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Examined Doctrine
PASSAGE · BSB

Romans 3

20 positions in the corpus lean on this chapter. Cited verses are marked.

1What, then, is the advantage of being a Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?

2Much in every way. First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God.

3What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?

4Certainly not! Let God be true and every man a liar. As it is written: “So that You may be proved right when You speak and victorious when You judge.”

5But if our unrighteousness highlights the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unjust to inflict His wrath on us? I am speaking in human terms.

6Certainly not! In that case, how could God judge the world?

7However, if my falsehood accentuates God’s truthfulness, to the increase of His glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?

8Why not say, as some slanderously claim that we say, “Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is deserved!

9What then? Are we any better? Not at all. For we have already made the charge that Jews and Greeks alike are all under sin.

10As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one.

11There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.

12All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

13“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The venom of vipers is on their lips.”

14“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”

15“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

16ruin and misery lie in their wake,

17and the way of peace they have not known.”

18“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

19Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.

20Therefore no one will be justified in His sight by works of the law. For the law merely brings awareness of sin.

21But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, as attested by the Law and the Prophets.

22And this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no distinction,

23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

24and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

25God presented Him as the atoning sacrifice through faith in His blood, in order to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand.

26He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus.

27Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of works? No, but on that of faith.

28For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

29Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too,

30since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

31Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Certainly not! Instead, we uphold the law.

Who leans on it

Aquinas on justificationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Justification is by grace infused into the soul, ordinarily mediated through the sacraments, genuinely transforming the person.Calvin on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°The will survives the fall but its soundness does not. Calvin's careful formula is that fallen man is 'deprived not of will, but of soundness of will' (Institutes II.iii.5) — he sins willingly, by his own inclination, an…Calvin on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°A verdict, not a transformation. 'To justify, therefore, is nothing else than to acquit from the charge of guilt, as if innocence were proved' (Institutes III.xi.3), and God does this not on proof of our innocence but by…Chrysostom on the nature of saving faithDISPUTED READINGNO FIT°No listed stance fits. He never takes faith apart into components, and the two things he does say pull against each other. Justification is "not of works, but of faith," with God "looking for faith only" (Homily 7 on Rom…Chrysostom on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°To declare God's righteousness is to make the unrighteous righteous. He runs the parallel out: as declaring His riches means making others rich and declaring His life means making the dead live, so declaring His righteou…Jonathan Edwards on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Two arguments, and the second is distinctively his. First the empirical one: a tendency is known from what is constant in event, and sin is constant without a single exception across all nations and ages, which proves "a…Jonathan Edwards on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Justification is a judge's verdict, not a change wrought in the person: God "is pleased, in his dealings with the sinner, so to regard one that has no righteousness, that the consequence shall be the same as if he had." …Second London Baptist Confession on canon of the old testamentPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Chapter 1.2 lists all thirty-nine Old Testament and twenty-seven New Testament books by name, and 1.3 names the Apocrypha and excludes it. The paragraph reproduces WCF 1.3 nearly word for word, adding only the parentheti…Second London Baptist Confession on justificationPRIMARY SOURCELEANS°Chapter 11.1 denies infusion and affirms imputation in Westminster's own words, then goes further than Westminster does by naming what is imputed. Faith is the alone instrument but never alone in the person justified (11…Luther on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Justification is by faith alone, on the ground of Christ's death and resurrection, and nothing may be conceded on it. Luther states it as the article on which everything else depends and from which nothing can be surrend…John MacArthur on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Forensic imputation, stated with a direct, explicit denial of the infused-righteousness alternative: not a virtue infused into the believer, but a legal declaration built on the double imputation of the believer's sin to…Philip Melanchthon on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Forensic, and Melanchthon wrote the sentence the Lutheran churches subscribe. Augsburg IV denies that works, powers or merits justify, grounds justification in Christ's satisfaction, and closes with the imputation clause…Justin Peters on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Total depravity in the full sense: Adam's fallen state is transmitted to all, and fallen man has no inherent ability either to save himself or to seek God. Depravity is stated as the reason salvation must be monergistic,…R.C. Sproul on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Explicit Augustinian, monergist reading of the fall: the will is in bondage and cannot come to Christ apart from a prior, effectual work of the Spirit. Argues from the Greek behind John 6:44's "draw" (force of compulsion…R.C. Sproul on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°His sharpest and most emphatic position: justification as God's declaration of the sinner as just by the imputation of Christ's righteousness, not any righteousness infused into or inhering in the believer. Explicitly na…Charles Haddon Spurgeon on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°The will is in bondage and needs sovereign, effectual grace — not merely wounded or freewill-capable. Argued both exegetically (from Romans 5:6, glossed as leaving no room for any human strength contributing to salvation…Charles Haddon Spurgeon on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Imputed righteousness on a penal-substitutionary ground, not a transformative or infused category. Frames the problem as "how can a just God justify guilty men" and answers that Christ bears the sentence due to the sinne…Westminster Confession on canon of the old testamentPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°WCF 1.2 lists the books by name - thirty-nine Old Testament, twenty-seven New - and closes the list with 'All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.' 1.3 then rules on the Apocrypha dire…Westminster Confession on justificationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°WCF 11.1 is unusually explicit for a confession: it denies infusion by name, denies that the act of believing is itself what is imputed, and names imputed obedience and satisfaction as the ground. Faith is the instrument…Zwingli on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°The will is in bondage and cannot free itself — but Zwingli reaches that by a route no other Reformer took. He argues that original sin is not sin in the strict sense, because sin means guilt and guilt means a deed done …