Romans 3:1-31
3 Then what is the Jew’s special privilege, or what is the good of circumcision?
2 Much every way. For, in the first place, that they had God’s revelation entrusted to them—
3 for what if some were faithless? is their faithlessness to abrogate God’s faith?
4 away with the thought, but let God prove true, and every man a liar! as it is written, “so that thou mayest be found to have been in the right in thy words, and mayest win when thou comest into court.”
5 But if our wrongness brings out God’s righteousness, what, shall we say? is God doing a wrong when he comes down with anger?—I speak from a human point of view.
6 Away with the thought, for how is God to judge the world?
7 But if by my lie God’s truth came out the more abundant to his glory, why am even I any longer judged as a sinner,
8 * and not as the gibe against us goes, and as some do assert that we say, “Let us do the bad things so that we may have the good consequences,”—on whom judgment is well-deserved.
9 * What follows then? are we outranked? no, decidedly. For we previously indicted both Jews and Greeks as being all under sin,
10 as it is written “There is not one single right-doer,
11 none that understands, none that seeks God;
12 all have gone wrong, together they are good for nothing; there is none that is acting humanely, not even one”;
13 * “their throat is an open grave, they have used their tongues insidiously,” “there is cobras’ venom under their lips,”
14 “whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness,”
15 “their feet are swift to shed blood,
16 havoc and wretchedness are along their roads,
17 and they have not known the road to peace,”
18 “there is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 * And we know that in anything that the law says it is speaking to those who are within the law’s jurisdiction, in order that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become liable to judgment by God,
20 because out of deeds under the law no mortal will be justified before him. For through the law comes recognition of sin.
21 But now apart from the law a righteousness of God’s has been disclosed, attested by the law and the prophets,
22 * but a righteousness of God’s through faith in Jesus Christ to reach all who believe; for there is no distinction,
23 for all have sinned and come short of God’s glory,
24 getting their justification gratuitously by his grace through the redemption by Christ Jesus,
25 * whom God put forward to be propitiatory through faith by his blood for a display of his righteousness, because of the way in which under God’s forbearance previous sins had been let pass;
26 with a view to the displaying of his righteousness at the present time, so that he should be righteous and be justifying the one who lives by faith in Jesus.
27 So what becomes of boasting? it is shut off. By what law? of deeds? no, but by the law of faith,
28 for we count that a man is justified by faith apart from deeds under the law.
29 * Or is God the God of the Jews only? is he not of the nations too? Yes, of the nations too,
30 if it be true that God is one, who will justify circumcised men on the basis of faith and uncircumcised by means of faith.
31 Are we superseding the law by faith, then? away with the thought, we are making good the law.
Footnotes
^ 3:8 Lit. so that the good things may come
^ 3:9 Lit. What then?
^ 3:13 Lit. have been insidious with their tongues
^ 3:19 Lit. those who are in the law
^ 3:22 Var. faith in Christ
^ 3:25 Lit. put forward propitiatory (or as a propitiatory)
^ 3:29 Lit. Or is God of the Jews only
