Romans 3:19-28
October 25, 2026
I was driving on Interstate 40 recently, coming back from a pastors’ conference in Asheville, when all of a sudden the traffic slowed down to a crawl. After a little while, I then saw those dreaded orange cones/barrels, which indicated that there probably was some road construction taking place ahead and we were going from 3 lanes down to 1 lane. As we crawled along I began to think, “How can I get around this? Maybe I can take some local roads around this construction,” but many of you know from personal experience that often times those “short cuts” are not any faster, because as soon as I got off the highway, I then discovered that many other people had the same idea. As a result, I eventually found myself getting back on Interstate 40 in about the same spot in the line of cars where I got off.
I think that’s how it is for many people when it comes to looking for a way to heaven or looking for a way to be right with God. The Bible calls this “righteousness;” but many people, in their search for righteousness, are running into all kinds of barriers and dead ends. They are trying to follow a variety of different roads they think will lead to heaven, because they appeal to our natural sense of right and wrong. For example, sometimes people try to impress God by following the “be a good person” road. This is the one that starts out smooth, but then we start to hit the bumps in the road when we fail to be good at all times. Pretty soon the obstacles or barrels begin to appear and before you know it you end up at a dead end and you wonder why. This “be a good person” road seemed like the logical road to heaven, but it doesn’t get you there. There’s no righteousness on that road.
So people turn off and they try another road – one that is marked, “be a good family person,” and they think this is the one that will help you become right with God. If I spend a lot of time on family things, God will definitely be pleased. Spending time with family is certainly good, but there is no turn off to get to heaven. It’s like driving along, thinking everything is fine, but then you see those barrels again and you realize that this road does not lead to heaven.
Next, you see the “work hard at your job” road. Now that seems like the way to go, it seems very natural. So you travel down this road and the traffic is moving quickly. Working hard at your job may make you think that you have found the right road, but once again you discover that this road does not lead to righteousness, it does not make you right with God.
Sadly, these were the kind of roads that the leaders of the Church in the 1500s were telling people they had to follow if they wanted to be righteous before God. Plus, the leaders said that these roads were not free, they were like toll roads. You had to pay money to the Church as you followed these roads if you wanted to get to heaven. Martin Luther even took this teaching a step further by becoming a monk, thinking that if he devoted his life to serving God in the church then he would be even more righteous in God’s eyes. But just the opposite happened to Luther. After he become a monk and studied all of the laws of God in His Word, the more he saw his sin and realized that none of these laws or roads would make him righteous in God’s eyes. In fact, the harder he tried to be righteous and failed, the more angry he believed God was getting with him over his sinfulness, and he began to lose hope of ever having eternal life with God.
But then, by God’s grace, Luther discovered another road in the Bible. This one was not one made by human beings, but it was built by God. Paul wrote about this road in our second lesson from Romans 3 saying, “The righteousness of God has been made known apart from the law, to which the Law and the Prophets (meaning the Word of God) bear witness to it. The righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus to all who believe. For there is no difference: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Notice that phrase in bold, “apart from the law.” The road that leads to heaven is different from all of those other roads – the “be a good person” road, the “be a good family person” road, and the “work hard at your job” road. Apart from those roads, which we could call “law roads,” there is one that is different. It is the “faith in Jesus” road.
But how is this road different? First, faith involves giving up trying to earn your way into heaven by being a good person, or a good family person, or a hard worker. Those are all good things and we ought to do them, but not in the sense that we’re trying to earn God’s approval. Second, faith is completely trusting in Jesus, who was perfect, to earn your way into heaven for you. Why don’t those other roads work? Because it says in verse 23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” No matter how hard we try to be perfect, we still fall short of what God wants us to be.
When I look at this verse in light of this theme of driving, I can’t help but think of bridges in our country that have collapsed without warning. I think of a bridge in Minnesota that collapsed about 20 years during rush hour. Prior to that everything looked fine, but all of a sudden, without warning, a section of the bridge just collapsed on a nice day and was gone. Once upon a time there was an easy road or bridge to heaven, and everything looked fine, but it too collapsed as it was destroyed by sin. And ever since that time, since the fall of Adam and Eve, people have been trying to earn their way into heaven. They have been trying all kinds of different roads, many that seem very good, but they all lead to dead ends.
But the “faith in Jesus” road was built by God to bridge the gap created by our sin, between Himself and all of us. And how did God build that bridge? Verse 24 says that we are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” The word “redemption” contains the idea of “someone buying our freedom.” Imagine being thrown in jail because you have piled up hundreds of speeding tickets, and the judge says that you will be in jail for the rest of your life, because the fines are so great, you will never be able to pay them. But then someone shows up and pays all of your fines out of his own pocket, and you are released from jail, that’s redemption. And that’s what Jesus did for all of us.
In the eyes of God, we have all kinds of fines piled up against us. In fact, every time we sin, that’s a fine and the punishment is eternal separation from God. We have all sinned millions of times and there is no way we could ever pay off the fine. But Jesus comes into the picture and He pays the fine for each one of us by living a perfect life and dying on a cross in order to set us free.
So not only can we not earn our way into heaven, but even our faith is something that we do not obtain on our own. Without the Holy Spirit working faith in our hearts, we would be like the 5 year-old who goes trick or treating for the first time with his dad, but he is so overwhelmed by the other children in costumes that when he comes to a house to get candy, he’s scared and doesn’t even hold out his bag. So dad has to gently take the hands of the child and help him open the bag to receive the candy. When the child gets home to count all of the candy he received, he cannot claim that he earned the candy. He did not buy it with his own money or even hold out the bag on his own to receive the candy. Dad had to stand with him and open the bag for him. That’s why Martin Luther emphasized in 1517, and why our church has been emphasizing for 25 years that we are saved, not by our works, but by God’s works. We are saved, because God sent Jesus to die for our sins and we are saved, because God sent the Holy Spirit to work faith in our hearts.
It has been said that if you want something done right, do it yourself, but that’s not true when it comes to eternal life with God. If life in heaven depended on our works, we would always be wondering if we had done enough. Fortunately, Jesus has done all the work and He is the one who will keep us on the only road that leads to eternal life in heaven.
