Many years ago, The London Times had a correspondent who ended many of his articles with the words, “What is wrong with the world today?” Finally, in response, G. K. Chesterton, the well-known Christian writer and apologist, wrote the following reply to the paper, “Dear Editor, What’s wrong with the world? I am. Faithfully Yours, G.K. Chesterton.” In those few words Chesterton beautifully summed up the Bible’s teaching concerning the central problem of mankind. It’s man! More specifically, it’s what lies within man, his inner being or person. In 1948, Albert Einstein echoed Chesterton’s sentiments when he said,
“The problem lies in the hearts and thoughts of men. It is not a physical but an ethical one. What terrifies us is not the explosive force of the atomic bomb, but the power of wickedness in the human heart.”

This is precisely Paul’s point in Romans 3:9-20. In this passage we’re faced with the reality of our sin against God and other people. In short, we’re the problem; I’m the problem. I can’t escape. This passage stands as a fitting climax to this entire section beginning in 1:18. Paul says that men are sinners—all of us—and held accountable to God. Verses 9-20 are like the great New York Yankee relief pitcher Mariano Rivera. Rivera is called the Yankee’s closer. In the eight or ninth inning, Rivera comes in to replace whoever is pitching and promptly puts the game away for his team. Well, Paul closes his argument here with the same kind of authority. This is a somber message that we can’t skip over. This is the clincher, the closer in this section of Romans. This passage, like no other, will tell us the truth about man.

[The first truth that Paul reveals about man is that...]

1. Man is Universally Sinful (3:9). In light of what Paul has just said about the Jews in 2:1-3:8, he asks two more questions and immediately answers his own questions with a negative reply. Paul writes in 3:9, “What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.” Paul makes it clear that there’s no difference between Jews and Gentiles—”all are under sin.” The phrase “under sin” is a military term that means to be under the authority of someone else or something else. It was used for soldiers who were under the authority of a commanding officer. In this context, it means that the human race is dominated by sin. We’re under its power, under its sway, and under its control.

Imagine three men on death row, all convicted murderers. The man in cell one was a drug lord who ordered the death of many of his rivals and whose drug dealing destroyed countless lives. The man in cell two killed five fellow employees in a fit of rage. The third criminal hired an assassin to kill his wife. The human tendency is for the man in cell two to compare himself with the man in cell one, judging himself the better man. The man in cell three compares himself to the other two and feels he’s better than both. But on the day of execution, what difference does it make? All three men have broken the law, and all three are sentenced to die. In the very same way, 3:9 teaches that we’re all under sin and, as a result, deserve death.

But you may be thinking, I agree, we all have our imperfections, our moral flaws, our weaknesses, and our deficiencies. If you want to call those things “sin,” then everyone’s a sinner. But is the situation really that serious? Everyone also has a lot of good in them, or almost everyone. Even unbelievers do good things, and some cultists are legendary for their good works and morals. To which God responds, “Man is not just universally sinful; he’s totally depraved.”

[In 3:10-18, Paul demonstrates that...]

2. Man is Totally Depraved (3:10-18). In these nine verses, Paul makes a clear-cut case of this truth. Before we look at the nine verses before us, let’s define what we mean by total depravity.

Total depravity means that there’s no spiritual good in man to commend him to God. Many people have trouble with this concept. While not denying they are sinners, many people feel that their sin isn’t bad enough to condemn them. What they don’t understand is that any sin is wholly unacceptable to God. Let’s suppose I invite you over to my house this Saturday morning for omelets. The day comes, you knock at my door, I let you in, and go to the kitchen to prepare the meal. There on my counter are several mounds of chopped onions, green peppers, ham, and sliced mushrooms. Nearby is a bowl of grated cheese. While you wait in the dining room I reach into the refrigerator for the eggs. To my shock I discover that I have only six eggs. That’s okay, except that one of the eggs is rotten. There isn’t time to go get fresh eggs so I say to myself, “I’ll just mix this rotten one in with the good ones and no one will be the wiser.” In a few minutes when I serve the omelets, you begin sniffing the air. “What’s that funny smell?” “Oh, don’t worry about that. One of the eggs was rotten, but I just mixed it in with all the rest.” Would you accept that omelet? No, you wouldn’t. And neither will God accept your life or my life when we mix in our sin with our good works. Just as the stench of a rotten egg makes the whole omelet putrid, even so the stench of your sin completely cancels out the value of your good works. That’s what total depravity means. Sin has so invaded our lives that any attempt to please God on our own is doomed to failure.

In 3:10-18, Paul reveals three curses that demonstrate man’s depravity. He does so by calling an expert witness to the stand. The witness is God Himself. Paul uses a technique called pearl stringing, where he quotes verse after verse to prove his point. In fact, he carefully chooses eight Old Testament verses directly attributed to God. Obviously, Paul is serious! What if a doctor told you that you were scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning? He then informed you that he has the cure and it’ll go just fine. Would you be willing? I don’t know about you, but I’d want more information. The following verses demonstrate that we’re in need of a radical surgery and the x-ray that Paul shows us belongs to us.

In 3:10-12, the first of the three curses is revealed: Man’s Character is Depraved. In these three verses, Paul writes, “as it is written, ‘THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.’” Paul summarizes the fate of man by stating that “there is none righteous, not even one.” Verse 10 is a summary statement and the following verses flesh this truth out more fully. Verses 11-12 indicate that the whole of man’s inner being is controlled by sin: his mind (”none who understands”), his heart (”none who seeks for God”), and his will (”none who does good”). It’s worth noting that any genuine searching for God happens because God sought out man first. Man, left to himself, never seeks God. He always turns to idolatry. Men don’t seek the God of the Bible; they seek a cheap substitute. To put matters in a broader perspective, if any man truly seeks God, it’s only because the Holy Spirit is working in his heart. Without that inner wooing of the Spirit, no one would ever come to Christ. C.S. Lewis, the great Christian writer and Oxford professor once said, “I never had the experience of looking for God. It was the other way around; He was the hunter and I was the deer. He stalked me like a redskin, took unerring aim, and fired.”

If you go to the city dump, you’ll find coke cans. These cans are made in the original image of a shiny coke can, but they’re rusted and corroded through and through. Every fiber of our being, though created in God’s image, is corroded through and through. Measured after God’s perfect righteousness, no human being is sinless. No sinner seeks God. Therefore, God must seek the sinner. This should lead us to be in awe of our God. The mere fact that He loved us and sought us out while we were still His enemies ought to stimulate a sense of overwhelming appreciation. Why not begin to express your daily appreciation for the fact that God is the One true seeker? This realization will dramatically enlarge your view of God and shrink your view of yourself.

In 3:13-14, Paul shares another curse: Man’s Conversation is Depraved. We betray our character by our speech. The heart blazes the way and the mouth follows. In these two verses it’s as though man is being given his annual physical. As you know when you go to the doctor for some unknown ailment he generally wants to look into your mouth. He puts one of those overgrown Popsicle sticks on your tongue and says, “Say ahhh!” Well, God here looks into the mouth of the sinner and when man says, “Ahhh,” God says, ‘Yuk!’ “Their throat is an open grave.” What does Paul mean by this statement? During biblical times embalming wasn’t practiced like it is today. So it goes without saying that an open grave must have reeked to high heaven! In the same way, Paul is saying that the stench of man’s throat is like a rotting corpse. He goes on to say “with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps in under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” Man’s worst enemy is his mouth! Even as believers who’ve been given a new nature from God, we still struggle with our conversation, don’t we? I know I do. It’s easy to be critical. All of us are guilty of slander and gossip in some way, shape, or form. As James writes, “If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well.”

The third and final curse of man’s depravity is found in 3:15-18: Man’s Conduct is Depraved. What the mouth utters, the feet usually carry out. In 3:15, Paul writes, “Their feet are swift to shed blood.” Life is so cheap in our country today, particularly in the major cities. People kill one another over a set of car keys or a verbal insult or even a sinister look, to say nothing of the thousands who killed while a crime is being committed. Furthermore, upwards of 50,000 innocent people die as the direct result of someone else’s overuse of alcohol. And all that pales into insignificance when compared to the 1.5 million babies murdered every year under “freedom of choice” laws relative to abortion. And if you’re innocent so far, do you still claim innocence when confronted with Jesus’ claim that murder is committed when one hates another person?

Paul writes in 3:16-17, “…destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known.” Back in 1968, Will Durant wrote a book entitled, Lessons from History. In this book Durant wrote, “In the past 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 have seen no war.” The search for peace goes on unabated because we don’t know the way of peace. Ray Stedman, the former pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in Paolo Alto used to say that 3:17 would be an appropriate slogan for the United Nations: “The path of peace have they not known.” We’re a warring people who constantly seek evil. What is the cause of this behavior? It’s found in 3:18: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” God is left out of conversation, decisions, all of life. He’s ignored.

[This final truth about mankind is found in 3:19-20. Not only is man universally sinful and totally depraved, Paul goes on to write that…]

3. Man is Helplessly Lost (3:19-20). Paul concludes not only this passage, but also the entire section labeled “sin” or “condemnation,” which stretches from 1:18-3:20. In these two verses, Paul closes his argument by sharing two purposes of the Law: (1) The Law was given so that the entire world may be accountable before God. In 3:19 Paul writes, “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law so that EVERY mouth may be closed, and ALL the world may become accountable to God.” The Jewish people of Paul’s day thought this description didn’t include them.

They knew that they sinned, but they thought they had diplomatic immunity from God’s judgment because they were Jewish.
The phrase “whatever the Law says,” refers back to the Old Testament passages that Paul quoted in 3:10-18. The word translated “closed” is literally translated “shut up”: that every mouth may be shut up! The Law brings us up short with God every time. So much so that when we stand before Him, we’ll be silenced!

(2) The Law was given for condemnation, not justification. In 3:20, Paul writes that “by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.” The Jews had distorted the purpose of the Law. It was never intended to commend a man before God, but to condemn him. Like the blood-alcohol test is designed to prove men are drunk, so the Law is designed to prove men are sinners, under the wrath of God. The Law provided a standard of righteousness, not that men could ever attain such human righteousness, but to demonstrate they’re incapable of doing so and must find a source of righteousness outside themselves. That’s the point of all the sacrifices of the Old Testament. When the Law revealed man’s sin, God provided a way of sacrifice so that a man wouldn’t need to bear the condemnation of God. The Law was never given to save a man, but to show man that he needed a Savior. The Law has been likened to a mirror. The purpose of a mirror is to reveal to you that your face is dirty. But a mirror makes a very poor washcloth. It’s only good to drive you to the washcloth, water, and soap.

If I were to try to hand you a life jacket right now, you’d probably turn it down. At best, you might politely accept it while yawning internally at your need for it. But if you were on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean, you’d take hold of that same life jacket with a passion wholly foreign to you right now.

This text demonstrates, in no uncertain terms, that we’re born into this world on a sinking ship, enslaved to sin. God holds out to us a life jacket, but until we become convinced that our plight is truly desperate we’ll never joyously and tenaciously grab hold of what’s being offered to us. The intent of God in clearly exposing our sinfulness isn’t to make us feel bad. It’s to make us feel desperate! If we only feel disheartened or discouraged by what we’ve seen, pride still remains in tact at some level. The truths concerning our sin nature and what happened to us at the fall are designed to shatter every vestige of confidence in ourselves and drive us into a right relationship with God. This relationship can only be found through Jesus Christ.

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Copyright © 2001 Keith R. Krell. All rights reserved. All Scripture quotations, unless indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible, C 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1977, and 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, and are used by permission.

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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: by Keith Krell, Timeless Word Ministries®, 2508 State Ave NE Olympia, WA 98506, 360-352-9044, www.timelessword.com

All Scripture quotations, unless indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1977, and 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, and are used by permission.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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