WWUTT 1188 No One Does Good? (Romans 3:9-12)

WWUTT Podcast

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

There is none who does good, not even one person. That's in the

00:05

Bible, Old Testament, and New Testament. It's not that a person can't do nice things for other people, but they can do nothing good in the eyes of God when we understand the text.

00:25

You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

00:34

And don't forget our website, www .tt .com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

00:40

Thank you, Becky. We're moving on in our study of Romans chapter 3. Today we're looking at verses 9 through 20.

00:48

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, What then? Are we Jews any better off?

00:56

No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both

01:01

Jews and Greeks, are under sin. As it is written, None is righteous, no, not one.

01:11

No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless.

01:20

No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave.

01:26

They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips.

01:33

Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

01:39

In their paths are ruin and misery. And the way of peace they have not known.

01:45

There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

02:01

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

02:11

So if you'll remember when we were looking at the start of Romans chapter 3, on Monday and Tuesday we read,

02:17

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way.

02:23

To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. Now we get to verse 9 where Paul says,

02:28

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No. Just because there are advantages to being a

02:37

Jew, that doesn't mean that the Jew is justified in God's sight for being a Jew. The Jew is not any better off, and Paul brings this whole thing home.

02:46

What is the point of what he has been saying from Romans 1 .18 all the way up to here? He has been saying that all, both

02:53

Jews and Greeks, are under sin. The Jews have certainly sinned in a certain way, in that they were given the law and they did not keep the law.

03:03

The Gentiles have sinned in a way in that they did not have the law, but even as a law unto themselves they couldn't keep that either.

03:10

So everyone is unrighteous before God. There is no one who does good.

03:16

Everyone is under sin. That's the point he makes there in verse 9.

03:23

We have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written.

03:31

And then he comes back to the scriptures. From the Old Testament on, it's been telling us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

03:40

Paul is laying out here basically that I'm not teaching you a new doctrine. I'm not teaching you anything that has not already been said through God's own prophets.

03:50

Thus saith the Lord. It has already been proclaimed. There is no one who is righteous.

03:57

And Christ shows up on the scene and he dies on the cross for our sins, but all mankind is still righteous.

04:03

Who needs a Savior? Everybody. Jews and Greeks together. No one has any sort of inherent righteousness that they can stand before God and declare themselves good.

04:15

There is no one who does good, not even one person. Now this section, as Paul comes to the

04:20

Old Testament scriptures to testify of the truth of what he has been proclaiming over the course of these two and a half chapters, he kind of breaks this up into two sections and then drives it home with a summary statement.

04:33

But all of this drawing from the Old Testament to make it. So the first section goes from verses 10 down to about verse 14.

04:43

And this is demonstrating the sinful condition of man. Jew or Greek.

04:49

So we're talking all of mankind here. The sinful condition of all men and women. This is verses 10 through 14.

04:56

And then you have the sinful action. So there's the sinful condition, and then what kind of action, behavior, does that produce in mankind?

05:05

You see it on the outside, who they are on the inside. And that goes from verses 15 to 17.

05:11

And then finally verse 18, the last passage from the Old Testament that Paul draws from is a summary statement that brings all of this together.

05:21

The sinful condition of men and the sinful actions of sinful men. So starting here at the top, as it is written, none is righteous, no, not one.

05:33

And that's taken from Psalm 14. As a matter of fact, the first few verses here are from either

05:39

Psalm 14 or Psalm 53. They're very similar. Let me start at the top of that one. Psalm 14, verse 1.

05:46

The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt.

05:52

They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

06:06

They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one.

06:15

Now, some of the words that we see here might be a little bit different than what we read in Psalm 14 or Psalm 53, and that's because Paul is quoting from the

06:23

Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. So taking it from that into Greek and to English, there's a little bit of difference, whereas the

06:34

Old Testament as we have it in English today is taken from the Hebrew, the original Hebrew in Aramaic that it was written in.

06:40

So the point being here in Psalm 14 is that of all the children of man, there's none who understands.

06:48

No one seeks after God. No one does good. Now, even though Paul does not quote from Psalm 14, 1, or Psalm 53, 1, his summary statement in Romans 3, 18 is kind of that statement that we read at the beginning of those two psalms.

07:04

There is no fear of God before their eyes. That's the same as saying the fool says in his heart there is no

07:10

God. So we continue on here in Romans 3. None is righteous.

07:17

No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God.

07:23

And I've come back to this over and over again. You've heard me say it. You've listened to great Reformed preachers say it.

07:30

Puritans say it. Going all the way back to early church fathers who have said it, and it comes from the

07:35

Apostle Paul. I mean, straight from Scripture. This is not a new or a modern invention of doctrine.

07:42

It says in the Scriptures, no one seeks for God. No one in their sinful state, in just their natural state, as a descendant of Adam, under the federal headship of Adam, born under the curse of Adam, born with Adam's sin nature, no human being in and of themselves seeks for God.

08:05

No one can. Not unless God intervenes first. It's not that a person cannot do good things, but they can't do things in a holy way that is acceptable in the eyes of God.

08:19

As we read in Isaiah 64 6, even our best deeds, even our goodest works are as a filthy rag before a holy

08:29

God. The best things that we could do that all the rest of the world of man would look at and say, that guy is a good person.

08:36

Just on our merit alone, that would be considered filthy and unrighteous and depraved before God.

08:42

Even those best deeds that the rest of mankind would say are good, are nothing to God, who is good and righteous and holy above all.

08:51

Our good works do not obligate God to show favor to us, because his good works are so much greater and higher than ours.

09:01

Our best works would be done to our own glory, not to the glory of God, unless our heart is transformed to glorify

09:08

God. Consider these words from Lorraine Bettner from the Reformed Doctrine of Predestination.

09:14

He said the following, This doctrine of total inability, which declares that men are dead in sin, does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that anyone is entirely destitute of virtue, nor that human nature is equal in itself, nor that man's spirit is inactive, and much less does it mean that the body is dead.

09:43

What it does mean is that since the fall, man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love

09:56

God or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive, but not necessarily intensive.

10:05

It is in this sense that man, since the fall, is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, wholly inclined to all evil.

10:18

He possesses a fixed bias of the will against God, and instinctively and willingly turns to evil.

10:29

He is an alien by birth and a sinner by choice. The inability under which he labors is not an inability to exercise volition or will, but an inability to be willing to exercise holy volitions, and it is this phase of it which led

10:50

Luther to declare that free will is an empty term, whose reality is lost, and a lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all."

11:02

So that's what it is that we mean when we say none is righteous, not even one.

11:10

No one understands, no one seeks for God. On the

11:15

Q &A this past Friday, Becky and I talked about how if a person is able to understand anything, if they do not have the fear of God, for as we read in Proverbs 1, 7, the fear of the

11:28

Lord is the beginning of all wisdom and knowledge. So can anyone have any knowledge if they do not have the fear of God?

11:36

And the answer is yes, of course. You know how to talk. You know how to do basic functions. You can even be brilliant in a particular field, but all of that knowledge that you have is for naught.

11:49

It is not to the glory of God. It is to the glory of yourself. It cannot save you. You have no true understanding of God in the sense that you have no relationship with him.

12:00

You do not know him according to his word. You may have some sort of theoretical theism in your mind, but nothing according to the word of God to understand it as the

12:10

Holy Spirit has transformed you to be able to understand it. So a person can certainly have knowledge, but it is not a knowledge that is understanding of God or his will or his word or any of these things.

12:21

So that's what we mean when we read, no one understands, no one seeks for God. Everyone is predisposed in their sinful nature to go after the thing that is in rebellion against God, not to turn to God and go after him because we have no holy will to do that.

12:41

A person is capable of exercising will, but not in a holy manner, which is pleasing to God.

12:47

So we go on in verse 12, all have turned aside. Together they have become worthless.

12:55

I have heard motivational Christian speaker after motivational

13:00

Christian speaker say over and over again, particularly the young people in youth groups, you are not worthless.

13:07

That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that because of your sinfulness and rebellion against God, you have become worthless.

13:15

When God made mankind in the garden, when he put man and a woman there in the garden of Eden, he looked at all of his creation and he said, behold, it is very good.

13:25

But when mankind turned to sin and going after themselves, rather than glorifying

13:33

God, rather than using those gifts that God had given us to glorify God, we use the breath that he breathed into us and we exalted our own glory instead.

13:43

When we did that, when mankind fell into sin, and this is all of mankind, again, because this is the argument.

13:50

Everyone is under sin. When mankind sinned, we made ourselves worthless. We became worthless.

13:57

So no, you don't have an inherent value in yourself in the sense that God is not going to destroy you because, hey, after all, you've been made in his image.

14:07

What God made is good, but what we did was not good. And everything we continued to do was not good.

14:12

No one does good. Not even one. All have turned aside. Together we have become worthless.

14:18

No one does good, not even one. How are we made worthy? Not by anything that we do, but what

14:25

Christ has done for us. In and of yourself, you remain worthless. And I don't mean that in the sense that we should not look at people who are not

14:34

Christians and see that they have no value. We absolutely should. We should warn them.

14:39

You've been made in the image of God, but you have blasphemed God with that image that you've been made in. And God's judgment is coming against you for that blasphemy.

14:48

So you need to repent and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. And he is the one who gives us worth and value.

14:56

Now, the Father certainly had desired that for us in that, as we read in Romans 5, 8, while we were yet sinners,

15:04

Christ died for us. So God demonstrated his love for us. The Father showing his love for us in that while we were sin, while we were in sin and worthy of the judgment of God, God gave his

15:17

Son for us to die for us. In his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins, which is what we read coming up here in Romans 3.

15:26

So this is a demonstration of the love of the Father. He has decreed from before the foundation of the world his own, whom he is going to call to himself and redeem through the giving of his

15:38

Son, Jesus Christ, in submission to the will of the Father, laying down his own life to the glory of God.

15:44

And all who believe in his name, those who were decreed from before the foundation of the world, come to faith in the

15:51

Lord Jesus Christ, and we are saved. So God placed his love and his affection on us before time even began.

16:00

We have worth and value because of the mercies and grace of God, not because we do anything good, but because God is good.

16:10

So in our sin, we become worthless. God is the one who makes us worthy. On our own, no one does good.

16:18

Not even one. No one can do anything good. You cannot even choose to follow

16:25

God, which would be a good thing, right? If you, in and of yourself, could make a decision just on your own, hey,

16:35

I'm going to stop doing this sinful thing, and I'm going to start following Jesus, wouldn't that be good? Wouldn't that mean that you are capable of doing a good thing?

16:44

But you can't. In your sinful, cursed, depraved state, you can't on your own repent of your sin and turn to Jesus Christ because you don't have any desire to.

16:58

It's not in your nature to. When you repent of sin and worship

17:03

Jesus, it's because God has given you a new nature, and he's done this through the hearing of the gospel, the declaration that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but we are justified by faith in the

17:17

Lord Jesus Christ who died on the cross for us and rose again from the grave. So turn from your sin and turn to Jesus, and you will be saved.

17:26

You will not be under the wrath of God, but you will be in his love forever and ever.

17:32

Amen. When you hear that gospel and you are transformed by it, it's because your heart was regenerated by the

17:37

Holy Spirit to hear it and to understand it. Even in the parable of the sower in Matthew 13,

17:44

Jesus said there are those who are going to hear the gospel and not be transformed by it at all.

17:50

And he says these are those that are represented by the path, the seeds that fell among the path, the seed that represents the message of the kingdom.

17:59

When the seed fell on the path, the birds came and ate the seed, and this is a person who hears the word of God, but Satan immediately snatches it from them.

18:08

So those are the ones who hear the gospel declared externally, but it doesn't have any internal change in their hearts.

18:15

It is only those on whom the message falls into good soil tilled up by the

18:22

Holy Spirit that produce a harvest, and they will never be snatched away.

18:28

They will be forever with the Lord, eternal security, the perseverance of the saints.

18:35

When we hear that good news and we believe it, it is because the Holy Spirit has worked in us a new heart to believe it, one that is not in rebellion against God, but one that becomes aware of our sinfulness and our state in God's presence as one worthy of judgment.

18:53

And so we weep over that. We are mourning over our sin. What I deserve for this is death, but I see in the gospel

19:02

God's good and loving gift, the mercies he is showing to me. You don't know the mercy of God if you do not know your sin.

19:10

If you do not know that you are worthy of destruction and eternity and a fiery hell, then you do not know the mercy and grace of God.

19:18

It is only when we come face to face with who we really are and the Holy Spirit shows us that through the hearing of his word, the hearing of the law in particular, as it says in verses 19 and 20, it's only when we come face to face with that in the word of God, we look into a mirror and we see who we really are, and we can see who

19:38

God really is, and the mercy and goodness that he shows us through his son.

19:44

Why is it that so many people look at the cross and they see a wicked and cruel God who would kill his son on the cross?

19:52

Why is it there are people that see atonement in that way? It's because they cannot see their own sin.

19:58

They think of themselves as much better than they really are. And so when a person thinks of themselves that way, they think of God as wicked and cruel.

20:06

You go all the way to the atheist like Richard Dawkins, who just sees a monster God in the Old Testament. That's all he sees.

20:12

Christopher Hitchens was the same way. He does not see mercy and grace because he cannot see his own wickedness.

20:18

It is only in light of the person, the man that is shown to us in the scriptures, when we look into this mirror and we see just how sinful we are, that we can look at God and we can see how merciful and gracious he is.

20:37

You know you deserve judgment because you looked into the word of God and it showed you who you really were as one who looks into a mirror.

20:46

James uses that illustration too in James 1. Don't be like the man who hears of himself in the word and then walks away and doesn't do what it says.

20:57

He's like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and the moment he walks away, he forgets what he looks like. That sounds absurd, right?

21:03

Well, that's the way it is with a person who looks into the word and sees themselves as someone who is unrighteous and desperately in need of the mercy and grace of God, but then walks away and doesn't do what

21:14

God says. If you know that you have been forgiven your sins and God has shown you grace, then don't turn around and start walking in your sinfulness again.

21:23

Otherwise, you're not under the grace of God. You're still enslaved to your sin. You're still the person who does no good thing.

21:29

You're not the one who's pursuing the goodness of God, the moral character that we see demonstrated in his word as well.

21:37

We see our sinful wickedness and we see his good, holy, and righteous character. So let us walk in the way of the good character of God rather than the wicked character of man.

21:49

Now, I was hoping to finish this whole section today, but clearly I didn't get there. We are out of time. So I'm going to pause there and we'll come back to Romans 3 next week.

21:57

Let's conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the goodness and grace that you show us on a daily basis.

22:03

As it says in Lamentations 3, your mercies are new every morning.

22:10

Let us rejoice in this. Every day that we wake up, we've got something to be thankful for.

22:15

God loves me today. He has shown his love for me in his son. I read about his love for me in his word.

22:24

I am worthy of sin. Because of my sin, I am worthy of wrath and judgment.

22:30

But you have shown me mercy and grace through the cross of Christ. You have given me wealth and treasure forevermore in the resurrection of Christ and the promise of his eternal kingdom.

22:43

Let it be these promises that lift us up and carry us with joy throughout our day and our week, no matter our circumstances.

22:54

We rejoice in God our Father, for you have been good to us. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

23:02

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a

23:08

New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.