The Guilt of All Men: The Conversation of the Accused

Romans 3:13-14

Romans 3:13-14

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.”

A person’s character will inevitably manifest itself in his conversation. Jesus declared that “the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth what is evil” (Matt. 12:34-35). On another occasion He taught the same truth in slightly different words: “The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart” (15:18). The writer of Proverbs said, “The mouth of the righteous flows with wisdom, but the perverted tongue will be cut out. The lips of the righteous bring forth what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverted” (Prov. 10:31-32). He also wrote, “The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, but the mouth of fools spouts folly … The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things” (Prov. 15:2, 28).

Continuing to quote from the Psalms, Paul illustrates the truths about a person’s character as they are reflected in his conversation. In doing so, he adds four more charges to the divine indictment against the unregenerate man.

Commenting on Paul’s use of human anatomy to illustrate how man’s evil character manifests itself, one writer paraphrased the psalmist’s and the apostle’s words in this way: “His tongue is tipped with fraud, his lips are tainted with venom, his mouth full of gall [bitterness],… his tongue a sword to run men through, and his throat a sepulchre in which to bury them.”

The seventh charge of Paul’s indictment is that by nature fallen mankind is spiritually dead, demonstrated by the metaphor of their throat being an open grave (c. Ps. 5:9). This expression is taken from Ps. 5:9, literally from the Septuagint. The design of the psalm is to reprove those who were false, traitorous, slanderous, etc. Ps. 5:6. The psalmist has the sin of deceit, and falsehood, and slander particularly in his eye. The expressions here are to be interpreted in accordance with that. The sentiment here may be, as the grave is ever open to receive all into it, that is, into destruction, so the mouth or the throat of the slanderer is ever open to swallow up the peace and happiness of all. Or it may mean, as from an open sepulcher there proceeds an offensive and pestilential vapor, so from the mouths of slanderous persons there proceed noisome and ruinous words. I think the connection demands the later interpretation.

A spiritually dead heart can generate only spiritually dead words. The throat is to the heart as an open grave is to the corpse within it. Where embalming is not available, a corpse is placed in the ground and then covered up—not only to show respect for the deceased but also to protect passersby from viewing the disfigurement and smelling the stench of decay. But the natural man keeps his throat wide open, and in so doing continually testifies to his spiritual death by the foulness of his words.

The eighth charge is that by nature fallen mankind is deceitful: with their tongues they keep deceiving. In their conversation, their promises, etc., they have been false, treacherous, and unfaithful.  The word from which keep deceiving is derived, has the basic meaning of luring and was used of baiting a hook by covering it with a small piece of food to disguise its danger. When a fish bites the food, thinking he will get a meal, he instead becomes a meal for the fisherman. The imperfect Greek tense of the verb indicates continual, repetitive deceit. For the natural man, lying and other forms of deceit are a habitual and normal part of his life.

Psalm 5:9 describes flatterers, whose words of praise are really a means of serving themselves rather than the one they are praising. And because praise appeals to human nature, it also leads the flattered person into pride and false self-confidence. A flatterer therefore both uses and abuses others.

David declares that man’s sinfulness can also lead to self-deceit and self-flattery. “Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes. For it flatters him in his own eyes, concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it. The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit” (Ps. 36:1-3).

Isaiah wrote, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short that it cannot save; neither is His ear so dull that it cannot hear.” But he follows those comforting words with the awesome declaration: “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken falsehood, your tongue mutters wickedness” (Isa. 59:1-3).

Jeremiah also exposed man’s natural deceitfulness, saying of the wicked, “‘They bend their tongue like their bow; lies and not truth prevail in the land; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know Me,’ declares the Lord. ‘Let everyone be on guard against his neighbor, and do not trust any brother; because every brother deals craftily and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer. And everyone deceives his neighbor, and does not speak the truth, they have taught their tongue to speak lies’” (Jer. 9:3-5).

The ninth charge in Paul’s indictment of the unconverted man is closely related to the previous one. Quoting from part of Psalm 140:3, he says of ungodly men that the poison of asps is under their lips.  This is taken literally from the Septuagint of Ps. 140:3. The asp, or adder, is a species of serpent whose poison is of such active operation that it kills almost the instant that it penetrates, and that without remedy. It is small, and commonly lies concealed, often in the “sand” in a road, and strikes the traveler before he sees it. It is found chiefly in Egypt and Lybia. It is said by ancient writers that the celebrated Cleopatra, rather than be carried a captive to Rome by Augustus, suffered an asp to bite her in the arm, by which she soon died. The precise species of serpent which is here meant by the psalmist, however, cannot be discovered. All that is necessary to understand the passage is, that it refers to a serpent whose bite was deadly, and rapid in its execution. Wicked people in the Bible are often compared to serpents; (Matt. 23:33; Gen. 49:17).  The psalmist precedes that charge with the observation that “they sharpen their tongues as a serpent.” Because of the spiritually damning false doctrines and the deceitful character of most of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day, both He and John the Baptist described them as broods of vipers (Matt. 3:7; 12:34).

Is under their lips - The poison of the serpent is contained in a small bag which is concealed at the root of the tooth. When the tooth is struck into the flesh, the poison is pressed out, through a small hole in the tooth, into the wound. Whether the psalmist was acquainted with that fact, or referred to it, cannot be known: his words do not of necessity imply it. In describing asps, one writer says, “The fangs of such a deadly snake ordinarily lie folded back in the upper jaw but when the snake throws his head to strike, these hollow fangs drop down, and when the snake bites, the fangs press a sac of deadly poison hidden under the lips, ejecting venom into the victim.” The sentiment is, that as the poison of the asp is rapid, certain, spreading quickly through the system, and producing death; so the words of the slanderer are deadly, quickly destroying the reputation and happiness of man. They are as subtle, as insinuating, and as deadly to the reputation, as the poison of the adder is to the body.

I remember reading about a man who found a baby rattlesnake and decided to make a pet of it. He kept it in the house and played with it for a week or so, but then it disappeared for several months and could not be found. One day the man reached behind a piece of furniture to retrieve something he had dropped. When he felt a sharp stab of pain, he pulled back his hand, with the rattler hanging from it by its fangs. Man’s sinful nature is equally untameable.

Even those who belong to the Lord can succumb to terrible deceit. David, the divinely anointed king of Israel and a man after God’s own heart, became enamored of Bathsheba when he happened to see her bathing. Although he was told she was married, he nevertheless summoned her to the palace and had sexual relations with her. When she became pregnant and notified David, the king flashed the fangs of deceit by inviting her husband, Uriah, to a sumptuous banquet, giving the impression that this man was a valued friend. But David was determined to have Bathsheba for his own wife, and the next morning he sent her husband to the battlefront with a sealed note to the commander that contained Uriah’s own death warrant (see 2 Sam. 11:1-15).

The tenth charge in the indictment continues the imagery of speaking, describing the ungodly as those whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness (see Ps. 10:7). The apostle has not quoted this literally, but has given the sense. David in the psalm is describing his bitter enemies.

Cursing carries the idea of intense malediction, of desiring the worst for a person and making that desire public through open criticism and defamation. It is reproachful and slanderous language, such as Shimei used in relation to David; (2 Sam. 16:5, 7-8).

Bitterness was not used so much in regard to physical taste as to describe openly-expressed emotional hostility against an enemy. Such is the obvious meaning in this context. In the psalm, it is translated deceits. The word “bitterness” is used to denote severity, harshness, cruelty; reproachful and malicious words.

David described cursing, bitter persons as those who “have sharpened their tongue like a sword … aimed bitter speech as their arrow to shoot from concealment at the blameless; suddenly they shoot him, and do not fear” (Ps. 64:3-4). Every age of mankind, our own certainly included, has been characterized by people who use their tongues as vicious weapons. Their attacks not only are against those they know well enough to hate but sometimes, as David seems to intimate, even against strangers, simply for the perverse pleasure of venting their anger and hatred. We ought to note that not all men demonstrate this kind of depravity to the same extent.  There are those who demonstrate such behavior whole-hog, so to speak and fulfill this picture fairly accurately.  Then, there are those who do not, whose experience with bitterness and cursing, deceit and venom is limited so as to be all but unnoticeable.  Yet, the Word of God says that it is true of all men without exception.  In the times when men are honest and when they are willing to admit their true failings, all men will admit that they demonstrate some of this kind of behavior.  The seeds of sin are there, they just germinate to a larger, more full degree in some men than in others.

I need to call men to see that they have the seeds of such sin in them and that the only solution to the issue between they and their God is the righteousness of Christ obtained by grace through faith.