Not Even One Series

If you were here this past week, you know that I just began a new sermon series entitled “Do Not Conform. Be Transformed.” It was based on Romans 12.1. Today we are starting to dig in to that series. We are going to look at a different section of Romans. We are going to look at Romans 3:10-12 in a sermon titled “Not Even One”.

As I mentioned last week, the goal of the series is to begin to take a serious look at the various patterns that we see in the world, particularly the negative patterns that tend to shape us and the rest of society. As I said before, if you are in the world you are either being shaped by culture or you are being shaped by God. There is no in-between. Our goal is to look at those patterns, the consequences of following them, and hopefully find a biblical response to keep us from yielding to them.

But before I just dive into those patterns I want to step back and give you a little bit of the big picture. Because although there are negative patterns in the world such as dishonesty, sexual immorality, drug addiction, violence, and bad behavior, underneath it all or over it all is this overarching pattern of sin. I could begin discussing the patterns of the world before talking about the overarching pattern of sin, but what might happen if you can’t connect a pattern to the overarching pattern of sin you may just dismiss it and tune it out. Or you may begin to isolate sin to a few pockets or segments of culture. Again, we have a big problem in the world and that problem again is called sin. What I want to get across today is sin is a universal problem that affects us all and the negative patterns we see in the world.

What I am going to do today is hit the idea of sin pretty much head on. I am going to start with the definition of sin from a theological dictionary. “Sin is the unbelief, distrust, and rejection of God and human displacement of God as the center of reality. It is expressed through concrete thought or actions. As an inherent part of the human condition, sin is universal and it is both corporate and individual.” I know that is a complex definition of sin. Some people prefer more of a simple terminology or a simple definition of sin. Some have actually suggested sin simply means “missing the mark” which although it may not be the best definition it is not totally wrong. As I have mentioned before, the word sin is actually an archery term that basically means missing the bulls-eye. The idea is that, when we sin, we miss the mark of God’s perfection. That is a good definition but to me it is inadequate. Think about archery. I haven’t engaged in archery in a number of years, and when I do it, I am not very good. But if you pull the bow back and you let the arrow fly and you are going for the bulls-eye and you miss it. But if you still hit the target at 100 or 200 yards, you feel pretty good about yourself, maybe saying to yourself “I didn’t hit the bulls-eye but I feel pretty good about my archery skills since at least I hit the target”.

Unfortunately, that is how people begin to view sin or immorality. I am not perfect but generally speaking if I weigh my good and my bad, I generally have more good than bad. I come pretty close to that mark. But again that is really an inadequate view of sin based on this lengthy theological definition. The definition speaks of the idea that when a person sins he or she is replacing God on the throne. In other words, they place themselves in the center of reality. At a minimum, that is insanity. At a maximum, it is blasphemy. Especially when you consider who the God of the universe is.

This definition also suggests that sin is universal. In today’s passage, we see that Paul is pretty clear about the fact that sin is universal. He writes in Romans 3:10-12 “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” As a side note some people like Paul and some people don’t like Paul. I suspect the people that don’t like Paul are thinking when they read this passage “there goes Paul again just being negative. He needs to see the good in people. He needs to focus on the positive.” Many in this camp would agree that there are bad people in the world. There are people out there trying to trip us up and take advantage of us, but generally speaking, people are pretty good. But according to this passage, that is simply not true. Paul doesn’t mince any words. He says there is “no one who does good, not even one”. Do you think he is trying to make a point? Yes, and his point is that there is no one that can be technically referred to as good.