Romans 3:9-20 - Concluding God's Sick Burn

 Part II: The Conduct of Humanity

What, then? Are we privileged?

Take a wild guess.

The “we” here is to show that he’s turned his attention back to the Greeks. This is question is going to be answered from here to verse 23.

Undoubtedly not, for we previously charge both Jews and Greeks to be all under sin, according as it is written, that “Not one is just” – not even one.

Wow. Everyone – Jews and gentiles – are not just.

We all completely resist the truth. It’s in the fabric of who and what we are as human beings, thanks to Adam's transgression (Rom. 5:12-14.) We all, at the end of the day, fall into sin. People these days try to look at the different ‘levels’ of wrongdoing, but that’s not the point – ignoring this point is, again, exactly God’s problem, and what earns us this indignation! We aren't comparing particulars, here. We're drawing a complete division between "righteous," or "just," and "unrighteous," or "unjust."

All are flawed.  No one is privileged. Instead of rolling your eyes (which I don’t believe you’re doing, but on the off chance you are, your eyes aren’t dice, they are a lens, so please stop the eye abuse,) let it sink in… you’re not just. Guys aren’t the solution. This is pride. Girls aren’t girlbosses. This is ignorance. We are all completely and utterly unjustified in our sin and there’s zero excuse for it.

Think about the whole framework of this statement, because I promise, neither you or I are thinking about it on God’s level: you and I, in this current state, from this absolute perspective, are on par with the likes of Hitler, Ted Bundy, Pilate, any social justice warrior, any woke activist, any right winger, any feminist, any President, any dictator, any ignorant churchgoer, any Jew, any other nationality, any celebrity, any introvert, any extrovert, and more. Neither yourself, in where you stand, or myself, in where I stand, are just on our own merits.

Not one is understanding. Not one is seeking out God.

I’m no exception to this. I’m writing this whole thing out, but it’s not worth it to argue or justify myself, because I’m not. There’s no explanation I could give. Go ahead and try! This is still being written in my spare time, as I have a job and a girlfriend to go to. My heart yearns for completion in Christ, as does everyone in the body of Christ, but any “justification” I speak of is God’s power (1:16) and is founded by Christ’s faith (Rom. 3:22) – our actions are affected as such, yes, and that can be proven by these written words, both mine and Paul’s. But as long as I live in the flesh, my heart is just as flawed as yours.

A debtor am I. Don’t forget that phrase, please. It was Romans 1:14, and I refuse to forget it. A debtor am I. We in Christ are debtors. We know better, through the faith instilled in us. We cannot be perfect in the flesh, so I don’t strive for it. But I do know better (not better than you, but of humanity, by the grace of God.) We don’t escape this statement… faith is the key, not our attempts to seek or display love. We are to endure right now, not lead. This is the learning experience – testing grounds, if you will. We learn as much as God wills us to understand until Christ's return. Thankfully, this is not the end of the doctrine, as it’s what God teaches that makes His justifications unimpeachable.

“All avoid Him: at the same time they were useless. Not one is doing kindness: there is not even one!”

That’s harsh.

“A sepulcher opened is their throat. With their tongues they defraud.”

That hurts too. A sepulcher, by the way, is a crypt – don’t pretend you knew. A “sepulcher opened,” then, is their throat announcing death. Man’s words announce literal death. Paul is explaining everything, are you getting it?? This is wild!

“The venom of asps is under their lips.”

Ouch.

Whose mouth with imprecation and bitterness is crammed.

He’s rattling them off, now.

Imprecation – a spoken curse.

Sharp are their feet to shed blood.

That’s… an incredibly rough depiction, but very true. It’s good to just let Paul talk right now. He just finished covering man’s words, and here he’s coming at our actions.

“Bruises and wretchedness are in their ways, And the way of peace they do not know.”

You’d think, in 2023, that war would be solved by now! Boy oh boy, are you wrong. “Peace” doesn’t compute with society today, and any attempt at peace in the flesh is impermanent and doesn’t last, because someone always comes along with an agenda.    

There is no fear of God in front of their eyes.

I don’t know how these two properly correlate, but Proverbs 1:7 calls “fear of Yahweh the beginning of knowledge.” I love the subtle burn, then.

Damn. Entire classes are dedicated to these teachings, yet still miss the point – the people that teach those classes are the same people that Paul referenced throughout the latter half of Romans 1. Paul said what God willed him to say – now let’s break it all down.

No one understands. Good God, no one understands. Look around you today. Where’s the love? I mean it – the honest love? Not that “we’re family” Sopranos nonsense – that’s obligation instilled by generations of tradition. Where is the love? We hear of it in music, films, and more. We hear people conflate pride with “love for themselves.” We hear church congregations gather and boast over the actions they commit for God. We hear these same congregations bastardize “painful” things, acting as though they are of Satan, as opposed to God. We hear politicians talk sweetly (venom of asps) as the inner cities fall apart. We hear Pharisees condemn Christ to His face, on the principle that they commit acts in the name of God.

We hear a lot.

But no one understands, do they? No one understands anymore that we are all unjust and, under intense scrutiny, everyone falls. It’s easy to excuse ourselves our imperfections, but so few excuse others under similar circumstances. Pay attention to people – don’t open your mouth for a little while. Just listen. Slow it up and recognize the pattern! Don’t worry – you’re still saved by Christ whether you do or not (which Paul is about to explain in detail.) But if you do, you’ll start to notice all these little patterns that string us all together. It’s fascinating, seeing it all. We’re all so predictable! Look at the psychology, yes. We’re so convoluted and interesting! But look beneath our psychology and you find the Potter to our clay. God truly is in everything.

*   *   *

All avoid Him. I noticed this best in my roommate. She avoids discussion about God with me almost exclusively, at all costs. She ignores the Bible, and in effect, her Creator, at every given moment. My roommate constantly gets tripped up in perspective after perspective, caught up in how she personally perceives the world and how the world can benefit her personally – money, women, and more. Her heart is not seeking out God.

It hurts, writing that about her… my roommate is a lovely woman, one I would gladly (and without second thought,) take a bullet for. The circumstances that would lead to such a situation are improbable, so I doubt that I’ll ever be able to prove that, but I don’t need to. She knows it, as do I. She took me in and let me stay in her home when my father tossed me on the street. It’s unfair both to me and to her, in my mind, but at the very least, I understand logically that Christ has me where He wants me, as well as my roommate, and as well as my family. The hearts in all of us (me, too stubborn to endure any afflictions from my father; my roommate, too stubborn to heed the concept of faith-obedience; my father, stubborn in his indignation,) do not seek out God, regardless of our words. Some of us are more open about it than others, of course, but we do not seek God. This makes Christ’s Sacrifice all the more beautiful.

Don’t misinterpret “they were useless.” Paul means what he says. We are useless in attempted acts. These acts occur for our own glorification, not God’s. It feels good to us and justifies our judgments. Makes us feel good. Yet this is the very hypocrisy God’s discussing! Acts 17:24-25 makes it abundantly clear that God no longer operates in human temples made with human hands – nor does he require anything from humanity. Yet almost every traditional Christian wanders into a church and claims their acts of worship as a token of His favor! What the hell, guys?? Did you fOrGet? Are you really so hellbent on your religious doctrine that you fail to recognize this simple sentence? I am referring to the Joel Osteen’s, or the Billy Graham’s of the world. They hear a lot, until God speaks. Then it’s Greek to them, I guess. They go on the defensive. “It can’t possibly mean our temple – we didn’t use hands, we used a concrete mixer!” It’s almost like this is the eon that killed Christ or something. Maybe Paul is right: not one is seeking out God.

Then to call our words the mark of death! Wow, the balls on this guy. He’s right! The words we speak are brought to us by God, and He decides whether these words honor or dishonor Him. The words that honor bring to Christ. The rest dishonor. This is not to say, “the dishonor leads to eternal damnation” (where is that written?) This is to say, literally, that words of honor are of Christ, not the individual, and the rest are dishonor.

The big criticism, I believe, that many have with something like the Bible, are statements like this: Not one is doing kindness. This is true – only when held to God’s standard, which is perfection. In this sense, no one can “achieve” kindness – at best, in short spurts.

Our actions, in effect of our words, are self-explanatory. We are violent, unforgiving. We understand this about ourselves – yet for some reason believe there’s some great perfection that we can still achieve. Yet it’s peace that is unknown to man, an effect of not knowing the God “of peace” (Rom. 16:20.) Indeed, tell a Baptist that hell doesn’t exist in Scripture and watch them damn you to that same place without a second thought – just like the Jew, seeking your destruction before considering what it means for them. This internal act of violence does matter, and it’s still manifested to this day – just because many wars have ‘gone cold,’ if you will, doesn’t mean they aren’t, by definition, ‘war.’

The ultimate cause and explanation for this conduct is simple: there is no fear of God in front of their eyes. They don’t see God, so they “huh? where?” their way into not caring about their own actions. In every line, men are shown to need God, if they have any hope of making it through any indignation, or learning of His only method of getting out of it, with this information in mind, but nope! Instead they accept the half-truth that “to fail is human,” and “people are weak,” and ignore life’s reasoning as to why this is and what purpose it’s bringing. They don’t know God, thus they may know mundanity, or accept the world that is handed to them, or live in some degree of comfort – but unrest remains written in the heart of man, and peace, apart from God, is never permanent.

Now we are aware that, whatever the law is saying, it is speaking to those under the law, that every mouth may be barred, and the entire world may become subject to the just verdict of God, because, by works of law, no flesh at all shall be justified in His sight, for through law is the recognition of sin.

This portion is the wrap-up of the complete and utter decimation of mankind and all of mankind’s perspective. When the law speaks, it’s talking, ultimately, to those under law. You can’t use the law to turn around and condemn your neighbor! If you’re under law, you answer to it – not portions of it, but all of it. This is in reference to the Hebrew law, but it goes for the laws written into your own heart as well, which Paul calls a ‘law to yourself’ (Rom. 2:14.) Regardless, you’re still breaking rules. If you can’t pull it all off (which you can’t, you imperfect ruffian,) then you’re subject to its consequence, which is God’s indignation (Rom. 1:18-19.) It’s an unjust retaining of God’s word, and it is through this revelation that every mouth is barred. There’s no technicality that can magically disprove the above argument for the Jews, or for the rest of the world. Relatively, it's not until one stops trying to justify themselves that God makes any personal progress with them on their heart.

Then the second half of this – man, is it a killer. This piece boils down to this – under law, the flesh fails in every way. In the flesh, we will never amount to anything. We are helpless against it. Remember that Paul is speaking to members of Christ in Rome – that is, non-Jewish folk. He tells them, now, that the Jews were pitted against the perfections of the law just to prove that humanity can’t be perfect. You cannot be justified in the law, because that isn’t its purpose.

But that’s just it, isn’t it? It was only a set of rules, to teach. Because of this, we don’t just “know sin exists,” but recognize it. The disaster that sin truly is cannot be understated – war, poverty, famine, pain, torture, all just words on a page that I can type, sure! But they are very, very real and have a continual, daily impact on everyone mentally, physically, and emotionally, and it literally stemmed from an initial disobedience to God (Gen. 3:1-4,) and now has compounded to an inability to keep a covenant with Him. The law is a mirror, but you can’t cleanse yourself with a mirror!

This is the only argument I’ve ever studied that gives a true, 100% honest look at man – because it’s not an argument to be moral, as many (even George Rogers) might say. It’s not a “moral” argument. It’s an indictment. It’s ground zero. This isn’t just some old guy popping off on a page, but the Creator of the universe telling us our current position in the grand scheme of things – that we cannot succeed, particularly not through law, through morality of any sort, and yet, in a lack of fear of God, continue in this direction, digging a deeper hole and setting the stage for the very Unveiling He promised, in prophecy, would occur in our transgression. His indignation isn’t a random feeling that came about one day – it’s something that is necessary for the unbelieving whole, that antagonize His spirit in ignorance to His word, and, because they haven’t seen immediate kickback on their sins, believe it’s okay to push harder.

Before Jesus arrived, no Jew had heard a direct message from God in around 400 years. When Jesus came to preach the coming of His kingdom (brought about by faith, not tradition,) both the Romans and the Pharisees murdered Him. Both the circumcised and uncircumcised were complicit in His death. All representatives of the most powerful religious and political entities on the planet at the time collectively rejected Jesus, the Son of God and God’s representative to the masses (John 14:9.) They both killed Him. This is, practically, to highlight that the flesh fails in every way. That being said…