Our living God, Pt 6: No One is Righteous

Romans 3:9-20                      9What shall we conclude then?  Do we have any advantage?  Not at all!  For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.  10As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.  12All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”  13“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.”  “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”  14“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”  15“Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16ruin and misery mark their ways, 17and the way of peace they do not know.”  18“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  19Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.  20Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

All under the power of sin

When Paul asks, “Do we have any advantage?” he was addressing a common belief in those days that the Mosaic Law elevated the Jewish people to a higher place than the Gentiles.  They thought they received righteousness through the Law itself and since the Gentiles didn’t have the Law, they were inferior people.  This isn’t very far from the modern tendency to consider ourselves better and more blessed than those other people who don’t believe as we do.

But vs 9 pretty much settles the issue…that human depravity is the universal condition of humankind.   No group of people, in this case Jew or Gentile has an inherent advantage when it comes to righteousness before God.  The phrase "under sin" conveys the idea of being enslaved to sin, indicating that human nature is fundamentally corrupted and unable to break free from sin’s grasp by its own efforts.  There is a little bit of a problem here contained in the phrase ‘human depravity’.  We modern humans like to think of depravity as particularly heinous acts like bestiality or child pornography, but we should remember that all sin is offensive to God.  Even the so-called ‘white sins’ like lying or cheating on taxes are an offense to God’s righteousness

The Pharisees liked to claim that they were above sin, that they kept all the 613 commandments in their Scripture (our Old Testament), and that they were therefore sufficiently righteous and holy.  But by addressing both Jews and Greeks, Paul unifies humanity under a single moral indictment—everyone is guilty before God.  This establishes the necessity of divine intervention for salvation since human effort is inadequate to overcome sin’s power.  The theological implication is profound: sin is not merely an act but a state of being. It affects all people, irrespective of their background or knowledge of the law.

No one seeks God

1The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.  2The LORD looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.  3All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. (Psalm 14:1-3)

Paul is making the case that no one, left to their own devices, seeks after God.  While people may pursue religion or spirituality, their natural inclination is not toward the true and living God but toward idols, self-righteousness, or moral autonomy.  The human heart, in its fallen state, is not disposed to seek God on His terms but rather to redefine God according to its own preferences.  So, if righteousness cannot be attained through personal effort, and if no one seeks God, then salvation must be entirely initiated by God.

Even more to the point:  People are not naturally good, even though modern society wants to say so.  People don’t voluntarily seek God, in fact, they actively turn away from God

So that the mouth may be silenced

9Not a word from their mouth can be trusted; their heart is filled with malice.  Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they tell lies. (Psalm 5:9)

Sin is particularly pernicious…it corrupts our language, and causes our actions to be violent and destructive.  In fact, Paul uses dramatic words to point out that, rather than glorifying God, what comes out of our mouths is as destructive and deadly as the stench of a decaying body.

All of this makes clear that human beings have no righteousness at all in themselves, and the Mosaic Law doesn’t either, except that it at least points out how sinful we are so thoroughly that not one single person can offer any defense but trust only in the grace of God.  The problem, no more or less, is that people do not revere or acknowledge God as they should.

No one declared righteous

These verses make it clear that the Law, rather than serving as a means of attaining righteousness, functions as a tool to expose sin.  The Law does not justify; it convicts.  This is a crucial distinction in Paul’s theology.  Many Jews at the time believed that adherence to the Mosaic Law was the pathway to righteousness, but Paul dismantles this view by asserting that the Law merely reveals humanity’s inability to meet God’s perfect standard.  The phrase "no one will be declared righteous" (v.20) underscores the futility of trying to earn salvation through moral or religious works.  Instead, the purpose of the Law is to bring awareness of sin.  Paul’s argument leaves no room for self-justification—every person is accountable to God, and no one can achieve righteousness through their own efforts.  Since the Law exposes sin rather than removing it, the only hope for salvation is through a means outside of human effort—namely, the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

What about me?

I suppose that all of us have been raised under the idea that all people are basically good inside.  It is common, but wrong.  Most of us don’t do horrible things…we don’t murder for instance, but nonetheless most of us also live our live putting ourselves first.  This is completely against the two Greatest Commandments:  We must love the LORD our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we must love our neighbor as ourselves.  None of us do this particularly well, and this passage is all about why we don’t.  we don’t seek God and our language and actions reflect that.

Believer, you are a child of God; He loves you no matter what.  You can’t earn your way to him, but the good news is that He has provided a way through his Son.  Oddly, knowing you have no righteousness in yourself is a sort of release because it means you don’t have to struggle or work hard to be good.  It just means you must trust God.  When he looks at you, he sees his Son.  Isn’t that a wonderful thing?