Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #28 of Romans 3,  and we will read Romans 3:16-20:

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. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them 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 there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

I will stop reading there.  We are going to continue this study by looking at Romans 3:16:

Destruction and misery are in their ways:

This is quite a passage concerning man, and concerning ourselves before we became saved.  That was our sinful condition, if we are truly saved, but if we are not saved, that remains our condition.

It is really hard to look at this in verse, after verse, after verse.  We might think, “OK, Lord, we get the point.”  But, you see, this all leads up to verse 19: “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”  So God is compiling the sins, filthiness, atrocities, and evils of fallen man, and He is pronouncing mankind’s guilt.  He is “stopping” man’s mouth. 

Keep in mind that we are very forgetful hearers.  We hear something, and five minutes later it is gone from us, but here it is in verse after verse.  The statement, “Destruction and misery are in their ways,” is full of awful meaning and terrible consequences for the sinner.  Sin leads man to destruction, and sin is that which makes man miserable. 

The Greek word translated as “destruction” is Strong’s #4938, but it is from a related word, #4937, which is translated as “broken,” and in other ways.  We will just look at one verse.  It says in Revelation 2:27:

And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.

The phrase “broken to shivers” is the related word to our word “destruction.”  That is what it means to be destroyed when you are a creature that the Creator has made, and you have become imperfect through your sins.  You are like a vessel unto dishonour, and God as the Creator is like the Potter that made the vessel, and He takes a “rod of iron” in Judgment Day, our present day, and He shatters the “vessels unto dishonour” because of sin.  He destroys them.  They are broken to shivers.  And that is what God is saying is “in their way,” the final destination of everyone who has never become saved and are in their sins.  They will be destroyed.

But before that ultimate destruction…and remember the statement concerning when Christ comes as Judge, in 2Thessalonians 1:8-9:

In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;

So if you are that broken vessel that is unto dishonour whom God is shattering in the Day of Judgment with a rod of iron, on the last day He will totally destroy you until you are annihilated out of existence.  That is the idea of “everlasting destruction” because for all eternity future you will remain destroyed and have no existence because you have been eternally destroyed.  So that is “in their way.”

But before that it says, “Destruction and misery are in their ways.”

The word “misery” is only found one other place.  It is in James 5:1-3:

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Here, God is also looking to the final end of man and the miseries that will occur.  It is interesting that this word “misery,” which is Strong’s #5004, has a related word, #5005, that is translated as “wretched.”  If you have ever wondered what it means when the Lord moved the Apostle Paul to declare, “O wretched man that I am.”  We find that in Romans 7:23-24:

But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

That is, he is referring to the physical body, the flesh that is not yet saved.  When God saved His people as He carried out His salvation program (which is now complete), He saved only their souls at that time, leaving the body in the same state.  So the elect children of God who became saved throughout the history of the world had to live out the rest of their time on earth in an unsaved body.  The body has seen corruption because the salvation of the body does not take place until the last day during the resurrection and rapture.  And that is why it says, “O wretched man that I am!”  And we could read that: “O miserable man that I am!”  Why?  It is because of the “body of this death.”  You see, sin brings misery.  Sin is a wretched thing.

This same word is used in Revelation 3:15-17:

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

The word that is the same as Romans 7:24 is the word “wretched,” although it also uses the word “miserable” in this verse, but it is a different Greek word than in Romans 3 in our verse.  This word is #1652 in Strong’s Concordance, but remember that the word “misery” used in Romans 3:16 is #5004.

But this is just added emphasis for somebody who thinks they are saved, and they are saying they are “rich” because salvation is a tremendously rich spiritual blessing that God bestows upon the ones He has saved forever and ever, and so they say, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.”  They are saying, “I am saved.  I have Christ.”  But the truth that they do not know is that they are “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”  In this case being “wretched” refers not only to their body but to their soul because they have the same desperately wicked heart that all unregenerate sinners have, and it has not been changed.

Let us turn back to Romans 3, and let us continue in Romans 3:17:

And the way of peace have they not known:

Immediately, we think of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We think of John 14:6 where Jesus declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  He is the way.  It is a definite article.  It does not identify with everyone who says they are a Christian.  Vast multitudes of professed Christians do not know the way of peace, the Lord Jesus Christ.  They have no intimate experience with Him through salvation because they never became saved. 

This does ties in with the end of the prior verse in Romans 3:16: “Destruction and misery are in their ways.”  And the word “ways” is plural because the world and its religions present numerous paths to heaven and getting right with God, like “living a good life,” as the world would say, or being morally upright in the manner in which they live, and so forth.  They have all kinds of ideas, all kinds of philosophies, and all types of religions.  There are Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, professed Christians, and countless others that speak of “their way.”  So God fits that all in with what is said in Romans 3:16: “Destruction and misery are in their ways.” 

Turn to Matthew 7:13-14:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Broad is the way that leads to destruction, and wide is the gate.  There is a very inclusive gate – everybody can come in, no matter what God you pray to and worship, whether it is the God of the Jews, the God of the Muslims, or the God of the Christians.  “You are praying to God, are you not?  It is the same God, and people just approach Him in different ways.”  No – the Bible will not allow that, “…for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”  And that name is the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other way to the Father for entering into the kingdom of God other than Christ.  Even then it is a narrow way because there are about two billion professed Christians today that give lip service to being of Christ and following “the way,” who is Jesus, because they know He is the only way to heaven.  They think they will enter in, and live for evermore.  But, not so fast, because God says in Matthew 7 that that are many that proclaim, “Lord, Lord.”  It says in Matthew 7:21-23:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

You see, they say it.  They profess it.  They claim it. “You are our Saviour!  You have saved us from our sins.  Let us in!  Lord, Lord, open the door.”  And the answer from the Lord is, “I never knew you.”  So as it says in Romans 3:17:

And the way of peace have they not known:

There is no personal, intimate understanding, knowledge, or experience of Christ.  They “know” Him through the hearing of Him, and what their preacher tells them, or what their church says, or from the surface meaning of what they read in the Bible.  But in order to know God, God has to make Himself known to them.  In order for someone to know God in the experience of salvation, God must first come to them, and save them.  Then there can be tremendous intimacy where we do come to know God because God is revealing Himself to us.  But for others that are still in their sinful condition with a proud, stubborn, and rebellious heart, God resists the proud.  He does not reveal Himself to them.  He does not “know” them, and they do not know Him.  This is what the Bible says in many places, but we do not have time to go to them all, but we can turn to Hebrews 3.  Oddly enough, it is referring to an Old Testament historical situation, but God is the same God of the Old Testament as of the New Testament.  The Lord Jesus is Eternal God of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.  We read in Hebrews 3:7-11:

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

They have not known God’s ways.  The way of peace have they not known because the way is Jesus, and peace is also Jesus, according to Ephesians 2:14: “He is our peace…”  He Himself has reconciled us to the Father through His blood, the atoning work performed on our behalf.  Our sins have been washed away, and now we have this renewed, intimate relationship with God because He first loved us, and we respond with love for Him.  This is the loving relationship that God and those that He has truly saved, His elect, enjoy.