Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #31 of Romans 3,  and we will read Romans 3:18-20:

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.

We have been looking at the statement in Romans 3:18:

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

It is a very evident truth when we see what the Bible says.  When we read God’s Law book, we see that God commands us to obey all His commandments that He commands the people of the world to do.  He has the right to command us, as He has made us.  He is the potter, and we are the clay.  Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of “vessels” are “vessels unto dishonour,” due to their sinful condition and rebellion against God.  We refer to “rebellion” often, and maybe when we hear that over a period of time, it just becomes something we are just saying.  But without question, the people of the world are individually all rebels, and they rebel against God, their Creator.

The world has done its best to glorify rebels in their fictional stories.  And when they find rebels in historical accounts, they may elevate them to high levels of veneration.  They like to hold up rebels because that is their own nature, and they tend to look at a rebel as a “good guy” (like Robinhood) that fights against a cruel, ruthless ruler or sheriff.  They like to portray them in a favorable way.

But that is nowhere near the truth of the Bible.  The truth is that the “good one” is God, and God alone.  God is good.  His Word is good.  His Law is good.  He is kind.  He is loving.  He is truthful.  He is faithful.  He is gentle.  He is merciful.  He is just, and there are a thousand other wonderful attributes, if we could name them all.  If they have to do with being good and right, they can properly be ascribed to the God of the Bible.

And man is exactly the opposite in all those attributes.  Man is not good.  He is evil.  Man is not just.  He is unjust.  Man is not righteous.  He is unrighteous.  He is not kind.  He is cruel.  He is not loving.  He is hateful, and we could go on, and on.  These are the facts.  This is the picture the Bible presents when God speaks of the sinner.  He never speaks of him in good terms.  He never describes the sinner as someone that is “basically good,” or kind.  The Lord does not present anything in the Bible that says one good thing about the sinner in his sins, as far as I know.  Can you imagine?  In this big book, there is nothing flattering, favorable or which would ascribe any goodness of any kind to the creature made in God’s own image.

In the beginning when God created man, he was good.  And you can find good things written of God’s elect people, the saints of God.  You can read  good things of Daniel, Joseph, Abraham, and so on, but that is only because God had changed them.  God had transfigured them in their souls, with the promise of the future transfiguration of  their bodies.  God made them new creatures.  He restored their soul to its proper place of obedience, perfection, and righteousness.  The soul is without sin in the born again person.

But as far as the rest of the people that are still in their fallen condition, they are dead in soul, and there is also corruption in the body, and soon that body will die.  And this applies to billions and billions of people.  With the exception of the few, the elect, they are all rebels, and not in the sense of any idolized way, but in the sense of villainy, and being the worst of criminals.  They are offenders, transgressors, and breakers of the holy covenant, the Law of God, and we could go on, and on.  These are the ones that God is describing in Romans 3 as He says, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  They live their lives apart from God.  They get up in the morning, and they do not pray.  They do not turn to the Bible and open the Word of God, and start their day by reading the Bible.  And they do not consider it the Word of God.  They do not ask God for His help.  They do not beseech the Lord for His grace and help in obeying Him, or for help in their work that day, or for help in keeping God’s commandments.  God is shut out.  They have turned their backs on God.  They wake up.  They dress and eat, and off they go, living a day with no thought of God.  Then they come back home, and that is the way their days go.

God tells us concerning man and “the fear of God,” which is what we are looking at…and I think we are learning some necessary things as we read of fearing the Lord in so many places in the Bible.  So I am glad we have this opportunity to spend some time taking a thorough look into it.  We read in Proverbs 9:10:

The fear of JEHOVAH is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

If you remember in our last study, it said in Proverbs 1:7:

The fear of JEHOVAH is the beginning of knowledge…

And here in Proverbs 9:10, it says, “The fear of JEHOVAH is the beginning of wisdom,” and it is saying the same thing.  A person cannot begin to fear God until he becomes saved.  As far as keeping His commandments, he will not be able to do it, and the Bible says that if we fear God, we keep His commandments.  If you say, “I fear God,” but you fail to keep His commandments, you are not fearing God, and that is why a person first must be saved.  And salvation is of the Lord.  God does all the work in the matter of saving the sinner.  Let us say he has accomplished that in the life of this person, and right away in his heart he will have a fear of the Lord, and he will keep His commandments perfectly.  He has wisdom.  He has Christ within, and he is counted as wise.  So it all ties together: “The fear of JEHOVAH is the beginning of wisdom…”

We read in Proverbs 10:27:

The fear of JEHOVAH prolongeth days: but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.

With the contrast, we can see that the fear of JEHOVAH must identify with salvation because it is only salvation that prolongs days.  That is a figure of speech to represent “eternal life.”  It would not be because of our work in fearing of God, but only with the fact that God first saved us, which leads us to fear him because He had already performed the work of salvation in our hearts, and that prolongs our days for evermore.

On the other hand, the years of the wicked shall be shortened.  It does not mean that they cannot live to 70 or 80, the same as we.  God is not talking about our natural life span – that is the same for the just and the unjust.  The rain falleth on the just and the unjust.  Illness comes on the just and the unjust.  And some of the unjust live for long periods of time.  And a few of the just live long periods of time in this world.  So it is not speaking of that.  It has to be the spiritual life (or lack of it) that is in view.  That is, it points to God extending the life of a person, and the only extension the Bible speaks of is eternity.  And not extending the life would mean that the years of the wicked are shortened in the sense that they will not live forever.

We read in Proverbs 16:6:

By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of JEHOVAH men depart from evil.

Again, after God has saved us and filled us with His spirit in our new heart and spirit, we have an ongoing desire to do the will of God from a heart that keep His commandments, and, therefore, fears Him perfectly.  And from that point forward, we depart from evil, although there is still sin in our personality in our physical bodies.  But God begins the process by which we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling as we bring the body under, and we turn from things the sinful body is desiring.  We are now going to bring our tongue “under,” and we are not going to speak so loosely.  We are going to bring our thoughts “under” the commandments of God, and we are not going to think so freely, or carelessly, letting our minds run to sinful things as had been typically the case in our lives.  But now we are new creatures, and our new soul and the Spirit of God within us are not pleased when our minds think as they did when we were not a new creature.  So all these things come into view as we start departing from evil.

We read in Proverbs 23:17-18:

Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of JEHOVAH all the day long. For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.

What does it mean to be in the fear of JEHOVAH all the day long?  What does “all the day long” refer to?  It refers to our lives, as we live day by day.  To be in the fear of JEHOVAH all the day long means that we keep His commandments all the day long.

Of course we can also think of this reference to “all the day long” as the day of salvation, when it was the day of salvation.  But now it applies to all of Judgment Day: “Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of JEHOVAH all the day long.”  It is the same direction.  It has not changed.  It was the direction given to Adam.  It is the direction given to the “new creatures” whom God has saved.  Once we become saved, we fear God, and we keep His commandments.  It is the direction that was given to God’s saints throughout the entire New Testament era during the church age, during the Great Tribulation, and now during the Day of Judgment.  Continue to fear God, and keep His commandments.