Everybody Needs the Gospel (Romans 3:9-20)

Introduction

99% IS NOT ENOUGH

Back in the 90’s a California research firm considered the advertising slogan for Ivory soap: the ads claimed that Ivory soap was 99.4% pure. Then they asked themselves the question: “What if everything in the world operated at 99% efficiency?” Here’s what they discovered:

drinking water would be unsafe one hour out of each month.

two planes would crash land - each day - at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.

five hundred surgeries would be botched each week

and 20,000 prescriptions would be improperly filled each year.

I wouldn’t want to drink that water. I wouldn’t want to fly on those planes. And I wouldn’t want to have those pharmacists and surgeons anywhere near me or my family.

99% efficiency is NOT acceptable in these matters, because missing these important things by just “that much” (just 1%) can many times be deadly.

Or consider this. If you're traveling and you’re off course by just one degree, after one foot, you'll miss your target by 0.2 inches. Trivial, right? But what about as you go farther out?

After 100 yards, you'll be off by 5.2 feet. Not huge, but noticeable.

After a mile, you'll be off by 92.2 feet. One degree is starting to make a difference.

After traveling from San Francisco to L.A., you'll be off by 6 miles.

If you were trying to get from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., you'd end up on the other side of Baltimore, 42.6 miles away.

Traveling around the globe from Washington, DC, you'd miss by 435 miles and end up in Boston.

In a rocket going to the moon, you'd be 4,169 miles off (nearly twice the diameter of the moon).

Over time, a mere one-degree error in course makes a huge difference!

In the passage we just read — Romans 3:9-20 — Paul makes it very clear that no one, I mean NO ONE, even comes close to 99% efficiency when it comes to meeting God’s standard for holiness and righteousness. And besides that, just as the research firm estimated the disasters that would occur each day if all we expected was a 99% efficiency rate, one sin — just one degree off target — violates God’s standard; and that one violation separates us at an eternal distance from God.

We’ve already read, in Romans 1, how depraved the human soul is. So sinful is humankind, that people not only sin against God, people brag about sin, encourage sin, and applaud sin. Speaking to the Gentiles in the church in Rome, Paul concluded that their dismissal of God placed them on a path of eternal destruction and judgment. In Romans 2, Paul warned the Jews in the church not to put too much hope in being a “good Jew”. Because they had the advantage of being the receivers of God’s Word, and since God put into writing His standards of living, they, like the Gentiles but in a different way, were without excuse. And last week, in the first section of Romans 3, we listened as Paul answered the objections to the gospel of Jesus Christ from both groups.

In this second section of Romans 3, Paul argued that every single person is subject to God’s judgement: the Gentiles because they ignore what knowledge they have about God from creation and their own God-built consciences; the Jew because they could never keep the law, not nearly even 99% of it.

Sin is a crushing burden (3:9)

If we’ve been paying attention, we will be confused by Paul’s question and answer in verse 9. Think back to the question that began Chapter 3: Romans 3:1 “So what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the benefit of circumcision?” Do you remember the answer?

Considerable in every way.’

In verse 9, Paul asked a similar question: Romans 3:9 “What then? Are we any better off? But what’s his answer this time? Not at all!

What? Is Paul inconsistent? No. In the first question, Paul is emphasizing to the Jews the incredible advantage they had over the rest of the world, because God chose them as the first receptors of His Word, as His chosen people to make Him known to the world, and as the people from whom the Messiah would come. This advantage also brought them a huge responsibility to live out God’s purpose. And we know that they fell short; as all of us do.

But in the second question in 3:9, Paul has a different issue in mind. Though given great advantage and privilege by God, they were no better off than Gentiles who lacked that advantage and privilege. He continued: For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin,”

In this phrase, Paul personifies sin as a cruel tyrant who holds the human race imprisoned in guilt and under judgment. That reminds me of the warning God gave Cain when he was considering to kill his brother Abel. God warned Cain, Genesis 4:7 “If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

Likewise, Paul warns in 3:9 that sin is on top of us, weighs us down, and is a crushing burden.

In Greek mythology, the god Zeus punished Atlas, for his treachery. He condemned him to hold up on his shoulders the earth and the sky for eternity. The Greeks understood this myth as symbolic of strength and endurance. But we know better. No man can hold on his shoulders such a burden. Sin is a weight that no one can lift. That is the point that Paul wants us to get in verse 9.

All humanity is charged guilty of sin; and we have no excuse and no defense.

Everybody is a condemned sinner (3:10-18)

In verses 10-18, Paul used a rabbinical technique to make his point: stringing Scripture passages together like a string of pearls (v. 10-18). That’s a beautiful and sophisticated way of making an argument; and it reveals Paul’s well-educated mind. Remember, Paul studied with Gamaliel, one of the most heralded and famous teachers of his day. It would be equivalent to a young physicist studying with Einstein, or a young composer studying with Leonard Bernstein. (No rhyme intended). Anyway, Paul used this beautifully brilliant technique to display a grim biblical picture of the state of humankind very clear. Paul stringed together a series of seven Old Testament pearls: one from Ecclesiastes, five from the Psalms, and one from the prophet Isaiah, all of which bear witness to the unrighteousness of humankind, and strung together, form a very dark string of black, bleak pearls.

We can glean three realities about humankind from Paul’s pearled necklace.

1. Paul makes plain the ungodliness of sin.

a. In verse 11, Paul points out that "no one seeks God".

b. Verse 18-"There is no fear of God'

Point: When people renounce God, they end up —sooner or later — plunging themselves recklessly into diverse manners of evil. In the opposite, when we fear God, regard Him as present, we tend to avoid evil. This reminds me of Psalm 14:12: "The fool says in his heart. There is no God. They are corrupt; they do vile deeds. There is no one who does good."

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 self-deification, the reckless determination to occupy the throne which belongs to God alone.

2. The pearls give evidence of the pervasiveness of sin.

a. Sin affects every part of our human condition: our faculties, our functions, our mind, emotions, sexuality, conscience and will.

b. Verses 13-17, Paul gives us a deliberate list of different parts of the body:

throat: an open grave; i.e., corruption, infection, and decay.

tongues: deceit (rather than truth)

lips: spread poison, like snakes

mouths: speak curses and bitterness (“let your speech be seasoned with salt", Colossians 4:6 “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.”

feet: rather than walking a path of righteousness, they move swiftly (quick and intentional-passionately) to violence. Their path is wickedness. They do not know peace. (Notice that more words are spent on feet than the other body parts. Interesting.)

eyes: looking in the wrong direction: away from God. No reverence for Him. (This reminds me of John Piper's reason for missions: Mission exists because worship doesn't"-at least not the worship of the Om True God.

These bodily limbs and organs were created and given to 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’

3. The pearls give evidence of the universality of sin.

"there is no one righteous, not even one (10)

There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God

There is no one who does good, not even one (12)

All have turned away, all have become worthless (12)

Repetition hammers home the point. For to be ‘righteous’ is to live in conformity to God’s law, and ‘the best man, the noblest, the most learned, the most philanthropic; the greatest idealist, the greatest thinker, say what you like—there has never been a man who can stand up to the test of the law. Drop your plumb-line, and he is not true to it.’

Paul’s Conclusion (3:19-20)

How did Paul reach his conclusion?

Every mouth may be silenced

The whole world is held accountable to God. "Every and"whole": all, without exception,

subject to God's judgment.

Hearing Paul's string of pearls from the 0.5, the Jewish Scriptures, perhaps the Jews assumed that Paul was pointing his fingers to those wicked and lawless Gentiles. However, v.19 speaks to those wicked and legalist Jews, "the law speaks to those who are subject to the law."The Jews. Romans 1:18ff point to the wicked and lawless Gentiles; but here, Paul strings together pearls that collect the entire world into one dispicable whole. The whole world, Jew and Gentile, is found guilty, and is liable to God's judgment. All the inhabitants of the world are inexcusable before God, without defense. All have disregarded the knowledge they've been given, and intentionally disregarded God and went their own ways. Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.” Therefore, Paul concluded no one is justified by the works of the law. For in fact, no one can meet all the demands of the Law. Paul said this in Galatians.

Galatians 2:21 CSB

I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

Galatians 3:10–13 CSB

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed. Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith. But the law is not based on faith; instead, the one who does these things will live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

Paul's conclusion in verse 20 is not only against Jewish self-confidence-thinking that by their status they were exempt from God's judgment-but against every form of self-salvation. What the law brings is not salvation, but the knowledge of sin, and the need for salvation. (Martin Luther)

What this means

How do we respond to Paul’s exposure of universal sin and guilt?

Be grateful for God's grace that saved us from sin. < humility and holiness.

Avoid falling into the trap of self-reliance

Feast on the Word.

Abide in Christ.

Walk in the Spirit.

3. Share Christ with others.

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, apart from God’s grace. Their knowledge, their religion and their righteousness cannot save them. Only Christ can. Their mouth is closed in guilt; let our mouths be opened in testimony of the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Everybody needs the gospel.