7. The whole human race
The apostle is approaching the end of his long argument, and asks himself how to wrap it all up, how to rest his case: What shall we conclude then? (9a).
He has exposed in succession the blatant unrighteousness of much of the ancient Gentile world (1:18–32), the hypocritical righteousness of moralizers (2:1–16) and the confident self-righteousness of Jewish people, whose anomaly is that they boast of God’s law but break it (2:17 – 3:8). So now he prosecutes and condemns the whole human race.
Although there is considerable uncertainty about both the form and the meaning of the second verb in verse 9, I am content to accept the niv rendering: Do we have any advantage? That is, is there any benefit in being a Jew? If this is correct, then Paul asks the same question twice within the space of a few verses, and proceeds to give himself apparently opposite answers. In verse 1 he has asked: ‘What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew?’ And he has answered: ‘Much in every way!’ Now in verse 9 he asks: Do we [Jews] have any advantage? And he replies: Not at all! He certainly sounds as if he is contradicting himself, saying first that there is great advantage in being a Jew and then that there is none. How can we resolve this discrepancy? Only by clarifying what benefit or ‘advantage’ he has in mind. If he means privilege and responsibility, then the Jews have much because God has entrusted his revelation to them. But if he means favouritism, then the Jews have none, because God will not excuse them from judgment: we have already made the charge [i.e. in 1:18 – 2:29] that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin (9) . Paul appears almost to personify sin as a cruel tyrant who holds the human race imprisoned in guilt and under judgment. Sin is on top of us, weighs us down, and is a crushing burden.
This fact of the universal bondage of sin and guilt Paul goes on to support from the Bible. He supplies a series of seven Old Testament quotations, the first probably from Ecclesiastes, then five from the Psalms and one from Isaiah, all of which bear witness in different ways to human unrighteousness. Paul ‘follows here a common rabbinical practice of stringing passages together like pearls’.
As it is written:
‘There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God [Eccl. 7:20].
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one’ [Ps. 14:1–3 = Ps. 53:1–3].
‘Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practise deceit’ [Ps. 5:9].
‘The poison of vipers is on their lips’ [Ps. 140:3].
‘Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness’ [Ps. 10:7].
‘Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know’ [Isa. 59:7f.; cf. Prov. 1:16].
‘There is no fear of God before their eyes’ [Ps. 36:1].
Three features of this grim biblical picture stand out.
First, it declares the ungodliness of sin. Near the beginning comes the statement that there is no one who seeks God (11), and at the end there is no fear of God before their eyes (18). This is more than an assertion that when people renounce God they tend to plunge recklessly into evil, whereas when they fear God, they shun evil. It is rather that the Bible identifies the essence of sin as ungodliness (cf. 1:18). God’s complaint is that we do not really ‘seek’ him at all, making his glory our supreme concern, that we have not set him before us, that there is no room for him in our thoughts, and that we do not love him with all our powers. Sin is the revolt of the self against God, the dethronement of God with a view to the enthronement of oneself. Ultimately, sin is the reckless determination to occupy the throne which belongs to God alone.
Second, this catalogue of Old Testament verses teaches the pervasiveness of sin. For sin affects every part of our human constitution, every faculty and function, including our mind, emotions, sexuality, conscience and will. In verses 13–17 there is a deliberate listing of different parts of the body. Thus, their throats are open graves, full of corruption and infection; their tongues practise deceit, instead of being dedicated to the truth; their lips spread poison like snakes; their mouths are filled with bitter curses; their feet are swift in the pursuit of violence, and scatter ruin and misery in their path, instead of walking in the way of peace; and their eyes are looking in the wrong direction; they do not reverence God.
These bodily limbs and organs were created and given us so that through them we might serve people and glorify God. Instead, they are used to harm people and in rebellion against God. This is the biblical doctrine of ‘total depravity’, which I suspect is rejected only by those who misunderstand it. It has never meant that human beings are as depraved as they could possibly be. Such a notion is manifestly absurd and untrue, and is contradicted by our everyday observation. Not all human beings are drunkards, criminals, adulterers or murderers. Besides, Paul has shown how some people sometimes are able ‘by nature’ to obey the law (2:14, 27). No, the ‘totality’ of our corruption refers to its extent (twisting and tainting every part of our humanness), not to its degree (depraving every part of us absolutely). As Dr J. I. Packer has put it succinctly, on the one hand, ‘no one is as bad as he or she might be’, while on the other, ‘no action of ours is as good as it should be’.
Third, the Old Testament quotations teach the universality of sin, both negatively and positively. Negatively, there is no one righteous, not even one (10); there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God (11); there is no one who does good, not even one (12b). Positively, ‘all have swerved aside, all alike have become debased’ (12a, reb). The repetition hammers home the point. Twice we are told that ‘all’ have gone their own way, four times that ‘no one’ is righteous, and twice that ‘not even one’ is an exception. For to be ‘righteous’ is to live in obedience to God’s law.
Verse 19 has proved a puzzle to commentators. Its purpose is clear, namely that every mouth may be silenced and that the whole world may be held accountable to God (19b). But how is this conclusion reached? The probable explanation is that Jewish people reading the series of Old Testament quotations would assume that they applied to those wicked and lawless Gentiles. And of course God’s judgment would fall on them. But Paul reminds Jews of their common knowledge: we know that whatever the law says [here meaning the Old Testament in general], it says to those who are under the law (19a, literally, ‘within’ the law), namely themselves as Jews, so that they will be included in the judgment as well. In this way every mouth is stopped, every excuse silenced, and the whole world, having been found guilty, is liable to God’s judgment. These words, writes Professor Cranfield, ‘evoke the picture of the defendant in court who, given the opportunity to speak in his own defence, is speechless because of the weight of the evidence which has been brought against him’. There is nothing to wait for but the pronouncement and carrying out of the sentence.
So this is the point to which the apostle has been relentlessly moving. The idolatrous and immoral Gentiles are ‘without excuse’ (1:20). All critical moralists, whether Jews or Gentiles, equally ‘have no excuse’ (2:1). The special status of the Jews does not excuse them. In fact, all the inhabitants of the whole world (3:19), without any exception, are indefensible (hypodikos) before God. And by now the reason is plain. It is because all have known something of God and of morality (through the Bible in the case of the Jews, through nature in the case of the Gentiles), but all have disregarded and even stifled their knowledge in order to go their own way. So all are guilty and condemned before God.
Therefore, Paul concludes, no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law (20a). What does he mean by this expression? ‘This is the first appearance’, writes Professor Dunn, ‘of a key phrase whose importance for understanding Paul’s thought in this letter can hardly be over-emphasized, but which has in fact frequently been misunderstood by successive generations of commentators.’
The traditional understanding of works of the law, promoted particularly by Lutheran scholars, is that Paul is referring to good works of righteousness and charity, done in obedience to the law and regarded by the Jews as the commendable ground on which God accepted them.
This tradition is now being challenged, especially by Professor E. P. Sanders, on the ground that Palestinian Judaism was not a religion of works-righteousness and that therefore Paul cannot have been denying what the Jews were not affirming, namely salvation by works of merit. Instead, as Professor Dunn explains, Paul’s target was narrower and quite specific, namely the ‘devout Jews’ who took it for granted that they were securely within God’s covenant, provided that they maintained their membership by ‘works of the law’, namely those ‘boundary markers’ like sabbath observance and the food laws which distinguished them from the Gentiles. Furthermore, the reason Paul denied salvation by these works is that he was opposing privilege, not merit. For if salvation was by circumcision and cultural practices, only Jews and proselytes were included and Gentiles were excluded. In reaction to this, Paul emphasized not so much the freeness of God’s grace (against merit) as its impartiality (against elitism). Salvation ‘by works of the law’ bolstered pride and privilege; salvation by faith abolished them.
How shall we respond to this increasingly popular reconstruction? At least, I think, in two ways. First, Professor Dunn’s thesis (what he calls ‘the new perspective on Paul’), namely that by ‘works of the law’ Paul meant distinctively Jewish ‘identity markers’ like sabbath, circumcision and food regulations, is far from proved. The expression contains no hint within itself that the ‘works’ in mind are only cultural–ceremonial and not moral. Nor does Paul’s use of it suggest this limitation. For example, Romans 3:20 concludes Paul’s long argument that all human beings are morally sinful and guilty, including Jews whose transgressions include stealing and adultery (2:21f.), not ritual offences; the second part of Romans 3:20 defines the law’s function as revealing sin; Romans 3:28 contrasts justification by faith with ‘works of the law’, which cannot mean ceremonial rules in the law of Moses, as is clear from the example of Abraham (4:2) who lived long before Moses. Dr Stephen Westerholm, who develops a powerful argument along these lines, writes: ‘The “works of the law” which do not justify are the demands of the law that are not met, not those observed for the wrong reasons by Jews.’
Our second response to Professor Dunn’s thesis relates to the question why Paul is so negative about ‘works’. There is no doubt, we agree, that Paul is opposing Jewish exclusivism, especially the notion that the Jews’ favoured status automatically spared them from judgment. But the whole context suggests that he was attacking merit also, that is, Jewish reliance on moral (and not merely ceremonial) works. For the law by whose works no-one can be justified (20a) is surely the same law which declares all human beings to be sinful (19a), so that the whole world is guilty before God (19b). Indeed, the reason the law cannot justify sinners is precisely that its function is to expose and to condemn their sin (20b). And the reason the law condemns us is that we break it.
If, then, Paul was opposing the concept of salvation by good works, who were his opponents? And how shall we respond to Professor Sanders’ thesis that this was not the stance of Palestinian Judaism? In general, I think Douglas Moo is correct, as indeed I have tried to argue in the Preliminary Essay (pp. 8ff.), ‘that Palestinian Judaism was more legalistic than Sanders has found . . . Even in Sanders’ proposal, works play such a prominent role that it is fair to speak of a synergism of faith and works that elevates works to a crucial salvific role.’ Since good works, according to E. P. Sanders, were essential if Jews were to ‘stay in’ the covenant, they played ‘a necessary and instrumental role in salvation’. The alternative possibility, which John Ziesler suggests, is that Paul was ‘opposing a perversion of Judaism, arising out of official Judaism but in spite of it, a popular perversion which did think of earning God’s favour’. That some doctrine of self-salvation was widespread in Judaism is surely evident not only from Paul’s polemic but also from the teaching of Jesus himself, for example in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, and above all from our own knowledge of the proud human heart.
Returning to verse 20, we should see it as the climax of Paul’s argument not just against Jewish self-confidence, but against every attempt at self-salvation. For, Paul continues, through the law we become conscious of our sin (20b). That is, what the law brings is the knowledge of sin, not the forgiveness of sin. In spite of the contemporary fashion of saying that Luther got it wrong, I think he got it right:
The principal point . . . of the law . . . is to make men not better but worse; that is to say, it sheweth unto them their sin, that by the knowledge thereof they may be humbled, terrified, bruised and broken, and by this means may be driven to seek grace, and so come to that blessed Seed [Christ].
In conclusion, how should we respond to Paul’s devastating exposure of universal sin and guilt, as we read it now? We should not try to evade it by changing the subject and talking instead of the need for self-esteem, or by blaming our behaviour on our genes, nurturing, education or society. It is an essential part of our dignity as human beings that, however much we may have been affected by negative influences, we are not their helpless victims, but rather responsible for our conduct. Our first response to Paul’s charge, then, should be to make it as certain as we possibly can that we have ourselves accepted this divine diagnosis of our human condition as true, and that we have fled from the just judgment of God on our sins to the only refuge there is, namely Jesus Christ who died for our sins. For we have no merit to plead and no excuse to make. We too stand before God speechless and condemned. Only then shall we be ready to hear the great ‘But now’ of verse 21, as Paul begins to explain how God has intervened through Christ and his cross for our salvation.
Second, these chapters challenge us to share Christ with others. We cannot keep the good news to ourselves. All around us are men and women who know enough of God’s glory and holiness to make their rejection of him inexcusable. They too, like us, stand condemned. Their knowledge, their religion and their righteousness cannot save them. Only Christ can. Their mouth is closed in guilt; let our mouth be opened in testimony!