Romans 3:9-20

No One Is Righteous
9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;

11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.

12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."

13 "Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."

"The poison of vipers is on their lips."

14 "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."

15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know."

18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes."

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.


Dig Deeper
I remember many years ago when my sister and I were both still in our teen years and one afternoon she left school at lunchtime and went back to our house with a bunch of her friends. They were all a little bit older than I and certainly didn’t want me around in their immediate vicinity but usually didn’t mind if I hung around at the house so long as I kept my distance. So, on this one particular day, because they all went to our house, I decided to go there as well. When I go there I discovered that my sister and her friends were breaking a few of my parents rules when we had friends over. My sister wasn’t concerned, though, because who was going to tell on her? If they happened to suspect something later and ask, she wasn’t going to point out her own guilt and she certainly expected that I would exonerate her. She was sure that if I was called to testify, she would be okay because I wouldn’t accuse her of anything. And there was her big mistake. I was upset that her friends told me to leave them alone and so I actually gathered a little evidence and turned on her. She thought that I would defend her but I actually did nothing but point out her violation. There is nothing quite like the sinking feeling that comes when you think someone is going to defend and protect you only to find that they are the very ones who accuse you.

This is not a perfect analogy to what is going here in this section, analogies never are perfect, but Paul wants the Jews to know that they are on the same footing as the Gentiles when it comes to God’s justification. Justification, as we remember, is his declaration of who the people of God are and who is standing in the right before God, with an eye on the final justification on the final day of judgment. The Jew of Paul’s day of course would be horrified a suggestion that they were on equal grounds with Gentiles and quite confident that they were justified in the present because of their possession of the law of God. This present justification kept them separate from the pagan world and showed them to be the true people of God in the present. Thus, when they faced God in final judgment they felt confident that their status as the possessors of the law would acquit them in this divine legal scene. And that is exactly where Paul wants them to see that they have gotten things wrong. That was not the purpose of the law and it never was. The law won’t acquit, defend, or protect them when they stand in judgment. It will actually accuse them as sinners. If they think that the law will justify them they will be sadly mistaken because the law will actually point the finger of accusation at them rather than defending them.

The question that begins this section looks the same, at first glance, as the question Paul answered affirmatively in verse 1 of chapter three. Are there real privileges that come with being a Jew? “Yes,” said Paul. Not the least of those is being entrusted with the oracles of God. His question now, though, despite the seeming similarity is a different question. Are the Jews in a better position when it comes to justification and judgment than anyone else if they have the privilege of being entrusted with the oracles? Of course not, says Paul. The charge has already been made in complete against the Gentiles, now he is finishing his point that the Jews stand charged and guilty just as surely as the Gentiles are. Paul goes farther than just saying that all humans have sinned, but he gives a personifying force to sin, describing it as a malevolent force that has enslaved all human societies, Jew and Gentile alike. They are both enslaved to sin and, as Paul will begin to show in the next section, need a new power, something that was not previously available to set them free.

Paul then turns to a string of quotations from the Old Testament that seem to be a string of references that make the point that all humans are guilty before God. And while that is true, Paul’s choice of quotations is far more systematic, subtle, and intentional than a random string of proof-texts that bolster the point he is trying to make. Paul begins with a string of quotes from Psalm 14:1-3 (with possible allusion to Ps. 53:1-3; Eccl. 7:20); he then, in verse 13, moves to Psalm 140:3; verse 14 comes from Psalm 10:7; verses 15-17 come from Isaiah 59:7-8; and verse 18 comes from Psalm 36:1. To follow Paul’s brilliant but subtle line of thought it is necessary to go back and not just read the verses from which Paul quotes but we have to understand the entire context of the passages to which Paul alludes. When we do this the rapid blur of so many loosely connected quotes comes into sharp focus. Each passage makes clear the condemnation of every human being before God but they all also point to a promise that God will work things out in the end. He will be faithful to his covenant and will show himself to be faithful and just despite the seeming bleakness of the circumstances. Yes, the surface meaning of the quotes is that no one is faithful to the covenant, no one stands in the right place before God, no one does God’s will, so all are equally guilty. But for the careful reader, Paul has deftly woven in a clue to where he is about to turn in the next section. All humans are guilty, but because of that very situation, God will act to help the helpless and fulfill the covenant, demonstrating that he is just, fair, and faithful to the covenant.

Paul’s point in verse 19 is for the Jew that thinks they can appeal to their possession of the law as a sign of their justification in the present, which guarantees their position in the final judgment. If they think that, they need to cover their mouths and let it be silenced. When Paul says this about silencing the mouth, he is clearly thinking of a courtroom setting. In the Jewish culture when a defendant had nothing more to say in their own defense because of their obvious guilt (see Job 5:16; Ps. 63:11; 107:42), they would put their hand over their mouth. An obviously guilty defendant who continued to speak in their own defense might be struck in the mouth by someone signifying that they should cover their own mouths (see John 18:22 and Acts 23:2 for descriptions of this happening). Everyone, in other words, stands before God with no excuse and nothing more to say. The Jew should cover his own mouth rather than trying to continue to assert his covenant righteousness before God.

Paul has already made an airtight case that Gentiles are deserving of God’s judgment and now he will finish off his shocking charge that the Jews are in the same state despite their possession of the law and all of the other privileges that came with being a Jew under the old covenant. No one, says Paul, will be declared to be in the right before God or in good standing in covenant with God by “observing the law.” The TNIV changes what is more accurately “by doing the works of the law.” When Paul uses “works of the law” here he doesn’t mean that Jews thought they earned salvation by doing the law. The works of the law were the aspects of the law that defined Jews as a separate people from the Gentiles. The works of the law could include the whole law, but things like circumcision, the food laws, and Sabbath observation were usually meant. These were the things that marked them out as being the people of God and clearly different from the Gentiles. A Jew that appealed to the works of the law would be saying, “Look, these are the things that demonstrate that we are different from the pagans and thus, obviously the true people of God. We are the ones that will be justified and vindicated at the final judgment.” By appealing to the works of the law, a Jew didn’t believe they were claiming to be sinless or to have perfectly followed every command, but they appealed to the possession of the law as the uniform of God’s promised people.

They thought, in other words that the possession of the law and doing the works of the law would exonerate them as innocent by showing them to be part of the one true family that had been forgiven and was the light of the world, the descendants of Abraham. Instead of the law doing that, however, Paul says the law accuses them by making them conscious of sin. They appealed to the law to defend them and help them but the law has responded by pointing the finger at them as being as guilty as anyone else. Paul doesn’t attempt to fully explain the purpose of the law but will return in 5:20 and 7:7-25 to dealing with why God gave the law. He has made his case, though, that both Jews and Gentiles have nothing to say to God in their defense. They both need something new and powerful to gain their freedom from the slavery of sin. It is to this that Paul will now begin to turn.


Devotional Thought
The problem for the Jews was that they put their hope in following God’s law rather than in God himself. Have you ever found yourself putting your hope for salvation in what you do or where you go to church rather than in the life of Christ alone? Spend some time today and dwell on the thought of why Paul put so much emphasis on understanding that the new family of God relied on faith in the life of the Messiah alone.