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"We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it
is written,
`There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands,
no-one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become
worthless; there is no-one who does good, not even one' (Psa. 53: 1-3).
`Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit' (Psa. 5: 9).
`The poison of vipers is on their lips' (Psa. 140: 3).
`Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness' (Psa. 10: 7).
`Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the
way of peace they do not know' (Isa. 59: 7, 8).
`There is no fear of God before their eyes' (Psa. 36: 1).
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.
Therefore no-one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the law; rather
through the law we become conscious of sin" (Rom. 3: 9-20, N.I.V.).
The `law' here means the O.T. Scriptures as a whole.
Having now dealt with all mankind in the two-fold division of Jew and Gentile, and
shown that all are sinners and are therefore guilty in the sight of God--the Judge of all
the earth, the Apostle Paul returns to the implications of the wonderful gospel of grace
which he stated in 1: 17. Man is not only a sinner but is unable to rescue or save himself
from this condition, no matter how much he tries. Since the fall, men have been
struggling to do this very thing, but have never attained to it, and as Scripture reveals,
never will. Max Muller, as he considered the many religions in the world, observed the
fact that although they differed in many respects, in one thing they were all united, that
man must do something to achieve salvation. He must make his contribution or work it
out for himself, in other words. The idea of salvation as a free gift, perfect and complete,
being brought before men and received personally by faith or trust never enters their
conceptions, but this is the heart of the gospel made known to Paul by revelation of the
risen Christ (Gal. 1: 8-12).
We have reached a point in Romans where God now steps in to meet the deepest
needs of man and provides with that righteousness or absolute rightness which
completely nullifies his guilty condition, so much so, that if he accepts it by simple faith,
in God's court of law he now can be pronounced "not guilty" by the Judge of all the
earth, the very opposite of the "guilty" verdict declared in Rom. 3: 19:
"But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which
the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in
Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that
came by Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3: 21-24, N.I.V.).