Schreiner, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  No, and Paul shuts the argument down immediately: “May it never be!” God’s judgment of sin is just on its own terms. The fact that his sovereignty brings good out of evil does not retroactively make the evil acceptable or God’s judgment of it unfair. If it did, Paul asks, how could God judge the world at all?

  Worth noting: “May it never be” is a translation of the Greek “mē génoito,” which was the strongest form of negation available in first-century Greek. When Paul uses it, he is not just disagreeing. He is expressing something like absolute horror at the suggestion.

• Verse 7 sharpens it personally: “if through my lie the truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I still being judged as a sinner?” If my sin ends up glorifying God, how can he hold it against me?
  Interpretations

  This is the same objection as verse 5, now put in the first person and pressed to its limit: if even my lie ends up serving God’s glory, judgment seems unfair. Paul’s answer is the same “may it never be,” and the reason most interpreters give is that the objection confuses two different agents and two different intentions. The good that comes is God’s doing, not the liar’s. The sinner intended the lie for himself; God, working over and above that intent, brought good out of it. Guilt attaches to the intent of the creature, not to the use God sovereignly makes of it. The liar does not get credit for an outcome he neither aimed at nor produced. (Moo, Schreiner, Cranfield)

  My Interpretation

  The difference is who the act was for. The lie was told for yourself, to further your own agenda. If God then uses it for good, that is God’s work, not yours, and it does not make the lie good or make you innocent. You are judged for what you intended and did, not for what God managed to draw out of it. Taking credit for the good, or treating it as cover, is exactly the move Paul rejects.

• Some took this logic further: “Let us do evil so that good may come.” What is Paul’s answer, and what does this objection reveal about how people misuse the doctrine of God’s sovereignty?
  Interpretations

  This is the perennial objection to robust doctrines of grace: if God sovereignly works good through evil, why not sin freely? Paul condemns it outright, because sovereignty does not dissolve moral categories. The objection collapses the distinction between divine providence and human responsibility. God’s ordaining of all things is not an endorsement of all things. Joseph’s brothers intended evil; God intended good; both are true at once without the one canceling the other. Paul’s phrase “as we are slanderously reported” shows this was a real accusation against his preaching, that his gospel of free grace was functionally antinomian. His short answer here is condemnation; the extended answer comes in Romans 6–8. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  Paul calls it a slander and says their condemnation is just. Yes, God is sovereign enough to bring good out of evil acts. But that is not a license to sin. It is a twisting of God’s sovereign plan into permission for wickedness. The fact that God can redeem something does not mean the thing itself was anything other than sin, or that the person who committed it is free from judgment.

  And the word “slander” is not a throwaway label. Paul said in chapter 1 that slanderers are among those whose deeds are worthy of death, and that those who practice such things know they are worthy of death. So by calling this objection a slander, he is connecting it back to the very catalog of sin he just finished building, and pointing out that the people raising the objection know exactly what they are doing.

  What strikes me is that this is still the objection raised against Christians today. Skeptics will argue that the believer has no real reason to do good, since his sins are already washed clean and forgiven, so why not sin freely? That is the same charge Paul was facing here, that a gospel of free grace removes any motive for righteousness. Paul takes it up directly in Romans 6:1, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? May it never be!” His answer is not that grace makes obedience optional, but that the believer has died to sin and can no longer live in it. The forgiven life is not a license to sin; it is a changed life that no longer wants to. The objection has not changed in two thousand years, and neither has the answer.

Romans 3:9: The Text

Romans 3:9: Key Questions

• After spending two chapters listing Israel’s genuine advantages, Paul now asks “are we better?” and answers “not at all.” How do both things hold together?
  Interpretations

  The two answers operate on different questions. Israel had real advantages of privilege: the oracles of God, the covenants, the promises (3:1–2). But privilege is not the same as standing before God in judgment. On the question of guilt, Jew and Gentile are on identical footing, because both are “under sin,” a phrase that pictures sin as a power holding all humanity captive, not merely a tally of individual wrongs. This is the verdict Paul has been building toward since 1:18, and verse 9 states it flatly before the chain of Old Testament quotations in verses 10–18 drives it home. Greater advantage actually means greater accountability, not exemption. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  This puts Jew and Gentile on the same level at the foot of the cross. Neither is better than the other in any respect that matters for salvation. The Jews really did have advantages, and Paul does not take those back. But advantage is not innocence. When it comes to standing guilty before God, everyone is in the same position: under sin, with no claim to make. That levelling is the whole point Paul has been working toward.

• Romans 3:9 says all are “under sin.” Back in Genesis 4, God tells Cain that sin is crouching at the door and that he “must rule over it.” How do those two statements relate?
  Interpretations

  In Genesis 4:7 God warns Cain, “sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” The picture is of sin as a predator at the threshold, and the command assumes Cain ought to, and is able to, subdue it. Romans 3:9 announces the verdict on the whole race once the fall has run its course: not man ruling over sin but man “under sin,” the Greek hyph’ hamartían picturing sin as a power that holds humanity captive beneath it. The mandate to rule over sin still stands as the standard, but the united testimony of Scripture is that no son of Adam has met it. The position of the two parties has been reversed: the creature commanded to master sin is now mastered by it. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  There is a sharp contrast here. In Genesis God tells Cain he has to rule over sin; the responsibility is laid on him to master it. By Romans 3 the language has flipped completely: now everyone is under sin, ruled by it rather than ruling over it. That flip is the whole point. The command to master sin was given, and mankind universally failed it. No one is without exception. What man was told to stand over, man now lies beneath.

• If all are under sin without exception, is there anyone the rule does not cover?
  Interpretations

  The universality of “all under sin” is Paul’s settled verdict on the race descended from Adam, and the New Testament is united in marking out one exception: Jesus Christ. He is the one who “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), who was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), in whom “there is no sin” (1 John 3:5), and who “committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). His exemption is not a quibble at the edge of the argument but its hinge: precisely because he alone is not under sin, he can stand in the place of those who are. The verdict of universal guilt is exactly what makes a sinless substitute necessary, and only one qualifies. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  There is one exception, and I do not think there is any room for interpretation on it: Jesus Christ. Every human being descended from Adam is under sin, but Christ is not. He is the only one who ever lived who was not held captive by it. And that is exactly why he can save the rest. If he were under sin like everyone else, he would have nothing to offer. The whole point of the universal verdict is that it has a single exception, and that exception is the Savior.

Romans 3:10–18: The Text

Romans 3:10–18: Key Questions

• Where does this catalog of condemnation come from? Paul strings one quotation onto another, but from where?
  Interpretations

  This is a catena, a chain of Old Testament citations woven into a single indictment. The technique was used in Jewish exposition to let Scripture pass its own verdict, and Paul assembles texts from the Psalms and Isaiah so that the law and the prophets, not Paul, pronounce the race guilty. The sources, in order:

  • Romans 3:10–12: Psalm 14:1–3 (paralleled in Psalm 53:1–3); the opening “none righteous” also echoes Ecclesiastes 7:20.
  • Romans 3:13a: Psalm 5:9 (“throat an open grave… tongues deceive”).
  • Romans 3:13b: Psalm 140:3 (“poison of asps is under their lips”).
  • Romans 3:14: Psalm 10:7 (“mouth full of cursing and bitterness”).
  • Romans 3:15–17: Isaiah 59:7–8 (“feet swift to shed blood… the path of peace they have not known”; cf. Proverbs 1:16).
  • Romans 3:18: Psalm 36:1 (“no fear of God before their eyes”).

  Notice the anatomy of the indictment: it runs through throat, tongue, lips, mouth, feet, and eyes, sin described organ by organ until the whole person stands condemned. (Moo, Schreiner, Cranfield)

  My Interpretation

  This is one of my favorite kinds of reference to the Old Testament, where Paul reaches back and pulls from the Psalms and Isaiah and stitches them together into one continuous indictment. He does not argue in his own words here. He lets Scripture do the condemning, and the verdict comes from David and from Isaiah, not from Paul. That is what makes it land so hard: the charge that all are under sin is not a New Testament novelty, it was already written into Israel’s own songs and prophets. Each line is worth tracing back to its source.

• How far back does being “under sin” go? Is a person under sin only once they start sinning, or before that?
  Interpretations

  The catena describes not merely sinful acts but a sinful condition, and the wider testimony of the Psalms traces that condition to its root in birth itself. Psalm 58:3 says of the wicked, “The wicked are estranged from the womb; these who speak lies go astray from birth.” Psalm 51:5 says the same of David himself: “in sin my mother conceived me.” This is the biblical ground of total depravity: the problem is not a set of bad choices laid over a good nature, but a corruption of the nature itself, present from the start. “Under sin” is therefore a status a person is born into, not one they earn by their first transgression. (Calvin, Murray, Schreiner)

  My Interpretation

  It goes all the way back. A person is not under sin only after they commit their first sin; they are under it from the womb. Psalm 58:3 puts it plainly, the wicked go astray from birth, and David says the same of himself in Psalm 51. That is total depravity: the corruption is there from the very beginning, not something acquired later. Being under sin is the condition we are born into, not a verdict we work our way into.

• Verses 11–12 say plainly that “there is none who does good.” But unbelievers obviously do kind, generous, courageous things all the time. Can an unregenerate unbeliever do good?
  Interpretations

  No, not in the sense that counts before God (Reformed): The Reformed answer turns on two senses of the word “good.” There is civil or external good, an act that outwardly matches what God commands, and there is good coram Deo, good in the sight of God, which must spring from faith and aim at his glory. The unregenerate can and constantly do perform the first kind: they love their children, keep their word, give to the poor, show real courage. They are not as evil as they could be. But no act of the unregenerate is “good” in the second, full sense, because it does not proceed from faith and is not done for the glory of God. The deciding factor is not the outward deed but the heart and end behind it. Romans 14:23, “whatever is not from faith is sin,” and Hebrews 11:6, “without faith it is impossible to please Him,” close off any work pleasing to God that does not flow from faith. The 1689 Confession states it directly (16.7): works done by unregenerate men, even when they are things God commands, “because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith… nor are done in a right manner according to the Word, nor to a right end, the glory of God,” are therefore sinful and cannot please God. Augustine compressed the whole point into a phrase: the virtues of the pagans are but “splendid vices.” (Augustine, Calvin, 1689 LBCF 16.7, Schreiner)

  Why they can do civil good at all: Two doctrines account for the genuine, if limited, good unbelievers do. First, the image of God is defaced by the fall but not erased; man remains a moral creature with a conscience. Second, common grace, God’s non-saving goodness toward all people, restrains sin and prompts external acts of virtue across the human race. These explain why the world is not as bad as it could be, without conceding that fallen man can produce a work that is good all the way down to its motive.

  The contrast position: Roman Catholic, Arminian, and especially Pelagian and semi-Pelagian traditions allow more room here, holding that fallen man retains the ability to perform genuinely good, even meritorious, acts apart from regenerating grace. The Reformed position denies this: not because the deeds look bad, but because no work done apart from faith and for any end short of God’s glory can be called good in God’s sight.

  My Interpretation

  No, they cannot, and I think this is the Reformed view. They can perform acts that, taken in isolation, are good in themselves, but the motivation behind the action is what ultimately determines whether the event is good or bad. It comes down to whether the motive is for the self or for God: self-glorification or God-glorification.

  A perfect example is when Jesus points out that the Pharisees gave, but gave only to be seen and rewarded by men. The act of giving is perfectly fine in itself; doing it for the wrong reason is what makes it bad. Unbelievers also have what is called common grace, which lets them do good things, and I think being made in the image of God is what allows that common grace to flow, or at least is a conduit for it. I’m not certain of the exact mechanism, but that is why they can perform good actions and are not always the most evil possible version of themselves, never doing a single good act.

  But I don’t think that really matters if it is always for the wrong reasons. Augustine said the virtues of unbelievers are splendid vices. Can someone do good for the right reasons while still unregenerate? My answer is no, because the right reason requires the person to have faith and a heart that loves God supremely. Romans 14:23 says, “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin,” and Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God. So the outward act can be good, but the unregenerate person can never supply the one thing that would make it good before God.

  There is a deeper way to press this. If someone really could do good apart from God, that would mean good can be done apart from the Holy Spirit, apart from God altogether. But God is the source of all good, “no one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18), and “every good thing given… is from above” (James 1:17). So good truly apart from God is not hard, it is impossible by definition, because it would require a second source of good independent of him. Which means the unbeliever’s good was never actually apart from God in the first place. It is God’s good, on loan, flowing through a creature God is sustaining at that very moment, “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). So the good is from God as its source and through God as he upholds the creature, but the unbeliever never directs it to God as its end. That last failure, not a failure of supply, is what makes it fall short. Jesus says both halves at once in John 15:5: “apart from Me you can do nothing.” The unbeliever is a branch drawing on grace he refuses to credit, bearing fruit he then claims as his own.

Romans 3:19–20: The Text

Romans 3:19–20: Key Questions

• What does it mean that “every mouth may be shut”? Who is being silenced, and what argument is being closed off?
  Interpretations

  The image is forensic. In an ancient courtroom a defendant with no answer to the charges would fall silent, and “every mouth shut” is exactly that picture of a defendant with no viable defense. The law closes off every argument of self-justification: no claim of ethnic privilege, moral achievement, or religious observance can stand. The proximate target is the Jewish person relying on covenant status (Paul silenced the Gentile back in chapter 1), but the word is “every,” and the verdict is universal. This is the climax of the argument that began in 1:18, clearing the ground for the righteousness of God revealed in 3:21–26. (Moo, Murray, Schreiner)

  My Interpretation

  Everyone is silenced. Jew and Gentile alike. The law has been speaking throughout Paul’s argument, and the verdict it produces is universal accountability. No one can stand before God and make a case for themselves. The law does not leave room for self-defense. Every mouth is shut because every mouth is guilty.

• If the law cannot justify anyone, what is it actually for? What does it mean that “through the law comes the knowledge of sin”?
  Interpretations

  The law as diagnostic (traditional / Reformed): The law’s purpose in this passage is to expose and identify sin, not to remove it. It is a mirror that shows the problem but cannot fix it. Justification has always been by faith, even in the Old Testament; what the law does uniquely is make sin recognizable, accountable, and inexcusable. By demonstrating the impossibility of self-justification it also functions as a tutor (Galatians 3:24, “paidagogos”) that drives the sinner to Christ. The law does not save, but it points toward the one who does. (Moo, Murray, Calvin, Schreiner)

  New Perspective / the law as boundary marker: A genuinely different reading. The “works of the law” Paul has in view are the Jewish identity markers (circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath) that separated Jew from Gentile. The law cannot justify because it was never meant to define who the covenant people are in the new age. In Christ the boundary markers are removed and the people of God is defined by faith. (Wright, Dunn)

  My Interpretation

  The law is a diagnosis, not a cure. Its purpose is to show you what sin is, to name it, to make you accountable to it. It was never designed to make anyone righteous. No amount of works done in obedience to it will justify a person before God. What it does instead is make sin visible and leave you without excuse.

  An analogy Ray Comfort often uses captures this well. Picture a doctor showing a patient his x-rays and telling him he has a terminal disease. The x-rays are real, they are accurate, and they reveal a problem the patient could not see on his own, but they do not heal anything. No one is cured by looking at an x-ray. The law works the same way. It shows you the disease of sin in unmistakable detail and tells you it is fatal, but it cannot treat it. The cure is a separate gift entirely, and that cure is Christ. This is why it is a mistake to try to be saved by keeping the law: that is like hoping the x-ray itself will make you well. The law sends you to the physician; it is not the medicine.

• Verse 19 says the law speaks “to those who are in the Law.” On the face of it that sounds like only the Jews, who had the written law. But the verse concludes that “all the world” becomes accountable. Is “those who are in the Law” actually everyone?
  Interpretations

  There are two layers here. Narrowly, “those who are in the Law” (those within the sphere of the law) are the Jews who possessed the written Torah, and Paul’s logic runs from the greater to the lesser: if even the people who had the law are silenced by it, no one else can claim a defense. But the conclusion Paul draws is universal, “all the world,” and the bridge back is Romans 2:14–15, where the Gentiles, though without the written law, “show the work of the Law written in their hearts.” So no one stands outside the law’s reach: the Jew has it on tablets and scrolls, the Gentile has its substance inscribed on the conscience. Either way the mouth is stopped. (Moo, Murray, Schreiner)

  My Interpretation

  Yes, I read it as all-inclusive. “Those who are in the Law” ends up meaning everyone, all of mankind, because the law reaches everyone one way or another. The Jews had it written down, and the Gentiles have it written on their hearts, as Paul already said in chapter 2. So there is no one the law does not address. That is why the verse can move from “those in the Law” to “all the world” in the same breath: they are the same group. Everyone is accountable because the law, in one form or another, is on everyone.

• Verse 20 says “through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.” But back in Genesis, eating from the tree gave the knowledge of good and evil. What is the difference between the knowledge of good and evil and the knowledge of sin?
  Interpretations

  The two are related but not identical. In Genesis 3 the “knowledge of good and evil” is an experiential, participatory knowing: by eating, man crossed over and came to know evil from the inside, by committing it, grasping at a moral autonomy that belongs to God alone (“the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil,” Genesis 3:22). It is knowledge gained by becoming a sinner. The “knowledge of sin” in Romans 3:20 is different in kind: it is the law holding up a standard so that particular acts are recognized, named, and measured as transgression against God. Genesis left the race with a guilty conscience and the experience of evil; the law supplies the articulate verdict, the definition that turns vague guilt into specific, accountable sin. One is the fall into evil; the other is the diagnosis of it. (Moo, Schreiner, Calvin)

  My Interpretation

  I think the difference is between experiencing evil and having it defined for you. In Genesis, the knowledge of good and evil came by doing it; man entered into evil and knew it from the inside, the way you know something by having committed it. That left everyone with a conscience that registers wrong. The knowledge of sin through the law is something more specific: it is God putting the standard in writing and naming what counts as sin. The first is the felt sense that something is wrong; the second is the authoritative source telling you exactly what is wrong and that you are guilty of it. You can have the first without the second, which is the situation of everyone who only has the law written on the heart.

• If the “knowledge of sin” comes through the law, what about Romans 1, where those without the law are said to suppress the truth in unrighteousness and to know God’s righteous decree? Do people who have never had the written law still know that what they are doing is wrong?
  Interpretations

  There is no contradiction once two kinds of knowing are distinguished. Romans 1:18–32 insists the godless “suppress the truth,” that what can be known of God is “evident within them,” and that they “know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death” (1:32). That is the testimony of conscience and creation: a real, accusing knowledge that leaves them “without excuse” (1:20). Romans 3:20 speaks of a fuller knowledge, the law’s explicit articulation of sin as defined transgression against a revealed standard. So the pagan genuinely knows he is doing wrong (conscience), but does not have sin named, codified, and set before him as God’s stated word (the law). The first is enough to condemn; the second deepens accountability and strips away even the excuse of ignorance. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  Yes, they do know what they are doing is wrong. Romans 1 is clear that the people suppressing the truth know God’s righteous requirement and know they deserve judgment. So the conscience is real, and it accuses them. What they lack is the source. They do not have God formally telling them “this is sin and this is not,” because nothing has been written down for them; it is only in their hearts. So in one sense they do not really know what sin is, not in the defined, named sense, but they absolutely know that what they are doing is wrong. They feel the wrongness without having the authority that spells it out. That is the gap the law fills: it takes the inner sense of wrong and turns it into stated, accountable sin. It is kind of like a confirmation. The conscience already testifies that something is wrong, and the law comes alongside and confirms it in writing, putting God’s own name to the verdict the heart was already pronouncing.

Romans 3:21–22: The Text

Romans 3:21–22: Key Questions

• Verse 21 opens with “But now.” After three chapters of building the case that all are under sin, why does the whole tone shift here?
  Interpretations

  The two small words “But now,” Greek nyní dé, are one of the great hinges of Scripture. Everything from 1:18 through 3:20 has been the prosecution: wrath revealed, the catalog of sin, every mouth stopped, no flesh justified by works of the law. “But now” turns the page from indictment to gospel. The “now” is also redemptive-historical: now, in this new age opened by the coming of Christ, the saving righteousness of God has been openly manifested, no longer merely promised but displayed. The verdict had to be total before the remedy could be free. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray, Cranfield)

  My Interpretation

  This is the shift. Everything up to here has hammered total depravity: we cannot be saved by our works, or for any reason whatsoever. We don’t even have the ability, or the desire, to do what is good without God. And then comes “but now,” and the door opens. The whole point of laying the guilt on so heavily is to make clear that the righteousness coming next is not something we produced. It had to be given from outside, because there was nothing in us to build it on.

• What does “apart from the Law” mean, and how can a righteousness apart from the law still be “witnessed by the Law and the Prophets”?
  Interpretations

  “Apart from the Law” (chōrís nómou) means the righteousness God gives is obtained by a means entirely separate from law-keeping. It is not earned by works of the law, which 3:20 just said can justify no one. Yet Paul immediately guards against the charge of novelty: this righteousness is “witnessed by the Law and the Prophets.” The Old Testament itself pointed to it. Abraham was credited with righteousness by faith (Genesis 15:6), before the law was given and before he was circumcised, and Habakkuk declared that “the righteous will live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). So the law is excluded as a way of justification but affirmed as a witness to the justification God always intended. Paul develops the Abraham case at length in chapter 4. (Moo, Schreiner, Calvin)

  My Interpretation

  I read “apart from the Law” as signifying that, since no one can follow the law, justification has to come by some other route entirely. So how are we justified apart from the law? The very next phrase answers it: through faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the mechanism, not the law. And it is “witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,” which is exactly what we see in Abraham being justified through faith back in Genesis 15:6. The Old Testament was already pointing at this; Paul is not inventing a new way, he is naming the way that was there all along.

• Who is the righteousness of God for? Verse 22 says it is “for all those who believe,” and that “there is no distinction.” Does “for all” mean everyone is saved?
  Interpretations

  The “all” here is carefully qualified: it is “all those who believe.” The scope is universal but the application is particular. Universal, because there is “no distinction”: no ethnic, moral, or social category is shut out, Jew and Gentile stand on the same ground. Particular, because the righteousness is received only through faith. This rules out universalism. The verse does not say all are justified; it says the righteousness is available to all kinds of people without distinction, and received by those who believe. “No distinction” settles the Jew/Gentile question that has run through the whole letter. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  Who is justified? The believers. This is a verse that denies universalism. It is like John 3:16 in that the offer is wide open, but you have to have faith in Christ to have the righteousness of God put upon you. It is not automatic and it is not for everyone regardless of response. And “for there is no distinction” means it does not matter who you are: background, ethnicity, history, none of it changes the terms. The door is the same for everyone, and the door is faith.

  So who is the righteousness of God actually for? Only the ones who believe. Not atheists, not Muslims, only those who believe in Christ. That is a core tenet of Christianity, and a lot of groups that identify as Christianity get it wrong. The two halves have to be held together: there is no distinction in who may come, but there is an absolute distinction in how, and the how is faith in Christ. Take that away and it is no longer the gospel Paul is preaching.

• When verse 22 says “there is no distinction,” no distinction among whom? Among believers, or among people in general?
  Interpretations

  The phrase sits on a hinge. Grammatically, the “for” that opens verse 23 (Greek gár) ties “no distinction” to what follows it: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Since that is a statement about humanity as a whole, most commentators read “no distinction” as no distinction among mankind, and specifically the Jew/Gentile distinction Paul has been pressing since chapter 1. All alike are sinners, so all alike must be justified the same way. But the phrase also reaches back to the first half of verse 22, “for all those who believe,” so it operates on both sides at once: because there is no distinction in the plight (all have sinned), there is no distinction in the remedy (righteousness by faith for everyone who believes). The connective tips the primary weight toward mankind in general, but the two ideas are inseparable. (Moo, Schreiner, Cranfield, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  Honestly, I am not sure of the answer to this one, and I can see it going either way. On one hand, the sentence right before it is talking about believers, those who believe in Christ, so “no distinction” could mean there is no distinction among Christians. On the other hand, the sentence right after it says “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and that is talking about everybody, which would make “no distinction” a statement about men in general. The phrase is wedged between the two, and each neighbor pulls it a different way.

  If I had to lean, the “for all have sinned” that immediately follows seems to be the reason Paul gives for saying there is no distinction, and that tips it toward mankind in general. But I hold that loosely, because the sentence before it really is about believers, and I do not think the text forces the choice as hard as it first looks.

Romans 3:23–24: The Text

Romans 3:23–24: Key Questions

• “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” What does this add to the argument, and what does it mean that we are “justified as a gift by His grace”?
  Interpretations

  Verse 23 restates the universal verdict one more time, “all,” with no distinction, and the verb “fall short” is present tense: a continuing failure to reflect the glory of God we were made to bear. That is the floor on which verse 24 builds, and verse 24 is stacked entirely with the vocabulary of unearned gift. “Justified” is forensic, God declaring the sinner righteous. “As a gift” translates dōreán, freely, gratis, the same word used for something done without cause or payment. “By His grace” names the source as God’s unmerited favor. “Through the redemption” (apolýtrōsis) is the language of a ransom-price, the buying-back and release of a slave. Every clause excludes human contribution: the declaration is God’s, the ground is grace, the price was paid by Christ. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray, Calvin)

  My Interpretation

  This again emphasizes that it is without distinction. Everyone falls short. No one is perfect and keeps the whole law, or else they would not need a Savior in the first place. And then it says we are “justified as a gift by His grace.” It is a gift, not anything earned. It is by his grace, not by any works of ours. It is simply his grace that allows us to be saved, nothing we do. And I would press that even further: not even faith itself can be derived from an unregenerate unbeliever. The faith that receives the gift is itself part of the gift. There is no point in the chain where we contribute the deciding piece.

  Deuteronomy 30 makes the same point from the other direction. It says Yahweh himself circumcises the heart so that you would love him (Deuteronomy 30:6). The loving of God is something God produces in you, not something you work up on your own and bring to him. So it was nothing you did that caused you to love Yahweh in the first place; he did the circumcising. That is exactly why even faith and love for God cannot originate in the unregenerate: the very capacity to love him has to be given before it can be exercised.

• What does it mean to “fall short”? Fall short of what, exactly?
  Interpretations

  The phrase is “fall short of the glory of God” (Greek dóxa, glory), and the verb is present tense: a continuing, ongoing shortfall, not a single missed mark. Interpreters read the “glory of God” in a few ways that often overlap. Some take it as the glory that comes from God, the approving verdict and glorified state believers will receive at the last day, which sinners as sinners forfeit. Others hear an echo of Romans 1:23, where fallen man “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God,” so that to fall short is to fail to render God the honor due him. A third and very old reading, rooted in Jewish tradition about Adam, is that humanity was created to bear and reflect God’s glory as his image, and forfeited that glory in the fall; to fall short is to fail to be the image-bearer we were made to be. These are not mutually exclusive: we were made to reflect God’s glory, we do not, and so we also miss the glorified destiny bound up with it. (Moo, Schreiner, Cranfield, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  My interpretation is that we are falling short of perfection, essentially, or of the image of God. We were made to be image-bearers of God, and that is exactly what we fail to measure up to. The standard we fall short of is what humanity was created to be and to reflect. We were made in God’s image to bear his glory, and sin means we no longer match it; we are not what we were designed to be. At least that is my read.

Romans 3:25–26: The Text

Romans 3:25–26: Key Questions

• What does “propitiation” mean?
  Interpretations

  The word is the Greek hilastērion, and its meaning has been fought over. C.H. Dodd argued it should be read as “expiation,” the wiping away or covering of sin, with sin as the object. Leon Morris and the Reformed tradition argued for “propitiation,” the turning away of God’s wrath by a satisfying sacrifice, with God’s wrath as what is addressed. The decisive point is the context: Paul has spent 1:18–3:20 establishing the reality of God’s wrath against sin, so a remedy that only cleansed sin without answering that wrath would not fit the problem he built. Propitiation includes expiation but is larger: the blood both covers sin and satisfies the just anger of God. The same word names the hilastērion of the Greek Old Testament, the mercy seat, the lid of the ark where the high priest sprinkled blood on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16). Christ is now both the place and the means where wrath is satisfied. And verses 25–26 draw the conclusion: the cross “demonstrates His righteousness.” God had “passed over” former sins in his forbearance, and the cross proves he did not simply ignore them. It lets God be “just and the justifier,” upholding his own justice while declaring sinners righteous. (Leon Morris, Moo, Schreiner, Murray, Calvin)

  My Interpretation

  My understanding of propitiation is that it is a kind of stand-in, like a paid debt for our sins, that allows the just damnation of sinners to be wiped clean. The penalty was real and deserved, and someone had to absorb it. Christ steps into that place and takes the wrath that was aimed at us, so that the debt is actually settled rather than merely overlooked. That is what keeps God just while he forgives: the sin was not waved away, it was paid for.

• Verse 26 says the cross was so that God would be “just and the justifier.” Would God be just in forgiving everyone without Jesus’ sacrifice?
  Interpretations

  No, and that is the very problem verses 25–26 are written to solve. In his forbearance God had “passed over the sins previously committed,” and left unresolved that looks like a miscarriage of justice: a righteous judge cannot simply overlook sin without ceasing to be righteous. The cross is what makes forgiveness just, because there the penalty was actually paid rather than waived. So apart from the atonement, forgiveness would make God unjust, treating sin as though it did not deserve the death it deserves. God cannot pardon by fiat and remain righteous; the demand of his justice has to be met, and it is met in Christ. This is penal substitution: justice satisfied, not bypassed.

  The step to definite atonement: This same logic is a central Reformed argument for particular (limited) redemption. If the cross is a real satisfaction of justice, an actual payment for actual sins and not merely a possibility, then whatever it accomplished, it truly accomplished. John Owen pressed it as the “double payment” argument: if Christ genuinely bore the punishment for a person’s sins, God would be unjust to exact that punishment again from the sinner in hell. Since not everyone is saved, the atonement cannot have paid for everyone in that effectual sense; it must have been intended to actually secure the salvation of those for whom it was made, the elect, rather than to make all men merely savable. Note how verse 26 lands: God is the justifier “of the one who has faith in Jesus,” not of all indiscriminately. Other traditions read the extent differently, general or unlimited atonement (Arminian, and some Reformed) holding that Christ died for all but the benefit is applied only on faith, and Amyraldianism proposing a hypothetical universal atonement; the Reformed Baptist position of the 1689 Confession (8.5, 8.8) holds particular redemption. (Owen, 1689 LBCF 8.5, 8.8, Moo, Schreiner)

  My Interpretation

  No. God would not be just in forgiving everyone of their sins without Jesus’ sacrifice and his atonement. Justice has to be satisfied, and it is only satisfied because Christ paid for it.

  And this is where limited atonement comes in. The atonement actually accomplishes what it was for; it is not a general possibility floated out to everyone and then left up to them, it is an actual payment for actual sins. If Christ truly paid for a person’s sins, God cannot justly punish those same sins again, or the payment would be exacted twice. That means the atonement had to be intended for the ones who are actually saved, those who have faith in Jesus, which is exactly who verse 26 says God justifies. The sacrifice does not merely make salvation available; it secures it for those it was made for.

• Why did God do any of this at all? Why does he spare his wrath through Christ instead of simply pouring it out on sinners?
  Interpretations

  Paul answers the question in the text itself, and he says it twice for emphasis: the propitiation was set forth “to demonstrate His righteousness” (v25) and again “for the demonstration… of His righteousness at the present time” (v26). The issue is what “righteousness” means here. In context the best reading is God’s justice, his moral rightness, which the earlier “passing over” of former sins had seemed to call into question: if God let past sins go unpunished, does he condone evil? The cross answers that he does not. God is shown to be perfectly just precisely because sin was punished, in Christ, rather than ignored. The doubled goal of verse 26, that God be “just and the justifier,” is the heart of it: the cross lets God uphold his own justice and declare sinners righteous at once, without either canceling the other. And behind the vindication of his justice stands the deeper end of all God’s acts, the display of his own glory. (Moo, Schreiner, Cranfield, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  The answer is right there in verse 25: for the demonstration of his righteousness. That is why God did any of this. He spares his wrath through Christ, rather than simply pouring it out on us, so that his own righteousness is put on display, so that he can be both just and the justifier at the same time. The reason is ultimately about God demonstrating who he is, not first about us. We are the ones who benefit, but the driving purpose in the text is the showing forth of God’s righteousness.

Romans 3:27–28: The Text

Romans 3:27–28: Key Questions

• Verse 27 asks how boasting is excluded and answers “by a law of faith.” What does it mean by a “law of faith”? Are we now placed under some new law?
  Interpretations

  The puzzle is the word “law” (Greek nómos). Two main readings:

  Law as principle or order (traditional / majority): Nómos here is used loosely to mean a principle, rule, or governing order, not the Mosaic Torah. Paul is contrasting two principles: the principle of works, which would leave room to boast, and the principle of faith, which does not. Boasting is excluded because justification operates on the faith principle. On this reading “law of faith” is essentially “the faith arrangement,” a way of speaking rather than a new code. (Moo, Cranfield, Schreiner)

  Law as the Mosaic law rightly read (New Perspective): A different reading keeps nómos as the actual Torah throughout. The “law of faith” is then the Mosaic law itself understood correctly, as an instrument that always called for faith rather than for self-achieved works. So the law, properly read, was never a ground for boasting. (Wright, Dunn)

  Either way the function is the same, and it is Paul’s actual point: because justification is by faith and not by works of the law, human boasting is cut off at the root. Verse 28 states the ground plainly, “a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” This also sets up verse 31, where Paul insists that faith does not abolish the law but establishes it. (Moo, Schreiner, Murray)

  My Interpretation

  My interpretation is that it is not some new kind of law that we are under. We are not under the old covenant, and we are not necessarily under the parts of it that have not been changed due to Christ’s sacrifice. But it is also not saying that we are under this new “law of faith” and do not need to listen to anything in the Old Testament. It is just an expression that we are not tied down to the law of the Old Testament, which was not just for the Israelites.

  It is kind of just saying that because our salvation is not by works, we cannot boast. So it is a “law of faith” only in a loose sense, more a way of speaking than a literal new law, and the real point of it is that faith leaves us with nothing to boast in.

Romans 3:31: The Text

Romans 3:31: Key Questions

• Before asking whether faith abolishes the law, it is worth asking the prior question: what does Romans 3:31 even mean by “the Law”?
  Interpretations

  “The Law” (Greek ho nómos) most often means the Mosaic law, the Torah given through Moses, whose legal and covenantal content fills the first five books. That is the most likely referent here. Some widen it slightly to the Old Testament Scriptures as a whole, since just ten verses earlier Paul spoke of the righteousness of God being “witnessed by the Law and the Prophets” (3:21), so “establishing the Law” could mean vindicating what the whole of the Old Testament was pointing toward. The harder question, which the next question takes up, is not the referent but the sense: in what way faith “establishes” that law. (Moo, Schreiner, Cranfield)

  My Interpretation

  I take “the Law” here to be the first five books, understood as the general moral law of God. I do not read it as one slice of the law carved off from the rest, but as God’s law as a whole. That fits with how I read the law elsewhere: the meaningful divisions are the ones Scripture itself draws, not a grid of categories we lay over it. So “the Law” is simply God’s law as he gave it through Moses.

• If we are justified by faith apart from the law, does that make the law void? And what does it mean that faith “establishes” the law rather than abolishing it?
  Interpretations

  Faith upholds the law (traditional / Reformed): Faith establishes the law in several mutually reinforcing senses. It accomplishes what the law demanded but could not produce, since Christ perfectly fulfilled the law’s requirements and faith receives that righteousness. It confirms the law’s own witness to justification by faith, for Abraham was justified before circumcision (Genesis 15:6, Habakkuk 2:4), which Paul develops in chapter 4. And it honors the moral law as an ongoing rule of life: justification removes the law as a ground of condemnation, but the believer still keeps its demands out of gratitude rather than to earn standing (Calvin’s third use). On every sense, justification by faith completes the law’s logic rather than departing from it. (Moo, Calvin, Murray, Schreiner)

  New Perspective / including Gentiles fulfills the law’s purpose: A genuinely different reading. The law’s purpose was always to define the covenant people in a way that would eventually include all nations (Genesis 12:3). Faith in Christ, which removes the ethnic boundary markers, actually accomplishes what the law always intended. Abolishing Torah as an identity marker is not abolishing the law but fulfilling its covenantal purpose. (Wright)

  My Interpretation

  This is a helpful reminder that the Old Testament matters, and specifically that the law matters. The tendency among many Christians to dismiss something by saying “that’s the Old Testament” or “that’s the law” is reading into the text rather than out of it.

  There are explicit fulfillments of the law that Scripture itself identifies. Paul addresses food and circumcision in Romans 14. Hebrews addresses the sacrificial system and its fulfillment in Christ. But in both cases, the fulfillment is clearly named. The text does the work. You are not left to decide on your own which portions of the law still apply.

  Nowhere does Scripture say the law has been abolished, or that a particular category of the law, whether civil, ceremonial, or moral, has simply been set aside without explanation. That three-part division is a theological framework, not a biblical one. The distinctions that matter are the ones Scripture makes explicitly, not the ones we impose on it.

• Now that we are justified by faith, does that mean we do not need to follow the law anymore?
  Interpretations

  No, though the sense matters (Reformed): Justification by faith removes the law as a way of earning standing and as a ground of condemnation, but it does not cancel it as a rule of life. The believer is freed from the law’s curse and from the Mosaic covenant as a covenant, yet the moral demands of God’s law remain binding, what the Reformed call the third use of the law, its use as a guide for the redeemed. Where Scripture names a fulfillment in Christ, the ceremonial and sacrificial shadows, those are kept by being fulfilled, not by being repeated. What abides is followed; what is fulfilled is honored as fulfilled. So faith is never a license to set the law aside. (Calvin, Moo, Murray, Schreiner)

  The Christological argument: There is also a direct argument from the identity of Christ. The one in whom we place faith is himself the Lawgiver: the pre-incarnate Word through whom all things were made (John 1:1–3, 14; Colossians 1:16–17), the “I am” before Abraham (John 8:58). The God who spoke the law at Sinai and the Christ we follow are the same person. So following Christ and honoring the law he authored cannot be set against each other. Jesus said it himself: “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17–19). That is the same word, abolish, that Paul uses in Romans 3:31, and both give the same answer.

  My Interpretation

  No. It is not possible to believe in Jesus, who is also the God of the Old Testament, and not follow the law, since Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh and is the God of the Old Testament. Not following the law would contradict following Jesus himself. The one who gave the law and the one we now trust are the same person, so to trust him and then discard his law is a contradiction.

  This comes straight out of John 1:1, that the Word was with God and was God, and that the Word became flesh. Christ is not a departure from the God of the Old Testament; he is that God, come in person. There are other passages that support the same point, but John 1 is the clearest. Being justified by faith frees us from earning our standing by the law; it does not free us from the God whose law it is.