Romans 3:19-22
19Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. 21But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it– 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:
The Law of God is so demanding that the whole world stands guilty.
The gospel proclaims that Jesus Christ came to earth and fulfilled the Law.
What is the point of verse 20?
Salvation (being right with God) will not come to us by our obedience to God’s Law. By active obedience to the Law no human flesh is justified before God.
But what about Jesus? Was He a Man like us yet without sin? Did He not live a human life under perfect obedience to the Law of God? Yes He was and yes He did.
The great point of this passage, and the propitiation by His blood, is that Jesus Christ was the only Man ever who was justified in the sight of God by obedience to the deeds of the Law.
The Lord Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled the Law of God, both in its requirement for righteousness of life and in paying its penalty of death.
So what the gospel teaches us is this:
Christ fulfilled the law of God and removed its curse once for all for all of those who have faith in Him.
So when God calls us righteous (justification is mentioned in verse 24) God is not pretending. He is taking real righteousness – Christ’s righteousness –and applying it to us.
We are not right in ourselves. So the only way in which we can be declared to be in a right standing before God is on the basis of the death of Jesus Christ for our sins, and by the application of Christ’s righteousness to us by God’s grace.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it like this:
Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.
Charles Spurgeon put it like this:
The great doctrine, the greatest of all, is this, that God, seeing men to be lost by reason of their sin, hath taken that sin of theirs and laid it upon his only begotten Son, making him to be sin for us, even him who knew no sin; and that in consequence of this transference of sin he that believeth in Christ Jesus is made just and righteous, yea, is made to be the righteousness of God in Christ. Christ was made sin that sinners might be made righteousness. That is the doctrine of the substitution of our Lord Jesus Christ on the behalf of guilty men.