How can God be just and yet treat people as though they had never sinned?  At the cross, “Mercy and truth met together righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Ps 85:10 NKJV). Grace, life, forgiveness, justification reconciliation: we aren’t entitled to any of them. Yet God provides them to us as a gift. Thus all Christian boasting, claims Paul in v27, is excluded on “the principle of faith.” All we can do is come to God thanking Him for His mercy to us. 

But why wait for heaven? When we cease to think so highly of ourselves as v27 tells us to, our churches will be more pleasant places to visit. And when we realise our total dependence on God, it will make us more gracious to others who aren’t quite as “good” as we are. The implications of “no boasting” can transform our lives even here on earth. 

To this point in his letter, Paul has demonstrated that every person who has ever lived has been a sinner; that there are no birthrights to salvation; that law-keeping will not get anyone to heaven, and then in a tightly packed paragraph, running from Romans 3:21-26, Paul has revealed that God saves people through their faith in Jesus. Paul sums up God’s salvation in the words “justification by grace through faith alone”, without works of the law.  

vs27-31 presents three implications or consequences of God’s plan of salvation. The first is that God’s way of salvation by grace through faith excludes boasting. When it comes to ourselves we remain speechless. The second consequence of God’s great plan, vs29-30, is that salvation has been provided for everybody. 

The third, v31, is that God’s way of salvation actually upholds the law. As we saw in our discussion of the justification of God related to vs25-26, the Lord took the law into consideration in His great plan. God’s revealed plan of salvation in actuality shows how seriously He regards His own law. He couldn’t just ignore its requirements or its penalties. Rather, Christ not only kept it, but He absorbed the death penalty of the broken law for each of us.