The Guilt of All Men (Introduction)

Romans 3:9-20

⁹ What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. ¹⁰ As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; ¹¹ There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. ¹² They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.” ¹³ “Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit”; “The poison of asps is under their lips”; ¹⁴ “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” ¹⁵ “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ¹⁶ Destruction and misery are in their ways; ¹⁷ And the way of peace they have not known.” ¹⁸ “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” ¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. ²⁰ Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

(Introduction) – In this section we begin a discussion of a doctrine that is critically important if we are to understand what else Paul has to tell us later in the book about issues of justification and sanctification.  If we misunderstand issues about the nature of man then we will misunderstand all the rest as well.  It is as if we are following a set of driving directions and they are meticulously laid out and very detailed in their instructions.  If we follow them exactly we will arrive at our finish point well and safe.  However, if we start from the wrong starting point, we will end up in completely the wrong place with disastrous consequences. 

This is the case with the doctrine of salvation.  If we start our journey, doctrinally, at the wrong starting place, we surely will end up at the wrong conclusions.  This is why Paul starts us off where he has.  We start with the nature of man, as demonstrated in the wicked rebellion of both Israelite and Gentile.  Here he speaks of that nature as a common truth about the essential makeup of all men.  Men like to believe they are basically good and that belief is continually reinforced by psychologists, counselors, and a great many religious leaders.  But deep in his heart man knows there is a problem with the way he is, that something is wrong. No matter whom or what he may try to blame for that feeling, he cannot escape it. He feels guilt, not only about things he has done that he knows are wrong but also about the kind of person he is on the inside.

A popular newspaper advice columnist wrote, “One of the most painful, self-mutilating, time- and energy-consuming exercises in the human experience is guilt.… It can ruin your day - or your week or your life - if you let it. It turns up like a bad penny when you do something dishonest, hurtful, tacky; selfish, or rotten.… Never mind that it was the result of ignorance, stupidity, laziness, thoughtlessness, weak flesh, or clay feet. You did wrong and the guilt is killing you. Too bad. But be assured,” she concluded, “the agony you feel is normal.… Remember guilt is a pollutant and we don’t need any more of it in the world” (The Ann Landers Encyclopedia [New York: Doubleday, 1978], pp. 514-17). With that, she went on to another subject.

The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca wrote that every guilty person is his own hangman. No matter how often a man tells himself he is good, he inevitably sees that he cannot help thinking, saying, and doing wrong things and feeling guilty about it. Guilt drives people to alcohol, drugs, despair, insanity, and more and more frequently to suicide. After playing psychological games about blaming his environment or other people or society in general, man still cannot escape the feeling of his own guilt. In fact, societies with sophisticated psychological services seem even more guilt ridden. People want to get rid of their guilty feelings but they do not know how. And the more they probe for solutions, the guiltier they feel.

Men feel guilty because they are guilty. The guilt feeling is only the symptom of the real problem, which is sin. All of the psychological counseling in the world cannot relieve a person of his guilt. At best it can only make him feel better, superficially and temporarily, by placing the blame on someone else or something else. That, of course, only intensifies the guilt, because it adds dishonesty to the sin that caused the guilt feeling in the first place.

Man’s guilt has only one cause - his own sin - and unless his sin is removed, his guilt cannot be. That is why the first element of the gospel message is confronting men with the reality of their sin. This is the function of the Law of God – it is designed to show men their sin and to bring them to the place where they are both aware of and sure of their guiltiness before a Holy God.  The word gospel means “good news.” But the good news it offers is the way of salvation from sin, and until a person is convicted of his sin, the gospel has nothing to offer. The gospel therefore begins by declaring that all men are fundamentally sinful and that the greatest need of their lives is to have that sin removed through trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

As Paul has already forcefully declared in the first two chapters of Romans, both the pagan Gentile and the religious Jew are sinful and stand condemned before a holy God. But human nature strongly resists that truth. Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse said, “It is only stubborn self-pride that keeps man from the confession to God that would bring release, but that way he refuses to take. Man stands before God today like a little boy who swears with crying and tears that he has not been anywhere near the jam jar, and who with an air of outraged innocence, pleads the justice of his position, in total ignorance of the fact that a good spoonful of the jam has fallen on his shirt under his chin and is plainly visible to all but himself”.

It is interesting that Paul does not begin his discussion of the Gospel and salvation with the love of God.  He begins it with the nature of man, and the offense of the sinner.  This is precisely the opposite of where many begin their presentation of the Gospel in this day and age.  We think that we must bring men to Christ by being winsome and enticing them to come.  The Word of God, on the other hand, recognizes that men must come to Christ as result of seeing their sin and recognizing that they cannot save themselves, and that they are hopelessly lost apart from the mercy of God.  This is a work that only God can do by means of His strong right arm, using the Law to show men their sin.

The apostle Paul was well aware of man’s disposition to deny his sin. Therefore, from creation, from history; from reason and logic, and from conscience, Paul has already presented powerful testimony of man’s sinfulness. Now he presents the ultimate testimony, the testimony of Scripture. Beginning with verse 10 and continuing through verse 18, Paul introduces before the court, as it were, the testimony of God’s own Word as revealed in the Old Testament. Verses 9-20 summarize God’s divine and perfect view of man and they continue in a trial motif: the arraignment (v. 9), the indictment (vv. 10-17), the motive (v. 18), and the verdict (vv. 19-20).

The truth of the nature of man must pervade my thinking.  It must color everything that I think about salvation and underlie everything that I perceive about how God has dealt with man.  It must be the starting point for all that I understand about the Gospel.