The whole world guilty before God

Introduction

Good morning, Church. It’s good to see you all here. Actually, I half-expected the church to be half-empty this morning, so I’m glad that you’re here.

We’re going to share together from God’s Word. This morning, we’re going to look at Romans chapter 3, from verse 9 through to verse 20. In the CSB, this portion of Scripture is entitled “The Whole World Guilty Before God,” and that is the title of my sermon this morning.

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray together.

Our Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word. We know, Lord, that all of it is God-breathed and all of it is useful for training. So, Lord, we pray this morning that as we hear Your Word, we would be attentive to it. Lord, even as we take it in, that we would remember it and apply it in our lives. May it not be something that we have heard today and is gone tomorrow, but something that sticks with us and that we can use in our daily lives as we live out our relationship with You.

Father God, we ask that You would bless Your Word this morning to us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Scripture Reading

Romans chapter 3, from verse 9 through to verse 20:

9 What then? Are we any better off?[a] Not at all! For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin,[b] 10 as it is written:

There is no one righteous, not even one.
11 There is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away;
all alike have become worthless.
There is no one who does what is good,
not even one.[c]
13 Their throat is an open grave;
they deceive with their tongues.[d]
Vipers’ venom is under their lips.[e]
14 Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.[f]
15 Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and wretchedness are in their paths,
17 and the path of peace they have not known.[g]
18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.[h]

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are subject to the law,[i] so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God’s judgement.[j] 20 For no one will be justified[k] in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.

Romans 3:9-20

I am sure that the Lord will bless the reading of His Word this morning.

Context: The Church in Rome

We know that this letter was written by Paul and addressed to the Christian community in Rome. It was addressed to a diverse group of people—some Jews, some Gentiles—but they were all believers, Christians, if you want to put it that way.

We need to remember that Rome was the capital city of the Roman Empire; it was the epicenter of political power, commerce, and culture. It was a melting pot of ethnicities, languages, and religions. The Jewish community represented a significant and well-established presence in the city. As a result, tensions between Jews and Gentiles were not uncommon. Pastor Mark, in past weeks, has alluded to the edict passed by Emperor Claudius, who expelled the Jews from Rome because of religious disturbances. By the time Paul wrote this letter, the edict had been lifted and the Jews were returning; however, the scars of that division still remained in the community.

The Jews brought with them a rich heritage of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Law, and the Prophets. The Gentiles, on the other hand, had no such thing; they came from a variety of pagan backgrounds with diverse practices. This diversity in the church led to practical and theological challenges. The Jewish Christians struggled with the integration of Gentile Christians who did not observe the Mosaic law, which included circumcision and dietary restrictions. The Gentile Christians sometimes viewed these things as obsolete and irrelevant in the light of the New Covenant that is in the blood of Jesus.

It is into this cultural and religious mix of humanity that Paul writes to address these tensions, emphasizing above all the unity of all believers in Christ. That is just some context for the Book of Romans and where we are at the moment.

A Legal Framework

In Chapter 2 of The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act number 108 of 1996, the fundamental rights to which a person is entitled in law are entrenched. The presumption of innocence—the right of the accused person to be presumed innocent until proven guilty—is embodied in section 35(3)(h) and is one of those rights. In terms of this section, the onus in a criminal case is on the state to prove that the accused is guilty of the crime with which he is charged. Furthermore, there is no duty placed on the accused to say anything during the plea proceedings or during his trial, nor is he obliged to testify at all. It also states that the onus of proof in a criminal case has to be discharged by the state. If the evidence establishes the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt—that’s the operative thing—the corollary, of course, is that the accused is entitled to be acquitted if it is reasonably possible that he might be innocent.

As we come to this portion of Scripture this morning, I’d like to unpack it using that legal framework that is part of our constitution. These verses we’ve read today are the conclusion of everything that Paul has been writing about, all the way from verse 18 in chapter 1 through to verse 8 in chapter 3 (which is where Pastor Mark went up to last week). Its application is to the Jews, the religious leaders, and the Gentiles in Rome.

The Accusation

As we start this portion of Scripture, we begin with an accusation. Paul starts in verse 9 with a question: “What then? What can we conclude from what I have just written? Are we any better off?” Paul addresses the Jewish believers using that inclusive word “we.” His answer to that question is immediate and very simple: “Not at all!”

He qualifies that answer and clarifies it for us: “We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.” The use of grammar there is quite important for us to understand. It’s not that Jews and Gentiles are alike—they cannot be, if you consider all of their religious beliefs, their cultural differences, and their traditions. No, rather, we are all alike under the power of sin.

If we go back to chapter 2, from verse 9 through to verse 11, we read: “There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.” So, Jews and Gentiles under the law are equal. The charge is brought that all of us are alike under the power of sin. This charge is not just applicable to the believers in Rome that are “loved by God and called to be his holy people,” as Paul refers to them. It very much applies to all of us today who are loved by God and are called to be His people.

The Evidence

So, we have a charge. In a court of law, evidence would have to be presented in support of that charge; otherwise, we would not be able to reach a verdict. Paul provides the evidence, and we need to bear in mind that the prosecutor—the prosecution being Paul in this case—needs to provide this evidence. He does so by referring back to the Hebrew Scriptures and begins with a phrase which lets us know this: “as it is written.” Here, he is referring back to the Psalms, to Ecclesiastes, and also to the Book of Isaiah.

Paul wants to drive home his accusation that all people alike are under sin and merit God’s wrath. He lists three different kinds of sin as we go through this portion of Scripture: first, we sin against God; second, we sin against each other by the words that we speak and the language that we use; and third, we sin against each other through violence and bloodshed.

Sin Against God

Beginning with Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 (if you go back to your Bibles, you’ll notice those two Psalms are virtually a carbon copy of each other), Psalm 14 is entitled “A Portrait of Sinners.” It reads as follows: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There’s no God.’ They are corrupt; they do vile deeds; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the human race to see if there is one who is wise, one who seeks God. All have turned away, all alike have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” The word “fool” there refers to a person who is morally deficient. So, we could say the morally deficient person says in his heart, “There is no God.”

If we look at the Book of Ecclesiastes 7:20: “There is certainly no one righteous on the earth who does good and never sins.”

If we go back to God’s Law—The Ten Commandments—and look at the first four of them, God expects certain behavior from us in our relationship with Him. The first thing He says is, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” The second is, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below, and you shall not bow down to it.” Thirdly, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.” And fourthly, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”

I think if God had to look down from heaven today, He would see a morally deficient world with the same characteristics that David wrote about in the Psalms, without a doubt. How can we say that we understand? How can we say that we seek God? How can we say that we have not turned away? How can we say we are not corrupt? “There is no one who does good, not even one.”

If you look at the world today, look at the way people behave. When things are going well in their lives, they worship idols. When people have an increase or a promotion in a job, the first thing they want to do is buy a bigger house, get a better car. They strive for those things; they place great importance on those things because they want other people to see that they are doing well, and they lose their first love for God.

You just have to watch a movie these days, or even a program on TV, to understand how often God’s name is misused. It’s common, and we should cringe when we hear it.

We also come to the fact that in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 27, it says: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The world today embraces the “woke” movement that promotes a whole host of different agendas. Do we think that we know better than the Creator? The world is accepting of same-sex marriage these days, but God declares that marriage should be between a natural man and a natural woman. There are even churches today that have abandoned God’s Word in favor of political correctness.

God’s fourth command says, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” We’ve just turned the Sabbath into another day. People work on the Sabbath; people go shopping on the Sabbath; people play sport on the Sabbath. It seems that the world does just about anything except worship God on the Sabbath. Genesis 2 tells us: “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” In the world today, the Sabbath is not being remembered, nor is it being kept holy. Sin against God is still very much in evidence today.

Sin Against Others with Our Speech

Secondly, we sin against others with our speech—the sins of our tongues. Here, Paul refers back to Psalm 5:8-9: “Lead me, Lord, in your righteousness because of my adversaries—make your way straight before me. For there is nothing reliable in what they say; destruction is within them; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongues.” Psalm 140:1-3 says: “Rescue me, Lord, from evil men. They make their tongues as sharp as a snake’s bite; vipers’ venom is under their lips.” Psalm 10:4-7 says: “In all his scheming, the wicked person arrogantly thinks, ‘There is no accountability, since there’s no God.’ His ways are always secure; your lofty judgments have no effect on him; he scoffs at all his adversaries. He says to himself, ‘I will never be moved—from generation to generation I will be without calamity.’ Cursing, deceit, and violence fill his mouth; trouble and malice are under his tongue.”

Matthew 12:34—Jesus addresses the Pharisees: “You brood of vipers, how can you speak good things when you are evil? For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.” Matthew 15:11: “It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth—this defiles a person.” James chapter 3, from verse 3 through to verse 6: “Now if we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we direct their whole bodies. And consider ships—though very large and driven by fierce winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So too the tongue is a small part of the body, yet it boasts great things. Consider how a small blaze sets a large forest ablaze. And the tongue is a fire. The tongue, a world of unrighteousness, is placed among our members. It stains the whole body, sets the course of life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”

Not very encouraging words from Scripture this morning. But is there comparative evidence of this type of sin in the world today?

Maybe some of us can think back to a certain place called Inanda, and those wonderful things we saw with firefighters putting on a demonstration of putting out a fire from a decorated swimming pool, which they were trying to convince everybody was a firepool. I doubt whether that was true in any way.

What about COVID-19? As we came into that particular pandemic, we were told of the suspicion that the coronavirus may have escaped, accidentally or otherwise, from a lab in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first recorded. The supporters of this particular theory pointed out the presence of a major biological research facility in the city: the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They noted that this particular institute had been studying coronaviruses in bats for over a decade, and of course, that institute was only about a 40-minute drive from the market in Wuhan where the first cluster of infections emerged.

What about a certain Dr. Anthony Fauci? In 2021, he said he was not convinced that the virus had originated naturally, and that in itself was a shift from what he had said earlier when he thought it most likely that COVID had spread from animals to humans. This is called the “natural origin” theory. This theory argues that the virus spread naturally from animals, without the involvement of any scientists or laboratories. The supporters of this natural origin hypothesis say that COVID-19 emerged in bats and then jumped to humans, most likely through another animal, or an intermediary host. That idea was backed up by the World Health Organization report, which said it was “likely to very likely” that COVID had made it to humans through an intermediate host. This hypothesis was widely accepted at the start of the pandemic, but as time has worn on, scientists have found no virus in either bats or any other animal that matches the genetic makeup of COVID-19. I suppose that leads to some doubt on that particular theory.

There was also an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory pushed by Chinese propagandists. They said that this particular virus had been made and leaked from Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, in the US. That city is about 80km north of Washington DC, and at one time it was the center of the US biological weapons program.

During that time, we were forced to wear masks that had no way of protecting us from this virus. Many people were vaccinated with an experimental shot that was supposed to save them from the virus, and on top of that, they were told that they needed multiple boosters to make it work and keep them safe. Despite that, millions of people died. Shutdowns were enforced through disinformation and falsehoods, and even news channels were reporting narratives in support of the lies. Lies and deceit still abound in the world today, unfortunately, to the detriment of mankind.

Sin Against Each Other Through Violence

Thirdly, we come to sins against each other through violence—man’s propensity to shed blood and resolve issues through bloodshed and war. Psalm 140:1-2: “Rescue me, Lord, from evil men; keep me safe from violent men who plan evil in their hearts; they stir up wars all day long.” Isaiah 59:6b-9: “Their works are sinful works, and violent acts are in their hands. Their feet run after evil, and they rush to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are sinful thoughts; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths. They have not known the path of peace, and there is no justice in their ways. They have made their roads crooked; no one who walks on them will know peace. Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We hope for light, but there is darkness; for brightness, but we live in the night.”

Are we able to apply these things to the world today without thinking too hard or really applying my mind a lot? There are so many conflicts that we can think of taking place in the world today, right now.

– The war ongoing in Gaza has been there since October 2023.
– The war in Ukraine has been ongoing since February 2022.
– There’s been a civil war raging in Sudan since April 2023.
– There’s a conflict in Myanmar that had been going on since 1948. It stopped for a short while, but in 2021 a military coup returned the country to military rule, and in 2023 it started up again as various militias and groups began fighting against the government.
– There’s been a civil war going on in Syria for over a decade.

The stories of hardship and loss that we hear around all of these events… We’ve seen the streams of refugees fleeing from these conflicts into other countries.

Even here in our own country of South Africa, we find people fighting for positions in local government. Elected councilors are being gunned down as people compete for turf and endeavor to enhance their lifestyles. Most of those people who are killed are just victims of internal political battles for power and control over municipal budgets. We’ve learned of extortion that takes place around the construction industry, as the “construction mafia” disrupt and close building sites when their demands are not met. Whistleblowers in corruption have been assassinated.

What about the Holocaust during the Second World War? Atrocious. The Rwandan Genocide that happened in the 1990s between the Hutus and the Tutsis.

We hear of gender-based violence that disproportionately affects women and girls in our country. It’s widespread, and it’s a systematic and deeply entrenched problem in institutions, cultures, and traditions.

During the days of turmoil and unrest in South Africa in the late ’80s up to the ’90s, leading up to our first democratic election, we heard—and sometimes saw on television—people publicly executed by necklacing. Man has a propensity towards violence and bloodshed, and it is alive and well in the world today, without a doubt.

The Root Cause: No Fear of God

Psalm 5:5-6 says: “The boastful cannot stand in your sight; you hate all evildoers; you destroy those who tell lies; the Lord abhors violent and treacherous people.” If you look at that same portion of scripture in the NIV, it says: “I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: there is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Proverbs 1:7 says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Proverbs 9:10 says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Galatians 6:7-8 says: “Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.”

There is a boldness that is exhibited in the world as we continue in our sin. It is exacerbated more so today, even as it was in those days when Paul wrote, by the fact that we have lost our fear of the Lord. It has been replaced by this idea of a “loving God who knows nothing else.” That is not true. God is also a God of wrath, and we need to fear Him. We shouldn’t be afraid of Him, but we should fear what God represents. We’ve lost that in the world today. We are quite brazen about the things that we do; we don’t care.

The sin of man in bloodshed and war goes on, and it is very much in evidence today. The fact that we have lost our fear of the Lord, for me, underscores the arguments that Paul has made because it gives us a reason for what is going on. We need to be careful and warned of these things.

The Verdict

So, as we come to the verdict in this particular case, we have brought a charge, and you have heard the evidence taken from Scripture, but also from some of the things going on in the world today. Paul has presented the evidence on man’s sinfulness and reaches his verdict in these final two verses.

“Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are subject to the law, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God’s judgment. For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.”

There is no way for us to attain a right standing before God through the works of the law. Paul concludes his argument, having addressed the Gentiles from verse 18 in chapter 1 to the end of that chapter, and then having addressed the Jews from the beginning of chapter 2 until verse 8 of chapter 3. The works of the law cannot justify a person because the purpose of the law is not to justify our works, no matter what merit we may think they deserve. We can never measure up to the standard that He set out for us in God’s law. That law was never intended to justify us, and it has no power to help us in this way. Rather, it condemns us because it reveals the fact of our sin and sin’s evil and condemnatory character. When we hold our lives and our conduct up in comparison to God’s holy law, we gain meaningful insight and knowledge of our own sin.

So, unlike my introduction where I made the point about the principle that in our law under the Constitution we are innocent until proven guilty, Paul doesn’t say that. He says, in plain and simple language, we are sinful and incapable of righteousness. The opposite legal principle is applied here: we are guilty until proven innocent.

The accusation has been brought. The evidence has been presented. It proves our guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and there is no defense that can be offered and no possibility of reasonable doubt. We are all alike under sin. We are completely fallen in God’s eyes, and there is no argument that we can make in mitigation that can be brought to change that.

Conclusion and Hope

So, as I draw this to a close, let me say: it sounds bad, but there is hope. However, I’m stopping here, and if you want to hear more about it, you’re going to have to come back next week and listen to Pastor Mark as he continues on in the Book of Romans, at the end of chapter 3.

But here’s the thing: all of us, whether we are believers or unbelievers, in our own individual capacity, we all stand condemned without hope and without defense. So, if you are not a believer this morning, that is where you stand right now: condemned, guilty, without hope. The fact is that you are in danger and you need God’s love. You are in big trouble. If that is you this morning, I would be happy to help you to change that. Please speak to me after the service this morning or as you leave.

But if you are a believer this morning, rejoice! Why? Because God has done a magnificent work through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross. The price that you should pay for your sin has already been paid, and you are justified through your faith in Him.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray.

Father, thank You for Your Word this morning. The fact is that Paul doesn’t pull any punches here. He makes it very clear that we are guilty under sin—and not just one, but all of us. There are no exclusions. There are no good people in the world today. No one who does good. No one who seeks God.

Father God, as we take note of that this morning, may You just speak into our hearts and lives, and may we rejoice in thanks as we realize just how fortunate we are. In Your love, You sent Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for us. That punishment which is laid on us, that charge that we are guilty of, is removed because of the work that He did on the cross.

So we bless You and we thank You for that this morning.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.