It was called the “Roman Road to Salvation.” I learned it as a child, a series of verses, found skipping around the letter to the Romans, that would provide reason and motivation to accept Christ as Savior. It began here in this week’s text from the second half of Romans 3, with verse 23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
From this little statement of the universality of sin we skipped over to 6:23 and a pronouncement that death (eternal death, it was explained) is the result of sin, and the promise that eternal life is God’s gift through Jesus Christ. Then it was back to 5:8 to gain the understanding that this gift of life comes to us through Christ’s death on the Cross. Finally, forward again to Romans 10, verses 9, 10 and 13 to discover that all that was needed for salvation is to call on the Lord in faith, to confess aloud that Jesus is Lord, and to believe that God raised Him from the dead.
All in all, the “Roman Road” is not a bad summary of the Gospel, though it plays a little loose with Paul’s own purposes and train of thought in the selected texts. Its use as an evangelistic tool reflects a day when there was a wider respect for Scripture even among those who hadn’t yet committed their lives to Christ.
The fact is, however, that one might stay right here in the vicinity of Romans 3:23 and find a pretty good exposition of what is central to Christian belief and what is essential for salvation, especially in 3:25. There we have Jesus as the atoning sacrifice for our sins being received by faith. Not too much more is needed, although Easter should remind us that the Atonement is not complete without the Resurrection (which Romans 10:9 calls us to confess).
One important point to get clear on in this text in particular is that it is the same Greek word family, dikaiosune (noun), dikaioo (verb) which is translated alternately by “righteousness” and “justify.” A particular and classically Protestant theological bent is partly responsible for this bifurcation in English translation, not wanting to parallel the noun “righteousness” with a verbal form in English like “to make right.” It comes from the theological conviction that “justification” must only be an imputation, a declaration of righteousness, but not an actual infusion or gift of righteousness, i.e., a “making right” or transformation of character.
The same traditional Protestant theology drives a debate about the word hilasterion in verse 25 (“God presented Christ as a hilasterion, through the shedding of blood.”) The translation of hilasterion as “propitiation” is favored as signaling an aversion of God’s wrath from persons who remain in character sinners, while the alternative, “expiation”, is denigrated as falsely implying that the atonement involves an actual removal of sin from sinners (rather than just a declaration of righteousness). The TNIV cops out nicely with the phrase “a sacrifice of atonement.” The word also points to the Old Testament image of the “mercy seat,” the kipper or “cover” of the Ark of the Covenant.
In any case, in Romans 3:21-31 we hear Paul insisting again that there is now clearly only one way to righteousness (justification) and that is in Jesus Christ through faith. The polarization between Jew and Gentile over the role of the Law evaporates in the face of the need both have for a righteousness which comes from God through faith in Christ.
The thing is that there was always only one way to righteousness through faith. Once again we need to realize that the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant in Christ was not a transition from works to faith as the basis of righteousness and relationship with God. It was always faith that put one right with God. As Paul will show in chapter 4 via the example of Abraham, that faith was demonstrated by performance of what the law asked, even when the law itself was not yet present. There’s a congruity between Jewish experience and Christian Gentile experience of justification by faith. That’s Paul’s point in declaring, “for all have sinned,” and in verse 24 “and all are justified freely.”
That’s also the point of the end of verse 25 about God’s forbearance with “sins committed beforehand.” He leaves them unpunished because He is looking ahead to the atoning work of Christ as verse 26 indicates. He forgave the prior sins looking ahead to the demonstration of His justice (righteousness) in the present. There’s not one sort of legalistic justification going on before and then a new one in Christ. Everyone, both Jew and Gentile, and Jew living by the law before Christ, is justified by the one faith which looks to Christ and His atoning work.
So Paul is able to talk about a “law” of faith in verse 27 and confidently assert in what follows that God is the God of both Jews and Gentiles because He relates to them in the same way, on the basis of faith. Moreover, in verse 31 he makes it clear that faith does not nullify the law, but that faith is the fulfillment and completion of the law. The law by which Jews lived prior to Christ centered in and was built around the same idea of justification by faith.