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- Romans Chapter 3
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Before diving into my notes, I encourage you to read Romans 3:27-31 first (or the whole chapter if you have time).
I include all the Scripture below, but there’s something about sitting with the whole chapter first — giving yourself room to be curious.
What catches you off guard?
What doesn't make sense?
Where is that?
Who's that?
Why?
Those questions will make the notes hit deeper.
"When disciples followed a rabbi, they followed him closely so they would never be out of his sight, never be someplace where they couldn’t hear him speak. They followed him so closely that his sandals often kicked up dust."
May you be covered in His dust.
To the saints,
Easter felt different this year.
Heavier.
Did you feel it?
The longer we sit in Romans, the more I understand what actually happened on that cross. The weight of it.
A death.
For me.
He took on my wrath. Mine specifically. The thing I deserved, the judgment I had coming, He absorbed it in His own body so that He could look at me and say “righteous” without lying.
I did nothing to make that happen.
He came after me.
He paid for me.
He chose me,
before I even knew I needed choosing.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
That’s what happens when a gift is so disproportionate it's hard to even look the person in the eye.
Two weeks ago I left you with a Moabite widow at the edge of a field that didn't belong to her. Picking up scraps. The grain nobody wanted.
That's us. Bent over in a field we have no claim to.
And a man who didn't have to notice her.
He didn't have to notice any of us.
But He did.
I've been sitting with that this week.
Why me?
What was it about me that deserved a second look? Nothing. There was nothing. My sin was real. The wrath I had coming was real. And He looked anyway.
He paid anyway.
I just have this gratitude I can't quite get out of my chest.
Five verses left in the chapter.
Let's go.
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.
“Then what becomes of our boasting?”
Paul doesn’t ease into this.
If any part of your right standing with God comes from you… then you have something to point to.
“I try to do the right thing.”
“I’m a good person.”
“I changed.”
That’s boasting.
And Paul says, “Not here. It’s excluded.”
It’s an important word.
It doesn’t mean “lessened” or “be careful with it.”
It means, it’s gone.
But why?
Because if any part of this comes from you… it’s not grace.
And if it’s not grace…
it’s a transaction.
Paul goes deeper in the next chapter and we’ll spend more time there next week, but just listen to how he says it.
Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.
If you work, your wages aren’t a gift.
They’re owed to you.
And the moment something is owed… you earned it.
And if you earned it… you can boast.
That’s what Paul’s tearing down.
When I sit down to write these notes, I usually listen to a few sermons. Different pastors. Different viewpoints.
I want to hear how other people are seeing the text before I start putting words on the page.
One of the pastors I listen to pretty often is John Piper.
And this week, he said something that made me slow down. I paused the sermon and sat there for a minute.
I wanted to make sure I understood exactly what he was saying… and then I had to decide if I actually agreed with it.
“You can’t make yourself godly or impressive to God. If I choose to be justified by my works, I will boast all the way to hell.”
The Apostle Paul and Piper have something in common.
They don’t pull punches to make you feel good.
They let them land.
Even if it hurts.
Maybe especially if it hurts.
What they’re saying is, if your works are part of what saves you… then your confidence is in you.
Even if it’s just a little.
And Paul won’t have it.
Not even a little.
So he shuts the door completely.
“What becomes of our boasting?”
It’s gone.
And honestly, that’s uncomfortable because we want something to point to.
Even if it’s small.
Even if it’s just… “I believed.”
But Paul doesn’t leave that door open either.
You've spent your whole life believing your effort meant something. You wanted it to mean something.
But it doesn't.
And that's ok.
And that's good.
Paul keeps asking questions.
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. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
That's a rabbi teaching.
He’s not lecturing. He's pulling us through a door one question at a time.
By what kind of law is boasting excluded?
By the law of faith.
Here's what that means. A law of works keeps a ledger. You do something, it gets recorded. The ledger grows. And the longer it grows, the louder the argument that you deserve something. That's just how ledgers work.
But faith doesn't build a ledger.
Faith is the empty hand.
You don't hold out an empty hand and then take credit for what gets placed in it. That's not how receiving works. The moment you try to contribute something, try to bring anything at all to the exchange, you've stopped receiving and started negotiating.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Not just the grace.
The faith too.
Even the empty hand was given to you.
There’s nothing.
Not one thread.
Not one moment in this whole thing where you can point to yourself and say, “I did that.”
Martin Luther saw this so clearly he was willing to lose everything over it.
When he translated Romans 3:28 into German, he added a word that wasn’t in the Greek text. Rome came after him for it. They said he was corrupting Scripture.
The word was “alone.”
We are justified by faith alone apart from works of the law.
Luther said he wasn’t adding to Paul. He was saying what Paul meant.
Because if boasting is completely excluded, then the only explanation is that faith brought nothing to the table except the need for grace.
Men were willing to die over this.
So to make it clear, they put it into five short phrases. They called them the five solas. “Sola” just means “alone” in Latin.
Sola scriptura. Scripture alone. The Bible is the final authority. Not the church. Not tradition. Not the pope.
Sola gratia. Grace alone. You didn't earn it. God gave it.
Sola fide. Faith alone. The empty hand. Nothing added.
Solus Christus. Christ alone. Not Christ plus your effort. Not Christ plus your record. Him. Only Him.
Soli Deo gloria. To God alone be the glory. Which means none of it comes back to you.
Five phrases.
Five hundred years old.
And every single one of them is just Paul saying what he's been saying since Romans 1.
The moment works enter justification, grace is no longer grace.
The moment something is owed, it's no longer a gift. It's a paycheck. And you don't thank someone for a paycheck. You cash it.
That's not the gospel.
Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
On the surface this question seems obvious.
Of course God is the God of the Gentiles. Who would argue with that?
Paul would only ask it if someone in the room was thinking the opposite. And someone was.
Eight years earlier, the emperor Claudius had expelled every Jew from Rome. The church, which had been a mix of Jewish and Gentile believers, became entirely Gentile overnight. New leadership. New culture. New assumptions about what it meant to follow God.
Then Claudius died and the Jews came back.
Paul writes this letter three years after that. The wound is still fresh. The tension is still in the room. Nobody is saying it out loud but everyone is feeling it.
Who really belongs here?
Is God the God of Jews only?
That's not a theoretical question. That's the question hanging in the air in every Roman house church in A.D. 57. And Paul answers it the only way it can be answered.
God is one.
Not a Jewish God who tolerates Gentiles.
Not a Gentile God who inherited Israel's story.
One God. And one way in.
Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
You can almost hear the objection.
Someone in that room, probably a Jewish believer, has been listening to everything Paul just said. No works. No Law. Faith alone. One way for everyone.
And they can't take it anymore.
“So what, we just throw the Law out?”
Paul saw this coming from a mile away.
“By no means!”
The punctuation is added by translators. The Greek manuscripts had no punctuation at all. "By no means" is the translators' best rendering of the Greek phrase "me genoito," which is an extremely strong negation. Some translations render it "certainly not" or "God forbid."
Faith doesn't throw the Law out.
It puts it exactly where it was always supposed to be.
If we've learned anything over the last three chapters it's that the Law was never meant to save you. It was meant to show you. Show you what God requires. Show you what you don't have. Show you that you need someone to do for you what you cannot do for yourself.
Remember, the Law is a mirror, not a ladder.
You don't climb a mirror. You look into it. And what you see is the problem.
Faith doesn't smash the mirror. Faith just introduces you to the One who can actually fix what you saw in it.
The Law demanded perfect righteousness. Not mostly good. Perfect.
Faith doesn't lower that standard.
It says that standard was fully met in Jesus.
Every requirement.
Every command.
Every demand the Law ever made on you, Jesus absorbed completely.
So the Law isn't ignored by faith. It's honored by faith. More than it ever could have been if you spent your whole life trying to keep it yourself.
Before, you pursued the Law to get right with God.
Now, as someone declared righteous, you pursue what the Law always pointed to.
The Law shows you your sin.
Faith shows you your Savior.
And together they point you to Christ.
Six months.
Three chapters.
And I feel like I've never read this book before. Not parts of it. None of it.
Man, that’s devastating. Because I've read Romans. I've taught Romans. I've quoted Romans in hard conversations and in moments I thought I understood.
And somehow I missed it.
All of it.
I feel like I've been running across a field my whole life. Back and forth. Fast. Confident. Thinking I knew exactly what was there.
And all along there were diamonds sitting just under the surface.
They weren’t hidden deep. They weren’t buried where only scholars could find them.
They
were
right
there.
Waiting.
But I never slowed down.
And I definitely never brought a shovel.
Now every time I dig, I hit something. Every single time. It doesn't matter where I put the shovel. It doesn't matter what verse I stop on.
At first you feel the weight of lost time. How did I miss this? How many years did I read past this? How many times did I settle for something thinner, something easier?
It stings. And somehow I’m grateful.
Because I didn't find this field by accident. And I didn't pick up this shovel on my own. God is revealing it.
Not when I was ready or when I deserved it.
Right now.
Maybe I've lost years.
But I'm standing in the field with a shovel in my hands.
He's been waiting in this field the whole time.
I love you,
George
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George Sisneros is a full-time missionary in Guatemala and the founder of Ordinary Missionaries and the El Rosario Christian Academy for Boys.
He’s been married to his wife, Vonda, for 27 years. He’s a father to nine children, five adopted.
In 2024, George and his wife expanded to Cuba, joining forces with nine pastors committed to transforming lives through the gospel.