9 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, 10 as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 in their paths are ruin and misery,
17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 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. 20 For by works of the law no human being [3] will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
It is becoming less and less fashionable these days to speak of sin and evil. Why is this nation struck with a plague of underachieving, lazy, mischief makers? Well, it’s certainly not sin. A lack of self-esteem maybe. Never mind that most in our younger generations think they will be rich, highly successful people even though they continually chose X-box over algebra. Never mind that a sixteen year old who doesn’t have the patience to learn a guitar chord thinks he will be a celebrated rock star because he can beat out the rhythms on Guitar Hero World Tour with the best of them. Yes, self-esteem is clearly the problem.
Even when a word like sin is finally used it falls upon terrorist acts or genocide. Perhaps if there isn’t sufficient parental damage in a rapist’s previous history, we might even dare to call him “sinful” or “evil” rather than a victim. Alright, I’m being somewhat patronizing, I know. But we do have an irrational knee jerk reaction to personal moral responsibility, and a double knee jerk reaction to harsh words like sin. Can a person be arrogant? Yes. Stupid? Sometimes. Sinful? Let’s not get judgmental.
The Bible, however, has no such qualms. Everyone is “under the power of sin.” That was a highly offensive statement when Paul made it. Many Jews thought that Gentiles were obviously “sinners,” but Jews were God’s people. But Paul backs up his radical claim with the only thing Jews would listen to, their Old Testament Scriptures. Verse 10-18 are simply quotes from those scriptures, and all of them say basically the same thing: “No one is righteous, no one seeks for God, no one does what is good.” Then Paul nails the coffin shut with the killer conclusion: “Whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law.” You want to live by the teaching of the Torah? Great, it says that no one is good.
Then Paul moves to a central point of Christianity, the point the Jews could not accept, the point that leads our culture to reject any notion of a “depraved” humanity. God gives us his law, his moral standard, not because we can keep it, but because we can’t. He gives his standard so that every mouth will be stopped before him, so that every individual will realize his guilt, so that we all come to turns with the fact that there is no hope of being clean and innocent before God.
One cannot help but wonder whether our aversion to the terminology of “sin” lies in a guilt complex. We intuitively know that we don’t measure up. And if we ever do label a thought, an act, or attitude as sin, we know that we will be guilty of it. We will be sinners. But sinners are not what we are. Sinners are the really nasty people out there somewhere. Sinner cannot be what I find in me. Why else would we be so antagonistic against sin language? If it was just old and out of date, then it would just be silly. But it’s not silly; it’s offensive.
