Romans 3:9-18

⁹ What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, ¹⁰ as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
¹¹ no one understands; no one seeks for God.
¹² All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good, not even one.”
¹³ “Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
¹⁴ “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
¹⁵ “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
¹⁶ in their paths are ruin and misery,
¹⁷ and the way of peace they have not known.”
¹⁸ “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” [ESV]

Note: With this installment, we have now caught up to where our Sunday School group is in our study of Romans. After this post, I will be posting notes on each passage after we study it each Sunday.

Paul begins with the same phrase he used at the beginning of 3:1: ti oun? “What then…?” In 3:1 he used it to introduce the question (literally) “What then is the advantage of the Jew?” Here, he is asking–or putting the question into the mouth of his hypothetical questioner–“What then? Are we [i.e., Jews, implied by the text] better off?” This, I believe, is the attitude of the Jewish Christians in Rome, as we’ve discussed, and what Paul said previously could be interpreted to lend support to this view. Yes, there is much benefit in many ways to being Jewish and having circumcision and the Law. Of course, if you ignore Paul’s qualifications to this statement (i.e., these things are only meaningful if you actually obey the Law, which even Gentiles can keep and be as good as Jewish in so doing), the follow-up question seems valid. If being Jewish is valuable, then aren’t we better than non-Jewish people? Don’t we have an ultimate security they don’t because we’re Jewish?

Paul’s answer: Absolutely not! (ou pantôs in the Greek.) And now he comes back to the point he made in chapter one, and that he has been implying and leading up to all this time: all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. That is, sin has dominion over the lives of all people, whether Jew or Gentile. Being Jewish or not being Jewish isn’t the issue.

Paul spells out the effect of being “under sin” in a series of verses pulled from the Old Testament which his readers (especially the Jewish ones) would have known. Most of the quotations are from the Psalms. The table below lists each of the verses, and where they come from in the English translation of the Old Testament. There are some variations of chapter and verse division in the Greek Old Testament (LXX), so I have listed these references in a separate column. “q” signifies an exact quotation of the Greek, “a” signifies an “almost” direct quotation:

Let’s briefly hit the highlights of what these verses are teaching:

• There is no-one righteous. Yes, Noah and Job were “righteous men” in that they were God-fearing and kept God’s commandments as far as they had been revealed. But as far as being righteous in the sense that Paul has meant up to this point, i.e., able to stand before God blameless–there’s no-one, Jew or Greek that qualifies.
• No-one understands, no-one seeks: Remember 1:21-23–men have become foolish, and futile in their thinking, having exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Clearly, they are not seeking God, because if they were, they wouldn’t have made such an exchange. There are no God-Seekers. Of our own accord, we do not search after the God of the Bible.
• All are useless, none do good: Again echoing what Paul has already discussed in chapter 1.
• Their throat…  their tongues… their lips… whose mouth…: The intentions of their hearts is made evident through their speech. They are full of bitterness and deceit.
• Their feet… their path…: The intentions of their hearts are also made plain by the way they live. Bloodshed, destruction, misery–these don’t have to, and perhaps shouldn’t be taken literally, but as symbolic of the way of wickedness which is the path of the unrighteous who don’t know the peace that only a right relationship with God can bring.
• There is no fear of God before their eyes: I think this sums it up. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7; Proverbs 9:10). Without the fear of God, men are left to their own ignorance and foolishness.