Romans 3:25

Righteousness by faith in Christ

God presented him [Christ Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.

God’s motive for justifying sinners is mercy; his method is redemption. The term redemption is intended to bring to mind for his readers the idea of a slave, or a prisoner of war, or perhaps even a kidnapped person—anyone who needs to be ransomed, to be “bought back.” The purchase price is greater than anything the captive can raise on his own. Somebody on the outside has to step in and help if there is to be a rescue. And that is exactly what God did! He provided “the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (3:24).

God is a holy God who can’t just wink at sins and dismiss the sinner’s many infractions as if they didn’t matter. God, in his Word, is clear and direct on that matter: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The sinner’s life was forfeit. Sin had to be paid for with a life. Again Scripture is clear: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). Sin carried a heavy price that had to be paid—and it was! God sent his very own Son to be the substitute to die in our place. Christ became true man so that he might shed his blood as a sacrifice and die the sinner’s death, or as Paul puts it, “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement.”

The apostle’s terminology here reflects the activity God had directed Israel to observe annually on the great Day of Atonement. God commanded this festival as a graphic reminder of Israel’s need to confess its sins and then symbolically transfer those sins to a scapegoat that was driven out into the wilderness, bearing away the sins of the people (Leviticus 16:1-34, particularly 20-22).

God’s intent was to remind Israel of its need for a Savior and to strengthen in them a longing for the promised Messiah, the Redeemer, who would do for them literally what was being enacted symbolically.

In writing to the Romans, Paul is, of course, speaking from the New Testament perspective in which Christ already has come and offered himself as the sacrifice, thereby putting us at one with God. Hence Paul can say that all have been justified by God’s grace “through faith in his [Christ’s] blood.”