Romans 3:20 is one of the most humbling passages in the Bible. It crushes human pride. It makes it impossible for us to continue to caress the delusion that we can perform our way into a relationship with God. It lets us know that our best track record of obedience falls woefully short of God’s holy requirement. This passage silences our pride in family, in our participation in formal worship, in our biblical literacy, and in daily obedience. If any of these things could justify us, there would have been no need for the righteous life, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection of Jesus.

No mere human has ever achieved acceptance with God through obedience to his law. No one.

I was raised in a Christian home. I attended Sunday school and youth group every week. My family almost never missed a Sunday morning or evening worship service. We had family devotions every day. I memorized portions of God’s word. Even as a little boy, I took notes during the sermon. I was convinced early in life that I was okay with God. I was one of the good guys. I was from a righteous family. Surely God looked down on me and judged that I was good. Because of my Christian performance and my family, I was quite confident of my standing with the Lord . . . until one summer at camp. My counselor read Romans 3 aloud, and verse 20 was the pin that completely deflated my self-righteousness balloon. All of a sudden, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes, and I saw my sin. No longer did I see myself as righteous. I could no longer think that I was okay with God. My righteousness had been devastated by fourteen words, in one verse in one book of the Bible: “By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight . . .” (Rom. 3:20). I looked into the perfectly accurate mirror of Scripture and found myself wanting.

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