Take Your Finger Off The Scale Series

Romans 3: 9 – 20

Take Your Finger Off The Scale

9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. 10 As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; 11 There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. 12 They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.” 13 “Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit”; “The poison of asps is under their lips”; 14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 Destruction and misery are in their ways; 17 And the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

What is your opinion of scales? It does not matter if you are thinking, the old kind or the new electronic kind. In the long run you are getting ripped off.

I use to work for the US Postal Service and they had me and another guy do a study to determine if the Post Office was losing money with their use of electronic scales. Our final report indicated that the Post Office was in fact earning two to three hundred million in extra income by using the new scales. You see by human nature clerks would raise the charge to the next highest level even if the item was close in weight.

Of course you are wondering why I bring up this subject in the first place. You see, there are a lot of people who think that God will in the end weigh our good deeds to our bad deeds. In their thinking they believe that they have done a heck of a lot of good deeds so they will be weighed in the balance and found righteous. Sorry, it does not work like that.

You can list all your good deeds as ‘Atta boys’ and your bad deeds as ‘Aw shucks’ Heaven’s mathematical scales are different than what you may think. For you might accumulate millions of ‘Atta boys’, however, just one ]1] ‘Aw shucks’ erases all the ‘Atta boys’.

All good deeds never outweigh our bad deeds. We read in the book of Philippians chapter 3 which Paul also wrote, “1 Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. For me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe. 2 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation! 3 For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, 4 though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; 6 concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. 7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

Man is ultimately unprofitable in his attempts to be righteous. Sin has tainted us. We are going to see how Paul drives this point home to us. We are in need of Someone Who can come to our rescue.

Paul does not want any of his readers to think that this puts them in a better position than the Jews, for as he has already demonstrated they are all ‘under sin’. So he continues to underline the fact that the whole world is under judgment, and therefore guilty in the eyes of God.