Romans 1-4
What is your standard? What rules or guidelines do you think people should follow? What’s the bare minimum for acceptable conduct?
It does not matter what the standard is. The standard could be God-given, like the Ten Commandments or the rest of the Torah, or it could be societal norms, or it could be one’s own conscience, or it could be whatever set of rules we wish to use to condemn others and make ourselves look good. The standard may not even present a particularly high bar. It can be exceedingly low. Regardless, we all have such a standard for ourselves. And we all violate our own standard in one way or another. Even those who say there should be no such rules and quote Jesus with “judge not that you be not judged” (Mt. 7:1), then turn around and condemn all those that they think are improperly judging others, thereby themselves judging others. We all fall short. We all need to be justified. We all need a Savior.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:21-26
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