What does it truly mean to be “under sin”? In Romans 3:9-14. Drawing on the Old Testament passages, Paul levels the playing field for all humanity by famously declaring that “none is righteous, no, not one.” Understanding the Romans 3:9-14 meaning is critical to grasping the rest of the New Testament. Before we can fully appreciate the beautiful gift of God’s grace, we must first confront this heavy truth: apart from Christ, every aspect of human life is corrupted by sin.
Are We Better Than Them?
This morning we want to continue our study through the book of Romans. So if you have your Bibles this morning, it will turn me again to Romans chapter 3. I want to pick it up where we left off last week, but I want to go back and look at verses 9 through 20 again in greater depth. And then I want to share at the end an example out of Scripture itself of a man that fits every one of the characteristics that the Apostle Paul gives of an ungodly worldly person, one who is rebelling against God in a situation that each of us find ourselves in before we come to know the Lord through Jesus Christ.
Let’s just begin by opening in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning and Lord, I pray that you just speak to us today through your Word. Lord, I pray that you would just help us to understand the horror of sin and how wicked and evil it is and how it impacts people throughout the world to cause them to walk on open rebellion against you and all that you would stand for.
Help us to see that the power of your Spirit can convict men of sin by revealing to them the holiness of your character and the unholiness of their lives. And Lord, help them to see through your Spirit opening their understanding that they need to give their hearts and lives to you and that there is only one means of salvation and that is Jesus Christ our Lord. Father, I pray that you would just speak to us this morning and help us to understand as we look at the world around us today and see all the wickedness that this is the normal way that men live that are walking in rebellion against you.
And Lord, help us to see that the only solution to these problems is Jesus Christ and a transformation of character and a forgiveness of sins in the new life that is found in you. Speak to us through your Word this morning we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Romans 3:9-14
9 What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;
10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are all together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no not one.
Their throat is an open sepulcher, with their tongues they have used deceit, and the poison of ass is under their lips. Those whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight.
For by the law is the knowledge of sin. Let’s just bow in prayer, that God would help us understand this. Lord, I pray that you just help us to understand the depth of this.
This is very sobering when you stop and read this, because our world would have you believe that there are many ways to come to God, many ways to be saved, many ways that you can not have to fear death and gain eternal life. Various religious systems have all kinds of things they would have you do.
Works, and have you try to earn your salvation. Some religious systems, for example, Hinduism, teaches reincarnation. That, for example, what you do in this life, you have to come back in the next life, and have it done to you, so that you can pay for what you’ve done in this life.
And you’re on this never-ending spiral in their philosophy, which eventually, they hope, leads to nothingness. What a goal in life. To have a belief system that would eventually cause you to become nothing.
Islam has a God that does not know what forgiveness is, does not know what love is, does not teach anything about working to transform lives, to make people righteous, holy, and pure, but really is a religion of death. And you can go down every religious system apart from biblical Christianity, and you’ll see the same thing. The second hymn we sang this morning, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, talks about the fact that we have an enemy who desires to destroy our lives.
Satan is there, and he hates what God loves. And I want us to understand why the world is so willing to open up to wickedness and evil, and yet doesn’t look at why Satan would take us down that road. The Bible tells us an interesting thing.
It says everybody here, even though we all have different intelligence, different physical attributes, different gifts, physical gifts and spiritual gifts, yet we all share one thing in common as we walk through this life. God created every person here in His image. Every man, woman, and child that has ever lived in the earth has been created in the image of God.
The Bible tells us that. When He created Adam and Eve, He created them in His image, and we are the descendants of the first man and woman. The problem is, we did not take that image seriously.
The Universal Charge: “No, Not One” (Verses 10–12)
When Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees one time, they thought they would trick Him. And they thought if they could get Him to say that people shouldn’t pay their taxes to Caesar, then it would cause the Roman government to say that He was a rebel and trying to cause the people to rise up in rebellion against Rome. So they brought to Him a coin, and they asked Him a question.
Should we pay taxes to Caesar? And He said, give me the coin. He said, whose picture is on this coin? And the currency of that day had a stamp of the image of Caesar upon it. And Jesus said an amazing thing, which most people read right over.
He said, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s. Now I want you to understand, He’s talking about images. And He’s talking about the image that was on the coin.
He says, this is really Caesar’s money. He established the currency. So render it back to Him.
But stop and think, what is placed on your life? The image of God. And render back to God that which is God’s. They didn’t have anything to answer to Him.
As we look at the text this morning, the Apostle Paul is telling us, people left to themselves will not acknowledge the fact that they’ve been created in the image of God and that they are God’s creation and that they need to render their lives or give their lives to Christ. As a matter of fact, we are open to believe the lies of Satan that lead us down a path of ultimate destruction and death. As I mentioned, you look at the world religions and every one of them, apart from the biblical Christianity which came out and flowed out of biblical Judaism.
Beyond that, they do not offer hope. And in one form or another are religions of death. William Carey, when he went to India and began his mission work there, was horrified with what he found.
The Hindu people believed that when a man died, they would place the corpse of this man on a raised wooden partition with a lot of inflammable material placed around the body. And then they would have his wife climb up and lay beside him as they ignited the fires. Even though she was still living, she would be burned alive.
You look at Islam and they have no value for women. Women are viewed as property. Women are viewed as, at best, second class citizens, but really usually not citizens at all.
I was just listening to a man who grew up in Iran. He still has relatives in Iran. And he has a cousin who was walking down the street and some of her hair was sticking out from her hijab.
And the Iranian police saw her and started chasing after her because she was violating the dress code. Had they caught her, in all likelihood would have beat her for having hair stick out from underneath her covering. You can look at Mormonism.
Today there are people who believe that Mormonism is Christian. Yet Joseph Smith devised a religion that served him and was based on the very lies that are at the foundation of all these other world religions that has nothing to do with biblical Christianity. And that women are there to bear children and that is the purpose.
And if they go into the next life, their whole purpose is to bear more children and more children and more children. While men can have as many wives as they would want. Because Joseph Smith was a philanderer who lusted after the wives of those that were following him and so he would take them as his own wife away from their husband.
Most people don’t know this stuff. They don’t know that the Mormons, there was a group of Christians that were traveling out to Oregon by wagon and the Mormons got the Indians to help them kill everybody in the wagon train. Death.
Let’s take a look at what Paul says causes this. What causes these belief systems? First of all he says, as it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. In and of ourselves we are not righteous.
You do not have to teach a baby how to sin. If you are a parent, you know that you don’t have to teach your children how to do things that are wrong. You have to instill in them a value system that teaches them what is right.
By nature we are selfish. By nature we want what is for us at the expense of others. By nature we do not want to bow the knee to God and acknowledge Him as the God of the Bible.
Because as the scripture said, we all suffer the enslavement that Adam and Eve gave themselves over to. The enslavement to sin. And Satan is our slave master.
And this is the result of being under his direction. There are none that understand it. There is none that seeketh after God.
What gives people the ability to see what is wrong and right? Sometimes we can have politicians or leaders present what appears to be what is right, but then you look at the real motives behind what they are doing and there is ulterior motives. Paul tells us, there is none that understand it. We do not in of ourselves really understand how depraved we are when we are giving our lives over to the sinfulness of this world under the direction of Satan and a philosophy that is in direct opposition to God.
People don’t truly understand it. The sad thing is, I think there are people sitting in the church today that truly do not understand how wicked sin is and where it leads. Or we wouldn’t do some of the things we do and yet claim we are Christians.
How destructive lust and passion can be. Paul goes on and the next thing he says, They are all gone out of the way. They are all together become unprofitable.
There is none that doeth good. No, not one. Now you are saying, I know Christians that do good, but as we are going to see later on as Paul gets into his letter later on, yes, but they have been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ.
But in and of ourselves, we are left to devices that will ultimately seek our own good at the expense of others. Jesus tells us some amazing things. Jesus is talking to his disciples.
And the Romans had a deal where if they came and they saw that you had something they wanted, they would take it from you. For example, if they needed a cloak, and they saw that you had a cloak, they would take that cloak from you, even though it wasn’t theirs. Jesus made the statement to his disciples, If they come to take your cloak, give them your coat also.
In other words, you are to have a different attitude. The average person that would see someone steal something from them would immediately strike back in revenge. We are going to see a little later on.
Vengeance is the Lord’s and not ours. And Jesus said we are to have a totally different attitude. And we have been delivered from this belief system.
The Corruption of Human Speech (Verses 13–14)
Now it’s interesting, he says, Their throat is an open sepulcher, with their tongues they have used deceit, the poison of ass is under their lips. In other words, he’s saying apart from Jesus Christ, what you’ve got to share can do people no good. What is an open sepulcher? A sepulcher is where death exists.
A sepulcher is where you go and put a dead body. So it’s as if our throats, apart from being transformed by the power of God, are that which brings forth death. Now I want you to understand this.
That’s what sin is. And what we do is we speak words that bring forth death. And what are these words and how do these words work? With their tongues they have used deceit, tell you one thing but mean another.
Why This Bad News Matters for the Gospel
The Bible talks about flatterers. And flattery is used by the person who wants to achieve and get something out of you, but they’re really not offering you a proper compliment. But they’re saying it with flattery.
They have no intention of really complimenting what you’re doing or being appreciative of what you’re doing, but they’re saying with flattery, Oh, I just love the way you do that. But it’s steeped in sarcasm. Because they really don’t.
And they want to use this flattery to undermine you and destroy you with their flattery lips because their lips are really poisonous denim. It seeks to destroy. If you look at what is happening in the world today, you see people that would tell you things and they tell you the things that they think you want to hear so that you put your guard down and you give them positions of authority in your life and also give them things that they have no right to have.
Whether it’s possessions, whether it’s your attention, whether it’s what you believe, because it’s really motivated by Satan. What did Satan do in the garden? He flattered, he lied, and he led to death. He told Eve when he came to her, God said you can’t eat of certain trees of the garden.
But what Eve said is, No, we can touch them and eat them. He said, well, why don’t you eat of the tree of the truth of good knowledge? And she said, well, we’re not supposed to do that. But he said, that’s simply because God doesn’t want you to be like Him.
In other words, he’s laying out a word of flattery that you have the ability to be like God. All you have to do is take of that fruit and that’s what God is trying to hold something back from you. But you are worthy to have it.
And she believed the lie. And it was a lie with Satan’s full intent to destroy that which God had created in his image, which God was having fellowship with, Adam and Eve. And Satan knew the consequences of rebellion against God because he had rebelled against God and he experienced the consequences firsthand.
But he didn’t tell them about the consequences of rebellion, of disobedience. He only laid out flattery and untruth. Well, you deserve it because you’re so wonderful, is really what he was saying.
Paul goes on and he says, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. It’s interesting. I’ve met people who claim to be very religious, but they use more foul language than anybody.
I know one individual, he’s high up in his religious system and every other word is a cuss word or a foul language word. Why? Because that’s his nature. It doesn’t matter his position in a religious system, but his nature is coming out of his mouth.
Jesus said the actions of our life are born in our hearts. And if we’ve got a heart that’s in rebellion against God, and we’re trying to put on a show on the outside, eventually the wickedness will work out and reveal itself where all can see. That’s what Paul says.
The unbelieving man, he’s filled with cursing and bitterness. You know, Christians should never be bitter. I’ve met Christians who are very bitter because something happened to them.
Maybe they had an inheritance that was taken away by another family member. Maybe they lost a job. Maybe they lost a business.
Maybe they lost a child. But they become bitter and angry and cursing comes out of their mouth. Maybe they don’t use curse words, but they could just as well.
Because bitterness causes us to be enslaved to sin deeper and deeper and we can never deliver ourselves from bitterness until we give it over to the Lord. He goes on. Their feet are swift to shed blood.
I talked last week about that speaking of abortion and that speaking of infanticide and that speaking of euthanasia. Did you know that you can kill somebody without killing them? I remember a number of years ago, I was taking a choir tour and I got to be friends with these two girls and one of the things we started to do was insult one another as a joke. I don’t know, have you ever been insulted by people? Do they come and mock you, make fun of you, insult you? Well, we thought it was cute.
We were insulting one another. It was kind of like who can get the next one up on the last one. All of a sudden, one day, one of these two girls that I thought were my friends, one of them wouldn’t talk to me.
And I went to the other one and I said, you know what’s wrong with her? She says, you don’t know what’s wrong with her? I said, no.
And he said, what happened to the paper? And she said, watch the paper, and it’s blowing all over the neighborhood. And he tells her, now I want you to go and get every piece of paper and put it back in the box. And she said, well, that’s impossible.
They’re blowing all over. I can’t even see where some of them have blown. He said, do you realize that’s what happens when you use your mouth to spread lies, and to spread rumors, and to spread insults? It’s like that which can never be taken back, because you never know where it’s going to end up.
You never know where it’s going to go. And that’s what happens when sin manifests itself in our life. We never understand the depth of how far it can penetrate and destroy other people’s lives.
We can say, well, I didn’t really hurt anybody with what I did or what I said. We don’t know. We don’t know how far it’s gone.
And that’s what Jesus is saying here. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways.
And the way of peace have they not known. And the reason, there is no fear of God in their eyes. Now, I want you to hold there, because we’re going to come back to the last two verses.
But I want you to turn with me to 1 Samuel, chapter 25. And I’m going to introduce you this morning to a man who fit every one of these characteristics. A man whose name, and we’re not given what, I can’t believe that his parents would have named him this, but it may be the nickname that people gave him, because it exemplified his character.
And his name was Nabal. And in 1 Samuel, chapter 25, it gives the story, the account, historical account, this is an historical account of a fool named Nabal. Now, is he a fool? Because he couldn’t do business, no.
It says he was extremely, extremely wealthy. He had hundreds and hundreds of sheep and goats. And that’s how you measured wealth when Nabal lived in Israel, the time he lived.
He was extremely wealthy. He had all kinds of servants. But the Scriptures tell us that he was a curlish man.
In chapter 3, it says, Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife was Abigail. And she was a woman of good understanding and of a beautiful countenance. But the man was curlish and evil in his doings, and he was of the house of Caleb.
I want you to understand, it doesn’t matter who your ancestors are, because Caleb was a godly man. He was of the house of Caleb, but he sure didn’t represent his ancestor Caleb well at all. He was the exact opposite of Caleb, where Caleb walked in obedience to the Lord, desired that people would see the blessings of the Lord, the power of God, the deliverance of God, the promises of God, a reality in their lives.
Nabal did the exact opposite. It was all about himself. And he was so enslaved to sin that he didn’t care who got hurt.
Now, we don’t have time to read the whole account this morning, so I’m going to give you a summary of what’s happening here. It’s a time of the year where they go out and they shear the sheep. And so they’re gathering the sheep, and he’s got hundreds and hundreds of sheep.
David, at this particular time, has 600 men. He is fleeing from Saul. Saul desires to kill David, the only reason, because of Saul’s jealousy and Saul’s lack of willingness to be humble before God and Saul’s wickedness of his heart.
So David is running from Saul, and one of the things that David does is he and his men act as walls, if you would, around the sheep and the goats of various sheep herders and goat herders that have their flocks out in the fields. And now they’re bringing the flocks in. David and his men have been down in the southern portion of what is Israel today, down where it’s called Carmel.
It’s not Mount Carmel, it’s Carmel. It’s in the southern portion of Israel. That’s where Nabal’s land was.
That’s where his herds were. They had protected his herds from thieves, from robbers, from wild animals, and they had gotten paid nothing. They’d done it because David knew it was right to do.
But now David sends a few of his men to speak to Nabal. And he knows Nabal is a wealthy, wealthy man. And he tells Nabal, we’ve protected your sheep, we’ve protected your flocks, we’ve protected your employees, we would like to be paid in food and drink for our service.
Imagine 400 men, and some of them had wives with them. They needed food to eat and to drink. When they come to Nabal, Nabal mocks David.
He said, who is David? Who is the son of Jesse that I should give him anything? Okay? The nation of Israel knew who David was, the son of Jesse. It’s the one that was going to be taking the place of Saul as king of Israel. It’s the one that Samuel was anointing as king.
It’s the one that God had chosen. Nabal knew, but he mocked. Nabal says, I’ll give him nothing.
They send the servants back to report to David. David hears his servants, and the minute his servants come back, the first thing David does, he sharpens his sword, and he divides his men. He says, 200 of you will stay here to keep track of our stuff.
400 of you come with me, we’re going to destroy the house of Nabal. This fool will die today. That’s what David was doing.
David was seeking revenge. People always paid those that protected their flocks out of what they received from the shearing and the selling of the wool. Nabal had ample, it wasn’t going to harm Nabal at all, to give David some food and some sustenance for what he had done.
And David’s going to seek revenge. The Bible tells us that in only one place, it wasn’t an angel, but it was one woman that stood and prevented 400 men from killing her husband and her whole household. It says that, if you remember, when it described Nabal, it described Abigail, his wife.
His wife was the exact opposite of what Nabal was. She was God-fearing. Nabal was God-hating.
Abigail, it says, was not only godly in character, but beautiful in countenance. She went out, she quickly got, if you can read it, she got hundreds of loaves of bread. She got wine.
She got other foodstuffs. She put them on donkeys. She had her servants take them, and they’re going out to meet David.
David’s coming to kill Nabal and his household. She tells the servants to go ahead with all the sustenance. And then the scriptures tell us that it’s interesting because all of a sudden she comes on her donkey and comes face to face with David.
And I want you to see her response versus her husband’s response. Her husband said, who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? Why would I give him a thing? She comes. She bows down before him, before David, in the position of humility and servitude, and says, I am so sorry that I have done this to you.
She didn’t do it. Her husband did. But she apologizes for her husband.
And she tells him, I have brought these things for you. Please take them for what you have done. And then she says an amazing thing.
Because she understands what Paul is talking about in Romans, those characteristics, where they lead to. And she says, David, you do not want to go down this path. You do not want to take revenge on my husband, because you do not want to have blood on your hands, because you are to be the king of Israel.
David puts his sword in his sheath. And he listens to this woman. She said, my husband’s name is Nabal.
It fits him well, for he is a fool. Nabal in Hebrew means fool. And it is stronger in Hebrew than it is in English, as far as what type of a fool you are.
While all of this is going on out in the country, Nabal is back with his sheep shearers, having a giant party, getting drunk, and not understanding what is happening out there between his wife standing before David to prevent his death. Now, she had gone out there without his knowledge, nor his okay. So, she knew she had to tell him.
But when she gets back, where Nabal is at, she immediately does not tell him, but waits until the next morning, because she sees that he is absolutely drunk and out of his mind. The next morning, you can imagine the condition he is in. He has got a hangover.
And she comes and tells him what happened, and who was coming to kill him, that she prevented from coming. It says, immediately, he began to have physical problems. And within a matter of days, he was dead.
In all likelihood, probably from a heart attack or a stroke, from realizing what he had done. And God brought judgment on Nabal. The thing is, going back to Romans, Satan wants us all to be Nabals.
In Proverbs, in two Proverbs, Proverbs 14 and the other one is 50, I can’t remember. It talks about, the proverb opens up and says, that the man who does not know God is a fool. Paul is telling us the characteristics of a fool.
Nabal is an example in Scripture given to us of a fool in real life that really lived. You can see fools all around you. And the problem is, the world wants you to be a fool.
The world wants you to have the characteristics that Paul talks about here, that are the characteristics of a sinner that is caught up and enslaved to sin, and will do everything to come against what God stands for. God called us and redeemed us through the blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord, to deliver us from out from under this. And so these characteristics should not be part of our life.
And when we see people who exemplify these characteristics, you know the one who’s controlling them is not the Spirit of God, nor the blood of Jesus, but it’s the author of death. And the one who would cause people to be called fools, because they give up that which is most precious for that which leads to death. You can look at it all around us.
I give you examples even in our own city. Just my daughter’s here and we were talking about what’s happening in Fargo. She said, you know what’s happening in Fargo? Your city is going down.
It’s becoming less of a place you’d want to live in, because the direction is being directed by fools, not by those who understand what is precious and true. Paul closes verses that we were looking at this morning. In verse 19 and 20 where he says, Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
God gave the law to the nation of Israel. They totally ignored it. They immediately, as they received the law from Moses, they immediately slipped back into sin at the base of Mount Sinai and worshiped false gods just about immediately.
But he’s saying what the law does is show you how guilty you are. And then he says, Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. The law reveals sin to us where it says, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
It reveals how we make other gods. Where it says, Thou shalt not kill, it reveals how that we may not kill physically, but we kill in spirit. Where it says, Thou shalt not commit adultery, maybe we don’t go out and have an adulterous relationship with a member of the opposite sex, but what we do is we harbor it in our heart.
Or it says, Do not steal, but we desire what does not belong to us. And if we had the opportunity, we would take it in a moment. And it shows the reality of sin and the consequences of sin and where sin leads to death.
But it can never redeem or save. Only the blood of Jesus can do that. And that’s where Paul is going with this whole letter.
Remember I said at the beginning of the letter, the key verse of this was found in chapter 1, verse 16. And you turn back to that and just read it again. It says in chapter 1, verse 16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. That’s where Paul is going with this whole thing.
How that men left to themselves apart from the power of God to open their eyes to their own wickedness and sin. When he does, we need to respond. And we need to accept.
And you and I need to share the power of the gospel, the transforming message to how men can be delivered out from this enslavement to sin. This wickedness that takes us down the road we don’t even realize we’re going. We don’t realize who we’re hurting.
We don’t realize who we’re harming. We don’t realize what one of our friends we may have insulted, thinking it was cute and funny. Instead, we need to realize what the power of God has transformed us to be.
Men and women that walk like Jesus. Men and women that are transformed to conform to His image, to reflect His character. May you and I reflect the character of Jesus Christ in our lives.
If you claim to be a Christian today, you need to understand these characteristics are to be set aside. That’s why Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, in his letter to the Colossians, in most of his letters, he talks about the fact, you once were those that did these things. You’ve been delivered from it.
Understand the power of your deliverance and what it means. You are a transformed person walking in the power of Jesus Christ, no longer enslaved to this lifestyle, no longer carrying a message of death, but rather carrying a message of life and transforming life that can give us the ability to walk as God intended us to walk, created in His image, reflecting His character and being the person He wanted us to be, to bring glory to His name. This is powerful, what Paul said.
It’s a powerful story of Nabal the fool with the wife who understood. Nabal’s actions led to death. Abigail’s actions led to life.
And it prevented the future king of Israel from doing something he would regret the rest of his life. That is taking vengeance into his hands instead of giving it to God. People do not understand.
I don’t understand the power of God to hear and answer our prayers in our times of need. James says, we have not because we ask not. And oftentimes it’s easy to slip into the ways of the world and complain and bellyache and mumble and grumble instead of taking it to the Lord and saying, Lord, I don’t know how to deal with this, but this is really causing a problem in my life.
I need help. And You’re big enough to deal with it. May we not be like the fool.
Let’s just close in prayer. Lord, I pray that You would just help us to walk in Your power, to realize what You’ve done for us and to realize the depth of Your power, transforming power, the ability to enable us to walk, the ability to enable us to accomplish and do what You would have us do in this world and help us to do it for Your sake and glory. This we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.