The Gift You Cannot Repay
"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."
— Romans 3:23-24
Paul was writing to believers in a city he had never visited, though he knew a good number of them there by name. In the lines just before, he piles up one scriptural quotation after another, and the point of the pile is that on this question nobody stands in a different place from anyone else. The verb behind fall short is an ordinary one for running out of something, for being left without it. Then the vocabulary turns legal. The word rendered justified belonged to the courts: a judge finds for the accused and the case is over. It reports a verdict, not a character reference, and in Greek it is passive, so the person on trial is not the one doing it. The term behind redemption is built on a root meaning release bought with a payment, and the Greek Old Testament uses that same word family for Israel brought out of Egypt. The small word describing how it all arrives is the everyday term for at no charge. A few lines later Paul asks what is left to boast about, and answers: nothing. You did not pay for this, and you had nothing to pay with.