But in view to the supreme law of faith which is gloriously defined in Romans Chapter 3, what advantage should a Jew gain from circumcision of genitals or even from "circumcision of the heart"? This is what Paul asks in verse 3:1 and does indeed answer in verse 2, albeit in a style that Thomas Aquinas made academically famous later — that is he gives an answer, "Much in every way!", that he will soon show the debilitating complications with if not outright repudiate. He will demonstrate that Romans 3:2 means that Jews have an advantage only if their Jewishness motivates them to accept Jesus Christ, that most times it will not, that accepting Jesus cancels out all "disadvantages" for Gentiles or anyone else, and that all prior "advantages" that in practice due to human frailty dissuade one from accepting Jesus become eternally binding "disadvantages." Verses 3 to 4 are another pair of examples of how Paul's letters (as Peter wrote about them, 2 Pet. 3:15-17) are wide open to misuse by malevolent actors. "3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: 'So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.'" This opening passage of Romans Chapter 3 is very easy to take out of context, and often has been, with the false claims that Paul is voicing that Jews are more likely to be judged sparingly by God, or favored by God over Gentiles, which are great contradictions with the Gospels and with the rest of his work. Yet we do not even have to turn that many pages to repudiate this, as in our Romans "Chapter 2," which to him was "a bit earlier in the letter," we have seen in 2:11 that God does not show favoritism, and we will now see that in 2:25-29 where he discredited physical circumcision in terms of personal morality that he was foreshadowing how he would discredit Jewishness in terms of personal salvation in our chapter immediately following.
Romans Chapter 3 begins steering toward Paul's conclusion starting in verse 5 where he reveals that he has been speaking as a man, "using a human argument" as the NIV puts it, or in other words offering falsity that he will soon repudiate with truth. Verse 5 in its entirety is: "But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man)". Here per the preceding verses he is obviously speaking of the Jews' unrighteousness and now we see that the uninterrupted faithfulness of God to them which he alluded to pertains more usually to God's vengeance on them or "wrath inflicted" on them. He probably has in mind here the same ideas of his conclusion in Acts 28, that the Jews' unbelief prophetically helps bring out God's faithfulness to all humanity and that the glorious salvatory aspect of that faithfulness thereby more heavily falls on the Gentiles. Verse 6 answers the question of if God is unjust in taking vengeance on the Jews, since their unrighteousness brings out his righteousness, and the answer in the KJV is "God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?" and in the NIV "Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world?". In verses 7 and 8, Paul applies this to the universally false notion of anyone getting by without condemnation if they are a sinner, due to any reason, but in this case the clear implication is that the aforementioned Jews will not get by uncondemned just because their unfaithfulness has been used by God as a lesson to the world and as a contrarian framework for His love to the Gentiles.
Chapter 3 Verse 9 then removes any iota of doubt that Paul was not conceding any real practical advantage to the Jews in the opening of Chapter 3. Verse 9 KJV, "What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin". The NIV uses the word "conclude" and it obviously is his conclusion on this matter, or as Aquinas might say it is the start of his "On the contrary...I answer that" section in response to the false propositions that he threw out earlier. The ESV translates verse 9 as "What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin." It should be unmistakable in any translation that in verse 5 when Paul asked, "in a human way," if God is "unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?" that he was for the sake of argument speaking as if a non-believing Jew. Yet the ESV verse 9 translation of "Are we Jews any better off?" helps fill in exactly what the Greek text implies he is asking, before answering "No" in the same verse for the reason that "both Jews and Greeks are under sin." In verse 5 he was for a moment speaking as one of the many self-righteous Jews who had abused him and rejected Christ, and in verse 9 he was asking if he and they being born as Jews have any advantage of escaping God's judgment for sin without Christ.
We next see in Chapter 3 Verses 11 to 18 a clarification on the dark days passage of Chapter 1 verses 18 to 32. Paul here in 3:11-18 expresses a very comparable list of vices that absolutely applies to everyone before Christ or without Christ per the preceding Chapter 3 context, whereas in Chapter 1 he was focusing somewhat more on the paganistic condition of B.C. Gentiles given that the letter is to the Romans. And what of Chapter 1 verse 18's "wrath of God...revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness"? Chapter 3 Verse 9 says that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin equally, and then 3:10 reemphasizes that "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one." Verse 3:5 in the NIV and ESV used the same 1:18 word "wrath" (Greek orgē, orgēn) for when Paul was, in the chapter opening, specifically speaking of God's vengeance as specifically dealt to the Jews.
Then in Romans Chapter 3 Verses 19 to 31 comes the grand conclusion, or it might be said "synopsis," of Paul's letter to the Romans. This passage furthermore is a beautifully concise summary of the entire Christian religion — the heart of the Gospels, the basis of the New Covenant, and the purpose of Jesus Christ as expressed by His foremost Apostle. We have divided this letter of his into 16 chapters, but Paul understandably revealed what was most important near the first of the unitary unbroken communication rather than count on all of his readers and listeners to be attentive until the end. By all natural logic, when this passage is compared with the rest of the New Testament and especially with the Gospels, it forms a high-level summarized match to the greater detail, whereas Romans 11 is obviously not representative of the whole and is only the exception chapter necessary to prevent the exclusion of believing Jews entirely.
In Romans 3, the Law is set forth as a means only to realize what sin is and that all universally are sinners, but not as a means to salvation, any more than being Jewish is a means to favor with God (3:19-21). The righteousness of God — which in this case means the outlay of His mercy as opposed to His wrath — is through acceptance of Christ alone. Verses 22 to 24 KJV: "Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 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." The NIV translation has "There is no difference between Jew and Gentile" in verse 22, but verses 29 and 30 in all translations reflect the Greek-original references to both racial groups to show that there is only one God and only one type of justification in Christianity. Romans 3:29 to 30 KJV: "Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith." Taken with Romans Chapter 3, the entire letter to the Romans, and the rest of the Bible, can there be any doubt that there is also only one spiritual group of Christians in the mind of God and therefore in truth? It takes a very bold Satan-inspired heretic to try to overturn Paul's endless amount of "no difference between Gentiles and Jews" statements and actions with the one chapter of Romans 11 that tries to prevent the minority Christ-believing Jew from being treated worse by those fellow believers that in the vast majority are Christ-believing Gentiles. Consider too that Romans 11 is not something that Jesus Christ in His ministry felt the need to directly provision for, whereas He spoke and acted in accordance with His universal Gentile-heavy purpose from its early declaration in Luke 4 (v.23-28) and John 4 (v.19-26) to His Great Commission upon ascending to heaven to His heavenly influence on Paul thereafter (Acts 9:15, Acts 22:18). Treating believing Jews the same as believing Gentiles was always implied in His ministry, but Jesus Christ since time immemorial knew that Gentiles would end up as the dominant portion of Christianity, as they already had in Rome by the time of Paul's letter. Jesus in His time of incarnation felt no need to overtly state, at least in His words preserved to us — for Jews that were rejecting Him then, for Jews who would almost uniformly reject him after — that a small amount of Jews who would accept him years later would still be welcomed into the Kingdom and saved. This much was implicit in Christ's ministry but, since there would be no difference between the "remnant" of Israel justified by faith and the millions upon millions of Gentiles justified by faith, Jesus Christ in word and deed rather stated that all men should be justified by faith. The same justification-by-faith gospel is absolutely what Paul preached in his Roman epistle, his other epistles, and his ministry, as is easily discernible when they are genuinely read whole rather than heretically cherry-picked or intentionally misinterpreted.
