There Is No One Righteous; No, Not One
9What then? Are we better than they? No, in no way. For we previously warned both Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin. 10As it is written, “There is no one righteous; no, not one. 11There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. 12They have all turned away. They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not so much as one.” 13“Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have used deceit.” “The poison of vipers is under their lips”; 14“whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” 15“Their feet are swift to shed blood. 16Destruction and misery are in their ways. 17The way of peace, they haven’t known.” 18“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Hebrews tells us that those who have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then fallen away, cannot be renewed again to repentance, because they crucify the Son of God afresh and put him to shame. People who have known how the word of God brings them to live in abundant grace, and who still abandon God because they cannot give up the world and its pleasures, commit the sin of nailing Jesus to the cross again. God is the one who lives forever. He created all things, and for the sake of sinners he willingly sent his Son into the world. The apostle Paul said that to know this love of God and still not live by faith is sin.
Some meet Christ and then want only to use God’s power for their own needs; others chase after bad habits and pleasures. Neither can receive the holy grace of God. That is because God does not work on behalf of those who follow the world. Many of God’s people today trust his covenant and stay faithful at the cost of their very lives. With such servants, he has no reason to watch over the lives of those who use him whenever they happen to need him.
1 Peter 1:9
9receiving the result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Those who treat as unholy the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, who trample the Son of God underfoot and insult the Holy Spirit, will receive a very heavy punishment. Sadly, though, those who have left God do not fear him, for they deny even the fact that they are sinning. Their eyes and ears are covered, because the pleasures they enjoy now are far sweeter to them than the God who rules over life and death, over disaster and blessing. The Egyptian soldiers, their eyes and ears covered in just this way, watched the people of Israel cross the Red Sea as though it were dry land, plunged in thinking they could cross too, and were wiped out to the last man. Cain did not fear God either. He killed his brother Abel, and when God came looking for Abel, he answered back in pride, asking whether he was his brother’s keeper; in the end he was driven out from eternal life.
Those who take lightly the grace God has given can become profane, like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. In the world there is a family register, and the firstborn and the younger son cannot trade places; but we must understand that in God the spiritual firstborn and the younger can change places at any time. Esau gave up his place as firstborn easily, and afterward he wept for the firstborn’s blessing. Yet he had been rejected by God, and he found no chance to repent.
God’s law is absolute, and so it must not be judged by human standards. How can limited human beings ignore the word of the almighty God? Why do they not fear the God who gives eternal punishment? And yet Jesus suffered the cross to atone for the sins of sinners. If that is so, we must at least make the effort to live by the word. Faith that submits itself to the word can build perseverance, and those who overcome the world’s trials by the word can receive the crown of life.
Psalms 14:1-3
1The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt. They have done abominable deeds. There is no one who does good. 2Yahweh looked down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who understood, who sought after God. 3They have all gone aside. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, no, not one.
David said that the fool says there is no God. Having no standard grounded in the word, such people feel free to attack the righteous as they please. King Saul was one of these fools. Jealous of David, who feared God, he fell into Satan’s scheme. Only when God’s law is the standard can we judge rightly; but Saul, in his folly, grew corrupt in spirit and acted on human reasoning, and in the end he met death.
Saul was the first king of Israel, set up by God himself. God gathered the hearts of the people to him so that he could rule. He moved Samuel to pray for Saul, and he made Israel a strong nation so that Saul would carry the authority of a king. But the more the nation prospered by God’s grace, the more King Saul came to believe that he had gained power through his own outstanding ability. It is a sad thing, but we see foolish people behaving exactly as Saul did.
Disappointed in Saul, God looked to see whether anyone was seeking him, and he set up David as king, anointing him with holy oil. Though King Saul was still on the throne, God made David king. Having left God, Saul was seized by an evil spirit and raged like a madman. His once pure heart filled with venom, and he fell into the grip of Satan’s temptation, which whispered that there is no God. When Saul fell, the people followed him and cast God out of their hearts as well. Saul and his men labored tirelessly to take David’s life. For all their efforts, they could not strike down David, who was under God’s protection and relied on God alone.
Imagine, for example, a large transparent ball, big enough for a person to climb inside. The outside has no seams, so no one can get in; but inside there is a handle, so whoever is within can come out at any time. David was inside this transparent ball, praying and praising and relying on God, and he was growing in a faith that held human life dear. Because the ball was transparent, one could see both in and out. Satan could not get inside. He tempted David and threatened him, but he could never harm David, who was inside the ball under God’s protection. Until David went out of his own accord, there was nothing Satan could do.
God’s people, too, are kept safe in this way, inside a ball that is Jesus Christ. The world’s wealth, pleasure, success, and honor are in plain view, and they tempt us to step out; but as long as we do not open the door ourselves and go outside, we are safe.
King Saul, who went out of Christ, met his death together with his sons, while David, who did not leave Christ even under Saul’s one-sided attacks, became king. David held on in faith, trusting that God would restore him, and after being trained according to God’s plan he took his seat on the throne of absolute power. Why, then, did God send suffering to David, who was so full of faith? We might wonder whether David, in the fullness of his faith, would not have honored God’s name and ruled the people well had God made him king from the start instead of Saul. But David, who had been put through the fire, took Bathsheba after he became king, and that shows us that human beings cannot help being sinners. Because of his sin, his children lied, a brother raped his sister, brothers killed one another, and a son seized his father’s kingdom. The painful training may have worn down David’s outward edges, but the sin at his core remained just as it was. This is how terrible sin is, and the Bible wants us to know it.
In our passage the apostle Paul quotes the Old Testament to proclaim the sins of humanity. He did so because he wanted to show how relentlessly sin drags human beings down to ruin. Scripture declares that not one person can stand before God, that all are sinners, and that the human heart is too defiled to be kept at God’s side. When the Jews protested that they were, after all, the chosen people and the ones who had the law, Paul answered, “Are we better than they? No, in no way,” for “both Jews and Greeks … are all under sin,” as “we previously warned.” In other words, the people of the world and we who believe are sinners alike. Since everyone is under sin, no one can shed it except through Jesus Christ, who came into this world as a descendant of David.
In Romans, sin in the singular means something different from sins in the plural. The plural refers to the evil acts we commonly commit; put simply, there is this sin and there is that sin [Romans 1:29-31]. The singular refers to an unseen power, the reality of sin itself: a spiritual being like Satan, who appeared in the Garden of Eden to beguile Eve. Jesus spoke of this evil spirit in these words.
John 8:44
44You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn’t stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and the father of lies.
The devil Jesus spoke of, the one who was a murderer from the beginning and in whom there is no truth, is our father, and he is the sin named in the singular. How did Satan become our father? When Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and became a sinner, everyone born of him into the world could not help but be a sinner. Sinners who have not received God’s grace were born under the prince of the power of the air. They took after him, sinning without even knowing it was sin. Never clothed in the atonement of Jesus Christ, who is the light, they lived under Satan’s rule and thought the world was all there is.
The devil, cast out of heaven into the air for opposing God, is a spirit; he therefore knew that God would send the Messiah into the world. That is why he tempts people to sin without end, keeping their hearts as foul as an open tomb so that they will not believe in Jesus. To break free of Satan, we must put sin to death on the cross with Christ and be born again as spiritual children. Those who have nailed their sin-filled flesh to the cross with Christ have no flesh left for him to tempt, so Satan cannot lead them into sin. Even so, Satan strives every day to tempt God’s people, and the Holy Spirit works all the harder to guard them.
Our salvation does not come about by the Holy Spirit fighting alone; it can be received only when people strive with their whole lives. Paul understood this. Every day he repented as if to the death and looked for God’s help. Had he not resolved to die daily as he preached the gospel, Satan would have toppled his faith through his weak flesh. Paul knew how frail human beings are. So he confessed his fear that those who heard the gospel from him would be saved while he himself, who had preached the truth, would fail to overcome sin and fall away from salvation. His confession shows how impossible it is to overcome Satan by human strength.
Satan is a spirit: there is nothing he does not know and nothing he cannot do. To stand firm against the devil’s schemes, we must put on the whole armor of God. We are to fasten the belt of truth around our waist, put on the breastplate of righteousness [a bronze plate fixed to the chest of a suit of armor for protection], and wear on our feet the shoes of the gospel of peace. Above all, we must take up the shield of faith, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. This is the only way we can overcome Satan. If you feel now that you have fallen into temptation, I pray that you will put on the whole armor of God.
Romans 3:10-12
10As it is written, “There is no one righteous; no, not one. 11There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. 12They have all turned away. They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not so much as one.”
Satan knows that people cannot throw off the yoke of sin by themselves, so he attacks their weakest point and drives them away from God. He makes those who love money serve it like an idol, turning them to scheming and making them commit the sin of getting what they want even at the cost of another person’s life. Those who love pleasure and drink he makes to lose their faith in a single moment, bringing misery not only on themselves but on their children and everyone around them.
Ephesians 5:16-18
16redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 17Therefore don’t be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18Don’t be drunken with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,
People living in this age also say these are the last days, and the apostle Paul, too, proclaims that we should redeem the time, since Jesus Christ will soon come. He pleads earnestly with us to redeem the time, because God is not in the heart of anyone who fails to do so, and such a person will not be saved. He commands us just as strongly not to be drunk with wine, for wine numbs the mind, and no one can meet God without a sound mind. When the disciples spoke in tongues, people said they were drunk. From this we see that the drunken speak words no one can understand and cannot truly communicate. Drunkenness can only carry them further from God. Suppose God has entrusted a person with someone who needs to be saved, and the one entrusted gets drunk: they will fail to share the gospel properly and will act in ways unworthy of God’s people, and they themselves must bear the responsibility for that sin. I have heard that with drugs, even someone who has stayed off them for years in order to quit is addicted again after a single use. The same is true of drink, tobacco, lust, idolatry, sorcery, strife, envy, outbursts of anger, heresy, jealousy, and dissipation. To such people Paul said he was afraid that, just as the serpent deceived Eve, their minds would be corrupted and led away from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. That is how cunning Satan is, and how weak people are, falling so easily into sin.
However firmly we resolve to live a good life, sin has the power to destroy it all; unless we rely wholly on the Holy Spirit, our lives may end in failure. Sin can make a respected person contemptible, and it can easily turn the wise into the useless. At first sin brings shame, but the more often it is repeated, the more numb the heart grows, like a conscience seared with a hot iron. Once sin has hold of us, we feel no fear even when we stop seeking God. We feel no shame though we give off a foul smell like an open tomb, and no guilt though we kill people with our tongues. It is hard for us to grasp what it means that the throat is an open tomb, but I am told the people of Israel understand it at once.
In our own funeral customs, the body is placed in a coffin and the coffin is buried in the ground, so no one sees the body or smells it decay. In Israel, however, tombs are made by hollowing small caves out of limestone, just as Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah and laid his whole family to rest there. Each time a family member dies, the stone sealing the cave is rolled away and the body is laid inside, so it is said that there is no escaping the terrible smell. When Scripture calls the throat an open tomb, it means that everything that comes from the heart of a fallen person is sin, just as a corpse gives off the stench of decay. Only by meeting Christ and receiving new life can we give off a good fragrance; those who serve as Satan’s slaves cannot help but give off the smell of the devil.
Jeremiah said that the heart is deceitful above all things and exceedingly corrupt, and Jesus called evildoers offspring of vipers and asked how, being evil, they could speak good things. Sin that fills the heart cannot help but pour out the moment the mouth opens. Because such words can kill, as a viper’s venom can, we must always keep our hearts clean and strive to speak what is good. What defiles a person is not what goes into the mouth but what comes out of it; so we are to keep far from sin. The greater problem is that the wicked do not sin alone; they make others sin as well. To keep from falling into such dreadful temptation, we must rely on the Holy Spirit and stand unshaken in faith.
Romans 3:16-18
16Destruction and misery are in their ways. 17The way of peace, they haven’t known.” 18“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Those who have never known peace live through one anxiety after another. Only by walking with Jesus Christ can we enjoy peace and rest, but sin blocks the way to the good Lord. A life given over to sin finds even a single step hard under the weight of that sin. In God we can enjoy freedom, as if living in broad daylight; but sin torments a good conscience, and so the sinner seeks out dark places.
If the way of truth is a highway, the road Satan leads us along is a dead end. Anyone standing at a dead end has nowhere to flee when evil people and evil spirits attack. Their lives are full of anxiety and pain. We who believe must tell such people, trembling in fear, not to remain in a darkness where they cannot see ahead but to come out into the bright embrace of Christ. We must tell them that here they can lay down the heavy burden they are carrying. Those who have known only darkness, however, cannot know how much freedom the light brings, so they are slow to give up their own opinions, their stubbornness, and their pride. Afraid as they are of their future, they will not easily yield to God.
At every opportunity we must share the good word and live as examples so that the word gains power. Just as God was patient when he called us, we are to persevere; just as he showed love to the end, we are to give ourselves up for others. Some have lived as they pleased, not knowing how lovely God’s love and grace are, and how much thanks they deserve. Until they turn back, let us plead with God for them and keep preaching the gospel. Then God, who is rich in grace, will make them repent of the sins of their tongues; he will cause them to cast off the vipers’ poison on their lips, and he will restore their lives, once full of cursing and bitterness. Jesus Christ has accomplished salvation, and we have received it through faith; but because we still live in the flesh, our salvation is still in progress, and we must persevere to the end.
Paul had met the God who restored him, a man who had committed murder and persecuted the saints. Because of that, he longed for others, too, to hear the gospel and be restored. Like a viper carrying venom, he had persecuted and killed Christians, yet he met the God who gave him life and experienced that love. So he could understand those who now bore venom against him as he preached, just as he himself had once hated God, and he could bear with them. We, too, before we were born again, were sinners no different from the apostle Paul. We must rise from our place of sin, break with the world’s pleasures, take up the work God has entrusted to us, and give glory to God through Jesus Christ. We were once children of Satan, yet God forgave us. May you lead to him the souls now wandering in darkness, and so repay, if only a little, the grace Christ has given you.