Or, Monotheism, Monergism, and Man's Morality
Scripture: Romans 3:27-31
Date: March 13, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
In his introduction to The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, J.I. Packer summarizes the gospel in three words: God saves sinners. It’s true from start to finish. It acknowledges man’s depravity and inability (man is a sinner who needs saving). It exalts God’s sovereignty and grace (He plans for and provides salvation). It proclaims the Son’s effective propitiation (all for whom the Son atones will be saved). And it has practical consequences for what we say. We have no defense for our sinfulness (Romans 3:19). We have no boast for our righteousness (Romans 3:27).
I’ve already asserted a few times through these first few chapters of Romans that the greater challenge for the gospel (using “challenge” only from the human perspective) is not unrighteousness, but self-righteousness. When God saves sinners, He saves the ones who realize that they’ve done everything wrong, and He saves the ones who think they haven’t messed up quite as bad.
Paul has demonstrated quite persistently that judging others for what we also do is its own kind of evidence against us. He’s held up the perfect standard of God’s law to prove that none of us meet it. And he’s said that not only have all sinned, we have all have fallen short of the glory of God. We’ve failed to live up to the original image. We’ve colored outside the lines (transgression), and haven’t filled in the lines (omission).
It’s why we need someone else’s righteousness. This is the alien righteousness we considered a couple weeks ago, a righteousness that isn’t ours that gets credited to us. God justifies sinners when He imputes righteousness to us, meaning that He regards Christ’s righteousness as ours. In God’s accounting books He has records of all our sins/offenses/wrongs, and none of us could erase them.
Have you investigated (or even invested in) cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology? Lay aside the question of whether or not it’s a useful workaround to government fiat, it provides an interesting analogy. The blockchain only works in one direction; it does not go backward. There is no undo button, no do-overs or restarts. A mistake can only be fixed by a second transaction, there is no reversal.
God justifies us not by forgetting our sin but by paying for it in His Son. He doesn’t undo the consequences, He satisfies His own wrath. This is what makes Him just and the one justifying believers (Romans 3:26). When God forgives He will never use our sin against us (think Psalm 103:12), but that’s because He won’t forget the atonement price paid by Christ. All we can do is rely on Jesus; we add nothing good to the chain. This is why we have nothing to boast about.
In this paragraph, Romans 3:27-31, we see that believing means no boasting in ourselves (salvation is monergistic), that believing is the (only) way to salvation for everyone (salvation is monotheistic), and believing leads to obedience (salvation is unto morality). This is all part of the law of faith, and it’s a law about, and against, boasting.
The word boasting is only written once in verse 27 but it is assumed five more times. Paul’s original writing is punchy, but if we wrote it all out, “boasting” would be the subject of six independent clauses, and it would be the subject of the verb excluded five times. Here’s the compact version:
Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.
Here’s what it would be extended into complete sentences: “Therefore boasting is where? Boasting is excluded. Boasting is excluded through the law of what? Boasting is excluded through the law of works? Boasting is not excluded through the law of works, but boasting is excluded through the law of faith.”
There’s three questions, and the first is expected after the previous paragraph. Where is boasting? Boasting is taking pride in something, bragging, self-congrats, patting ourselves on the back. Where does boasting belong? It’s as if we were looking for her somewhere. But boasting is not invited.
In verses 21-26 all we “got” was verse 23. Everything else was about what God did, what Jesus did. We see God’s grace, God’s justifying, God’s gift, God’s redeeming in Jesus, God’s propitiation in Jesus, God’s patience with sinners, God’s constant work of showing His righteousness in saving sinners. So man’s boasting is right out.
Then we get more contrast on how boasting is excluded, and there are two options: the law of works or the law of faith. First, it’s usually “works of the law” not “the law of works,” even as it must be in verse 28. Second, “the law of faith” seems odd after all the limitations we’ve seen about the law.
Law of faith refers to the defining standard, a presiding principle. This law is higher than the law of works. Our works won’t actually let us boast, but let’s say we wanted to try to boast in our works, which, a lot of men do. Fine. Faith, by definition, looks away from self. Faith leaves no breath for blowing our own trumpet. If we are justified by faith then God has done all the work.
Verse 28 explains it:
for we calculate (that) a man is justified by faith without works of law.
The ESV translates it as we hold, but the verb refers to counting, to calculating, as belongs in the sphere of accounting. When we add up how justification works, the works side is zero and the faith side is full.
Justification is entirely God’s work. This is monergism (from mono meaning one and ergon meaning work, so “the work of one), not synergism (the work of more than one). We don’t work together with Him to save ourselves. We add zero merit. The law of faith rules our boasting out.
Two more questions in verse 29 scratch at the universal law of faith, a law that excludes boasting from Jews and Gentiles.
Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is God not also God of the Gentiles? Yes, God is also God of the Gentiles, since God is one, who will justify the circumcised by faith and will justify the uncircumcised through (the same) faith.
Who is this aimed at? Doesn’t it seem aimed at those most likely to boast? And aren’t the ones most likely to boast the ones Paul took a couple chapters to poke at? The truth is good news for Gentiles, but the rhetoric challenges the Jews.
The since starting verse 30 is especially Jewish: God is one. This is the Jewish thing. Jews were monotheists, believing in “The LORD our God the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Paul uses this very reality to point out that salvation by faith argues for monotheism. All the ones believing, Jew first and also Greek, are saved by the power of one and the same God.
Verse 29 differentiates between the groups ethnically (Jew and Gentile), verse 30 differentiates between them religiously, circumcised and uncircumcised.
By faith and through faith may not be as distinguished as the significance of the article in the second phrase, as if to point out the very same faith.
Monotheism is the argument. There is only one God and God is one. May God’s “way be known on earth, Your saving power among all nations…let all the peoples praise you!” (Psalm 67:2-3). There are not many gods, polytheism, nor is everything god, pantheism. God promised the Jews that He would save them. God did not promise the Gentiles that He would save them, though, God did promise the Jews that He would save the Gentiles.
Obviously this paragraph, following the emphasis of the previous paragraph, has been a lot about faith, even recognizing the the law of faith. The faith-standard leaves us no room for boasting in our works. Does the faith-standard also mean that our works don’t matter at all?
Therefore, do we overthrow the law through the faith? May it never be! But we uphold the law.
The law shows us what God wants; it reveals His will. When we look at our lives in the light of the law, we always find that we have missed the mark. We need forgiveness for our disobedience, and no amount of attempted obedience can make up for it. The law points out our need for a Savior (Galatians 3:21-22), and God tells us the only way we can have the Savior is by faith.
And all those believing in the Savior are saved from the penalty of sin, and they are being saved from the power of sin. When Paul says, we uphold the law he isn’t saying that we keep using the law in our evangelism (though we do that, too). He’s saying we look to the law differently, as it serves the law of faith.
Just as there are whole chapters devoted to showing God’s seriousness about saving Israel (just as He promised, Romans 9-11), so there are entire chapters to show God’s graciousness in saving us from slavery to sin (Romans 6-7). We don’t do good works to get justified, we do good works as those who are justified. We are saved by faith alone, and also the gospel brings about “the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Romans 1:5).
If you’ve read our larger “What We Believe” statement, you may remember that the largest section is about how justifying faith is not dead faith, but alive to righteousness. See also Romans 8:3-4. Faith eliminates man’s boasting, not man’s morality.
Romans is a ministry of the gospel for believers, for those with faith. If it is true that faith comes by hearing (and it is, Romans 10:17), then as we Christians live from faith to faith, we still need to keep hearing the gospel.
There is more joy without trying to boast in something necessarily inferior. There is more joy with greater understanding by grace and of grace.
Boasting is a killer, it is usually a half truth at best, a potential idolatry at worst, and it never increases fellowship between two people.
The reason that the righteous live by faith (Romans 1:17), and that we cannot please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6), that we walk by faith not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), is that faith is the law of the world for worshipers in God.
The charge to you today is to live by faith, and as you live by faith you will do great obediences (in prayer, in projects of blessing, in sacrificial partying), and you will boast in God not in your obediences. As you believe, obey, and boast in God, His name will be great among the nations. As Isaiah said, the root of Jesse is the hope of the Gentiles (Romans 15:12), and so we hope in His rule.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13, ESV)