²¹ But now for the good news: God’s restorative justice has entered the world, independent of the law. Both the law and the prophets told us this day would come. ²² This redeeming justice comes through the faithfulness of Jesus,^[a] the Anointed One, the Liberating King, who makes salvation a reality for all who believe—without the slightest partiality. ²³ You see, all have sinned, and all their futile attempts to reach God in His glory fail. ²⁴ Yet they are now saved and set right by His free gift of grace through the redemption available only in Jesus the Anointed. ²⁵ When God set Him up to be the sacrifice—the seat of mercy where sins are atoned through faith—His blood became the demonstration of God’s own restorative justice. All of this confirms His faithfulness to the promise, for over the course of human history God patiently held back as He dealt with the sins being committed. ²⁶ This expression of God’s restorative justice displays in the present that He is just and righteous and that He makes right those who trust and commit themselves to Jesus.

²⁷ So is there any place left for boasting? No. It’s been shut out completely. And how? By what sort of law? The law of works perhaps? No! By the law of faith. ²⁸ We hold that people are justified, that is, made right with God through faith, which has nothing to do with the deeds the law prescribes.

²⁹ Is God the God of the Jews only? If He created all things, then doesn’t that make Him the God of all people? Jews and non-Jews, insiders and outsiders alike? Yes, He is also the God of all the outsiders. ³⁰ So since God is one, there is one way for Jews and outsiders, circumcised and uncircumcised, to be right with Him. That is the way of faith. ³¹ So are we trying to use faith to abolish the law? Absolutely not! In fact, we now are free to uphold the law as God intended.

4 In light of all of this, what should we say about our ancestor Abraham? ² If Abraham was made right by performing certain works, then he would surely have something to brag about. Right? Not before the Creator God, ³ because as the Scriptures say, “Abraham believed God and trusted in His promises, so God counted it to his favor as righteousness.”^{[b] 4} Now, when you work a job, do your wages come as a gift or as compensation for your work? It is most certainly not a gift—you are only paid what you have earned. ⁵ So for the person who does not work, but instead trusts in the One who makes the ungodly right, his faith is counted for him as righteousness.

⁶ Remember the psalm where David speaks about the benefits that come to the person whom God credits with righteousness apart from works? He said,

⁹ So is this blessing spoken only for the circumcised or for all uncircumcised people too? We remind you what the Scripture has to say: faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.^[d]

¹⁰ So when was the credit awarded to Abraham? Was it before or after his circumcision? Well, it certainly wasn’t after—it was before he was circumcised. ¹¹ Eventually he was given circumcision as a sign of his right standing, indicating that he was credited on the basis of the faith he possessed before he was circumcised. It happened this way so that Abraham might become the spiritual father of all those who are not circumcised but are made right through their faith. ¹² In the same way, God destined him to be the spiritual father of all those who are circumcised as more than an outward sign, but who walk in our father Abraham’s faithful footsteps—a faith he possessed while he was still uncircumcised.

¹³ The promise given to Abraham and his children, that one day they would inherit the world, did not come because he followed the rules of the law. It came as a result of his right standing before God, a standing he obtained through faith. ¹⁴ If this inheritance is available only to those who keep the law, then faith is a useless commodity and the promise is canceled. ¹⁵ For the law brings God’s wrath against sin. But where the law doesn’t draw the line, there can be no crime.

¹⁶ This is the reason that faith is the single source of the promise—so that grace would be offered to all Abraham’s children, those whose lives are defined by the law and those who follow the path of faith charted by Abraham, our common father. ¹⁷ As it is recorded in the Scriptures, “I have appointed you the father of many nations.”^[e] In the presence of the God who creates out of nothing and holds the power to bring to life what is dead, Abraham believed and so became our father.

¹⁸ Against the odds, Abraham’s hope grew into full-fledged faith that he would turn out to be the father of many nations, just as God had promised when He said, “That’s how many your descendants will be.”^{[f] 19} His faith did not fail, although he was well aware that his impotent body, after nearly 100 years, was as good as dead and that Sarah’s womb, too, was dead. ²⁰ In spite of all this, his faith in God’s promise did not falter. In fact, his faith grew as he gave glory to God ²¹ because he was supremely confident that God could deliver on His promise. ²² This is why, you see, God saw his faith and counted him as righteous; this is how he became right with God.

²³ The story of how faith was credited to Abraham was not recorded for him and him alone, ²⁴ but was written for all of us who would one day be credited for having faith in God, the One who raised Jesus our Lord from the realm of the dead. ²⁵ He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and raised so that we might be made right with God.

5 Since we have been acquitted and made right through faith, we are able to experience true and lasting peace with God through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King. ² Jesus leads us into a place of radical grace where we are able to celebrate the hope of experiencing God’s glory. ³ And that’s not all. We also celebrate in seasons of suffering because we know that when we suffer we develop endurance, ⁴ which shapes our characters. When our characters are refined, we learn what it means to hope and anticipate God’s goodness. ⁵ And hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love.

⁶ When the time was right, the Anointed One died for all of us who were far from God, powerless, and weak. ⁷ Now it is rare to find someone willing to die for an upright person, although it’s possible that someone may give up his life for one who is truly good. ⁸ But think about this: while we were wasting our lives in sin, God revealed His powerful love to us in a tangible display—the Anointed One died for us. ⁹ As a result, the blood of Jesus has made us right with God now, and certainly we will be rescued by Him from God’s wrath in the future. ¹⁰ If we were in the heat of combat with God when His Son reconciled us by laying down His life, then how much more will we be saved by Jesus’ resurrection life? ¹¹ In fact, we stand now reconciled and at peace with God. That’s why we celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed.

¹² Consider this: sin entered our world through one man, Adam; and through sin, death followed in hot pursuit. Death spread rapidly to infect all people on the earth as they engaged in sin.

¹³ Before God gave the law, sin existed, but there was no way to account for it. Outside the law, how could anyone be charged and found guilty of sin? ¹⁴ Still, death plagued all humanity from Adam to Moses, even those whose sin was of a different sort than Adam’s. You see, in God’s plan, Adam was a prototype of the One who comes to usher in a new day. ¹⁵ But the free gift of grace bears no resemblance to Adam’s crime that brings a death sentence to all of humanity; in fact, it is quite the opposite. For if the one man’s sin brings death to so many, how much more does the gift of God’s radical grace extend to humanity since Jesus the Anointed offered His generous gift. ¹⁶ His free gift is nothing like the scourge of the first man’s sin. The judgment that fell because of one false step brought condemnation, but the free gift following countless offenses results in a favorable verdict—not guilty. ¹⁷ If one man’s sin brought a reign of death—that’s Adam’s legacy—how much more will those who receive grace in abundance and the free gift of redeeming justice reign in life by means of one other man—Jesus the Anointed.

¹⁸ So here is the result: as one man’s sin brought about condemnation and punishment for all people, so one man’s act of faithfulness makes all of us right with God and brings us to new life. ¹⁹ Just as through one man’s defiant disobedience every one of us were made sinners, so through the willing obedience of the one man many of us will be made right.

²⁰ When the law came into the picture, sin grew and grew; but wherever sin grew and spread, God’s grace was there in fuller, greater measure. No matter how much sin crept in, there was always more grace. ²¹ In the same way that sin reigned in the sphere of death, now grace reigns through God’s restorative justice, eclipsing death and leading to eternal life through the Anointed One, Jesus our Lord, the Liberating King.

6 How should we respond to all of this? Is it good to persist in a life of sin so that grace may multiply even more? ² Absolutely not! How can we die to a life where sin ruled over us and then invite sin back into our lives? ³ Did someone forget to tell you that when we were initiated into Jesus the Anointed through baptism’s ceremonial washing,^[g] we entered into His death? ⁴ Therefore, we were buried with Him through this baptism into death so that just as God the Father, in all His glory, resurrected the Anointed One, we, too, might walk confidently out of the grave into a new life. ⁵ To put it another way: if we have been united with Him to share in a death like His, don’t you understand that we will also share in His resurrection? ⁶ We know this: whatever we used to be with our old sinful ways has been nailed to His cross. So our entire record of sin has been canceled, and we no longer have to bow down to sin’s power. ⁷ A dead man, you see, cannot be bound by sin. ⁸ But if we have died with the Anointed One, we believe that we shall also live together with Him. ⁹ So we stand firm in the conviction that death holds no power over God’s Anointed, because He was resurrected from the dead never to face death again. ¹⁰ When He died, He died to whatever power sin had, once and for all, and now He lives completely to God. ¹¹ So here is how to picture yourself now that you have been initiated into Jesus the Anointed: you are dead to sin’s power and influence, but you are alive to God’s rule.

¹² Don’t invite that insufferable tyrant of sin back into your mortal body so you won’t become obedient to its destructive desires. ¹³ Don’t offer your bodily members to sin’s service as tools of wickedness; instead, offer your body to God as those who are alive from the dead, and devote the parts of your body to God as tools for justice and goodness in this world. ¹⁴ For sin is no longer a tyrant over you; indeed you are under grace and not the law.

¹⁵ So what do we do now? Throw ourselves into lives of sin because we are cloaked in grace and don’t have to answer to the law? Absolutely not! ¹⁶ Doesn’t it make sense that if you sign yourself over as a slave, you will have to obey your master? The question before you is, What will be your master? Will it be sin—which will lead to certain death—or obedience—which will lead to a right and reconciled life? ¹⁷ Thank God that your slavery to sin has ended and that in your new freedom you pledged your heartfelt obedience to that teaching which was passed on to you. ¹⁸ The beauty of your new situation is this: now that you are free from sin, you are free to serve a different master, God’s redeeming justice.

¹⁹ Forgive me for using casual language to compensate for your natural weakness of human understanding. I want to be perfectly clear. In the same way you gave your bodily members away as slaves to corrupt and lawless living and found yourselves deeper in your unruly lives, now devote your members as slaves to right and reconciled lives so you will find yourselves deeper in holy living. ²⁰ In the days when you lived as slaves to sin, you had no obligation to do the right thing. In that regard, you were free. ²¹ But what do you have to show from your former lives besides shame? The outcome of that life is death, guaranteed. ²² But now that you have been emancipated from the death grip of sin and are God’s slave, you have a different sort of life, a growing holiness. The outcome of that life is eternal life. ²³ The payoff for a life of sin is death, but God is offering us a free gift—eternal life through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King.