All mankind under sin

Well, good morning. Well, after reading those verses, I'm surprised you people are still here. Don't forget, this is a summation of three chapters, almost, of Paul laying his case out against mankind and why they can't contribute anything to their salvation. All right, so I labeled this as verse 9 says, all mankind or all men are under sin.

So the outline, this is one I've used since actually the start just about, you know, we start off this whole section through verse 20. Mike gets to do the closing verses. He gets to do 19 and 20 after Resurrection Sunday. We'll have the closing verses and he gets to be the final words. And then we get in the cool part in 321 and on about our wonderful salvation and what God has done for us.

But this part, Paul's laying out his case. So we talked about condemnation of mankind. First of all, the Gentile world, the immoral man. And then the moral man. And now we're working on the Jewish world condemned. We finished that up in 3.8. So now, this is his final statement. We're going to kind of see a chart on that. The whole world is condemned. Divided it into two sections this week. We'll do 9 through 12 and then next week we're going to do 13 through 18 and Then as I said Mike's going to finish it off with no flesh justified by the works of the law Actually Mike just we were talking a little bit this morning. I usually thought the schedule so I said Mike you get two verses and he said well we had talked about that and I said enough verses said Roger I started looking at at these commentators, and they had seven, eight pages of stuff on these two verses. So I think we'll have enough. All right, cool. All right, so let's get into it here. So now, actually, several people, I think Newell, Cawley, and others, actually Malloy too, all the Ms. I didn't listen to Merriman, but all the Ms. have looked at verses 9 through 19 and said, you know, this looks like a courtroom scene. If you're a fan of Perry Mason, that really dates me if I say Perry Mason, because Perry Mason is in reruns from the 50s. How about, who else? I'm trying to think of another person. I don't know. I lost it here.

But there's plenty of courtroom scenes. So we can look at, A courtroom scene in these verses. So let's start out here. So the charge we're going to see in verse 9 is, the charge is that all are under sin. And the indictments come in several sections. And there's kind of three sections of indictments. The first is the scope of sin, which we'll cover today. This is the scope of man's sin. The character of man's sin, if you will. Then next week we're going to look at the depths of his sin and the source of his sin. And as I mentioned, and then my son is going to have the defense. The defense is pretty weak here. The defense says, Lord, you nailed us. We have nothing to say. You've said it all. Every mouth is shut. So that's the defense. And the verdict is, all the world is accountable to God.

So that's kind of the picture of the verses we're going through. It actually kind of helps to kind of think of this as a courtroom scene. So let's get into this courtroom scene here. So here are the verses. I just wanted to... Jim read these. I'm not going to reread them again.

But notice, you know, in most translations what they've done is whenever you have the... especially in the New American Standard, whenever you have a quote from the Old Testament, they put that in there. Well, if you note, if you observe, that 10, 11, and 12 are all quotes. So Paul's... Indictments all come from the scriptures of the Old Testament, the oracles of God. There is none righteous, not even one. These three verses here all come from the Psalms and Isaiah, I think. Okay, so let's kind of get into it here. First part of verse 9.

What then? Or you could say, how then are we to understand what's laid before us? How are we going to understand that? Are we better than they? Not at all. And notice one thing. You notice that then they is in italics. So that's been supplied. And I think it's proper, but it actually reads, are we better? Not at all. That's how the original reads. So are we better is the idea to have preeminence, to excel. It's in the present tense. Are we continually better is kind of the idea.

So the question comes up, and I typically choose a path I'm going to go, but I'm going to give you option one and option two. I'm strongly in favor of one of the options, and you're going to see that, but I'm going to give you option one as well. Because option one, actually, a lot of commentators have option one, so it's actually in the majority. Option two is in the minority.

So the question is, who are the we and the they? And it's good. You know, when you go through, many times what I'll do as I study, I'll go through and I'll mark because I'll say, well, he's talking about, you know, Paul's talking along or whoever's we're reading, talking along, and he'll use all these pronouns. And I said, well, who are these people? Who are the pronouns? Do I have it right? Do I understand it right?

And if you notice many times, and this is one reason why I like option two, I haven't even told you option two. One reason I like option two is that that Paul many times will identify himself with the body of believers he's at. If he's at Corinth, he will say, we. And if he's at Ephesus, he'll say, we. And he says this in this case as well. So he'll identify himself. Well, the question is, who's he identifying himself with? That's the key question. Okay, option one. Option one.

Are we, Jews, better than they, Gentiles? In this case, Paul identifies himself with the Jews. He was a Jew, right? Are we Jews better than they Gentiles? Option two, are we believers better than they Gentiles? Paul identifies himself with believers under grace.

So you probably know where I'm headed here. You've been at Holly Hills for a while, you probably know where I'm headed here. And actually it turns out that This is from a class that Hal taught in 2006. He taught these verses here. So I used quite a bit of his material from that class. Okay, so let's look at that.

So the important points to kind of take away here is that if you look back in the whole section, the whole three chapters we've read, the whole two chapters plus up to verse nine, Paul has not identified himself with the Jews at all in this section. He has not done that. So why would he all of a sudden change, why would he all of a sudden make a change? And so our brother Hal says, I don't think that, it doesn't appear that's the case in 3.9. That's one point.

If you compare, if you go back and look at, I didn't put the verse up here, but if you look at what Mike covered in Romans 3.1, it says, what advantage has the Jew, or what is there, what is the benefit of circumcision?

Great in every respect. And it goes on, entrusted with the oracles of God. So in this case, he's contrasting in the comparison you can make. We said in 3.1 that the Jews have an advantage in every respect. They have the oracles of God. So why, all of a sudden, he change that and say the Jews have not at all, they have no advantage.

It seems like it contradicts that, 3.1 versus 3.9. And the third point is that If you keep tracking through all the pronouns and you look at the we in 3.8, if you read 3.8, it looks like it's talking about the body of believers in 3.8, if you read that carefully. So why would he change that to 3.9 and talk about the Jews? So here's kind of our brother Hal's rendering of 3.9, putting in option 2, if you will.

What then are we believers, with Paul included, the church, better than they Jews and Gentiles? No, in no wise, in no way. We believers, including Paul and the church, have before proved that both Jew and Gentiles, they, Jews and Gentiles, are all under sin. So basically all of mankind is under sin. But what's wonderful is, as we're going to see, once a person puts his faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, he is no longer under the condemnation of God. because our Savior has taken the condemnation of God.

That's kind of the point. So that's the whole issue. Why would you put in the Jews in there? And there's some arguments out there. Actually, Newell is one of the ones that goes along with that. I read Newell and I said, I went with this option. But you're free to choose your options. Alright, so second part of the verse.

For we believers, including Paul, have already charged to bring a charge. It's Aorist tense. So it's a past point fact, and Paul laid that out beautifully in chapters 1 and 2. Here are all the charges against the immoral man, the moral man, and the Jews. He's laid that out. That both Jew and Gentile are, and this is one of the cool Greek words, ami, the state in which something continuously exists. Both Jew and Gentile are, under sin, or all under sin.

So we're going to spend some time thinking about that phrase, or all under sin. So let's just, first of all, let's kind of say what it's not. And if you look carefully, all under sin is singular. It's not sins, it's sin singular. And also, and this could be a little bit of a stumbling point to the case I'm going to build here, and I'm using Brother Howells a lot, it actually does not have the definite article But it seems like it has the sense of that.

So I think that what I'm going to present here is that all men are under the sin nature, under his or her sin nature. That's what's in view here. And that's a substantial statement in Scripture. That's something that's really important to understand, that all mankind is under their sin nature, that dominates their life. So that's kind of the point.

And also what we're going to see, we're going to see a snapshot of all these wonderful verses that talk about our sin nature and how God has dealt with our sin nature in Romans. So we're going to get a preview, if you will, of what we're going to cover down the road in Romans. And here's one of the previews, if you will.

For the sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. So what's cool is we're going to present The bad news if you will that man is under his sin nature But we're going to also talk about the wonderful what God has done to take care of that So believers are not under so believers not unbelievers believers are not under the sin nature, but they're under grace Okay, so I borrowed a chart from how I had the doctor a little bit it was in it was in PDF and I don't own a PDF destructor or take-apart-er, so I had to kind of bring it across and do this and that. So anyway, I was able to do that by the miracle of PowerPoint. So here's his three points. All mankind are under sin in three aspects, under the sin nature.

It's dominion and reign, which we'll see in Romans 5.21.

It's power in Romans 5.12. and it's penalty and condemnation in 518.

And also we're going to see it in Romans 8.3 about the condemnation of the sin nature. So it's dominion and reign, it's power, and it's penalty and condemnation. The three aspects of all mankind being under their sin nature.

So let's start with the first one. Under it's dominion or reign. So what I did here, I looked at Hal's comments And I thought, well, and then he referenced some verses, so I thought, boy, I think the verses are just dynamite. So I put our brother Hal's comments at first, and then I backed them up. We're going to look at the verses to see, well, how did we get those observations, if you will?

So, all under sin is dominion and reign. The sin nature in the unbeliever reigns in his or her present spiritual, am I reading that right? The sin nature in the unbeliever reigns in his, slash her, present spiritual death. Separation from God. Death is separation. So they're separated from God. They have a sin nature from Adam and it separates them from God. It's 24-7. It's inescapable. It's forever. Unless they trust in Christ. So note, by God's grace, the believer is now under the dominion and reign, is not under the dominion and reign of their sin nature.

So the verse for that is Romans 5, 17. For if by the transgressions of one, Adam, death reigned through the one, through Adam, much more the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. So here death is reigning. And it's reigning through this Adamic nature that every person has and it reigns until they accept Christ. And then we get the free gift of righteousness. We have another reigning, we have Christ's life reigning in us. It's power. Every person is born with an Adamic sin nature.

And you can trace that back, if you doubt that, you go back and look at Go back and look at Genesis, and you look at the Fall, and you look at God saying, you know, He gives, before actually, chapter 3 and chapter 2, He talks about the fact that, you know, if you transgress my commandments, dying you will surely die, talking about a spiritual death and a physical death, and death is separation. It talks about that. And then it also goes on in chapter 5, and it talks about the fact that The descendants of Adam were in Adam's likeness and in his image, not in God's image. They were in Adam's likeness and image.

The sin nature has an inherent power and the unbeliever is a slave to it. We're a slave to that power. We're going to see that in the verse coming up here. By God's grace again, it frees us from the power. We're no longer a slave. We're now a bondservant to Jesus Christ.

So here are the verses, 5.12, Therefore, just as through one man, Adam, sin entered into the world, if you ever, somebody ever asked you, how did sin come into the world? This verse tells you, it came into the world through one man, Adam, into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned.

And then in Romans 3.20, for when you were slaves of sin so the point here you were slaves of the sin nature and also the definite article shows up starting in chapter 5 it shows up in 5, 6, 7, 8 that will show up pointing to the sin nature and then in 622 but now having been freed from the sin nature and enslaved to God so there's the good news so I have the good news and the bad news together here Third point under its penalty and condemnation God has condemned the sin nature and this is this is interesting. We're going to see that I have four verses coming up here God has condemned the sin nature and if you and this is one of the points that our brother Mike makes a lot if God has condemned the sin nature and you're connected and you have no choice by birth you were connected to that sin nature and Guess what? When God says the sin of nature is condemned, you're condemned too. So that's one of the key points to understand, that men and women outside of Christ are condemned, not because they're bad people, but because they have bad relatives.

And they have no choice. We don't get a choice in that. Every person is born into sin, if you will. In sin my mother conceived me." Not that she was angry with you, but that's just the way it is. So now, again, by God's grace there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. So here are the verses for that.

So Romans 5, 16b, For on the one hand judgment arose From one transgression, so this is answering the question, how did this judgment arise? It came from the transgression of Adam, resulting in condemnation. Then 518, so then as through one transgression, Adam's again, there resulted condemnation to all men. So you see how the Lord has all through, especially Romans here, He's put in these little nuggets about Adam's nature, What it what has done to mankind and then also what is his remedy for that and?

Here's his remedy therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and Then the one I referred to earlier Romans 8 3 For what the law could not do weak as it was through the flesh God did sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and And as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

So what I presented, that's kind of the nuggets. But there's another little point, some points I want to make about, and there's kind of some background about what Paul's doing here. So Paul, like a skillful lawyer, and that's why you kind of get the idea of this courtroom, he's kind of presented the following.

That all men are under sin, under his dominion, power, and penalty. The charges and conviction are based factually on 118 through 38, which we've been studying the last several months here. The charges and conviction Paul has stated further illustrate God has previously declared in the Psalms. We're going to see as we get into these, I'm going to look at actually six of the indictments that Paul has, and they all come from the Psalms or Isaiah.

God's assessment of mankind, it's the same. God didn't say, well, you were really bad in the time of Moses, and you've gotten better. Man's progressed, he's gotten better, right? That's what we're told, right? He's gotten better, we're now more enlightened. God has the same issues he had with Adam's race, starting with Adam, and through all the patriarchs, up and through all people of today.

There's no difference, the charges are the same, and he uses the charges from the scriptures in the Old Testament. And this is the point. So, Paul is going to use to refute the Jewish claim that they had a privilege, that they had the oracles of God, he's going to refute them by using their own oracles. He's going to say, your oracles will condemn you, because they will tell exactly what you're like. And we're going to see that. So now, here's the first set of indictments, verses 10 through 12. This is the scope of man's sin. There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands God. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside from God. Together they have all become useless. Or literally, that word, it's interesting, that word, it stands for rotten fruit. We'll see that shortly. There is none who do good, not even one.

And the word good is the idea for kindness, the kindness of God, which we'll look at a little bit too. So there's the six indictments, and we're going to go through these six. As it is written, so it means that this is what's written down. It's written and it's on record. Actually, it's a little bit narrower than I said before. It's actually Psalm 14. Actually, Psalm 14, 1-3 is in your bulletin, the first three verses. And then Psalm 53, 1-3 in your bulletin.

They both say very similar things, but they talk about these indictments. There is none righteous, not even one. So righteous is the idea of being right according to a standard. And the standard is the very righteousness of God. God is the standard. It's being righteous according to God's standard, not man's standard. And several psalms, not the ones in here, talk about the righteousness of God. For the Lord is righteous. He loves righteousness. The upright will behold His face. Psalm 145 the Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his deeds So these two verses show us the righteousness of God Now, what about man? Where is he at? Well a very familiar verse.

We haven't covered it yet It's coming up soon for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God remember all is that word a pass in the Greek it means a None excluded. When he says all, he means all. All, all and all. Everything. Not one excluded. A person outside of Christ does not have a right standing with God. That's his problem. He doesn't have the proper standing with God.

So there's none righteous. Okay, that's indictment one. Indictment two. I've used interlinear sometimes to kind of bring out the full impact. There is not one who understands God. It's present tense, continuous action. Man is continually not understanding God. And boy, I think we kind of see that. Man wants to worship God in his own way. I'm going to worship God the way I think God is, outside of Scripture. I think God is whatever. God's in the trees, so I'll worship the trees. They worship God, but they don't understand Him.

The only way we can understand God is by looking at his word. So understand here is the idea. I have a lot of additional words here. It's to reason out, to understand, to recognize. So Hal says, there is not one that acts on the knowledge that he has from God. Interesting. If they don't know what he's saying, they can't act upon it, right? This kind of is really illustrated well in Romans.

118 we covered it earlier for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and the righteousness of men Who suppress the truth in unrighteousness? You know man wants to when God's truth hits him so to speak they want to they want to push it down They want to suppress it You know this is a section that talks about the heavens declare the glory of God all these wonderful things declare God's glory and then the following verse says Because that which is known about God is evident within them for God made it evident to them I was thinking about I've been I've been looking at the wine I look at one for Israel and it's about the hundredth time I mentioned this but Anyway, there was a gentleman that they had on he's a Jewish guy Who met the Lord as a teenager?

He's from the u.s From New York City, and he became an eminent scientist. He won the Nobel Prize his name is I'm going to lose it here. What is it, Bonnie? Jim Tour. I think I mentioned it to our Jim. But anyway, he studies chemistry. He's a chemist. He's a believer and he's a chemist. And his statement, and he studies the human cell, and he says, We are just on the brink of...

We understand so little. We've been studying it for years. And the more we understand, the less we find we understand. Because we go to a certain point and then there's more. And he says, the claims that people make about the origin of life based on the human cell are absolutely nuts. They're not scientific. They're not following the science. But it doesn't make any difference. Man wants to suppress it. They don't want the truth. They want to suppress the truth. So he's a real encouragement. I don't agree with his... His doctrine, exactly. He's a wonderful believer. Anyway, I wish he knew more about grace. It's pretty cool. Third point.

There is no one who seeks God. No one is continuously seeking God. It's just the opposite, right? If God didn't seek us, we'd be in a world of hurt. He's the one that sought us. You know, we make our attempts in our ways to seek God, but they're not in line with who He is. Seeking is the idea to seek after, to search for. No one diligently seeks out God so as to turn to Him and glorify Him. Christ is the one who seeks man. And here's a wonderful verse that we all remember. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.

And then if you think about what the Jew and the Gentile, this section really kind of points out the fact that of the people groups in scripture, if you're a careful reader and look at that, you'll see that the Lord looks at mankind in kind of three categories, the Jew, the Gentile, and the church. And that's kind of what's in view. We've been talking about the Jew, Gentile, and the church.

So what do the Jews seek for? They seek for a sign. They want miraculous signs. What do the Gentiles want? They want wisdom. Wisdom rules. But they don't seek for God. God has to seek for them. We love because He first loved us. His love had to be demonstrated first before we could respond to it. The fourth point. All turned away from God. Turned away as to uh, because actually I like that from the vines the vines dictionary has to swerve from god I kind of think some people avoid god, right?

They they don't want to I'll tell you a story about my brother. How when uh, when I was at uh, buckley, he had a a bible study Uh, and uh, and I wasn't a believer at the time this goes back quite a few years But i've known how for a long time. I did know how for a long time anyway Anyway, I would go by the Bible study, and I would say, hmm, I don't know, I feel uncomfortable in a Bible study. They talk about the Bible and God. I don't want to talk about that kind of stuff. So I would swerve around the Bible study. So I kind of brought home the idea. I'd swerve around. Anyway.

So it's a past point fact, it's reality. It's a weast hazard to turn aside, to deviate from the right way. And I couldn't help but include this verse talking about going astray. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. And then from Malachi, But as for you, you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble. So this is this case that Paul's building.

One point after another point after another point. And I think there's 14 or 16 points total. We're only on point four. That's why I divided it up a little bit. I figured it'd be too many to do them all in the same message. Okay, number five. Together they have become useless. Have become useless is the idea to become unprofitable or useless. Err is tense. It's a past point fact. It's reality. And this is where Newell's definition just kind of blew me away.

He says, the Greeks used this term, this term unprofitable, to speak of concerning rotten fruit or whatever was utterly or irrevocably bad or useless. So the Amplified Bible has, using this word, has 53.3 says, they have all together become filthy and corrupt. Okay, the sixth point.

There is none who does good Actually, this is one of those times when you're studying along and you think, boy, I think I know what good means. Because somewhere in the Gospels it said, only God is good. I kind of understand that, but I found I didn't understand it because this word is more the idea of kindness. The word describes one's disposition of kindness. It's literally the kindness of heart. It's God's kindness of heart. It does not necessarily entail a goodness of an act. It's describing God's character. And Ephesians is one of the places where it's used. Ephesians 2, 7.

That He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. It's also one of the fruits of the Spirit. Fruit of the Spirit. We get the whole package. I have to explain this every time. It's a package deal, right? We get love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness. We get the whole package. And that's called the fruit of the Spirit, singular. Ask God why he did that when you get the glory. I want to say fruits of the Spirit is fruit of the Spirit. Okay, no unbeliever can manifest this kindness of God. He can't do it. It's impossible. It takes the life of Christ for a person to... And so that's why Paul has said, There's not even one. There's none good. There's none who has this kindness of God. Not even one.

Okay. So just for final thoughts, I thought I'd just review what we talked about today. Sometimes I try to find a quote by somebody or whatever, but today, just this review. So we talked about being under sin, and we saw the three aspects of that. Under the sin nature, dominion and reign, You know, that speaks to the fact that we're... I had to note that one. Give me one second here. You know, that speaks to the separation that we have.

Because we have a sin nature, then sin nature is power. We are slaves to the sin nature until we trust Christ. Under the sin nature is penalty and condemnation. The sin nature has been condemned and those who are still outside of Christ are condemned with it. And then we see these characteristics, these six characteristics of man outside of Christ.

There's none righteous, not even one. There's none who understands God. There's none who seeks for God. All have turned aside from God. Together, they have all become useless or rotten. And then lastly, there is none who does good, does God's kindness, not even one.

So next week we're going to talk about, if this wasn't enough against man, we're going to talk about man's, Paul's going to describe man's, the indictments against man by his simpleness of his speech. He's going to describe what, as I think Macaulay said, it's like the doctor saying, ah. He looks into man's speech and he says, it's rotten, it's awful. And he looks into man's conduct and he says, That's bad, too. You've got feet that run to evil. You've got mouths that spit out, you know, awful stuff.

And the bottom line is that all are accountable to God. Okay, let's close in prayer. We thank you, Father. We thank you for today, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have. Thank you so much for just your care for us, your wonderful, marvelous grace.

We thank you for your thoroughness, how you carefully go through and show that every Every person that has not trusted Christ is under the just condemnation of a holy God. But you provided a way. It's your way, not our way. It's your thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and your ways are higher than our ways. We thank you that you provided your son, the Lord Jesus, for us. We ask it in his name. Amen.