Growing up in Northern Ireland made it hard to escape the words of the Bible. I remember growing up and seeing Bible verses nailed to trees, painted on the side of hay bales in fields or pasted on walls of various buildings. I didn’t always know what they meant but they often seemed to focus around one particular topic………my sin and how I hadn’t lived up to God’s standards.

One of the ones I saw often was Romans 3:23, I still see it often today.

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God Romans 3:23 (NIV)

These are words from the Bible, they haven’t been created by anyone but God so they are true but one of the things that I hadn’t realised until more recent years as I have become more acquainted with the Scriptures is that this verse has a context – a before and an after. The whole section comes after the writer, Paul, has been talking about righteousness. Here is the verse in a slightly wider context.

This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 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: 22-24 (NIV)

You see by simply taking verse 23 out of verse 22 and 24 we could be forgiven for thinking that we are all doomed, that we are all worthless cretans who are good for nothing. But just after that verse we are reminded that even though we have all fallen short, we are also and equally reminded that we are all justified freely by His grace. Put simply we have freely been put right with God because of Jesus.

I guess what I’m saying is that we can’t have the first part without the second partake we can’t have the second part without the first part.

Part of me wishes I could go around all of those tree verses and add verse 24 in so that people get to hear the wider truth of this message.