Romans 3:25-26

Romans 3:25-26 - Daily Devotion - 22 June 2026 St Barnabas Anglican Church Fairfield & Bossley Park 25 God presented Him as the atoning sacrifice through faith in His blood, in order to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand. 26 He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus.REFLECTIONSWritten by Stephen SheadA number of years ago I preached an evangelistic sermon on the cross of Christ. It was just after scientists had announced a big discovery related to black holes, and it occurred to me that Jesus’ death on the cross was a bit like a black hole. A black hole is where an unimaginable amount of matter is squashed into a single point of zero size. And when Jesus died on the cross, all the sin of the entire human race – past, present and future – was concentrated into a single point and placed on Jesus. All God’s judgment against sin was poured out on that point, for us. That was the “atoning sacrifice” that God presented in Jesus’ death (v 25).But reading these verses again, I realised that there’s another way in which the cross of Christ is like a black hole. The inside of a black hole is a mystery that no one fully comprehends, because in a black hole, the normal rules of physics don’t apply. And the death of the Son of God was such a powerful event that the normal rules of justice don’t apply, because God can now do what is otherwise impossible: he can justify sinners.Or as Paul puts it in verse 26: because of the cross, God is both a just judge and justifies sinners like me. Those two things can’t normally be true. God himself says that judges must not justify the guilty or condemn the righteous (Prov. 17:15). I think that’s why sometimes I think of justification more like God pretending we’re righteous even though he knows we’re really not. But that would make him an unjust judge!The truth – the glorious truth, the black-hole-mystery truth! – is that if you trust in Jesus, God the just judge has sat in his judgment seat and declared, “You are righteous, completely innocent of all sin, guiltless” … because you now are! Satan looks at you, and he can’t find anything to pin on you.The thing that makes that true is the death of the innocent Son of God for us. I don’t fully understand how that’s true – but it is! Bask in the light and warmth of that truth today, and give humble and heartfelt thanks to God for such an amazing sacrifice and gift. You really are righteous. ABOUT THE AUTHORStephen is our Senior Minister.