Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #18 of Romans 3,  and we will read Romans 3:10-12:

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

I will stop reading there.  As we see at the beginning of verse 10, it says, “As it is written,” and that is a statement God often makes to let it be known that the statement has been previously written in His Word, so we should look for it.  We should go to the Scriptures to see where else this is written.

If we turn to Psalm 14, we find a very similar statement in Psalm 14:1-3:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. JEHOVAH looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

We can see the similarity between what is written in Psalm 14 and in Romans 3. 

Also, we read in Psalm 53:1-3:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Once again, in Romans 3 it says, “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.”  We can see that this is pulled from these verses in the Psalms.  When it says, “As it is written,” it is really letting us know that this is a biblical principle, a consistent Bible teaching that can be found in the Scriptures as a whole.  And that is exactly what we find if we turn to the book of Genesis, for example.  It says of the days of Noah, in Genesis 6:5:

And JEHOVAH saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Since men’s hearts were only evil continually, that would mean that they were not righteous.  None were righteous, no, not one.  You cannot have evil thoughts and be considered righteous.  Actually there cannot be evil or sin of any kind because just one sin makes you a lawbreaker, and a lawbreaker becomes unrighteous.  All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.  Therefore there are none righteous, no, not one. 

Someone might say, “Hold on!  You are not reading the whole Bible because even in Genesis 6 where you are reading that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, you just need to go down a little bit and read verses 8-9.”  And we do read in Genesis 6:8-9:

But Noah found grace in the eyes of JEHOVAH. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

And the word “just” is a word that is also translated as “righteous,” so God is saying that Noah was a righteous man.  So an individual might say, “When God is speaking of the thoughts of men’s hearts being only evil continually, He is talking about the wicked people’s hearts, all those that were not like Noah, and Noah was a different case.  He was a different sort of man.”  But that is not true.   That is not correct.  Without question, that is a false idea.  Noah was a sinner.  Noah was just like everyone else; he was conceived in sin, and born speaking lies, unless God saved him in his mother’s womb, but there is no record of that, so Noah would have spent some time in the world as a sinner.  But at some point, as Genesis 6-8 declares, “…Noah found grace in the eyes of JEHOVAH.”  That is why it was a different matter with him.   That is why God said he was just (righteous) and perfect in his generations.  It was because he had found grace.

Let us go to Ephesians 2 where it tells us about God’s grace.  It says in Ephesians 2:4:

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God…

Twice we read in this passage that we are saved by grace, so grace is bestowed.  It is granted.  It is the gift of God.  It is tied to faith, which is said to be the gift of God: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves…”  It is certainly not our grace that saved us – it is God’s grace.  And neither is it our faith that saved us, but God’s faith.  It says in Galatians 2:16:

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ…

It is Christ’s faith, as well as His grace, that was bestowed upon the sinners to save us.  Thus it is not “of ourselves,” but the gift of God.  And this faith saved us and justified us.  We are justified by the faith of Jesus Christ.  God’s salvation makes us righteous because of what Jesus has done on our behalf in bearing our sins, which are our filthy deeds and unrighteous acts.  He bore all of them in His body on the tree, and He became a curse for us, and God poured out His wrath and slew the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world.  He slew Him in our stead so we could be free from the weight of sin and the guilt and shame of our iniquity.  All was paid for, and the penalty the Law demanded (death) was satisfied, thereby justifying us, and making us righteous.  This is what God says in Romans 5:18:

Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation…

That is, by the offence of Adam, all men were condemned because we were all in him.  Then it goes on to say in Romans 5:18:

… even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

Of course the “one” was Christ, and by His righteousness salvation came upon all, referring to all the elect that God had predestinated to save before the foundation of the world.  The Bible speaks of these names being written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  All of these individuals received that free gift unto justification of life.  Then it goes on to say in Romans 5:19:

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Christ is our righteousness.  He is made unto us wisdom, sanctification, and righteousness, according to 1Corinthians 1:30.  He is the breastplate of righteousness we are equipped with, which is the armour of God.  So that is what God sees.  He sees the righteousness of Christ that was imputed to us, or reckoned to our account, and He saw it with Noah because Noah found grace in the eyes of JEHOVAH.  Therefore Noah was a just man and perfect – no sin.  You cannot be perfect with any sin, but Noah still sinned, did he not?  He was still a sinner even after salvation, but only in his flesh or body, and those sins were also accounted for.  The full measure of our sins are accounted for, and there are a multitude of them.  You could start counting your sins, and it would take many years to count your sins, if you could even know them all, in thought, word, and deed.  And yet the full number of our sins was laid upon Christ, and they were all paid for, and that means that after God saved us and gave us a new born again soul, He has made us righteous.  There is no sin found in the born again soul of one of God’s elect.  He is a new creature in his spirit existence.  He now has life, and there is no sin of any kind.

But we know that sin still resides in the flesh, and we cannot say we have no sin because there is sin remaining in our members, our fleshly body, but even those sins have been paid for, and that is why God can say what He says in Ecclesiastes 7:20:

For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.

But, once again, Noah was  a just man because God saved him.  He found grace in the eyes of God.  So this would be true of all those who by the mercy of God were given salvation.  It is an incredible blessing of God that has been given to us due to nothing in ourselves.  It was completely unearned and unmerited, and no one has ever done anything to deserve God’s salvation.  In fact, we could say that God takes the worst of sinners, and He transforms them and changes them.  He cleanses us and makes us righteous in His sight.  But in ourselves, we were nothing but terrible, filthy sinners, but the righteousness of Christ was granted to us in salvation.  But even after salvation as we live in the world in our born again soul, we still have sins in the flesh, so that is why God can say, “For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.”  And yet that person will “do good” because God has given him a new heart and a new spirit, and the Spirit of Christ dwells within him to will and to do of His good pleasure.  So, yes, he will do good, but he will continue to sin.  Again, “ For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.”  And that would agree with that statement in 1John where it says that if we say we are without sin, we are a liar because we still have sin in our bodies.

Let us go back to Romans 3, and again read Romans 3:10:

 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one…

Not a single soul of himself is righteous.  If God just left us alone, we would all be unrighteous.  We would all be condemned and die, and be destroyed for evermore, and God would have had no people for Himself.  So this is an all-encompassing statement regarding mankind, all the descendants of Adam.  We are unrighteous, of ourselves, without exception, except for the fact that God did intercede for some, and He did grant His righteousness to the few out of the whole of mankind, and those few are the elect of God.

Then it says in Romans 3:11:

There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

When we read in the Bible that none understand, it does not seem too terrible, does it?  It is not the best thing, of course.  It would be good if people understood, but we have some sympathy toward those that lack understanding because we all lack understanding regarding many things.  There are many things in the world we do not understand.  That is why there are specialists and experts in various fields.  We may have a little knowledge or understanding of medicine, psychiatry, construction, plumbing, electrical, or mathematics, but there is so much we do not know about so many things, it may not seem that awful to lack understanding.  Again, we are sympathetic to that idea because most of us have a great lack of understanding in many areas.

But when God says, “There is none that understandeth,” we must realize that this is not referring to things like English grammar, history, mathematics, or other fields of endeavor.  The Bible is concerned with one thing as far as understanding is concerned, and that is understanding God, the Creator, who has written this book.  He is the author of all Scripture, and He is the One who is communicating to us through the written Word of God, the Bible.  That is the main area of God’s concern when it comes to “understanding,” and this is the big problem of mankind as sinners.  They lack understanding.  In fact, according to the Bible, there are none that understand.  And we can know that God means that there is no one in the world who of himself (in his sinful, spiritually dead state) can understand God or the Bible in any way.