Evangelical Catholicism: Romans 3:21-26 Explained
Short answer: Evangelical Catholicism is a loose label for Christians who hold Protestant convictions about salvation by grace through faith while keeping Catholic or Anglican instincts about the church, sacraments, liturgy, and tradition. Romans 3:21-26 is the passage that tests the label. Paul says a righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law, witnessed by the law and the prophets, and given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. Anyone who claims the name evangelical must let that verse set the foundation, and anyone who claims the name catholic must reckon with the whole New Testament, not only the letters. The position is coherent only where Scripture governs both halves of the phrase.
What the phrase evangelical Catholicism actually names
The term is not a denomination and not a single movement. It describes a posture: people who pray the creeds, love the historic liturgies, value the sacraments, and read the church fathers, yet who also insist that a sinner is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Many of them sit inside Anglican, Lutheran, or Methodist churches rather than Rome. Others are Catholics who read the Reformers seriously. The common thread is a refusal to choose between the Reformation's doctrine of justification and the ancient church's practice of worship.
That refusal is not automatically wrong. Paul himself was a liturgical Jew who quoted the law and the prophets while arguing that righteousness comes apart from the law. Romans 3:21 says, "But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified by the law and the prophets." Tradition and Scripture are not enemies in that sentence. The prophets testify. The question is whether the testimony rules the doctrine or merely decorates it.
So the label is useful mostly as a set of questions. Does this person treat the historic creeds as a summary of Scripture, or as a second authority alongside it? Do the sacraments convey grace as God's promises received by faith, or do they function as works that earn something? Does church tradition interpret hard texts, or does it override them? Those questions matter more than the label itself, and Romans 3 answers them more directly than any contemporary debate does.
History explains the tension. The sixteenth-century Reformers did not set out to invent a new church; they set out to recover a doctrine they believed the medieval church had obscured. Rome responded at Trent by defining justification in terms that many Protestants judged incompatible with Paul. Since then, faithful Christians have disagreed about how much of that divide remains. Evangelical Catholicism is one attempt to live in the space between, and it deserves to be judged by Scripture rather than by slogans from either side.
Righteousness revealed apart from the law
Paul has spent Romans 1:18 through 3:20 building a case that no one is righteous, not even one, and that the law can only expose sin. Then comes the hinge: Romans 3:21 begins with the words but now. Something has changed. God has acted. The righteousness that sinners need has been revealed, and it comes apart from the law, meaning apart from law-keeping as the basis of acceptance. That is the foundation of any genuinely evangelical position, and it is non-negotiable.
Notice that Paul does not say the law is discarded. He says the law and the prophets testify to this righteousness. The whole Old Testament anticipated it. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, and the prophets promised a servant who would bear sin. Evangelical Catholicism is right to treasure that long history of revelation. It is wrong if the treasuring turns into a claim that the church's later traditions supply what the prophets lacked.
The word revealed matters. This righteousness is not a human achievement discovered by moral effort; it is God's own saving action made known in the gospel. Paul is not describing a program but an announcement. That is why the Reformers spoke of justification as a verdict pronounced, not a process completed. In Romans 3:23-24 the reasoning continues, and the conclusion is that sinners are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
If a teaching ever makes acceptance with God depend, even partially, on something produced in us, it has stepped away from Romans 3:21. This does not mean obedience is optional; Paul spends chapters 6 through 8 insisting it is not. It means obedience is the fruit of a standing already granted, never the ground of it. Any version of evangelical Catholicism that keeps that order intact has kept the evangelical half of its name honest.
Faith in Christ as the sole instrument of justification
Romans 3:22 says this righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. Faith is the instrument, not the merit. It is the empty hand that receives a gift. Galatians 2:16 states the same thing from Paul's own experience, that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. Two letters, one doctrine. Whatever else evangelical Catholicism includes, it must include this, or the word evangelical has no content left.
Here is where the label faces its sharpest test. If sacraments, penance, indulgences, or accumulated merit are said to complete what faith begins, then justification is no longer by faith. It becomes faith plus something else. Paul's grammar does not allow that. Justification is a once-for-all declaration made by God the judge, based on Christ's finished work, received by trust. The Council of Trent and the Reformers disagreed precisely here, and honest readers should not pretend the disagreement was only about wording.
Ephesians 2:8-9 makes the same point about salvation, that it is by grace through faith, not of yourselves, the gift of God, not of works, so that no one can boast. Grace and works are not two channels feeding the same reservoir. Grace excludes boasting, and boasting is exactly what a system of accumulated merit produces, however politely it is dressed. Evangelical Catholicism is biblically sound when it says this plainly and refuses to soften it for the sake of unity.
None of this makes faith a passive, contentless idea. Faith trusts a person, not a formula. It looks away from itself to Christ crucified and risen. That is why Paul can speak of being found in him, not having a righteousness of his own from the law, but the righteousness which is from God by faith, as Philippians 3:9 puts it. True faith is always directed outward. The moment faith becomes a quality to admire in ourselves, it has quietly become a work.
Does James 2:24 contradict Paul?
James 2:24 says, "You see then that by works, a man is justified, and not only by faith." Read against Romans 3:28, this looks like a flat contradiction, and critics of the Reformation have used it that way for centuries. The resolution is not to flatten one writer to fit the other. Paul argues about the ground of acceptance before God; James argues about the evidence of a faith that claims to be real. Both use the same word justified, but they are answering different questions.
Paul's example is Abraham believing God's promise, and his point is that the promise came before circumcision, so that Abraham could be the father of all who believe. James's example is Abraham offering Isaac, and his point is that the faith was demonstrated by the deed. The same man, the same life, two different questions asked of it. Paul asks what made Abraham right with God. James asks what proved that Abraham's faith was genuine rather than a mere verbal claim.
James makes the second question explicit earlier in his chapter, when he describes a faith without works as dead. Dead faith is not weak faith; it is not faith at all. That is entirely consistent with Paul, who insists in Romans 6 that grace does not license sin and that those who belong to Christ have died to sin. Neither apostle imagined a Christianity of correct opinions with no changed life.
So an evangelical Catholicism that leans on James to reintroduce merit has misread the argument. James does not say works supply the righteousness that God accepts. He says works show that the faith is real. The distinction is the difference between the root and the fruit, and confusing the two has cost the church enormous confusion. Read carefully, James supports assurance of salvation through a changed life, not confidence in a moral ledger.
Grace, sacraments, and the means by which faith comes
Here evangelical Catholicism makes its most constructive contribution. If faith is the instrument of justification, where does faith come from? Paul answers in Romans 10:17 that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Historically, the church has also spoken of sacraments as means of grace, visible words that accompany the spoken promise. Baptism and the Lord's Supper do not replace faith; they are ways God confirms it. Titus 3:5 describes salvation as being according to his mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.
Read that verse closely. It says God saved us not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves. The washing is something done to us, not something we perform to earn standing. So a sacrament rightly understood is gospel in physical form, a promise to be received by faith. It becomes a rival to Christ only when it is treated as an act that obligates God, or when receiving it is made the basis of acceptance rather than the sign of it.
This is why faithful Christians differ about how many sacraments there are and what exactly they convey. Lutherans and Reformed believers, Anglicans, Methodists, and Roman Catholics do not agree on the details, and pretending otherwise is not honesty. What they can agree on is the direction of travel: every means of grace exists to drive the sinner to Christ, never to supplement his work. Any practice that makes a person look at their own performance has stopped being a means of grace.
Evangelical Catholicism is at its best when it recovers the liturgy as a rehearsal of the gospel and the sacraments as seals of a promise already spoken. It is at its worst when the beauty of the tradition becomes a reason to leave Paul's sharp edges untaught. Beauty and clarity are not rivals. The same church can sing the ancient songs and still say with Paul that no flesh will be justified by the works of the law.
The obedience that follows justification
Justification by faith alone has always attracted the same accusation: it makes obedience unnecessary. Paul heard it, and he answered it in Romans 6 with horror at the thought. The grace that declares a sinner righteous also joins that sinner to Christ's death and resurrection, so that the old life is left behind. Justification and sanctification are distinct, but they are never separated. A person who claims to be justified and shows no interest in holiness has reason to question the claim.
Catholic tradition has often emphasised this rightly, insisting that faith is not a bare mental assent and that the Christian life is a real transformation. Evangelical Catholicism inherits that emphasis and should keep it. What it must not do is let the emphasis quietly relocate the ground of acceptance from Christ's work to our progress. If assurance rises and falls with our performance, we have returned to Rome's problem, or to a Protestant version of the same anxiety.
The biblical pattern keeps both truths in view at once. Paul says believers are justified freely by grace, and then commands them to present their bodies as living sacrifices. He tells the Philippians that he counts all things as loss for the sake of knowing Christ, and he also tells them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling because God works in them. Effort and grace are not in competition when grace is the power at work inside the effort.
Practically, this means a believer can examine their life honestly without despair. Imperfect obedience does not undo the verdict. Growing obedience confirms it. Paul's own ambition in Philippians 3 is to be found in Christ, not to present a record, and that ambition produces a life of pressing on. Evangelical Catholicism at its best is simply that: a people who take the ancient church seriously and still rest entirely on a righteousness that is not their own.
Where this position is right and where it is at risk
It is right to refuse the false choice between doctrine and worship, between the Reformation's clarity and the church's historic practice. The New Testament church was liturgical and doctrinal at once. It is right to honour the creeds as faithful summaries of Scripture, and to value the church's long memory. It is right to insist that the sacraments are gospel, not law, and that they are received by faith rather than performed for credit. All of this can be defended from the text.
It is at risk whenever tradition is treated as a second source of revelation that can settle what Scripture leaves unclear, or whenever the church's authority is used to silence exegesis. It is at risk whenever justification is redefined as a process rather than a verdict, or whenever love of the tradition becomes reluctance to say hard things about merit. Those are not minor stylistic differences. They are the fault lines the Reformation drew, and they have not closed.
Where faithful Christians differ, they should say so plainly rather than pretending agreement is deeper than it is. Baptists, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics have real disagreements about baptism, the Supper, and the nature of the church. Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994 produced a statement that many found helpful and many found premature. Honest readers can appreciate both reactions. What no one should do is use warm ecumenical language to hide a disagreement about the gospel itself.
The test is always the text. Bring every claim, ancient or modern, to Romans 3 and ask whether it preserves the sequence Paul lays down: a righteousness revealed apart from the law, testified by the prophets, received through faith, grounded in the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, and resulting in a life of obedience. Where a tradition keeps that sequence, receive it gratefully. Where it blurs it, lovingly correct it. That is the work of a careful teacher, and it is how the church stays both catholic and evangelical.
Biblical fidelity check
Romans 3:21-26 establishes that God has revealed a righteousness apart from the law, that it comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, and that it is grounded in Christ's redemption and propitiation. It does not establish that works are irrelevant to the Christian life, nor does it settle every question about church structure, sacraments, or tradition. The passage is about the ground of acceptance before God, and reading it as a full ecclesiology asks it to do something it was never written to do.
A common misreading is that Paul and James contradict each other, so readers must choose one and discard the other. That misreading fails because it ignores their different questions: Paul asks what makes a sinner right with God, and James asks what proves that a professed faith is genuine. Another misreading treats justification as a process of becoming more righteous, which turns a verdict into a project and returns the believer to uncertainty. The text will not bear either load, and it does not need to.
Other passages that speak to Romans 3:21-26
Several studies helpfully fill out the surrounding argument. What Does Ephesians 1:18 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application explores the hope and inheritance that belong to those God has called. What Does Ephesians 1:4 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application traces election and holiness back to God's initiative in love. What Does Ephesians 1:6 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application connects grace to the praise of God's glory, echoing the free justification Paul describes here. And Ephesians 1: Blessings and Inheritance in Christ gives a wider survey of the blessings that flow from union with Christ.
Frequently asked questions
Is evangelical Catholicism a denomination?
No. It is a descriptive label for a range of Christians who hold Reformation convictions about justification while valuing historic liturgy, the creeds, and the sacraments. You will find such believers in Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and even Baptist settings, and among some Roman Catholics who read the Reformers sympathetically. Because it is not an institution, it has no single statement of faith, which is both its flexibility and its weakness. Any particular congregation or writer using the label should be assessed on what they actually teach about how a sinner is made right with God.
Does Romans 3:21-26 teach justification by faith alone?
The passage teaches that righteousness is revealed apart from the law and received through faith in Jesus Christ, and that justification is by God's grace as a gift, leaving no room for boasting. That is the substance of what the Reformers meant by faith alone. The word alone does not appear in this paragraph, but the logic excludes any contribution from human works. Paul's point is not that faith is a meritorious act, but that faith simply receives what Christ has accomplished. The ground is Christ's redemption, and the instrument is trust.
How do I hold tradition and Scripture together faithfully?
Treat Scripture as the final authority and the tradition as a servant that helps you read it. The creeds, the fathers, and the liturgies can correct your private reading and connect you to centuries of worship. But when a tradition contradicts the plain sense of a passage such as Romans 3:21-26, the text must win. Practically, read the Bible first, then read the tradition asking what it noticed that you missed. Where faithful Christians differ, say so honestly, and keep the gospel's sequence intact: grace, faith, Christ, then obedience.
