Dr. Sproul covers some of the most famous Old Testament quotes starting with, “There is none righteous, no not one.” This section shows the utter shortcoming in man and his relationship to God. No matter what is considered from scripture mankind is shown as unacceptable in all areas. All are left at this point wondering if there is any way to be justified before God.

This evening as we continue our study of Paul’s letter to the Romans, I will be reading from Romans 3:10–20. I will ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

As it is written:

“There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

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. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

If you have ears to hear, please hear the Word of God. Please be seated. Let us pray.

As we attend now to this, Your Word, O God, we realize that, with the whole of humanity, You have dragged us before Your throne of judgment. You have examined us and found us wanting. You have stripped us of all pretense to righteousness and laid bare before Your eyes our iniquity. O God, help us to take seriously this indictment that it may drive us to the cross and to the sweetness of the gospel. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

An Indictment from God

We saw in the first chapter of this epistle that Paul announced the revelation of the righteousness of God that is by faith, and we saw that the theme for the whole epistle was the outworking of the gospel of grace. Yet so quickly after that announcement of good news, Paul changed his focus to the revelation of the wrath of God, which is made manifest against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Paul then explained that the essence of that ungodliness is found in our universal action of suppressing the clear and manifest self-disclosure of God, exchanging the truth that we know for a lie, and giving ourselves to idolatry, which plunges us into moral ruin. Paul went on to bring both Jew and Greek under this indictment, showing that we are not redeemed through the rituals or programs of the church, and stripping away from us any hope of self-justification.

In the text I have read, we see Paul coming to the conclusion that he wants us all to understand before he declares the gospel of justification by faith alone. But again, no one is ready to hear the gospel until we first understand the indictment that comes down to us from God Himself.

This view of our humanity I have just read is on a collision course with everything our culture tells us about our natural condition. Humans in our day profoundly disagree with this assessment of our condition. But I am not interested tonight in what we as fallen people think of ourselves. What we must listen to is the assessment of our condition made by God Himself. So, let us look together at this section of the text.

The Burden of Sin

I am going to back up to the last portion of what I read last week. We ended last week with Romans 3:9, with the question, “What then, are we better than they?” The answer to that question was: “Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.” Let that conclusion from last week serve as the introduction for our study tonight: Jew and Greek, which means everyone, are under sin.

What does the Apostle mean when he says that we are in our natural condition under sin? He means that sin is not something that just scratches us on the surface, something that is tangential to our lives. Rather, the weight of it is so heavy that it presses down upon us, and we are under a weighty burden of guilt as the result of our sin. The force of what Paul is saying is that because of our sin, each one of us is exposed to the judgment of God, being under the verdict of the law.

Sometimes in the colloquial expressions of our society, if we are doing well, if we are succeeding, we say that we are “on top of things.” With respect to our performance of obedience before God, we are not on top of it. We are underneath it. The law hangs like the sword of Damocles over our necks. We are under the awesome weight of sin, under the burden of our guilt before God.

One of my desires when I talk about this is that we might come to a greater capacity to feel the weight of the burden of sin and guilt. We have become experts at denying and dodging it so we do not feel the burden. Not one person in a thousand has a complete and full comprehension of the weightiness of this matter.

None Are Righteous

In order to buttress his claim and defend this grim assessment of our condition, Paul rests not on his own insights or experience but goes back into the pages of the Old Testament. The quotations that follow are not found in one particular place in the Old Testament. Rather, Paul gives us an amalgamation of several texts, most of which are from the Psalms and some of which are from the prophet Isaiah. But everything he repeats in verses 10–18 is taken from the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament.

Paul sets this before us in a kind of chronological order, where the judgments are not just loosely laid together, but the second judgment follows from the first, and the third from the second, and so on through this indictment. If we were in God’s court right now, and the judge came into the court, and the charges against us were to be read aloud in the courtroom, the charges would sound like this: “As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’”

Not one person in the world can be found who, when judged against the standard of God’s righteousness, will be seen to be righteous. Yet it is our self-description of being righteous that leads us to suppose that we can pass the judgment of God on judgment day based on our own performance.

I have mentioned before the diagnostic question we asked in evangelism: “If you were to die tonight and stood before God, and God said to you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven,’ what would you say?” Of the people asked that question, 90 percent answered by giving some kind of works-righteousness answer. They said: “I would say to God: ‘I’ve tried to live a good life. I belong to church. I gave to charity. I never did anything really bad in my life.’” Beloved, that is a pretense of righteousness that has no substance to it.

The Word of God lays it bare when it gives this universal appraisal: “There is none righteous.” It is a universal negative proposition: “There is none righteous.” And in case we do not get it, the emphasis follows, “No, not one.” It admits of no exception in this universal judgment.

None Understand

Since there is none righteous, it would follow irresistibly that, “There is none who understands.” What do we not understand? In view here is a failure to understand the things of God. If we as fallen creatures do not want to have God in our thinking, if we want to dismiss Him from our thinking and develop a worldview that suits our performance and ignores the Word of God, how could it be anything else but that we fall into a complete inability to grasp or lay hold of the truths of God?

Who among us in the flesh understands the sweetness of God? Who among us, even in our converted state, hungers and thirsts to understand the deep things of God? How many professing Christians have you heard say: “I don’t need to study the Scriptures. I don’t want to study theology. I want to have a childlike faith”? But God’s Word tells us, “In malice be babes, but in understanding be mature” (1 Cor. 14:20). But we do not want that. We want to learn everything else in this world except the things of God. We are satisfied to not have any understanding of these holy things.

None Seek God

After saying, “There is none who understands,” Paul says, “There is none who seeks after God.” Did you hear that? No one in his natural condition seeks after God. Seeking after God is the business of the believer. When you become a Christian, that is the moment where your quest for God begins. Prior to your conversion, you are a fugitive from God. You do not seek God; you flee from God.

That is why it frustrates me to see the movement that wants restructure worship and restructure the activity of the church to accommodate seekers, to be seeker-sensitive. This rests on the assumption that people who are unconverted are desperately seeking after God but cannot find Him, as if He is hiding. This movement in the church wants to structure worship, teaching, preaching, and everything else to the pagan in order to help him find what he is desperately searching for but just cannot seem to uncover.

Is it not a strange, foolish thing to structure worship for unbelievers seeking after God, when the Bible tells us there are none? Ladies and gentlemen, that is senseless. It manifests a failure to understand the things of God. If we understood the things of God, then we would know that there is no such thing as people out there who are unconverted seekers of God.

However, it seems from our perspective that we have friends who are not believers, and we say, “My next door neighbor is not a Christian, but he’s searching.” Why do we say that? Thomas Aquinas was asked that question on one occasion: “Why does it seem to us that there are people who are not Christians who appear to be searching for God when the Bible says no one seeks after God when they’re in that unconverted state?”

Aquinas essentially said: “We see people all around us who are furiously, feverishly seeking for purpose in their life, searching for meaning to their existence. They are involved in the pursuit of happiness, looking for relief from guilt to silence the pangs of conscience that haunt them. They are looking for peace, looking for lasting satisfaction, trying to avoid being consigned to the state of living lives of quiet desperation. We see people searching for the things that we know can only be found in Christ, so we make the gratuitous assumption that because they’re seeking the benefits of God, they must therefore be seeking God.”

This is our dilemma as fallen creatures: we want the things that only God can give us, but we do not want Him. Yes, we want peace, but not the Prince of Peace. Yes, we want purpose, but not the sovereign purposes decreed by God. We want meaning found in ourselves and not in His rule over us.

So, we see people who are desperate, and we say, “They’re seeking for God.” No, they are not seeking for God. How do I know that? Because God says so. No one seeks after God. How desperately was Paul searching for God when he was on his way to Damascus to destroy the followers of Jesus? He was no more searching for God than I was when God stopped me in my path one night and brought me sovereignly to Himself. I knew then that I did not come to Christ because I was seeking Him; I came to Christ because He sought me.

Christ Seeks Us

No one seeks after Christ until they have first been found by Christ, and that begins the seeking of the kingdom. That is why Jesus says to those who come to Him, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). But that only is meaningful to the believer.

How many times do you hear evangelists say: “Jesus said, ‘I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him.’” The evangelist might say: “Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart. If you open up the door, Jesus will come into your life. If you’ll just seek Him a little bit, you will find Him.” However, when Jesus said, “Knock and it shall be opened unto you, seek the Lord while He may be found, seek and you will find—I stand at the door,” He was saying those things to the church. He was talking to believers. It is believers who are called to seek the Lord while He is near, to call upon Him while He is near. While we are in unbelief, we do not seek God.

Here is a test: Do you seek God? If you do seek God, that is a clear indication that you are already in the kingdom. If you do not seek Him, that is a good indication that you are not in the kingdom, for apart from Christ seeking us first, “there is none who seeks after God.”

Only One Way

“They have all turned aside.” Is it not interesting that the Christian community, before they were called Christians—a term of derision used for them at Antioch—were first called “the people of the Way” because Jesus identified Himself as the Way: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Do you believe that? Do you believe there is only one way? The culture tells us there are many ways. But God says, “No, there is only one.” Jesus said there is only one way: “I am the way. No one comes to the Father but through Me.”

If there is none righteous, no one understands, and no one seeks after God, where would you expect them to go except out of the way, missing the road, missing the path? So, the indictment continues:

There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside.

If they have turned aside, if they have no understanding of the things of God, if they are not searching after God, if there is not any righteousness, what is the net result? “They have together become unprofitable”—futile.

I once was writing a book on the glory of Christ, and I was using a word processor on my computer. I did not understand all the mechanics of backing up the hard drive, and I had finished one hundred or so pages of that book when my computer crashed. I did not have it backed up. Do you know how a writer feels when he has produced a hundred pages and he loses them?

I had a friend who worked for five years on his doctoral dissertation. He was in the last days of completing his dissertation, which he kept in his office at the college where we taught, when a fire burned his office to the ground. He lost it all. He had to start all over.

Nothing seems more tragic than to labor as hard as you can and see the fruit of your labor be destroyed, amount to nothing, be unprofitable, and be an exercise in futility. But that is what God says is the bottom line for the richest people in the world who know not Christ, for the most successful people in the world who know not the gospel. They have become futile, unprofitable in all that they do.

True Good Deeds

This section of the indictment concludes by saying, “There is none who does good, no, not one.” You might be thinking: “It’s one thing for me to say I’m not a righteous person, but surely you’re not going to go over the edge and say that I don’t ever do anything good, or that I’ve never done a good deed prior to my conversion, or that no pagan ever does anything good. Haven’t we seen pagan people with no profession of Christ lay down their lives for their brothers on the battlefield and mothers sacrifice themselves to save their children?” Calvin calls this “civic righteousness.” From our perspective, these are good deeds. But if you define goodness the way God does, then the verdict comes out a little differently.

In biblical terms, there are two aspects to a good deed. When God weighs your actions to see if they’re good, He says, first of all, to be good it has to correspond outwardly to His law. If God requires honesty, and you are honest such that you do not cheat on your test or on your income taxes, and you do not steal, then it is good that you do not steal. It is good that you do not cheat. So far, so good. You have half of it down. You have external conformity to the law of God.

But when God evaluates our behavior, He not only judges the outward action but connects the inward motivation to it. From God’s perspective, for someone to do good in His sight, that person not only has to do something that externally conforms to His law, but that action must be motivated by a heart trying to please God, someone who loves Him with his whole heart and whole mind.

If that is the case, if that is the standard of a good deed, then even after my conversion, there is a pound of flesh in everything I do. I have never in my life loved God with my whole heart. Have you? Have you ever loved Him with your whole mind? If there is anyone who has loved God for five years with your whole mind, please come take over this job for me. You will give us much greater insight to the Word of God than I can possibly give because I am someone who has never loved God with his whole mind. Sure, I have loved God with part of my mind, but all of it? All my strength? All my heart?

Is that not the Great Commandment? To fail in this would be the great transgression. There is no one who has loved God with his whole heart and whole mind for five seconds. If that is the standard by which God will judge our deeds, then you see why He would say, “No one does good, no, not one.”

Superficial Goodness

Remember the rich young ruler who came up to Jesus. He was very enthusiastic. He interrupted Jesus and said, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” What did Jesus say? “You must make a decision to follow Me”? No, He said: “Why do you call Me good? Why did you address Me as good? You don’t know who I am.”

It was not that Jesus was denying His sinlessness. It is not that Jesus was denying His perfect obedience. But He knew the man had no idea who he was talking to, and he was just throwing the word “good” around liberally. So, Jesus said: “Excuse Me, why are you calling Me good? Don’t you know that only God is good? Don’t you know that there’s none righteous, no, not one? Don’t you know that there is no one who does good, not one? Why do you call Me good?”

Then Jesus said to the ruler, “You know the commandments, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, and so on.” It was like the rich young ruler said: “Is that all? It’s that easy? All these things have I done from my youth. I can check off the Ten Commandments every single day. I’ve kept every one of them since the day that I was old enough to remember and learn them. I’ve never stolen. I’ve never committed adultery. I’ve never killed anyone.”

How did Jesus answer him? “That’s remarkable. You know, you’re the first person I’ve ever met who has kept all these commandments from your youth. You don’t need Me. I’ve come to call sinners to repentance. The healthy have no need of a physician. You’re going to go straight to heaven. If you’ve kept the law since your youth, you’ve got it made.” That is not what He said. Nor did Jesus say: “No you haven’t. You haven’t kept the Ten Commandments since you got out of your bed this morning.” He did not say that. He just said: “Let’s start at the first commandment: ‘Thou shall have no other gods before Me.’ Let’s try that one. Why don’t you go, sell all that you have, give it to the poor, take up your cross, and follow Me?”

It is as if the rich young ruler responded: “Is that the first commandment? You mean I have something that I’ve put ahead of you?” The man walked away sadly because he had many possessions.

The saddest thing about that encounter is that Jesus met a man who really thought he was good. Obviously, the rich young ruler had not been present on the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus explained the depth of the import of the Ten Commandments. The man had a superficial understanding of goodness, a superficial understanding of the law of God.

Poisonous Mouths

To prove the point, to bring it home to practical application, Paul gives us a list of metaphors to describe the extent to which we are not righteous, have gone astray, do not understand the things of God, and do not do good. In this relentless indictment, he begins to use parts of the body, principally the throat, mouth, and tongue, to show our corruption:

“There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb.”

Remember when Jesus said to the Pharisees: “You are like whitewashed tombs, whited sepulchers. On the outside, you’re whitewashed, clean, and pure, but inside, underneath, what can’t be seen by the naked eye is filled with dead men’s bones, where there is decay and corruption.” The Word of God here says, in effect: “If I open your mouth and look down your throat, I see death. I see corruption, corruption that comes from the core of your being and then goes up your throat and out your mouth.” That is the metaphor Scripture uses: your throat is an open sepulcher.

Paul moves from the throat to the tongue: “With their tongues they have practiced deceit.” The Bible says that all men are liars. We are deceitful. By nature, we do not love truth. We use truth only when it advances our self-interest. In the meantime, our lips are full of deceit.

Then Paul goes on: “The poison of asps is under their lips.” The adder or the asp is one of the deadliest reptiles in the world. Not only is its bite fatal, as was the case with Cleopatra, but it is exceedingly painful. The description the Bible gives of us is that underneath our tongues are sacs of venom, like pit vipers, because the words we use destroy, maim, and poison; they are vituperative.

“The poison of asps under their lips;”
“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”

I grew up in Pittsburgh, and I heard my father curse maybe once. If he hit his thumb with a hammer, he may have said a word he should not have said. Yet I live in a world today where I know lots of people who cannot speak a sentence without vulgarity or blasphemy. Their mouths are full of cursing.

When you look at television or see the ratings of the movies on TV or in the movie theaters, they will give symbols, the rating system. It is PG, or R, or whatever it is. Then they put these letters on the side, AC, adult content, then AL, adult language, mature language.

You know when you see that symbol, AL, that you are going to get an earful. You are going to wonder how people who made movies before 1950 were ever able to communicate anything in those films when gratuitous language is now part of the warp and woof of our society, where we take for granted that we are people whose mouths are full of cursing, blasphemy, and filthy talk.

That is who we are. This is our nature, not that we have mouths that let a bad word slip every now and then, but our mouths are filled with it—that is paganism, barbarianism, mouths full of cursing and bitterness.

Ways of Destruction

From the throat, the mouth, the lips, and the tongue, Paul moves to the feet. He says, “Their feet are swift to shed blood.” In our bitterness, in our propensity for violence, we run for violence; we cannot wait to spill blood. What kind of being would be worthy of a description like this?

“Destruction and misery are in their ways.” You might say: “Paul, don’t quote these antiquated texts from the Old Testament, from that vengeful God, Yahweh. That’s pre-modern society, pre-scientific age, pre-Enlightenment thinking. We live in a sophisticated world today where there isn’t any misery. There isn’t any destruction. Read the paper. Watch the news. You won’t see any images of destruction or violence, not in this civilized country.”

“The way of peace they have not known.” Someone did a calculus of violence in warfare for the last two thousand years of Western civilization, measuring the number of wars and the magnitude of violence in them. The most peaceful century in the history of Western civilization was the first century, the century that witnessed the coming of the Prince of Peace. The second most peaceful century in human history was the nineteenth century. That was why people became so optimistic at the end of the nineteenth century. They thought that through science and education, warfare was over. They did not anticipate there would be more violence and warfare in the first quarter of the twentieth century than in any full century before that time.

That was before World War II. That was before the slaughter of millions in the Soviet Union or in Red China. It was before Vietnam, before Korea, before the wars that broke out across every aspect of the globe in the latter part of the twentieth century. Far and away the most violent century in recorded history was the twentieth century because the way of peace we have not known.

No Fear of God

At this point in the text, the conclusion of this rehearsal of God’s assessment comes to the bottom line: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” This is the scariest thing of all: the pagan is not afraid of God. Of course, fear includes within it the sense of reverence. We are, by nature, irreverent people. We have no sense of awe, no desire to honor God or glorify Him as God. When we do not give it a second thought, we are not afraid of God by nature.

I want to tell you something: God scares me, even though I know I am redeemed and that now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, as we will see later in this text. But God is holy, and I know that, and even though I am covered by the Savior, I am still frightened at times by the character of God—with good reason.

I was on a plane once in a bad storm, and I was nervous. I was holding on white-knuckled to the seat. My friend next to me asked: “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you believe in the sovereignty of God?” I said, “Yes, that’s why I’m afraid.” I know God can sometimes put His hand upon us to correct us and chasten us, and I know if He put His hand on my shoulder now with pressure and bore down, He would have every right to do it, and He is worthy of my fear. He is worthy of my reverence.

That is why the wisdom literature of the Old Testament says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This is the incredible thing: people who do not fear God think they are smart. They think they are wise, when if a person has no fear of God, there is not an ounce of wisdom in their heads or hearts. It is the fool, the Bible says, who says in His heart, “There is no God.” It is the fool who has no fear of God.

Silence in God’s Courtroom

Finally, after this recitation of biblical texts, Paul says, “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.” Every time the New Testament describes with any vivid imagery the scene of the final judgment, where God’s verdict comes down in His courtroom, the response of those on trial is silence.

I had a friend who did his PhD at Harvard in neurological studies, advanced studies in the operation of the brain, and he said: “The more I study the brain, which is an amazing thing—so much more incredible than the most vast computer system in the world—I’ve learned that every experience that you have is recorded in your brain. Every word that you’ve ever spoken is recorded in your brain. Do you know what I think? On the last day, God is going to take our brains out of our heads, put them on a table in the courtroom, plug a recorder into it, and punch rewind. We’re going to have to sit there and listen to our own brains rehearse everything we’ve ever done, everything we’ve ever said in secret, and every thought we’ve ever had in our head. The prosecuting attorney won’t have to say a word.”

After that recitation takes place, what would there be to say? What use is there in arguing with God when God says: “I have weighed you in the balance and found you wanting. I can’t find any goodness in you. I’ve search your soul, and I don’t see righteousness. I see the poison of snakes in your mouth. I give you My law, and you break it at every point.” As Paul says, “Every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”

The Law Will Not Justify

Here is the conclusion of this segment of the epistle that no sane person dare miss: “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”

If you are paying attention to the law, you know it will not justify you. You know you will never be able to get into heaven on the basis of your works, because the law reveals to you your filthiness. The law teaches us the conclusion that by the works of the law, no flesh, no person, no human being will ever be justified in His sight.

Why do people continue to hope that their good deeds are going to be good enough to satisfy the demands of God? Despair of that, dear friends. Do not for one second rest on your works as the ground for your justification, because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in His sight.

Verse 21 begins with my favorite word in the New Testament. It makes all the difference in the world, in heaven and on earth. I call it politely the “Apostolic however” because the “Apostolic but” does not seem appropriate. But those three letters, B-U-T, are the difference between heaven and hell. Finally, after this relentless indictment you have had to endure all these weeks, we are coming to that place where Paul finally says, “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed.”

Now, the Apostle is saying, it is time for the gospel. Enough of this bad news. But listen to the bad news, that you might hear the goodness of the good news, which we will begin to examine next Sabbath evening. Let us pray.

O Father, when You measure us by Your standard, we know that You do not judge on a curve, but we are found lacking, and all of our righteousness is filthy rags in Your sight. Father, by Thy Spirit, crush any hope in our breast that would think we could earn our way into heaven. Help us to despair altogether of our flesh and any pretense of righteousness we think we possess. Turn our eyes to the Savior, who alone is good, who alone is righteous, whose righteousness alone can avail for our need. For without that righteousness, all that we have is unprofitable. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.