Or, The Law of the God-Seeker Romans 3:9-20 February 20, 2022 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins

Introduction

There are at least three great reasons to be a Calvinist: 1) other people, 2) my heart, 3) God’s Word. It’s the Bible that has the ultimate authority, but personal experience and observation affirm the Scripture.

Maybe you’ve heard of the “cage stage” of Calvinism, where enthusiasm (for a newly understood theological perspective) is rabid and needs some restraints. But by (irresistible) grace you may get to the Sage Stage, where you don’t even care if other people use the words, but you know the truth anyway.

Here is a foundational truth: people are not “good.” In general people are not good, and no person is generally good. Doing good is inconsistent with what most people actually believe, it is inconsistent with who most people are. The problem that people have is not a bad environment; people are the ones who make their environment bad. The problem is not that people don’t know enough; people are the ones who reject education. We choose not to learn. I don’t say this from a position of superiority; I am one of these people.

This doesn’t mean that every man is as bad or evil as he could be. The Bible explains how that’s possible, and it’s something we can be thankful about, but we’re thankful to God for it, not men. Every single day we’re confronted by what we see in the media and what we see in the mirror. It’s not a good picture, and the biggest surprise is that it’s not worse.

The evil in men and committed by men is a symptom of a systemic problem. While it may not present itself in the same way, it starts with how a man relates to God, or, more specifically, how he refuses to.

This is where Paul began in Romans 1:18. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against those who know enough from creation to know that there is a God who governs and gives but who still refuse to honor God or give Him thanks. Out of that spiritual reality their minds can’t process reality and they become more and more blind to it. Their minds are darkened and debased, and out of that their conduct is disobedient to God’s standards and dishonorable. Sure, they try to redefine all this to say that they are free and fulfilled, but this is like putting a gold-colored twist-tie in a pig’s snout (compare with Proverbs 11:22).

Even the ones who retain more of their sense of morality undermine it by hypocritical behavior (starting in Romans 2:1) and, for Paul, none represented that better than the Jews (Romans 2:17), the ones chosen by God as a nation to receive God’s law and God’s blessings, who still didn’t obey.

All men are sinners, all men need the good news of salvation in Christ. They need deliverance from depravity, from their innate nature of wrath (Ephesians 2:3). It’s the first petal of TULIP, Total Depravity, and whether you call it that or total inability or radical corruption or spiritual death (Ephesians 2:1), it means that from head to toe, from heart to tongue, from inside to society, all men stand guilty as charged before God and cannot do any amount of good works to overcome their condition.

Paul rests his case in Romans 3:9-20 as he prepares to launch into the gospel of justification by faith alone in 3:21 and following. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t need the gospel because there isn’t anyone who, on his own, knows and seeks and loves and obeys God. Not even one.

We can see three steps in this summary sequence, as if Paul was in a courtroom: 1) The Indictment, 2) The Testimony, 3) The Verdict

The Indictment (verse 9)

“What then?” is the first question that prepares for the summary.

The second question in verse 9 requires us to answer some questions about it. Who are the “we”? The ESV add[...]