Romans 3 | No One Is Righteous — Only Grace Saves

Mark Twain is quoted as saying, everyone is like a moon.

He has a dark side, which he never shows to anybody.

Maybe there is a sense in which that is true.

Maybe that is true for you and me.

But when it comes to human relationships alone, I would say that could be true.

When it comes to the relationship that we have with God, obviously that is not true, as God says in 1 Samuel chapter 16 and in verse 17.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

Man looks at the outward appearance.

But when it comes to God, the Lord, he says, looks at the heart.

Hebrews 4, verse 13 would uh harmonize with that.

Hebrews 4:13

No creature is hidden from his sight, we're told.

Though we are all capable of giving into our dark side.

That side that maybe nobody knows, that is sometimes held captive when it comes to doing good and evil.

God says he knows us better than that.

He actually understands us better than that.

He knows darkness and he knows light.

For some people, that is a fearful acknowledgement that God knows us that intimately.

Knows us that well.

Then for others, there can be found in that some great confidence that God knows us that well.

I want you to turn with me this morning to Romans chapter 3.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 3 is where we will uh be looking this morning for the the main the uh major part of our content for the lesson today.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

And while you're getting there, Romans chapter 3.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

We're gonna start around verse 21 of that text in just a second.

Say good morning to everybody, and uh good to see everybody this morning.

Good to have everyone here, both visitor and guest alike.

Appreciate your being with God's people today for worship.

And uh hope that it has already been profitable to you, thanks to some of our worship leaders already today, and hope that it will be in our study also.

Romans chapter 3 and in verse 21.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

The Jews had a very special, divine, we might even say, relationship with God, going all the way back to Abraham, 2,000 years before this Roman letter was written.

And so it shouldn't surprise us that when Paul begins teaching that non-Jewish people can also have a part in that special family relationship of God or with God, that some would take offense and they would begin asking questions about that.

In fact, I would say to you, they go beyond just the questions and they begin to actually insult Paul and his message of God's gospel to the Gentiles.

What are some of those questions?

Well, he begins with one right here at the very beginning.

What is the benefit in verse 21?

What is the benefit of being chosen by God all those 2,000 years previous to this, if we're no further ahead with God because of it?

Paul teaches in chapter 2, if you just look up a few verses there in verse 28 of the text, that no one uh that no one is a Jew who is merely outward, nor is circumcision outward and physical.

These were cornerstones of the Jewish religion, the specially chosen of God.

Verse 29, the true family of God was set apart inwardly, and is a matter of the heart, he says, by the Spirit, not by the letter.

And his praise is not from man, but for God.

What that means is being born a Jew gives no special preference in the sight of God.

Now, that, if you were a Jew, might cause some great consternation.

He looks beyond the visible and the outer, Paul is teaching, of a person, and he sees all the way through that person to the very soul, the very heart of who they are.

And that is what God takes into account.

And in fact, we see this over and over again in scripture.

Notice in chapter one, remembered there in chapter one, the Gentiles in verse 24 were overt sinners, and they were given up by God because of this to do what they wanted to do.

Remember that?

We looked at that in a previous lesson.

Verse 24, God gave them up in the lusts of their heart to impurity.

Verse 26, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

And in verse 28, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

But it is also why when we come to chapter 2, we are taught there that the physical Jew was really no better off than that.

Because they themselves would know these things, understand these things, even teach on these things, but then turn around and do them themselves.

As though they were depending upon their possession of the old law, the covenant of circumcision, which connected them specially toward God, dating all the way back to their forefather Abraham 2,000 years ago.

But because of their continual breaking of that covenant, they too were under God's condemnation, as were the Gentile people.

Though they were not overt sinners, they certainly were covert sinners.

And so even the privileged religious Jew, educated from his or her youth, had this dark side.

So when it comes to our division that we see here in chapter three of the text, Paul is pressing this point to maximum.

So that no one who is reading of this, no one who is thinking through this, misunderstands it.

A Jewish person may be led to ask the question then that we mentioned at the very beginning here, then what good has it been to have been raised as a Jew?

That was not an easy raising.

That was a difficult childhood, that was a difficult way of living as an adult.

If there's no advantage to that, doesn't that seem very unkind of our God?

Paul urges that there's great advantages to having a religious background.

The argument is set up, well, what good is it then to have been a Jew, raised a religious person, if that does us uh those works that we've been doing in that law does us no good before God, does not justify us before God.

What good is it then?

Verse 1 of chapter 3.

Then what advantage has the Jew?

Or what is the value of the religious rites of circumcision, keeping that law?

Again, these were cornerstones of the Jewish faith, and that's why they're pointed out, but they could be rightly said of all of God's Old Testament law.

Then what good is any of it?

Is what they're asking.

Paul says, What's the value?

It's much in every way.

And then he begins to name off some of those ways for us.

For one thing, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

That is a special privilege, ladies and gentlemen.

I got thinking about that a little bit, and I want you to think about that as well.

What is he saying?

It's not so much about what God wants and what God is doing for them as what they were privileged to be doing for God.

I want us to consider the fact of whether or not we value our work in Christ or God.

Is that valuable or is that just a burden?

Because you see, the Jews they saw the law as a burden.

They saw their work for God, their person for God, as becoming a great burden to them.

God was demanding, God was ruthless in what he wanted.

God was difficult to be a family member with.

To be entrusted with the oracles of God, even at a younger age, Paul says that's valueless.

There is great value to this.

There can't be a value put on this, is what I should be trying to say.

You can't measure what how great that is in a person's life, holding this sacred truth.

That's a big deal, brothers and sisters.

It was a big deal to the early Christians, it was a big deal to our forefathers in the old covenant.

It should be a big deal for us today.

Because it's a big deal to God.

Much in every way.

I make a quick diversion in this.

I know we're talking about the old covenant Jews, but in some places, brothers and sisters, if you if you're one who's been raised among God's family, you can identify to some of their issues, can't you?

Some might be asking the same question, what use is it to have been raised in God's family and try so hard to live the right way if it doesn't earn me any good standing in God's sight?

What use is this?

You might recall from our earlier studies uh in chapter two as well.

Chapter two, looking just skimming down through that again for sake of context with what Paul's describing right here in the beginning of chapter three, chapter two, verse 17, they relied on the law, they boasted in God.

That's a privilege, Paul is saying.

That's a privilege for a person in their relationship with God.

To be able to have the old covenant law, to have that law in your hands, to understand that law, to be able to say, God is my God, this God is my God.

This is our national God, this is our family's God, this is my personal God.

They approved of God's will in verse 18.

They were favored recipients of his instruction.

Verse 19, they were guides of the blind, able to teach the uninformed.

Verse 20, they had embodiment of the knowledge of truth available to them.

And were to protect that.

These are all some pretty great reasons for being part of the family of God.

It would have been a blessing to have been born into the Jewish religion.

To grow up as a religious person.

Maybe they were doing what sometimes we see young people do today, sometimes even older people who've grown up among God's family, they despise it.

They look at it as a hard task, a laborous thing.

Void of the great benefits that come with growing up among God's people.

And what Paul is teaching here is that is a perverted view.

The fact of the matter is, there are great advantages to growing up to be a religious person.

Great advantages.

And he's naming them off either here in our text this morning in chapter 1 through chapter 3, verses 1 through 20, or previous study portions of the scripture of Romans.

Those with such privileges were selected to be lights in a dark world.

That's not a burden, it's a blessing.

It's a privilege.

To be set apart by God, having a special standing with God, Paul is talking about.

Having all that God gave to them amounted only to blessings in their life.

And not disadvantages.

That is a messed up view to say having grown up among God's family became a disadvantage to me.

It's just not true, Folsa.

It's just not true.

And then he asks in verse 3 of the text, what if some were unfaithful to these oracles?

Well, that is the problem, isn't it?

That's the real problem.

They were unfaithful to these oracles.

They had corrupted God's religion.

Paul says in verse 3 of the text there, does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?

Is God going to just chunk everything since the Jews didn't hold up their end of the deal?

In other words.

And he says in verse 4, by no means.

It's possible to become the kind of person who says, I've gone too far.

I've broken too many laws of God.

I'm just too far gone to redeem.

And maybe that's where some were feeling at this point when he's pointing out you've been faithless.

But he's making the bigger point that God is faithful.

It already really caused us a great amount of joy, brothers and sisters, to understand that Paul is teaching God doesn't become unfaithful in his promises simply because his people become unfaithful to their promise.

That's not how God works.

Fortunately, God, knowing the future, had made a promise to the forefathers, even under the old covenant, going all the way back to Abraham, really going all the way back to Genesis, if you really want to be uh critical about it.

That he would keep his promises.

Promises that would extend all the way even to you and me, to us, still today, through Christ.

We'll see that in just a minute.

Then he quotes from Psalm 5 chapter 51, Psalm 51, where King David uh writes the beginning of that in that Psalm, saying, Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

Then he quotes this from David, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

There in verse 4 of our text.

Paul's point is King David's sin did not limit God's character.

It didn't limit God's spoken word to the people.

It didn't limit God's plans and his fulfillment of those plans.

Even though rebellion and sin existed in these people's lives, God will and God promises, his will and his promises are not stifled.

They're not nullified by man's reaction, by man's keeping his end of the bargain.

Ask a question, and my mind went to a question when I read that the first time here recently, again, as studying for this.

Do we sometimes get the impression that sometimes people's unfaithfulness somehow stifles God's faithfulness?

That somehow our faithfulness gets in the way of God doing what he says he's going to do as if we're that important in the equation.

These Jews thought they were that important to the equation.

Well, if we didn't keep up our end of the bargain, that means God must not want to be faithful anymore.

At what point did man's unfaithfulness ever stop God from carrying out his design plans?

Name one time in all of Scripture.

One time.

Even if the entire populace of the Jewish race had become unfaithful, which they didn't, but even if they had, God would still have been faithful and just in what he had said and what he planned, and carrying of that plant out.

He doesn't need people.

He wants people.

In fact, as it turns out here, the dark unfaithfulness of even the religious Jews only illuminated the great faithfulness of God.

And that brought about another question by Paul.

And an answer, thankfully.

If my sin and unfaithfulness brings out the display of God's faithfulness, if my unfaithfulness illuminates the faithfulness of God and causes God to respond in unmerited favor, unearned favor called grace, then why not sin more and therefore thereby magnify God's grace in me?

It almost sounds reasonable.

Except in verse 5, and that's going to take some intentional thinking on our part because I would say to be, it's a difficult text.

If our unrighteousness, Paul says, serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say?

That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?

I speak in human ways.

By no means, he says in verse 6, for then how could God judge the world?

But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?

And why not do evil that good may come?

As some people slanderously charge us with saying their condemnation is just.

So obviously, Paul here is addressing some who are telling lies about what Paul is teaching.

That's what you know.

The word slander is not a good word.

He's teaching that good comes from evil.

That God receives more glory when Christians do evil and then are forgiven for it.

His point is to emphatically reject that summary of their slander.

If that were the case, how could God judge evil if his desire is that we commit it?

That would be a horrible judge, is what Paul is teaching.

He's going to deal with that more in chapter six, more extensively, in chapter six.

And so we'll save it for that.

But to kind of just concisely talk about the argument that God that uh that God's talking about through Paul, it goes something like this if I were to tell you arson fires are good things, you would say, Well, why is that?

And I would say, Well, because arson fires give first responders work.

I mean, how are they going to stay employed if there's no fire to put out?

And besides that, and beyond that, the opportunity to display their skill and their bravery.

Look at bravery.

Look at those people.

They are selfless in their service as first responders.

I mean, we ought to really esteem them.

Look at how good they are doing.

So we all ought to go about setting uh places on fire.

That way everybody can grow.

Can I use the Bible term?

Abound if their appreciation for first responders, you'd rightly conclude that that is some seriously faulty rational.

And you would say what Paul says that's dumb.

Well, okay, I'll paraphrase it.

That actually makes no sense to what we know about God.

Paul is saying the same thing about God and sin.

How dumb can you get?

Verse 6 by no means is that the case.

If that's the way it worked, then God's judgment against sin could not be just judgment.

God would not be a just judge.

Why?

Because you can't rightly condemn something that you're actually approving of.

God would be no better than the people we read about in chapter 2, verse 2, who Paul condemns for their hypocrisy.

Though knowing what was right, they stood for what was wrong, and that was hypocrisy.

So referring to those who would try to justify their willful sin with such a twisted logic as what you read in those verses, he simply says, their condemnation is just.

In other words, it's deserved.

They'll answer for that kind of logic.

As we come to verse 9 in our text this morning, Paul presents his own question for us to ponder when he says, What then?

Are we Jews any better off?

No, not at all.

Now, don't get that confused with do we have advantages?

Yes, they do.

The fact is that they do have advantages because of all the blessings that they had from God since their birth, actually.

Literally.

And going back more than 2,000 years to their father Abraham.

But like spiritually spoiled children, they're not any better off with all of those riches and all of those advantages than the underprivileged Gentiles who had nothing like that.

Who grew up spiritually poor compared to them.

For we have already charged, Paul says, that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

And he is setting now forth some scripture in our text in rapid fire.

I mean, sometimes when you want to make a real drastic point, you just pile up the scriptures one after the other that prove the point.

And that's what Paul is doing here in this argument.

He just shoots them out there, one after the other, in rapid fire, all of them showing the biblical truth regarding God's verdict, even from an old covenant perspective.

God's verdict was even under the old law, every one of you are guilty.

Every one of you are judged as faithless before me.

Every one of you are due to God's verdict of condemnation.

He begins in verse 10.

He goes all the way through verse 18 of our text, giving what I consider to be a spiritual autopsy of the human race.

You'll notice how he uses body parts to illustrate the foulness of the death, the decay that existed there.

It's not a free thing if you're to read all of those characteristics of how God portrays his people.

Complete depravity is what I would label that as.

But you know, maybe we could fix this.

Maybe we can make up for our shortfalls in the past.

As I was thinking about that a little bit, because that's I don't know about yours, that's my natural instinct, actually.

Okay, I I I understand.

I've been living as a deprived, a depraved person before God.

I get that.

I I can do better, I can do better, right?

And maybe we can, we should.

I remember back in August of 25 when I was watching the news and and uh President Trump was trying to, you know, he's been trying to end the war, he says, over in Ukraine between Russia and Ukraine.

And but there was a quote that he said about that.

When a reporter asked, why are you doing?

Why do you even care?

What what does it matter what they're doing over there?

And he said, I'm trying to get to heaven if possible.

I I'm really at the bottom of the totem pole.

But if I can get to heaven, ending this war, saving all those lives will be one of the reasons.

It makes sense.

I'm not saying he's a fool.

I'm not saying, well, that's just ridiculous.

I'm not saying, well, that's a bad thing to want.

That's not that's a terrible desire.

Obviously, it's a good desire.

But he's wrong about his conclusion.

Just as now many had come to believe that their attempts at obedience, doing good, but get them recognized by God.

In fact, even beyond that, justify them before a just God who wants us to do good.

But brothers and sisters, there's no cosmic scale.

It doesn't exist.

God never bought that.

He doesn't need it, he won't use it.

We just can't offset our past sins because we start trying to do good now.

In fact, I don't even want that system.

Do you still in all the good that we do, there's still evil that lurks in all of our lives.

Even Paul would talk about that here in the book of Romans, that some of the things he wished he could do, he ends up not doing.

He doesn't understand himself sometimes.

God teaches it does no one any good to try as hard as they might to make up for the past sin in their life as an attempt to justify him or herself before him, before God.

We can't outsmart, outmaneuver, we can't even blame God for where we stand before it.

Any resistance to God's righteous conclusion of man's guilt can only bring death.

It will fix nothing.

Whether we've been raised religious like the Jew or raised without God like the Gentile, the overriding recognition in all of our lives is one that we all have in common, and that is sin is still a problem.

If you want to know the truth about yourself, if I want to know the truth about myself, all I need to do is take a quick reading again of the Ten Commandments.

I say the Ten Commandments because they're short and they're easy to read.

Only takes literally about a minute.

And then think to yourself, how many of these have I broken in my lifetime?

In the last year, in the last month, sometimes even today.

How many have I broken?

Nine of those are repeated in the New Testament.

Are there any that you have not broken at some point?

I'm just saying to you, brothers and sisters, we need not fool ourselves.

We need not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, Paul would say.

Thinking, well, I've done pretty well.

I mean, I've been raised among God's people.

I've been practicing what God says ever since I can remember.

I'm certainly not as immoral and corrupt.

I am not as dark as some of those other people.

And you know, the truth is that might be true if you're counting up sins.

But that's not how God works.

Fact of the matter is, it only takes one violation to be guilty before God of everything.

I mean, like one violation blows the whole system of our relation between God and Him, uh, ourselves and God.

And frankly, it really doesn't matter where we come from.

Without God in our life, we will still all stay guilty, stuck in sin.

That's what God means.

That's what God means when he speaks through Paul.

Are we any better than them then?

And his answer is, no, as a Jew, you're just the same at the sight of God as a Gentile.

And so he says, What can we say then?

And and if we could answer that in short, it would be something like this Thanks be to God for his law.

That's a great privilege in my life.

I don't have to go around ignorant, I don't have to go around unknowing what God wants.

Living a better life, though I am imperfect in doing it.

But it is a privilege to have the teachings of God in our life, isn't it?

Thanks be to God for his relentless love in that, that he would not make a covenant with us, and when we fail, he would just throw us off more.

His willingness to confront our condition without him and inform us of our true condition.

Otherwise, I don't know about you, but I never would have started seeking.

Without this knowledge, I never would have begun knocking.

I never would have found my rescue.

Could the good news of our being pulled by God from our dark and sinful past possibly mean as much to us without a clear understanding of where we'd be without his plan, his promises, his great mercy, and his faithfulness.

I'm using that because that's a very noticeable thing when I was up here with a patch on my face, right?

When I went to that doctor for that cancer, I did not expect him to tell me how good my cholesterol was.

I didn't expect him to say, Wow, man, your shoes look great.

What I was going to him for was a problem that I had that I did not know how to identify.

And then after that, I went back to him again in order for him to eradicate the problem, to cut the problem out of my body.

I wanted him to deal with the sickness.

Most of all, I wanted him to deal with the treatment so that the ailment could be addressed and cured.

Like the great physician, God refuses to simply see our ailment and go about his life as if we don't matter to him.

The great physician.

God refuses to just point out the ailment that we have and then just simply say, Well, shame on you for breaking the covenant.

Shame on you for being a person who's unfaithful.

His love refuses to leave us to die in that darkness.

Instead, he spread out his arms and he offered himself for our sins, for our unfaithfulness, nailed to a cross, taking our capital punishment of wrath from God on himself, bearing God's full weight against sin, dying in our place in the flesh.

He offers that most valuable and highest commodity to pay for you and me, who are unfaithful.

Absolutely one hundred percent free of charge.

If it were something of this world, it would be too good to be true.

We didn't earn it.

We certainly don't deserve it.

But that is the God who loves us and calls us to be his.

Maybe you have come to the conclusion that you've been avoiding the real problem in your life, in my life, in all of our lives, just like the Jews in their life that Paul is addressing.

We need to remind ourselves when we're not where we should be with God, if that's where you are today, it is not religion that has put you there.

It is not the law that has put you there.

It is not a disadvantage that has put you there.

It's not an advantage that has put you there.

It's just plain sin.

No excuse is good enough when we stand before the judge.

We are utterly and completely resting on his grace.

Further denial of that can really only bring inevitable judgment because God's not fooled by any excuse.

But a willingness.

A willingness to embrace God's grace, God's mercy, and God's forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

Now that is something through faith which brings salvation.

A new life.

A life that only God can give us as he takes us from darkness, pulls us out of darkness, and brings our soul into light.

Only God can do that.

Only God is strong enough to do that.

Only God is faithful enough to do that.

I will say to you this morning, if you need to respond in repentance and baptism, and you've been putting that off, I want you to ask yourself the question, why am I doing that?

When before me is a God who is this faithful.

When I have been unfaithful, God doesn't want you to stay in that circumstance.

He wants to pull you from.

If you're subject to his call this morning, I hope you'll respond now.

By coming forward, while together we stand, and as we