“Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Romans 3:27-28, ESV)
If you think you can make your way to heaven or earn favor in God’s eyes by doing good deeds, then you may be under God’s wrath. Paul maintains that no human being can earn God’s favor by doing good deeds. There is no advantage in keeping the law or living a moral life but we cannot continue to sin without restraint. Paul dismisses such an idea because God, by nature, is holy and hates sin. And yet every human being is by nature a sinner in need of God’s help and grace, including those who claim they follow the Law or those who claim Baptism into the Church. Even these fall short of perfection. Not only do they fail to obey every detail of the Law, they often obey for the wrong reasons. Many who obey do so to earn favor with God or as a means of saving themselves. Either way they are in rebellion against the Lord.
As Martin Luther discovered, God in Christ Jesus has rectified this situation. The Lord justifies us, that is, declares and makes us righteous, enables us to live lives of goodness and charity. He does not excuse or ignore sin, nor does He merely forgive it. He atones for it because it is a serious matter to Him for it merits His wrath. Yet in love, He has taken the necessary steps to make us right with Him by offering up His Son Jesus as our propitiation, our sin offering. In these verses Paul makes it abundantly clear that the work of salvation is all God’s work, and we human beings add nothing to this, not even the faith to accept it. Even that comes from God as He enables us to see our sinful depravity and our hopeless state. Then, as we stand on the edge of the abyss of despair, he reaches out to us with His assurance of mercy and grace.