Well, it’s been a while since the last WFTD.  A few things have contributed to that, but honestly, the biggest hurdle for me has been to attempt do justice to the gravity of this text.  While I hold to the belief that all of the Word of God needs to be wielded in order to know Him rightly, know ourselves rightly, and understand His will for us – so much of my understanding of God was challenged, transformed, and now built upon this passage in Romans 3, especially Romans 3:10-11.  I am prayerful that God would grant eyes to see all that He has for us in this text.  Much like other parts of God’s Word to us in Romans, the most difficult part is not in the exposition of the text, but in accepting that God means EXACTLY what He says.  My task then, is not to be clever or make light of hard doctrinal truths, but to fulfill the calling laid out for a teacher from Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 4:11-14 says this – “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” 

Some of you reading this are not where I would like you to be on the issues I’m going to raise today.  I want you to know, that is ok.  I still hold a great affection and love for you as my brother and sister in Christ.  My request is that you prayerfully consider the Word today, not so much my words, but the Word spoken by God to us.  If I press on your beliefs some, know that my goal is your joy in deeper fellowship with Christ.

If there was a crescendo to Paul’s first three chapters of Romans where he is outlining how everyone is accountable to God, everyone has fallen short, and no one is righteous on their own, it would certainly be this passage in Romans 3. Romans 3:9-20 – “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:  “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.”  “The venom of asps is under their lips.”  “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”  “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, 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 speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.  For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”  (bolded for emphasis from me)

Let me restate simply what God says above, and I challenge you to think on the implications.

• No one is righteous
• No one understands
• No one seeks for God
• No one does good

What is being described above is the “total depravity” of man.  Total depravity, used primarily as a theological term means that man’s condition from birth is completely sinful, incapable of doing any good and unwilling to do any good. What I’m about to say, I say looking back on years spent in the Word and years pursuing joy in fellowship with God; if you rightly understand your own depravity as complete and full, eventually every other piece of your theology (your understanding of God / redemption / salvation) will correctly fall into place.

Acts 17:26-27 – “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us”

That seems like a contradiction, right?  In Acts we are told that God desires for us to seek after him and in Romans we are told that no one does.  No one.

There are two ways to approach these two texts together

1)      You take a man-centered view, whereby you say God makes men savable, but requires something apart from Himself to actually save; namely the belief/faith of man.

2)      You take a God-centered view, whereby you stand in awe that God actually saves sinners, and grace covers all sin, first and foremost your unbelief, whereby even the faith to believe/seek after God is a gift purchased by the blood of Christ.

Now if you’re in the first camp, I don’t want to beat you up, but I do want you to consider, whether or not what you believe makes sense in light of Romans 3.  Instead of discussing how prideful it is to believe that man enters into salvation apart from God, I want to help you bridge the gap between the offense of total depravity to joy in knowing Jesus Christ as completely your Savior.

Total Depravity offends the pride of man.  It was well understood that this would be offensive to a natural man, and was written of throughout the Bible.

Galatians 5:11 – “But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed

Isaiah 8:13-14 – “But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.  And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” 

You cannot work your way to God.  There is nothing in you righteous that would please God.  If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, even your unbelief was a sin that was covered through the blood of Christ, just as any other.  In fact, it is written that unbelief is the root of all sin.

Romans 14:23 – “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”

Right now hopefully you’re seeing the depth of our sin problem. We have no hope in ourselves.  This is why in Ephesians 2 we are told that we are dead in our sins and trespasses.  Jesus gave a picture of this death, and our hope of salvation in Him, in Lazarus.  John 11:41-44 – “Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”  When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.”  The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”  Jesus goes to Lazarus, Lazarus doesn’t come to Him.  Jesus gives life to Lazarus without Lazarus asking as a gift.  Jesus gives a command for Lazarus to be unbound, Lazarus doesn’t unbind himself.

When God says that He forgives sin, he doesn’t mean it like you or I.  Nahum 1:3 – “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.”  God is infinitely holy and just.  His justice demands punishment against all sin.  Every breath of your life has been sinful and infinitely offensive to our Holy God.  You were incapable of ANY good.  You would NEVER seek after God.  You were not righteous.  But the righteousness of Christ is greater than ALL your sin.  God did not forgive your sin; your sin was placed on Christ.  The infinite wrath of God was poured out on Him who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.  It pleased God, Christian, for His eternal purpose for His glory, to demonstrate His love and mercy to you.  It was not deserved.  It was not owed.  It was a gift.  He is the giver of salvation – all glory belongs to Christ.

It is because Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of salvation, that we can rest in full assurance of our faith.  Philippians 1:6 – “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”  It is because Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of salvation, that I can look upon past sin and current struggles and proclaim “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Our sin was greater than we could ever imagine, but so is our salvation in Christ.  2 Corinthians 5:16-18 – “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.  Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation”  

My prayer and hope is that God would continually illuminate our sin in the light of His glory.  My prayer is not that we would make light of our sin or rest any hope of salvation in ourselves, but that we would turn to the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:2) and find peace, rest, freedom, and joy in Him.

Grace and Peace,

Adam