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“As it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”” (Romans 3:10-18, ESV)

 The sermon on this passage is called "No One Righteous".

In the Summer, sometimes crickets will find their way into my apartment at night. There are few things I like less than being surprised by a cricket jumping out at me. To a cricket, nothing is out of the ordinary. It thinks it is good. It thinks it is doing its job. But to me, the cricket is evil.

The long passage above can seem overwhelming to hear at first. If we are honest, it can cause all sorts of objections to rise within us. Surely, I am not that bad! Yes, humanity in general is messed up in all kinds of ways, but I’m at least above average! But when this happens, we miss a key truth that, similar to how I see crickets, this is a description of how the Holy God sees fallen humanity in its natural state. In general, the list has two parts: 1) What God says we lack 2) What God says we have.

What We Lack

  • Righteousness: We don’t live in a right way according to God’s commands.
  • Understanding: We are lost in this world, clueless regarding the meaning of life.
  • Desire to know and seek God: We seek ourselves instead.
  • Faithfulness: We turn aside from following God’s path. We follow our own whims.
  • Worth: Because we refuse to live in alignment with God’s will, we are worthless to Him.
  • Goodness: Even the good we think we do is vile and repugnant to God.

What We Have

  • Perverse, destructive speech: Our tongues are weapons, used to destroy others (James 3).
  • Skill in death: In 2020, an estimated 930,160 abortions were performed in the US alone.
  • Ruin and misery: Homelessness, substance addictions, poverty, and disease are commonplace in our world.
  • War: One does not have to watch the news for long before this fact is evident.

To conclude this, Paul sums it up simply by saying, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” And this gets to the heart of the matter, the dead root of the dead tree. All of us, individually and collectively, the entire human race, are wicked because we don’t worship and fear God the way he deserves to be worshiped and feared. This is how the Holy God sees every fallen and sinful human, according to the Bible. And until we begin to see ourselves the way God sees us, we will never see our need for a savior. And we will not see just how incredible the gospel is!

 

Go Deeper / Questions

  • Read Matthew 5:48, and Exodus 20:1-17. Have you followed God’s law perfectly in your life?
  • Do you see yourself as God sees you?
  • Watch this video on the doctrine of sin. What stands out to you about this doctrine?