(Article for publication week of 4-25-2012 AD)
“…. There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). We
have seen in our previous articles that God requires a perfect righteousness to
dwell in His presence. He is too holy and righteous and just to allow anything,
or anyone defiled into His heaven. God also is determined to punish sinners.
His law is inflexible, and God will not quit being God, so He must of a holy
necessity execute his divine Justice.
Our text this week puts us all in a terrible plight. God
requires us to be righteous, but we are unrighteous. There is not one of Adam’s
race that is righteous. We are all condemned by God’s law. “There is NONE
righteous, no, not one.”
Our condemnation is threefold. In the first place, we are all
condemned by the Fall of Adam. In Romans 5:12 we read, “wherefore as by one
man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all
men for that all have sinned.” Then in the 19th verse we read, “by
one man’s disobedience, many were made sinners.” Then in I Corinthians 15:22 we
read, “in Adam all die.” God created Adam and appointed him as the federal head
of the whole human race. When Adam sinned, he plunged himself and his whole
race (which was in him seminally) into sin and degradation. The whole human
race stands condemned and totally depraved as a result of Adam’s sin. And so
our text says there is none righteous, for we lost our righteous standing
before God when Adam sinned.
Secondly, we are condemned because we are sinners by nature.
The Psalmist mourned in Psalm 51:5, “I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did
my mother conceive me.” David confesses that he had a sin nature the moment he
was conceived. (By the way, this verse is solid proof that life begins at
conception since David acknowledges a sinful human nature as soon as he was
conceived.) When Adam sinned, he became a sinner by nature, and passed his
nature on to all his descendents. You have a sin nature, because you have
sinful parents, who had sinful parents all the way back to the human father of
us all, Adam.
Thirdly, we are condemned because we are sinners by practice.
We come forth from the womb speaking lies (Psalm 58:3). A child does not have
to be taught to do wrong- he inherently knows that, but has to be taught to do
right. We are natural born sinners, so we start sinning as soon as we are born.
This is the sad plight
of all mankind, under the just condemnation of a thrice-holy God Who is
determined to execute His vengeance upon cosmic criminals. Man is not basically
good, he is totally depraved and lost world without end. Dear reader, you have
a terrible sin problem that condemns you eternally before God unless some Way
be found to justify you before God. The Way is in the Second Adam, the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Federal head of a redeemed humanity. There is none righteous
among men, but there is One Who is all righteous, the eternal and coequal Son
of God Who recovers us from the ruin of Adam. May the Lord grant you faith to
believe in Him for justifying righteousness.
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