Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Romans 3:21-31, Redemption and the mercy seat
Paul announces that God's righteousness has been revealed through faith in Jesus for all who believe, Jew and Gentile alike, through a redemption and an atoning death he links to the mercy seat.
Romans 3:21-31, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul reaches the turning point of his argument: God has now shown his justice in a new way, apart from the law yet in line with what the Scriptures said, through faith in Jesus. Every person has failed, Jew and Gentile alike, and every person is put right freely by God's grace through Jesus, whose death Paul describes in the language of atoning sacrifice. Because there is only one God, he is God of Gentiles as much as of Jews, and no one has grounds to boast.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/slavery\/","n":"Slavery and slave managers","s":"Slaves were everywhere in the Roman world, from field hands to stewards who ran whole estates and handled their master's money. A master away and slaves left in charge was a familiar story.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/passover-pilgrims\/","n":"Passover and the pilgrim crowds","s":"The spring festival that retold God's rescue of Israel from Egypt. Jerusalem filled with pilgrims, and hopes of freedom ran high.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/day-of-atonement\/","n":"The Day of Atonement and the mercy seat","s":"Once a year the high priest went into the holy of holies with sacrificial blood, for his own sins and then the nation's. It was the one fast the law commanded, and the mercy seat on the ark was the place the blood was brought.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sacrifice-and-blood\/","n":"Sacrifice and the daily offering","s":"Animals were offered at the temple for sin, for thanks and for cleansing, and blood sealed covenants. Every day a lamb was offered at dawn and again in the afternoon, and Jews everywhere prayed at those hours.","r":""}
Redemption meant freeing a slave, usually at a price; God had redeemed Israel at the cost of the Passover lamb (Keener and his notes), and Wright reads the cross as the new exodus. The word in verse 25 points to the mercy seat on the ark, consecrated each year with sacrificial blood (the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener), and Wright makes Jesus the place where, and the means by which, God meets his people and forgives. God passing over earlier sins echoes Exodus 12:13 (Keener and his notes). The basic confession of Judaism was that God is one, and Paul concludes that he must be the God of Gentiles too (Keener). What Paul's Jewish contemporaries thought about works and boasting is disputed. Carson, Moo and Morris set out E. P. Sanders's view that Jews believed they were saved by belonging to the covenant people, with obedience keeping them in it rather than earning entry. They call it a needed corrective to caricatures of Judaism, but doubt that it rules out more legalistic Jews, and hold that the Reformers' reading of justification by faith remains the most natural.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Romans 3:24, 3:25, 3:26 and 3:29-30
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Romans 3:24 and 3:25
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part One, comment on Romans 3:25-26
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 8, Romans, Romans in Recent Study
