4: The Whole World: Guilty (3:9-20)
4: THE WHOLE WORLD: GUILTY (3:9-20)
Paul has talked about Gentiles being condemned before God (1:18—2:16); he has talked about Jews being condemned before God (2:17—3:8). Now he draws them both together, and shows that all people everywhere stand in the same place in God’s sight:
What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin. (3:9)
For Paul to equate Jews and Gentiles in his day would perhaps be equivalent to equating professing Christians and atheists today. Many times when I’ve talked about this passage people have responded, “What do you mean? Are you saying that a member of a Christian church is just as guilty in God’s sight as that awful Communist or atheist over there?” And God is saying through Paul, “Yes, he is!”
We can get so riled up with righteous indignation against people who openly deny God’s existence. It isn’t hard for us to agree that they desperately need salvation and to feel very virtuous about recognizing their sin. But when Paul swings around and says that, in the sight of God, we need salvation too, then our emotional response might be very different. Certainly Paul’s Jewish readers would have responded strongly against Paul’s assertion that Jews are no better than Gentiles in God’s sight. Paul anticipates their strong reaction and finishes the matter by quoting from their Bible, the Old Testament.
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (3:10-12)
It isn’t just Paul who says that all humans are sinners. Quoting from Psalms 14:1-3 and 53:1-3, he shows that the Old Testament, the Bible of his Jewish readers, says it too. And as we saw earlier, Isaiah says it too: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way” (Isa. 53:6). The person without the Bible hasn’t kept his own standards perfectly, so he deserves the wrath of God. But those of us who have the Bible, who have had even higher moral standards, haven’t kept our standards either. This is not a theological abstraction, coming from a metaphysical mood. Moral corruption is the result of individual immoral desires. Paul describes a concrete tragedy of sinful desires, not a human state or definition.
This understanding of sin’s universality is the truest and greatest “leveler” of humanity. Jesus emphasized this over and over again. People would point to someone and say, “Look at that sinner,” but Jesus would always show them that all people are equally sinners. All stand on the same level before God.
Paul’s words are concrete, and they are also very personal. We saw him earlier become very personal when he said, “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man” (2:1). But his words in 3:10-12 are just as personal. For if there are “none righteous,” then I’m not righteous. If there are “none that understandeth, . . . none that seeketh after God” in the way that God should be sought after, then I don’t understand and I don’t seek after God as I should. If “they are all gone out of the way,” then that includes me—I have gone out of the way. If there are none who do absolute good, “no, not one,” then I don’t do absolute good either. If all humans, without exception, are morally corrupt, then I am morally corrupt too, no matter how good I may think I am.
Even those of us who have accepted Christ as our Savior should never think of sin as an abstraction. All people are morally corrupt. We’re not in a position to think of sin in terms of other people. As we saw in Ephesians, we were all “by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). This is where each one of us has lived. This is the pit out of which we have been dug. This is what we are.
Christians sometimes speak of being “shocked” by this or that kind of behavior. We should certainly never hesitate to say that something is wrong, if it is wrong. But how can we be “shocked” or surprised about the sins of others when we are morally corrupt ourselves in God’s sight? If we truly understand how sinful each of us is in God’s sight, then we will understand that we are on the same level with everyone else. In terms of our sin nature, we have all been cut down to the same size.
Paul makes this matter of human sinfulness personal by including himself in the discussion. He doesn’t say, “Are the Jews better than the Gentiles?” Rather, he says, “Are we better than they?” (3:9). He identifies himself with his fellow Jews. “Am I, are we, better than they?” he asks. And the answer is, “No. We, and I, are no better than they.”
Paul’s quoting from the Old Testament surely would have been devastating to his Jewish readers—and by extension to Christian readers today. How can anyone feel that he or she is in a good position before the holy God merely because of having the Bible, when the Bible itself says that none are righteous? For the self-righteous person, after verse 12 there is nothing but rubble. No one is safe just by being under the umbrella of Judaism, and no one is safe just by being under the umbrella of Christendom. None are righteous, “no, not one.”
Does this mean we are all without hope? If each one of us is so morally corrupt in God’s sight, is there any hope for us? Remember that at this point in his letter to the Romans, Paul is still preaching the “first half of the gospel”; he is still trying to show that all people need to be saved. Don’t forget the context: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation” (1:16).
“But why do I need salvation?”
“Because you are under the wrath of God.”
“And just why am I under the wrath of God?”
Paul is answering that question in this first half of his gospel presentation (1:18—3:20), and he continues in 3:13 with a terrible picture of the human race.
Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. (3:13-18)
What an awful picture Paul paints of mankind in his own day. And can we really claim that mankind today is any better? Has mankind “progressed” in terms of morality, as so many would like to believe? God’s Word would surely say, “No, not one!” We may be progressing in this way or that, but not in our moral standing before God. We dare not make an abstraction out of Paul’s horrible portrayal of us. This is the way we humans are, and this is the way a holy God sees us.
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become [may be shown to be] guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. (3:19-20)
Paul is now drawing to a conclusion his case against the Jews; but, as he has since verse 9, he is broadening his analysis to include all mankind. Since no one, whether Jew or Gentile, is perfectly keeping the law, the only possible conclusion is that all humanity is guilty before God and subject to his proper judgment. “Therefore by the deeds of the law . . .” Here Paul has in view not just the Law of Moses, but good works of any kind. “Therefore by the deeds of the law [by good works] there shall no flesh be justified in his sight.” The sense of the original Greek is even stronger: “No flesh shall ever be . . . no flesh can ever be justified.” The person who doesn’t have the Bible is judged by the perfect standard of God on the basis of his or her own condemnation of others, as we saw in 2:1. No one can ever say, “I have perfectly kept the standard by which I have judged others.” But then along comes the Jew, saying, “Yes, but we have the Bible.” And God says, “Yes, and you haven’t kept it either.” So, the conclusion now is all blackness. “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh [ever] be justified in [God’s] sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”
We have come to the end of Paul’s presentation of the “first half of the gospel.” Paul has taken most of the first chapter, all of the second chapter, and a lot of the third chapter to show us that we need salvation. He hasn’t yet told us how to be saved. The word salvation has occurred only once, in the theme verse: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation” (1:16). And you can just hear the cry, whether it’s in the humanistic Greek and Roman world of Paul’s day, or whether it’s in the humanistic twentieth century: “Why do I need salvation?” People may have all kinds of opinions about whether God exists or what He is like if He does exist, but when they are told that God says they must be saved, they will usually raise objections.
It is interesting that people don’t object to existentialism the way they object to Christianity. The existentialist says all people are lost. The existentialist says everyone is damned. The existentialist say it’s all hopeless. Cynics and nihilists of all kinds say it’s a hopeless life, it’s a black life, it’s an impossible life, man is a zero. But this is where Christianity differs radically from existentialism, and this is why people react so strongly to Christianity but not to existentialism. Existentialism says man is a zero and he is hopelessly damned. Christianity says man is damned, not because of what he is but because of what he has freely chosen to do. If a man is damned because of what he is, you can’t say that he’s wrong—he’s just pathetic. But Christianity says that man is not pathetic. In fact, man is a marvelous creation of God. But he is also a rebel against God, and as such deserves God’s wrath. Man is not pathetic, man is a rebel. It is not as if man were hopelessly caught in a net from which he can’t escape; he is caught in a net, all right, but he is there by choice. And if men and women are caught in this net by choice, says the Bible, then there is something more involved: They must accept the responsibility, the guilt, for being there.
And that brings us to the second half of the gospel.