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What the Bible says about All Have Sinned
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Job 25:2-4

All of us sin, so who can escape the condemnation of Him who sees all and knows all? There is no vindication, no exoneration, before God. If He so desired, He could name all of our sins, and if He determined to execute justice, no one could call Him into account. If we are not impressed with God's gift of grace after considering that, then there is something wrong with us.

Justification is the declaration of righteousness. God simply declares us innocent and righteous. He does this legally on the basis of Christ's priceless sacrifice.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Grace Upon Grace

Psalm 14:1-3

Psalm 14:1-3, which Paul quotes in Romans 3:10-12, contains direct and unambiguous statements on what man's nature is really like. We are all corrupt. No one—“not one”!—is good. The only thing that saves us is the blood of Christ. So Paul, in Romans 3:23, concludes: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” This is just another way of saying that man's nature is “only evil continually.”

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Are Humans Good or Evil?

Proverbs 13:6

This verse seems like a fairly straightforward statement of a truth repeated in various ways dozens, if not hundreds, of times throughout the book of Proverbs. Those who practice righteousness will ultimately succeed, while the sinfulness of the sinner will be his undoing. The way Solomon composes this proverb, however, brings out a few particular points.

First, the emphasis in the first half of the couplet is not necessarily on the godly man's success but on the fact that his practice of goodness shields him from adversity (compare Proverbs 2:11; 4:6; 13:3). A practitioner of God's way of life is protected by the fact that he does what is right. If a person does good things, avoiding what is evil, he will be drawn into adverse situations far less frequently than those who dance on the edge of the cliff.

For instance, the Christian who lives by the injunction found in the seventh commandment—"You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14)—will not put himself or herself in tempting situations; and on the rare occasion that a temptation of that nature presents itself, he or she will, like Joseph, run in the other direction (Genesis 39:12). Such a person's righteousness—his right doing—guards him from the destruction that sin causes, and "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). We could also understand this to suggest that a person who walks uprightly shelters under the protection of God, who is pleased with those who practice righteousness (Colossians 1:10; Hebrews 13:16).

The second half of the verse communicates the exact opposite: He whose conduct is determined by sin is bound to fall into destruction. The sinful way of living offers the sinner no protection at all; the course of sin will run unchecked through his life all the way to death (see James 1:14-15)—provided that God Himself does not arrest it through His calling. This is the course of the world that we see every day on the street (Ephesians 2:1-3).

We can take this principle to the bank. Even though we see in various places in Scripture (for example, in Psalm 10), and even in our own experience, that the wicked seem to prosper, we can be assured that their prosperity is only temporary (Psalm 37). The evil that they do will catch up to them in time and begin to take its toll. The corrupt always pay the piper.

The Hebrew text contains a pair of technical oddities in this verse's second half, making it difficult to translate into English but bringing out a significant point. The oddities are that both nouns, "wickedness" and "sinner," are abstract nouns in the original. The NKJV translators, as in many translations, chose to render only one of them as abstract, "wickedness," and changing the other to a concrete noun, "sinner." Literally, though, this part of the verse should be read as "wickedness overthrows sinfulness."

The point this brings out shows just how pervasive sin is once committed. There is no such thing as a partial sinner; one is either righteous or sinful. In practicing sin, the sinner is perfectly wicked—he is sinfulness, nothing but sin, a mass of evil and corruption. James puts it another way, writing that if we break one commandment, we break them all (James 2:10-11). Jesus, speaking both to His disciples and to His audience of Jews, calls them "evil" (Matthew 7:11; 12:34). Paul writes of all humanity, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). James states the simple truth that we all stumble (James 3:2).

Each time we sin, then, we become evil and require the gracious forgiveness of God through the blood of Jesus Christ to become clean once again. The lesson in this proverb is to make it our practice to do what is right and good in God's eyes, and that will greatly diminish our chances of falling into sin and straining our relationship with God.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh

Ecclesiastes 7:20

Notice that Solomon is speaking of “a just man,” not an evil man or a corrupt man. The best citizens among us, those we raise to judgeships and listen to in church, have their own sins, and even in their doing of good, they cannot keep out the taint of sin.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Are Humans Good or Evil?

Ecclesiastes 9:3

People's entire lives are full of sin, evil, madness—and then they die. Not even good and just men, as others think of them, are truly good and just. Like all the other “sons of men,” their hearts are full of sin.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Are Humans Good or Evil?

Matthew 19:17

Jesus is plainly stating that, since God is the only One who is good, no one among all humanity can truly claim to possess goodness. No one's goodness rises anywhere near the level of God's goodness. Jesus, however, then explained to the rich young ruler what he needed to do. As God in the flesh, He knew what the young man needed to do to get on the road to godly goodness, so He taught Him.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Leadership and Covenants (Part Eight)

Matthew 24:12-13

The apostle John declares that sin is the transgression of God's commandments (I John 3:4, KJV), including the two great commandments Jesus spoke in Mark 12:28-31. The word translated as "sin" literally means "to miss the mark." Combining these principles gives us a very broad definition of sin: Sin is imperfectly loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and imperfectly loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Romans 3:23 declares that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." In other words, all have sinned in the past, and in the present all fall short in reflecting God's love, which is a major part of His glory. Godly love does not have to grow cold for it to be shown imperfectly. It will be shown imperfectly when it is demonstrated by God's still-imperfect children. We all are in this state.

This is not to say that we should give up trying to perfect God's love. On the contrary, we have every responsibility to do our utmost to perfect it (I John 2:5; 4:12, 17-18). At the same time, it should not shock us when our spiritual brothers and sisters show God's love to us imperfectly, for we are guilty of the same toward them—and toward God.

Perhaps we find ourselves in a situation where it appears that God's love in others is growing cold. Maybe we see God's standard of holiness being ignored or compromised, and some form of lawlessness is beginning to show up. We may see little evidence of sacrificial love, and relationships are beginning to be strained. What should we do?

There are two possibilities. The first is that our discernment is correct, and what Jesus Christ foretold in Matthew 24:12 is coming to pass, perhaps not in its ultimate fulfillment, but at least in type. The second is that our discernment is incorrect, and that God's love is actually present and not growing cold, but we are having trouble seeing it.

If our discernment is correct, and we truly are in a circumstance where agape love is waning, Jesus has already indicated what He wants us to do. Matthew 24:13 says, "But he who endures to the end shall be saved." When many are letting their relationships with God deteriorate, the emphasis is on patient, active endurance.

I Corinthians 13 gives a beautiful description of agape love, which parallels Jesus' exhortation to endure in several points. Verse 4 says that godly love "suffers long." It displays patience and endurance, even in the face of being loved imperfectly. Verse 7 adds that godly love "bears all things" and "endures all things." However, if we are not showing patience or endurance in response to imperfect love, then we are simply responding with carnality rather than with God's love.

Similarly, verse 5 says that godly love "thinks no evil." True love pays no attention to a suffered wrong, nor takes account of the evil done to it. It does not keep a running list of all the ways it has been offended or loved imperfectly. That, again, would be responding to imperfect love with carnality. So, if we find ourselves in the midst of a fulfillment of Matthew 24:12, we really have our work cut out for us because we will have to endure patiently and continue to display God's love rather than allow our own agape to also grow cold in response.

Conversely, God's love may be present, but our discernment may be incorrect, and we are missing it by looking for agape only in one application. We may be continually waiting for a specific type of sacrificial love, and if we do not receive it, we may suppose that God's love is absent. However, we are not all the same in how we show love or how we recognize it. We may need to take a step back and look for facets of God's love that are present, rather than focusing on what may be absent.

In addition, given that human nature is still present within us, we also have to remember that nothing inhibits or damages our ability to see things clearly like focusing on the self. That is, we tend to evaluate whether God's love is present based on how we feel or how we are affected, rather than on objectively looking for God's spiritual workmanship in the overall situation.

David C. Grabbe
Is the Love of Many Growing Cold?

Luke 5:29-32

The scribes and Pharisees, who lived in constant fear of spiritual defilement, ask Jesus why He spends so much time with sinners. His answer is simple: It was His mission to come to this world and to change people's minds so that He can change their lives—to bring them to spiritual health. Recall that all have sinned (Romans 3:23). Every human being—including the scribes and Pharisees—needs the services of the Great Physician. We all need to change our minds so that we experience a positive change in life.

Taken literally, though, Luke 5:32 sounds as if some people need repentance while others do not. However, Jesus never intended His words here to be understood literally. Remember that He is answering the scribes and Pharisees, so what Jesus tells these self-righteous know-it-alls is coated with a heavy layer of sarcasm: "Certainly, you, being so righteous, have no need to repent! I just go where I am most needed!"

The scribes and Pharisees did not consider themselves to be sinners; in fact, they had come nowhere near the point where they could repent. Their hearts were so hard, and they were so convinced of their own goodness that they had closed their minds even to the suggestion that they needed to change in any way. They were blind to their own depravity. However, Jesus went to the ones who knew they were sinners and needed and wanted His help, people He could work with.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Repentance: The Genuine Article (Part Four)

John 6:44

Genuine repentance is impossible without God first acting in our lives. Nothing truly spiritual happens in our lives until God initiates a relationship with us. Jesus tells us plainly in John 6:44, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day." His wording is definite: No one has the ability to approach Christ without God the Father first calling him, summoning him, inviting him, to draw near. One may think he is seeking God and the truth, but unless the Father has opened his mind, nothing will ever come of all his efforts.

Therefore, any purported repentance that occurs apart from God and His way of life is not biblical, godly repentance. If someone whom God has not called—say, a professing Buddhist or an atheist, to use an extreme—claims to have repented, he has simply altered his lifestyle, a human self-improvement. Positive though it may be, his "repentance" is mere change; God is not involved. A closer inspection of the situation will show that, despite improving in one area of his life, other areas continue to be ungodly, and in the case of the Buddhist or atheist, completely outside the bounds of Christian doctrine.

Unfortunately, many who say they are Christians also fit in this category, claiming to have repented of their sins, but their lifestyles argue against them. Despite the Bible's clear teaching to the contrary, much of the Christian world believes that all they need to do to be saved is to believe in Jesus, and their initial remorse over their previous lifetime of sin fulfills the requirement to repent. From that time on, they believe, the blood of Christ covers their sins, so they have no need to keep God's commandments and to conform to God's way of life since Christ did it all for them.

Yet, the apostle John writes in I John 2:4, "He who says, 'I know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." I John 2:9-11 gives the example of a person claiming to be "in the light" yet continuing to hate his brother. The apostle says that such an individual is still "in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes." The fruit of his life shows that there has been no true repentance.

Sin is ever-present with us, even those who are under the covenant. Paul writes in Romans 3:9: "What then? Are we better than they [the world]? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin." We are all sinners. The apostle says in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Earlier in the same chapter (verses 10-18), he had listed quotations from the Old Testament describing the sinfulness of man, beginning with "There is none righteous, no, not one."

For those of us who are truly called and converted, God has graciously forgiven us and cleared the long record of our past sins through Jesus Christ's shed blood (see Romans 3:24-26). But even helped by the Holy Spirit to live righteously, we nevertheless continue to sin. Because sin still relentlessly dogs us, we must repent again and again. Why?

The simple answer is that, even though we have found the truth and started along the path toward the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, we are still very much human, reeking of human nature and constantly influenced by this present, evil world. To transform from sinful to godly is not a matter of divine fiat but a protracted struggle against self, Satan, and this world, with countless turnings of the tide of battle while we surge ever closer to victory. Every time we give ground—after every sin, trespass, or transgression—we must repent and rejoin the fight.

This is not easy to do. In Jeremiah 10:23, the prophet acknowledges, "O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps." Left to ourselves, we would not know how to live properly before God, and even with His help, it takes us years of study and experience to learn God's ways. We spend that time repenting of our own ways and taking on God's.

The same prophet records in Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" The record of mankind has shown that humans are quite adept at deceiving themselves. They are especially good at considering themselves in the right though all the evidence is against them. In most cases, God must work years to show His people that His way is best, and they spend much of that time repenting.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Repentance: The Genuine Article (Part One)

Romans 3:19-23

This passage shows us the foundation of understanding justification by faith and thus where we stand in our relationship with God. Paul explains that, regardless of who one is and what he has done that might be considered as righteousness, God owes Him nothing but death because "all have sinned." Sinners are those under the law, and the law condemns them, making them subject to its power to take the sinner's life. Each person's own transgressions against the law and God place him in that position.

Sin is something each sinner is responsible for, and once the individual has sinned and earned the death penalty, the sin cannot be forgiven simply because he does good to make up for it. God did not make him sin. A clear example is Adam and Eve: God obviously did not make them sin; each of them chose to sin. Romans 3:20 clearly states that no sinner can justify himself through law-keeping. The law's purpose is to make known what sin is.

Once a person sins, everything is seemingly stacked against him. The sinner can in no way make up for what he has done. Therefore, since justification cannot be claimed as a right due to his keeping the law, if a person desires to be forgiven, the only alternative is that justification must be received as a gift.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Living By Faith and God's Grace (Part Two)

Romans 3:23

Every human being who has ever lived - except Christ - has broken God's laws. Therefore, everyone needs to be saved from sin's consequences.

Earl L. Henn
Basic Doctrines: Salvation

Romans 5:6

In Romans 5:6, the apostle Paul declares that “Christ died for the ungodly.” The Greek word for “ungodly” is asebes, meaning “those without any reverence toward God.” The first man and woman, Adam and Eve, showed little reverence toward God. They were heedless when He warned them of the deadly outcome of their disobedience (Genesis 2:17; 3:3).

Since then, all humans have followed their example, falling from God's favor because of unbelief, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Essentially, man is unwilling or unable to recognize God's sovereignty and holiness, which causes him to fall short of being what God intends him to be.

The countermeasure for man's sinfulness is the perfect, sacrificial life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, culminating in our opportunity for justification (Romans 4:25). The objective of justification is not merely to render a guilt-free verdict for the repentant sinner, nor does it provide a special certificate of eternal life to its recipient. Instead, it is a spiritual act—part of a spiritual process—with spiritual effects that open the way to salvation and eternal life.

Martin G. Collins
The Fruit of Justification

Romans 5:12

When Adam and Eve sinned, God judged them. Since they were the father and mother of all of mankind, and they were the only representatives of mankind at the time, all of mankind figuratively sinned in Adam and Eve. God's judgment was correct, because given the chance, every human has sinned.

What then happened to Adam and Eve? They were ushered out of the Garden, and God put cherubim at its entrance to guard the Garden and the Tree of Life so that nobody could get back in. This is why at times the Bible bids people to return to God when they had never seemingly turned away from Him. Yet, all of mankind did turn away from God in Adam and Eve, and He invites us to return to the place, symbolically, where everything started, back to the environs He occupies, where the Tree of Life is.

The relationship with God is everything to our salvation. Without what Christ did in dying for our sins, we would not be in the position to have one with Him. Christ's payment of our sins opens up the way for a relationship to be built and for us to grow in the Holy Spirit, because now we have access to the Tree of Life in a relationship with God.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit and the Trinity (Part Seven)

Ephesians 1:10

We say that we are "in Christ." We say that there is "one church." We say that there is "one Body," "one Family," "one Kingdom." What is said here in Ephesians 1 is where God is headed with all this. He will unite everybody who has ever been born and makes it into His Kingdom into one—one family, the God Family—one kingdom, the Kingdom of God. The church is simply the beginning of an awesome process—a tremendous project—that will eventually cover the 50 or 60 billion people who have ever lived on the face of this earth.

We who are now begotten children of God are at the prow of the ship, as it were, cutting the water as we forge ahead. It is our calling to have gotten in on the ground floor, the very beginning of the process. We have entered the process even before all of the great men and women we have read about in the histories of the nations. They will get their opportunity, but we are way ahead of them.

Why has God had to do this? The basic cause is what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve sinned. Sin is disruptive; it divides, and it divided our first parents away from the one Family. As Paul says in Romans 5:12, "All have sinned." We have all sinned—maybe not exactly as Adam and Eve did, but everybody has sinned. We have followed our parents in becoming separated from God. Sin divides away from God, and man from man. The world has been shattered by sin. One could say, then, that the central object of salvation is to reunite all mankind into one Family.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Unity (Part 6): Ephesians 4 (C)

1 Peter 4:3

He could have named a hundred more sins, but the point remains: We were all like the unconverted people in the world. We were all cut off from God and living in sin, just like all the rest of humanity from the time of Adam and Eve. There have been no exceptions apart from Jesus Christ.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Are Humans Good or Evil?

1 John 1:5-10

In this passage, John is responding specifically to certain claims, voiced by Gnostics who had already begun to infiltrate the church, regarding sin and a Christian's ability to sin. They claimed three false beliefs:

  1. In verse 6, that their conduct had no bearing on their relationship with God. As John repeats their statement, they believed that they could sin—"walk in darkness"—and continue fellowshipping with God with no adverse effects. John calls this a lie.

  2. In verse 8, that they had no sin—in effect, that they were perfectly pure already. John calls this self-deception.

  3. In verse 10, that they were beyond sin—in other words, that they could not sin. The apostle says this belief calls God a liar.

This passage reveals how little the Gnostics understood, though they claimed to know it all, which is what the Greek word gnosis means, "to know." A Gnostic is "one who knows," or pejoratively, a "know-it-all." Gnostics were proud of their knowledge, believing that they knew more than others did. Worse, they felt that their knowledge gave them superiority over others who had not studied the "mysteries" of spirituality as deeply as they had. However, John exposes that they actually knew nothing. As he writes, the truth was not in them; they did not understand even the most basic elements of Christianity.

He answers their false claims quite simply. First, he argues that, by definition, a Christian is one who follows the example of Christ, so it is sheer nonsense to say that our manner of life has nothing to do with our relationship with God. Only if we do as Jesus did will we stay in fellowship with God and please Him (John 8:29). If we are constantly trying to follow the example of Christ, His blood will be available to cleanse us of our sins, and He will gladly do so along the way.

Second, he counters that we only show our hypocrisy and self-deception if we claim not to sin because we are obviously full of sin. Paul instructs us that God's law defines what sin is (Romans 7:7), and even a cursory comparison between God's righteous standards and our imperfect lives reveals that a great deal of sin remains in us after baptism—sinful ways that we must turn from. If we fail to see any sin in ourselves, we are clearly deceiving ourselves.

Third, regarding a Christian being incapable of sin, John contends that such a statement calls God a liar. Since the whole plan of God is based on redemption from sin, if we are already so spiritual that we cannot sin, why is God putting us through this farce of conversion? The truth is that all men are sinful (Romans 3:23). Jesus teaches that, just as God is perfect, we are to become perfect (Matthew 5:48), and Paul echoes that our job is to "go on to perfection" (Hebrews 6:1).

In his answer, John admits that, even though the whole thrust of Christianity is to turn from sin and live sinlessly, we still have sinful human nature in us—or as Jeremiah 17:9 says, a heart that is "deceitful" and "desperately wicked"—and we do sin. Yet if we sin, admit it, repent of it, and seek forgiveness for it, Christ's blood covers the sin, and we go on striving not to sin. The desired result is that we have overcome the sin, learned a lesson, and grown in character. This is how conversion works: step by step, one transformation to the image of Christ at a time.

This should tell us a few things about conversion. For starters, it is not something we can do alone. It is God who works to convert us by His Spirit, as we work in cooperation with Him (Philippians 2:12-13). Conversion is His spiritual, creative process at work, transforming us into what He has purposed and designed us to become. As Paul says, the process of conversion is God's workmanship in us (Ephesians 2:10). He conducts us through the entire process.

In addition, we realize that, no matter how long we live, the process of conversion will never be complete. We can never achieve perfection in this life, for we will always fall short of the righteousness of Christ. With its inherent self-centeredness, human flesh can never be entirely converted to God's way of outgoing love. The apostle Paul, certainly a righteous man, lamented many years after his initial conversion, "I am carnal, sold under sin" (Romans 7:14) and "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells" (verse 18). Only by the resurrection of the dead at Christ's second coming will we be truly "incorruptible" (I Corinthians 15:52).

Yes, sin is involved in the conversion process, but we are endeavoring to overcome it. Even with the indwelling of God's Spirit, from time to time we will sin. Thus, a converted person is not perfect, but he is constantly working in that direction under God's guiding hand.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
What Is Real Conversion? (Part Three)

1 John 3:24

John does not imply that we are doing things perfectly, for he also says in I John 1:8 , "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." What is being referred to here are things that even sinning Christians are able to do.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Love and Fellowship


 




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