The book of Romans chapter 3 versus 21 through 26. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

They are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus,

whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness

because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

It was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous

and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.

One of the reasons it's so hard

to make biblical truth intelligible for the secular mindset is that the secular mindset

and the biblical mindset begin from such radically different starting points.

Let me try to explain what I mean by these two mindsets.

When I say secular mindset, I don't mean a mindset necessarily that excludes

God from the picture. It might not. And I don't mean necessarily that it says the Bible is not true.

It might not say that.

What I mean is a mindset that starts

with the assumption that man is the basic given fundamental reality of the universe.

That man and his rights and his wishes and his needs and expectations are the starting point,

where we stand, and then the secular mind moves out from that center

and measures things by it.

And so what the secular mindset sees as problems in the universe to be solved

will be seen as problems because of whether or not things out there fit, man, and man's rights

and man's needs and man's expectations and wants and wishes. And so man moves out from man as the center

...