The Point

As a young preacher, one of my index passages was Romans 3:23, "For all sin and fall short of the glory of God."  I quoted it often and encouraged people to accept that reality and to turn their lives around, get baptized and live a new life.

And, like many young preachers, I didn't get it right.  I missed the real point of the passage.  Years of training, daily study and devotion to the Bible but still I missed it.  I missed the point because I didn't read the passage to the end, I stopped at the comma instead of the period.  

If you'll look at the quote above, I have a period after God.  In  the Bible, however, there is a comma.  That comma means there is a pause not an end in the sentence.  The pause is to allow one to focus on what is next, which, as Paul Harvey use to say, "Is the rest of the story."  And, not just the rest but the point of the passage.

I should also point out that the passage doesn't begin with "For."  I have it erroneously capitalized.  The full sentence is this, "There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and  fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus" (Rom 3:22b-24).

The point is that all of us sin but only only One can save.  Neither Jew nor Gentile can overcome sin but neither need be overcome by sin because Jesus died, releasing God's grace.  By his wounds we are healed.  It is not within our grasp to adjust our lives and  walk in righteousness, we all "fall short of God's glory" (Rom 6:23).  Instead, we are to turn away from self governance, accept the gift of salvation and walk in the light of his glory.

In other words, we aren't called to change our lives in order to be accepted.  Rather, accepting his grace, we are changed and now we can live a new and different life, a life of listening to His call to follow him, surrendering our will to His, not charting a new course based on self-reflection and an improved self-will.  Jus' Sayn.