WWUTT 1201 For All Have Sinned? (Romans 3:23-24)

Romans 3:23-24 and the Meaning of “No Distinction”

Romans 3 says, for there is no distinction, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, when we understand the text.

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Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of Romans chapter 3, and we're going to pick up where we left off last week. But starting off here, I'm reading verses 21 through 26. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

So where we left off last week was with verse 22. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. And then right at the end of verse 22, we have this statement, for there is no distinction.

And that's really the beginning of a new sentence, which then picks up in verse 23. 23 is not the start of the new sentence. The sentence begins at the end of verse 22, but because it's at the end of 22, it tends to get dropped off most of the time.

So you may have Romans 3 23 memorized, right? Maybe you memorized it a long time ago. You learned it as a little kid in Sunday school. Romans 3 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Or maybe you learned it the King James style for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But don't miss the statement that precedes it, that sets it up for there is no distinction. Again, that tends to get forgotten because it's at the end of verse 22.

It's not in verse 23, but don't miss it. Paul had been making this argument throughout chapter three. Back in verse nine, he said, all are under sin, Jews and Greeks. We have already charged that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

And then we have in verse 19, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, which are the Jews, so that every mouth may be stopped, whether they are Jew or Gentile, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

And then you get to verse 22, well, verse 21. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

Paul summarizes the point here, for there is no distinction. The reason why that is so important is because we're remembering that neither Jews nor Gentiles are righteous before God. All have sinned and fallen short of his glory.

But both Jews and Gentiles are saved by faith in Jesus Christ. They're both saved by the gospel. Remember Romans 1 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

That's a portion of that verse that tends to get left off to, you know, Romans 1 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to all who believes. But when we say that, we don't often include that.

That next part that comes right after the comma to the Jew first and also to the Greek to the Jew first, because they were given the oracles of God. They were entrusted with the law and the prophets. But now the message of the gospel has come also to the Gentiles.

So the Jews received it first. The gospel was first preached at Pentecost in Jerusalem. The Jews were the first to hear the declaration of the gospel with the Holy Spirit coming upon all those who believed in it.

Remember at the start of Acts, Jesus said to his disciples, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem where the gospel was first proclaimed in Judea and Samaria, which is those outlying regions and then to the ends of the earth.

Everyone else, all the Greeks, Gentiles, those who are outside Judea and Samaria would also hear the message of the gospel and turn from their sin and believe in Jesus Christ and so be saved. Everyone has sinned.

Everyone is under the judgment of God. That's our default state because we have inherited a sin nature from Adam, all of us who are descended from Adam. It is only through the hearing and believing of the gospel that we are saved from the judgment of God.

That's what it means to be saved. When you say that, I'm saved, right? I believe in Jesus and I've been saved. He's my savior. What has he saved you from? He has saved you from your sin, certainly. He saved you from the wages of sin, which is death.

We read about that in Romans 6 .23, but he saved you from the judgment of God that is coming against all the unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. That was back in Romans 1 .18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.

Why is this so important to preach the gospel? This thesis statement that Paul made at the start of his letter to the Romans, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

To the Jew, to the Greek, why is it so important that this gospel be proclaimed? Because without it, no one will be saved. Without the gospel, everyone will perish under the judgment of God. And so there is this necessary understanding that everybody has sinned.

No one has the favor of God outright. No one has inherently received some kind of favoritism from the Lord just because they were born Jew or even because they were born Gentile. See, the Jews thought that they had the favor of God because they were descended from Abraham and God made that covenant with Abraham.

Then he made a covenant with David and we're recipients of those covenants. So if we're descended from Abraham, then we have the covenants of God. God favors us. We're the favored nation of the world.

So he's going to destroy everybody else, but he's going to save us, right? That's what the Jews thought. But Paul is pointing out here in Romans, at least in these first three chapters we've read thus far, we've seen how he has stated, you were given the law, but you broke it.

You couldn't even keep it. Paul will even say later on in Romans that the law never had the power to save us anyway. That wasn't the function of the law. The law is not our salvation. Jesus Christ is our salvation.

He who kept the law and the prophets perfectly, hence why we read here, the law and the prophets bear witness to the righteousness of God that has now been given to us by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ so that we may be saved.

And this is how anybody comes to salvation. It is by faith in Jesus. So the Jews were not receiving some sort of inherent salvation. The kingdom of God was not automatically theirs just because they were born descendants of Abraham.

Jesus made this point back in John chapter eight, where he said to the Jews who would not believe in him that you are of your father, the devil. In John eight 42, he said to them, if God were your father, you would love me for I came from God and I am here.

I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.

Jesus pointing out to the Jews that God is not their father. Abraham's not even their father, for if they believed in Abraham, then they would also believe in him. That's the argument he goes on to make.

And because he says, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. The Jews pick up stones to throw at him because they believe he just blasphemed God. For him to say, I was before even Abraham and Abraham knew me, well, that was considered blasphemy to the Jews, so they wanted to stone him for that.

But Jesus is very clear here that just because you're a Jew doesn't mean you're going to heaven. It does not mean you have inherited the kingdom of God. You were given the law of God, but you did not keep it.

Your hearts are far from him, as the prophet Isaiah said. And so Jesus said of them, you acknowledge me with your lips, but your heart is far from me. So the Jews are not inherently recipients of salvation just for being Jews, just for being born in the line of Abraham.

They're born in the line of Adam. And everyone who is descended from Adam is born into sin, dead in our sins and our trespasses. Even we who are Christians, we once walked in these things, but now we've been made alive by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Justified by Grace Through Faith in Christ

So here's the understanding that the Jews are not automatically saved for being Jews and neither are the Gentiles, because see, the Gentile argument would have been, well, the Jews transgressed the law, but we didn't even have the law.

So there wasn't a law for us to break, therefore God loves us better, right? And another way this Gentile argument went was the Jews rejected God, and now he's shown his favor to us. So the Jews, they're kind of outside now.

We're the main focus of this show. We Gentiles, now we're the favored people of God. And so God has poured himself out on us since the Jews had rejected him. So Paul is making sure that everybody here in the church in Rome made up of Jews and Gentiles.

Now I've explained to you why there is this skirmish between Jews and Gentiles that kind of exists, a little bit of head-butting that's going on here, a sibling rivalry, so to speak, in the church in Rome.

I'm not going to flesh that out further again. But anyway, the Jews thought that they were the favored people of God. The Gentiles are going, no, you rejected God for all that he gave to you. You even put Jesus to death, his son, so therefore the favor of God is on us now.

And Paul wants everybody to understand, bringing quite a bit of humility upon this body of believers that he is writing to. He says there's no distinction here. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But the wonderful thing about that statement, for there is no distinction, is not just to say that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's certainly what he says in verse 23. That's what immediately follows, for there is no distinction.

But remember, that's the beginning of the sentence. And the way the sentence is written for us who speak English, and you understand the English language and the way that sentences are diagrammed and structured and so on and so forth.

When you're reading this in English, you read, for there is no distinction, colon. There's a colon there. And that punctuation is meant to communicate something emphatic that Paul is teaching here. Now, of course, the English punctuation was not in the Greek.

As a matter of fact, we have a lot more punctuation than the Greeks did. But that doesn't matter. We've applied our punctuation to communicate to us in our language, the English language in which we speak, what it was that Paul was actually teaching to the Romans.

So the punctuation is still functional for us, that we may understand exactly what's being said. A colon separates two independent clauses, and the second explains or illustrates the first. So where we read, for there is no distinction, colon.

Everything that's coming after the colon is explaining that statement. We read in verse 23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's not the only place where there is a distinction, because that's not the end of the statement.

There's a comma there. So we're continuing on, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So there's no distinction. Jews are not favored in any way before God.

Gentiles are not favored in any way before God. Jews are not hated more by God. Gentiles are not under the wrath of God more than Jews are. There's no distinction. They all have sinned. Everyone needs a savior, Jew or Gentile.

We need someone to redeem us from our sins that we have committed against God. That's the statement in verse 23. And Jew or Gentile alike can come to salvation by faith in Christ who has died for us to redeem us by the shedding of his blood.

Jews do not receive this faith more so than Gentiles. It was preached first to the Jews. That was back in Romans 1 .16, to the Jew first and then also to the Greek. So in sequential order, the Jews heard it first, but it was by no means kept from Gentiles.

That the Gentiles would not also hear it too. This was part of the plan. This was God's intention for his elect, those whom he would redeem from sinful man to himself. They would come from the Jews and from the Gentiles.

The favoritism is not because they're Jew or Gentile. They are favored by God because they have the righteousness of Christ. It's because he loves his son that he loves us who believe in his son. It's because God loves us that he gave his son to redeem us that we would be adopted into his family as the children of God.

So there is no distinction. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Everyone needs a savior. No one has a righteousness or a glory in and of themselves that puts them in such a place that they have the favor of God over anybody else or they can address God or they can ascend to the place where he is.

Nobody can do that. There's no distinction here. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Verse 24, and we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

There's the whole statement there after for there is no distinction. And again, we end the sentence in the middle of a verse, middle part of verse 25, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

End of the sentence. Then we start a new sentence in verse 25. This is where we'll pick up the teaching tomorrow. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

The Gospel Creates One People in Christ

So once again, bringing bringing this all together here, because I've broken this up enough, it's all kind of spread out. So let's bring this together into verse 22, for there is no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Everybody's a sinner. Everyone is under the judgment of God, which Paul had argued about starting all the way back in Romans chapter one. Everyone needs a savior. Everyone needs to be saved from the wrath of God that is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Jew and Gentile. We both need a savior. That one savior has come for everyone who believes in him, whether they are Jew or whether they are Gentile. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but we are justified.

All have sinned. All are justified by his grace as a gift. Now understand that statement all here is all to whom God gives this justification by grace through faith. It doesn't mean everybody has received the grace of God.

It means only those who have faith in Christ. That distinction is made there. There's no distinction as to who will receive this gift. When you're talking about ethnic distinctions, we may make a distinction between Jew and Gentile, but God does not.

Everyone who believes in Christ by faith will be saved, and there's no distinction there. For the people of God are going to be made up of every tribe, tongue, nation on earth as we see the picture of God's redeemed in the book of Revelation.

People from all over earth who have heard the gospel and come to faith and believed are praising Jesus Christ, their savior, forever in glory. So all who are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, they're made up of people of all stripes, and now we have a new DNA.

There is nothing outside that should be separating us. We have a spiritual DNA through the Holy Spirit that has been poured into our hearts. So even within the body of Christ, there should be no distinction.

If God does not make a distinction, then we should not make a distinction. If God's not making a distinction between Jew and Gentile, which by the way is the most separating ethnic distinction there has ever been in the history of man.

We argue in the context of North American bigotry and prejudice and things like that. We argue about the difference between black and white. There has never been a distinction more separating than Jew or Gentile because this is a distinction that's been made by God over the course of redemptive history.

But now there is no distinction in Christ Jesus. Jew and Gentile alike are saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So if God is not making a distinction and Paul is addressing a church where there's a little bit of head-butting going on between Jews and Gentiles, God makes no distinction so you should make no distinction.

We are all one in Christ Jesus. All of us have sinned. All of us have come to salvation the exact same way. And that is by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

We'll pick up there tomorrow. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the goodness you have shown to us, rescuing us out of sin and darkness, out of the separation that exists in this world. It's talked about in Titus 3 .3, hated by others and hating one another.

This constant strife that we were in because of the sinfulness of our flesh. And you rescued us out of that. You gave us a new heart. You transformed us from the inside out so we're no longer making distinctions by what we look like on the outside, but we love one another from the heart that has been transformed by the Holy Spirit of God, sharing the same spirit.

We have the same Father, the same Savior. We have received the same baptism so that there should be no distinction in the body. All of us need a Savior. And we have all received that wonderful gift by the grace of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

So let us be one in Christ and proclaim his gospel for many more need to hear this and come to faith. And may we make no distinctions with who we share the gospel with. Everyone needs to hear this for the sake of the faith of God's elect.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

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