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The Glory of God is His Righteousness

For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Romans 3:23,24.

God knows the hearts of all men, that all are alike sinful, and therefore He makes no difference in the gospel to different men. The great burden of the Epistle to the Romans is to show that so far as sin and salvation are concerned, there is absolutely no difference between men of all races and conditions in life. The same gospel is to be preached to the Jew and to the Gentile, to the slave and to the freeman, to the prince and to the peasant.

People are fond of imagining that what are called "shortcomings" are not so bad as real sins. So it is much easier for them to confess that they have "come short" than that they have sinned and done wickedly. But since God requires perfection, it is evident that "shortcomings" are sins. When perfection is the standard, it makes no difference in the result, how much or how little one comes short, so long as he comes short. The primary meaning of sin is "to miss the mark."

From the text we learn that the glory of God is His righteousness. Notice, the reason why all have come short of the glory of God is that all have sinned. Man in the beginning was "crowned with glory and honor" (Hebrews 2:7) because he was upright. In the fall he lost the glory, and therefore now he must "seek for glory and honor and immortality" (Romans 2:7). Christ could say to the Father, "The glory which thou gavest Me, I have given them," because in Him is the righteousness of God which He has given as a free gift to every man.

In Christ we are "being justified", in other words, being made righteous. To justify means to make righteous. God supplies just what the sinner lacks. Let no reader forget the simple meaning of justification. Some people have the idea that there is a much higher condition for the Christian to occupy than to be justified. That is to say, that there is a higher condition for one to occupy than to be clothed within and without with the righteousness of God. That can not be.

Waggoner on Romans, pgs. 70,71


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