Romans 3:9-20 - All Jews and Gentiles are under sin

Romans 3:9-20 - All Jews and Gentiles are under sin

Here are some  Piper highlights and human lowlights

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One of the most important truths to hold up in the world is that all human beings, even though created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), are corrupted by the power of sin. We are not morally good by nature. We are morally bad by nature. In Ephesians 2:3, Paul says we are all “by nature children of wrath.” The attitudes and thoughts and actions that deserve the wrath of God come from us by nature. In Colossians 3:6, we are called “sons of disobedience.” We are so disposed to disobedience against God that it is as though “disobedience” is our father. We are chips of the old block of disobedience. We don’t just do sins, we are sinful. We are “under sin,” as verse 9 says. Sin is like a master or a king, and reigns over us and in us. Not that it coerces us to do what we don’t want to do, but makes us want to do what we ought not to do. We are not innocent victims of sin. We are co-conspirators with sin against God.

 

So as we look at Paul’s final, summary diagnosis in this section, keep thinking: this is good, this is good. Because for all this bad news about my true condition, there is a remedy. And the only reason for telling me the bad news is so that I will understand the remedy and take it—namely, the righteousness of God, freely given to those who really trust in Christ.

 

There are two main questions I want to try to answer in verses 9–18. One is: How does Paul support verse 9 and the sinfulness of all men on the basis of the Old Testament in all these quotations in verses 10–18? And the other is: How does he describe the state of being “under sin” in these verses? Or: What can we learn about sin, and about ourselves, and about the Gospel from the way Paul talks about sin in these verses?

 

How does Paul support the universal claim of sinfulness in verse 9 by quoting these six Old Testament passages which speak of righteous people as well as wicked people? He shows that both Jews and Gentiles are characterized as deeply corrupt and that the only way out of that corruption is by God’s gracious gift of faith and forgiveness that sets a person right with God (which, we know now, is) on the basis of the substitutionary sacrifice that would one day come in Jesus Christ.

 

How does he describe the state of being “under sin” in these verses? Or: What can we learn about sin, and about ourselves, and about the Gospel from the way Paul talks about sin in these verses?

 

1.    Ruined Relationship with God

Being “under sin” is first and foremost a ruined relation with God. Not, first, a ruined relation with other people. Verses 10–18 begin and end with this point. Verse 10–11: “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.” And verse 18: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Everything in between these verses has to do with the meaning of sin in human relations. But at the beginning and the end being “under sin” means that we have no fear of God and we don’t understand him and we don’t seek him. Verse 11: “There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.”

2.      Ruined Relationships with People

Being “under sin” means that our relations with people are ruined, even though God’s common grace may restrain us from treating people as badly as we might.

3.      Good News for Those “Under Sin”

4.      Finally, if this is who we really are by nature—people who are “under sin” and therefore, as Romans 1:18 says, under the wrath of God—then is it not the best news in the world that the entire point of the book of Romans and the whole Bible and of Christianity is that God, in his great mercy, has made a way of salvation from sin—the power of sin and the penalty of sin? We are just centimeters away from it. Romans 3:21–22—“But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.”