None Is Righteous

The opening chapters of Romans provide a devastating analysis of humanity’s lost and sinful condition. Today, Sinclair Ferguson explains how these verses emphasize our need for God’s saving grace in the gospel.

Yesterday, I promised that this week on Things Unseen, we’d take a quick overview of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and I said it divides fairly neatly into four sections. Well, the letter can be divided in different ways, but this is a simple division that may be helpful to us.

The first section of the letter goes from 1:1–3:20. Chapter 1:1–15 is an introduction. Paul had never been to Rome, but he’d long wanted to go. In fact, by the end of the letter, he indicates he’s hoping to come soon. He felt his ministry from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum was now drawing to a close and that God was calling him to go west, to Spain, and who knows where else, and he hoped to get to Rome en route. And it looks that he was hoping that the churches in Rome might help him, support him in his new mission, maybe the way the church in Antioch and some of the other churches had helped him.

So, one of his reasons for writing Romans was to present his credentials, as it were, to say, “This is the gospel I preach.” He knew that what he had taught had sometimes been twisted by people, and he wanted to set the record straight. And in addition, as is clear from chapter 16, he seems to have known a remarkable number of church members in Rome, and he’d probably heard from them of some of the issues facing the church, and he wanted to help them. So there’s quite a lot going on in Romans.

In 1:16–17, he begins his exposition of what he calls “my gospel.” He’s not ashamed of it because it’s the good news of God’s saving righteousness. Sinners can be justified by faith in Christ, and by faith alone. In other words, the gospel answers the question, “How can a sinful man be righteous before a holy God?”

And then from 1:18–3:20, Paul presents a massive argument to demonstrate the sinful and lost condition of everyone in the human race. Chapter 1:18–32 is a devastating analysis of the human condition. We’ve been made as the image of God, for the glory of God, but we’ve exchanged His glory for idols. We’ve exchanged the truth about Him for the lie, and we find ourselves, therefore, under His wrath and judgment.

And then, in 2:1–16, Paul exposes the self-righteous, who agree with that judgment. He seems to talk first about gentiles and then about Jews. God will judge us all according to the truth. Jesus Christ will be both the Judge and the standard of judgment, not our good opinion of ourselves. People sometimes say, “God will judge us according to the light we have had.” And Paul says, “Yes, indeed, that’s true, but you need to understand that means that we all stand condemned.”

All who have sinned without the law (that is, the law given at Sinai), all who have sinned without the law will perish without the law. It’s not having the law that makes me a sinner; it’s the way I’ve rebelled against the God who has revealed Himself in creation and providence and shown His eternal power and divine nature and amazing kindness. I should have sought him out and worshiped him unreservedly. But I’ve swapped His glory for my own idols and his truth for my own lie.

And then this argument develops into a more detailed exposure of the sin of those who have actually had the special revelation of God recorded in the Bible, who’ve had the signs of God’s covenant of grace, like circumcision. And Paul exposes the mistake of thinking that these privileges themselves provide us with security and make us more or less immune from God’s judgment and condemnation. “No,” says Paul, “those who have the law, and yet sin, will be judged and condemned by the law for that sin.”

And he brings all this to a crescendo in chapter 3 with a series of quotations, mainly from the Psalms, like a series of hammer blows on the casket of our dead self-righteousness: “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:11). And the whole section concludes by telling us that every human being—the whole world—is accountable and guilty before God and condemned by Him. So he says, “Every mouth will be shut.” That’s actually the first step towards discovering our need of God’s grace, isn’t it, when our mouths are shut and we realize that we have nothing to plead—we are guilty. We can’t say, “We’ve done enough,” and we know we can’t compensate. Our problem is guilt and nothing to say in our defense. There is no righteousness in us. That’s the message. Righteousness is lacking in us—we have none.

Well, thank God that’s not Paul’s last word. There’s good news to come. And join us tomorrow to hear more about it.