3:9
“What then? Are we better than they?”
Therefore, what? I’ve just shown you that, in spite of their sin, God chose Israel and gave them a very specific advantage, namely the words of God Himself! What have I proved?
That we are better? Please note that the words for “than they” are not in the Greek. That’s why “than they” is in italics. Paul simply asks, the Jews have an advantage, but are we better? Paul is a Jew and seems to include himself in the question. Are we better, even with this advantage of having Scripture, better than the Gentiles?
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Think of it yourself. The people who know the most Bible, are they intrinsically better, I mean when you look at their heart? Is knowledge of the Word the basis for acceptance with God? Jews had and knew the Scriptures. Are they better?
“Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.”
Where did he do this previously? In 1:18, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” All. 2:8, 9, “… indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek…”
Notice “previously charged” or “proved already”. That’s a legal term. Paul is making a case here. I have proved my point, Jews and Greeks are equally guilty, they are all under sin.
“Under” sin. Sin is on top, dominating, controlling, directing. Like in a wrestling match, you weigh 120 pounds, your opponent is 150. He floors you, and sits on you. You are going nowhere. This is sin. An opponent you cannot defeat. You are under him, going nowhere. There’s only one possibility for Jew or Gentile, and Paul is getting ready to share it with his readers, but first an appeal to Scripture to back up his case even more strongly: Psalm 14.
Note that he has already appealed to the creation and its fall, the history of evil men, the idea of conscience, the equality of Jews and Gentiles, the ineffectiveness of the law and circumcision and heritage, and he keeps coming up with the same conclusion: men are sinners. Still don’t believe it? The final court of appeal, “It is written,”
3:10
“As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no not one;”
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Macarthur refers to this section as an indictment, a multi-count indictment against fallen man. The first indictment is that sinfulness is universal.
He quotes a Spirit-filled King named David as his authority. This is Psalm 14, a Psalm remarkable in that it is repeated almost word for word in Psalm 53. As Paul quotes the first three verses here, I will give the fuller quotation side by side, so you can get the depth of the meaning David heard from God.
The entire quote of Psalm 14:1: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have done abominable works,” and then the point Paul is trying to make, “there is none who does good.” None. Paul adds the “no not one” to be sure we get the point.
God’s standard is perfect righteousness. To get near God you must be as righteous as He is. He accepts nothing less. Paul will tell us later how to get that righteousness added to our account, but fallen man knows nothing of this. They will all freely admit, Well, no one is perfect. And that’s the problem. Not perfect? Then, lost forever. One unforgiven sin keeps you out of heaven. Only one. The very best of men have sinned. The very worst of men have sinned a lot. But it’s all the same to God. Sin keeps us from God and heaven.
Macarthur imagines a jumping contest between serious athletes. They are all located on a south seas island, and the idea is to jump over the water to the United States. Some jump ten, fifteen, twenty-five feet. Some not in shape hardly jump at all. None of them make it to the American mainland. Does it matter how much better one athlete is than the other?
You say, what a ridiculous analogy. Yes, the analogy if insufficient to show how ridiculous it is to think we can get to heaven by being a good moral athlete. Sin puts a wide gulf between us and God. Some might be those 25-feet people but so what? We all fall far short, as Paul will conclude later.
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Psalm 14 goes on in verse 2, “The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God.” And the implication is there aren’t any in either category, so Paul summarizes that verse as you see it in verse Romans 3:11.
3:11
“There is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God.”
You say, that doesn’t sound so bad, not understanding. Maybe the poor man never had a Bible or a Bible teacher. Maybe he had a bad parenting experience. And on and on we go making excuses for ignorance, where there are no excuses for ignorance, and ignorance itself is not an excuse for not following after God. Paul has already nailed this problem to the ground in chapter one where he talks of all men “suppressing” the truth that he has. Conscience.
You’re driving down the street, the sign says 35, and you go 40 and say to yourself, “They don’t really care about that.” Your conscience is now retrained as you suppress the knowledge of the truth. Before that process is over, you’re going 50 and 60 down that same road, until mercifully an officer pulls you offer and gives you a ticket to the policeman’s party. That may shake your conscience into re-forming again.
And Nature. You see a mountain and know that that mountain did not come there by itself, but you suppress that idea because it may lead you to thinking there is Someone greater than you who may have a right to your life, and you can’t have that hanging over you.
And Scripture. Thus saith the Lord. But with Satan you ask, Did God really say that? And you excuse yourself once more on the basis of your higher intellect that doesn’t accept mythology and fairy tales like Santa Claus and Jesus.
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There’s truth out there, and man doesn’t want to know about it. His ignorance is self-induced. Man has a disposition toward evil and away from God. We call that depravation. Free will, yes, but inability to choose correctly.
None who seek after God, say David and Paul. Ignorant because He doesn’t ask God for understanding. Ignorant because he knows there are better things available for him but he wallows in his self-satisfaction and contentment with the physical world and its supposed comforts.
A man who seeks God will understand more and more about himself, his need, and eventually the solution to his sin problem. But among the people of the world, not one person is so inclined. Now that is an indictment! Spiritual ignorance.
3:12
“They have all turned aside…”
Psalm 14:3 reads the same way. And the Greek ekklino “gone out of the way” in the KJV has to do with deviating from the norm. A soldier running the wrong way, even deserting. Here’s the way, here’s the road. But this person says, “No way,” I’ll go my own path thank you.
Isaiah 53:6 concurs, “All we like sheep have gone astray.” Following the wrong shepherd, or no shepherd at all except self. Follow any shepherd but Jesus and you will go astray. You will get lost and stay lost forever. There is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof are the ways of death, says Solomon (Proverbs 14:12).
Paul says with David, everyone has gone down that way that leads to death. Everyone, that is, except those who were called by grace back to the main Road, the Way of the cross, the Way that is Jesus.
“…they have together become unprofitable…”
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The word means “spoiled” as in milk or eggs, or children. Worthless. When they sit long enough in the wrong places and get no attention, they are ruined. Milk and eggs? Yes. Children? yes.
The whole human race? Yes. Sit long enough in the world, surrounded by the enemy’s people, the enemy’s philosophies, the enemies world-view, all of which is available every minute in our day via the media, and you will become worthless. Spoiled. Needing to be tossed.
Did not Jesus say, and this is a warning to His people, John 15:6, “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned”? Abide, hang around, the world, you will become unprofitable to God, worthless to God and man. The only remedy is staying as close as possible to Jesus Christ through His Spirit.
Paul then uses one more segment from Psalm 14 to summarize what he has said so far:
“… there is none who does good, no, not one.”
And everyone in the Christian audience says, Whoa! I can think of one! Jesus, the sinless, spotless Son of God. True. But with one problem. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, following the Greek text literally, “Him who knew not sin [Jesus], for us sin He [Father] made, that we might become righteousness of God in him.” We become righteousness because He becomes sin.
Jesus was not a sinner. But in some way we can’t imagine or appreciate, on that day at Calvary He became sin and even tasted death.
That’s how despicably evil the human race is. There is none that does good, no not one. And the one who kept Himself pure and sinless even bore the weight of sin. We are fallen.
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Now if you didn’t know better, looking at the text in Romans, assuming verses 10 to 18 are in italics, you would think Paul goes on with Psalm 14. But actually, he switches to another Psalm in verse 13. Go to Psalm 5:9.
“For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is destruction; their throat is an open tomb; they flatter with their tongue.”
As you see, he only quotes the latter part of that verse. Then he goes to yet another passage.
3:13
“Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit…”
The picture is revolting, disgusting. But so is the tongue of man, the organ of the voice that begins in the throat. Imagine a grave. A corpse in the grave. No casket. Just a dead body in a pit. And a few days. What awful sights and odors will emanate from that hole as flesh decays. Mankind in general has a similar problem.
Imagine an open mouth. A wicked heart, decayed from sin. Corrupt. Filthy. And out of that heart come sounds that are just as revolting and disgusting as the odors from an open grave. I heard much of this on my “adopted” street corner where I handed out Christian literature. I went home feeling dirty some evenings. You’ve heard it, I’m sure.
But wait. Paul is including everyone in this indictment. Except the born again. But even the born again at times fall into this trap. James says the tongue cannot be tamed. It’s a universal problem. A man with a tamed tongue is a perfect man. Words produce anger. Words produce enticement. Words defame God Himself. Words belittle. Words accuse. Every man or woman has used such words at one time or another, and will again if he is pushed far enough. The tongue is the mirror of the heart.
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Talk long enough and we know who you are, a corrupt fallen human being.
Paul says that these tongues lie. Remember David said in haste, “All men are liars.” He was angry. Maybe he had just been lied to. But Paul is not angry here, nor is the Spirit-inspired David whose work he quotes. All men are liars. And all women and children too. We deceive ourselves into thinking this and that about life and ourselves and we pass on that false information to others via these tongues.
The indictments keep coming down. Good news is coming. But not before he buries us all in guilt and shame. He now jumps to Psalm 140, verse 3:
“… the poison of asps is under their lips.”
The KJV “adder” in this passage is corrected to “asp” in the NKJV, and seems to be the Septuagint usage. There is another word for “adder” in the Old Testament. Both the Hebrew and the Greek suggest a word that means to “coil” like a serpent would do, and both conclude that the writer is referencing the asp.
So what’s an asp? Webster says it is a small venomous snake of Egypt, usually held to be a cobra.
So we dig a little deeper and find this Wikipedia description of the poison of the Egyptian cobra, which like all cobras has that expanded head that seems to be a cape, part of its way of intimidating an enemy:
“The venom of the Egyptian cobra… yield is 175 to 300 mg in a single bite… The venom affects the nervous system, stopping the nerve signals from being transmitted to the muscles and at later stages stopping those transmitted to the heart and lungs as well, causing death due to complete respiratory failure. Envenomation causes local pain, severe swelling, bruising, blistering, necrosis and variable non-specific effects which may
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include headache, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, dizziness, collapse or convulsions…”
Poison that kills with a single bite. Poison under their lips. What’s under your lips? Your tongue. The “little member that boasts great things… the unruly evil full of deadly poison… we bless God and we curse men” with this same organ, says James.
Paul is not done yet. Still talking about our words, Paul jumps to Psalm 10:7, which reads, “His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression; under his tongue is trouble and iniquity.”
3:14
“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
The word for cursing here has to do with prayer. What’s the connection between prayer and cursing? Prayer is just talking to God or someone who you believe has power to answer. So we can say, God bless my friend, God help me and so on. We can also say, God, curse this person. The words we call “curse words” are often derived from prayers. In anger a man may say, may God damn you. That’s a curse. God strike him down and send him to hell. A prayer, but a curse at the same time.
“Bad words,” as we like to call them, are not curse words. Cussing is not cursing, though the former word came from the latter. To curse is to call down God’s disfavor on some other human being. As the witches recently tried to put a curse on Judge Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court.
Using impolite or graphic words is not cursing, it is being impolite and graphic and should have no part of a Christian’s vocabulary. But cursing is far worse. If you as a Christian ever utter a curse, you better be sure it lines up with God’s word. I regularly curse, and ask God to curse, the work that goes on inside the Admiral Theater in Chicago’s Albany Park. When that place is emptied out, I want that building to be used for God’s
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people, much as the Times Square Church in New York was formerly a place of carnality and is now a place of the Spirit.
But I am careful not to curse people, only the work they do there. You’ll find David involved in serious judgment of evil in the Psalms. And those curses he brings down will come to pass on unrepentant men.
But notice that cursing and bitterness are mentioned in the same breath here, though not necessarily by David. David mentions bitterness in Psalm 64:3, and perhaps Paul is just including that with cursing because of his own mental connection. That Psalm says,
“[the wicked] sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows – bitter words…”
Cursing and bitterness. Angry depressed hurting people who have lost sight of anything or anyone good. Life has not been what they thought it would be. They got left behind in the mad rush to success. Bitterness settles in. And out of the mouth of a bitter person comes a condemnation of all those around them. They blame other races. They curse the government. They accuse their family members, their neighborhood, their education. And God.
And remember. No one is excepted from this tendency. Bitterness and the resultant bitter words of cursing and blame can come out of any one of us if the situation seems to demand it. Be on your guard.
3:15
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;”
Paul now leaves David for a while and quotes from David’s son Solomon in Proverbs 1:16, speaking of sinners whose “feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood.”
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Isaiah uses similar words in chapter 59.
The human race is a murderous race. Think cannibalism in some primitive tribes over the centuries. Consider mass executions, as of the Jews and other unwanted people. Communism and Nazism have massacred untold millions of people. The Roman church was responsible for many murders during its dark ages.
Macarthur says that since 1900, twice as many of America’s citizens have been “slain in private acts of murder than have been killed in all the wars of its entire history.” Think of war itself. Think of abortion’s slaughter of the innocents. Think of the anger and prejudice in the human heart and Paul’s indictment of all humans as murderers begins to ring true.
He’s still not finished.
He continues on with Isaiah 59:7, 8. “Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ways. They have made themselves crooked paths; whoever takes that way shall not know peace.”
That’s boiled down in
3:16, 17
“Destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known.”
Destruction the cause, misery the effect, of human ways. The thief comes to steal, obviously. But in stealing he has to kill to make his getaway. And in the process he destroys. As a bank robbery I watched on an old Bonanza. The safe is blown open, the money is taken, people are killed in the process. And the people who were counting on that money being there for their future needs, they are destroyed.
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As the enemy, so those whose hearts are toward the enemy. Men destroy one another’s property, one another’s hopes, one another’s futures. Our goal is to survive and we will run down everything in our pathway for that to happen. Our streets and the streets of cities across the nation are filled with the miserable ones whose lives have been destroyed by fellow human beings who sold to them destroying substances for their bodies, or sold them a bill of goods about safe sex and feigned friendship and bad business deals that turned out to be all lies.
Destruction and misery. Our trademarks as humans.
As for peace. Humans have never known peace. Jesus tells us that as early as the days of Noah the earth was filled with violent men committing acts of violence. Before that we read of Cain and Abel. Only four people in the world and one of them is declaring war against another. This trend has continued.
The history of Israel and her neighbors is a war history.
The New York Times is not everyone’s favorite source of factual material, but they did have an article some years back that stated:
“War is defined as an active conflict that has claimed more than 1,000 lives. Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history. At least 108 million people were killed in wars in the twentieth century.”
Wikipedia found 12,703 battles which had an exact location and date, from 2500 B.C.
Depending on how you define war, one has estimated that there were anywhere from 10,000 to 250,000 wars on the planet since history was recorded.
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Paul told us that in the first century, Isaiah, seven hundred years before Paul, said: mankind does not know the way of peace. Look in your own home. The stupid things we fight over. The divorce rate, even among believers. We love our wars. We’ll kill everything around us to be right.
I’m not a pacifist. But I am painfully aware as are you that there is altogether too much war, and the reason is that man without God is at war with himself. He has no peace within, so there’s no way he will have peace without.
Now Paul sums it all up with one more quote from David. This time it is Psalm 36:1, where David does some summarizing of his own when he says, “An oracle within my heart concerning the transgression of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes.”
3:18
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Why is man not righteous? Why does he turn aside? Why has he become unprofitable? Why does obnoxious odor come from his mouth, and poison from his tongue? Why does he murder and destroy and make miserable? Why has he no peace?
There is no fear of God out in front to guide him.
We have long been taught that we believers are not to be afraid of God any longer. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, we hear, but no need for it now. There is of course truth in that. But it depends how far along the relationship has gone. I do not read of any age limit where God’s discipline of His children is suddenly not a factor. Knowing there could be some discipline – and it’s correct to call it punishment – could save a good man from many a problem.
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Even in the most loving of father-child relationships, a measure of fear is necessary.
Could it be that in the church of today, one of the problems is that we have picked up a notion of our Father in Heaven that resembles more of a grandfather, a nice old guy who just wants to get along and give you gifts every time you smile pretty? A softie who can’t bear to think negative things about His kids?
That’s not the Bible notion. Granted that perfect love casts out that original fear, but how perfect is your love of the Father?
Of course, for the unbeliever, any imaginable fear is warranted. Jesus commands him to fear the one that can deal with both body and soul in eternal punishment. Those who refuse the punishment that Jesus took for their sins must bear Divine wrath themselves. Sin has consequences, eternal ones. Fear!
All sin, say Paul and David, stems from the fact that man does not fear God.
Paul’s indictments are in, echoed by David, Solomon, Isaiah. God has spoken.
