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.