Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #25 in Romans 3,  and we will read Romans 3:12-18:

They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used 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 have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes.

I will stop reading there.  We find another all-encompassing statement at the end of verse 12.  We have already seen that it said in Romans 3:10-12:

… 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.

This is a description of mankind that is about as bad and negative as any description could be.  With each statement, God is hammering the “lid on the coffin” of man’s spiritual deadness.  There is no area that He is not touching upon that would allow a person to think he has some righteousness.  We have none – no one does.  Or they might think they have some understanding, but no one has understanding.  Or they might think that they have sought after God, or could seek after Him, but none seek after Him.  All are unprofitable, and all have gone out of the way.  As we saw in our last study, all are filthy, spiritually.  All are dirty, rotten sinners.  We are as bad as can be imagined, and beyond.  That is the fallen nature of mankind.  It applies to each human being in our fallen state apart from God.  Each one of these statements apply to us and are true of us.

Finally, at the end of verse 12, it says, “…there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”  Not one doeth good – not a single person.  This has always been true since Adam’s fall in the year of creation in 11,013 B. C.  Over the 13,000+ years of human history since then, not a single person has done good of himself. 

We are aware of the exceptions that occur only when God intervenes in the lives of certain ones, His elect people, and He changes their heart and makes them “good” in that sense.  He makes them righteous in that sense, as He gives them understanding and causes them to Seek after Him.  So all that we see here is altered in the life of the elect child of God.  But without God’s intervention in entering into the life of an individual, and if God should leave that person alone (which, sorrowfully happens with the vast majority of people), then all these things remain most accurate.  And it is a full explanation as to why we see the ugly sinfulness in the world on a daily basis, day after day, with all the evil reports of terrible things that happen all over the face of the earth.  There is no town, city, or country that is functioning on a different level where they are operating with all their inhabitants being good, righteous, just, and loving.  No.  This is true of every place in the world.  There is no place to run.  There is no place to go to escape as far as getting away from the sinfulness of man.  You cannot avoid it, even within our own selves.

I mentioned earlier that God does intervene in the lives of the elect who were predestinated by Him to obtain salvation, and He changes them, but we still read in Ecclesiastes 7:20:

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

This is true even in the lives of the elect.  They do good.  They are just.  They are made righteous by the righteousness of Christ.  In other words, Christ’s righteousness is their righteousness.  They have received a born again soul which is perfect, and therefore good.  It is without sin of any kind.  Still, there is not a just man upon earth  that doeth good, and sinneth not, because as we live the rest of our days in this world we are still in the flesh, and the flesh is corrupted and sins.  The flesh is still sinning, so it is a desperate situation in this world, and the only solution or remedy for the world is its end, and for God to judge it and destroy it.  In destroying it, He will destroy the corruption.  He will destroy all the wicked people with their sins, and He will remove it all out of existence.  It must be annihilated completely.  This awful stain of evil must be wiped out completely, and that is what we are rapidly moving toward in this Day of Judgment as we approach that last day.

Getting back to Romans 3:12, the statement is made: “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.”   I have said many times (because I have heard it many times, and I am sure you have, too) that when a person is asked if he is a good person, the common response is, “Yes, I am basically a good person.”  I started wondering if that perception has changed lately, given the fact that there is so much evil multiplying across the face of the whole earth.  And when evil multiplies,  it obviously means that there are more people doing those evils.  So has some sense of understanding and recognition crept into the minds of the people of the world if they were asked this question in 2021? 

Actually, I found that they recently conducted a poll in May 2021, and the question was asked: “Are you a good person?”  This study was conducted in the United States, and the respondents were US residents, and they found that 81% believed that mankind (humankind) is inherently good.  And 75% believe that they themselves are fundamentally good people.  Researchers also asked the respondents to compare themselves to other people in their lives, and 46% said they are a better person than everyone else they know.  It is a tendency of man, is it not?  It is a tendency of man to see people as basically good, and especially to see oneself as good, or even the best of all.  The people were asked to describe characteristics that they believed are attributes of a good person, and they said it would be someone who is kind, friendly, and giving.

And, you see, this is the reason for the discrepancy…and it is huge, is it not?  There is a huge discrepancy between so many people thinking they are basically good and what the God of the Bible says: “There is none good.”  And when God says you are not good, He is not looking at it on a scale.  He is not looking at an individual and assessing, “As far as goodness, I use a 100% rating as the best, so this person is not so good, so he is 45%, and this one is 49%, and this other one is 51%.”  God does not use that kind of rating system.  When He looks at someone, all He sees is that someone is good only if they are perfect, and they have obeyed His Law perfectly, without a single exception in their whole life.  If they have kept His Law perfectly – in thought, word, and deed – one hundred percent of the time in every moment of their existence from conception to the present, then that would be a good person. 

And of course that did apply to man back in the beginning.  After God created the world and all things, it says in Genesis 1:31:

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

That included Adam (mankind) and he was created very good.  It was a short while – we do not know if it was a few days or a couple of weeks – that Adam walked with God.  He communed with Him.  He had a wonderful relationship with God.  He was keeping the Law by obeying God, and he was good.  What a wonderful thing it is to be good, righteous, just, holy, pure, and perfect, and it all has to do with keeping the Law.

God tells us concerning His Law in Psalm 119:39:

Turn away my reproach which I fear: for thy judgments are good.

And “judgments” are a synonym for law, statutes or the Word, the Bible and all its commandments.  God’s judgments are good.  The Law is good, if a man use it lawfully. 

We read in Proverbs 4:1-2:

Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law.

Doctrine comes forth from the Law, and it is good doctrine.  The Bible lays down a Law, and then we learn the doctrine which is that which we live by according to the Law.  The Sunday Sabbath is a doctrine.  The teaching of the end of the church age and the need to come out of the churches is a doctrine.  Every teaching of the Bible is a doctrine, and a right doctrine is a good doctrine based on a good Law, and if you were to obey it, you would be doing “good.”  That is what we ought to do as children of God.  We are to do good, walk in God’s commandments (statutes) in truth, and that is to do good.  And that is a work, and no man is justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, so we who have been blessed with salvation and received a new born-again soul obey the commandments and walk in His Law.  We do good in that way because it is how we show love for Christ as we live our Christian life.  It is doing the will of God.  That is the biblical definition of “good.”  The biblical definition is to obey and keep the Law of God, and the opposite is to transgress and break the Law, which makes man a transgressor and an evil doer.  When he breaks the Law, he has done evil, and as God looks at him…and this individual could have done much righteousness, but the moment he breaks the Law God sees sin  and all those terrible things we read about in Romans 3.  Immediately, the man is unrighteous.  Immediately, he is not good.  He has lost righteousness.  He has lost goodness in the sight of God, and he has become a dirty, rotten sinner. 

Again, that is not the world’s standard.  The world’s standard of goodness is someone who is friendly, kind, giving, and so forth.  In other words, according to the world’s standard, you could have a neighbor who is just an awful person – maybe a killer – who has done terrible things to people, but as long as he comes out of his house with a smile and a friendly greeting each day, the neighbor is going to say, “He is a good guy.”  You see, the world’s definition of “goodness” is not based on the right standard.  People can easily be deceived by other people, and that is one reason that when someone has done something atrocious and horrible to his fellow man, and the news crew shows up afterwards, and they talk to his neighbor, and they say, “Tell us about this guy.  Have you heard what he has done?  What was it like living next to him?”  And the neighbor replies, “Oh, he is a nice guy -very friendly.”  People are easily deceived because they use the wrong standard.  We cannot define goodness by our idea of goodness.  The true standard is God’s standard, and that standard is His Word, the Bible.

And according to the Bible (and this is a fact and absolute truth), “there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”