{"id":22916,"date":"2022-08-31T22:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T05:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/romans-3_1-8-copy\/"},"modified":"2022-08-09T21:06:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T04:06:03","slug":"romans-3_9-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/romans-3_9-20\/","title":{"rendered":"No One Is Good Except Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Romans 3:9-20\u00a0 Click here for Bible Verses<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Romans 3:9-20.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n

Romans 3:9a (NIV)<\/strong>
\n9\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all!…<\/em><\/p>\n

On verse 9:\u00a0 Given Paul\u2019s Jewish heritage and his international upbringing outside of Jerusalem, Paul has the unique ability to relate to and identify with both Jews as well as Gentiles.\u00a0 So after talking to the Jewish Christians in Rome and warning them not to take their rich spiritual heritage for granted (Romans 2:17-3:8), Paul in verse 9 speaks to the Gentiles and says, \u201cWhat shall\u00a0we<\/em>\u00a0conclude then?\u00a0 Are\u00a0we\u00a0<\/em>any better?\u201d \u00a0Paul is using his unique shape to serve God (\u201cshape\u201d meaning his Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality and Experiences).<\/p>\n

Likewise,\u00a0you are uniquely shaped to serve God.\u00a0 There is not a single aspect of your background, your experiences, your gift set or your personality that God accidentally allowed.\u00a0 Rather you are a custom-made creation built for the glory of God.<\/strong>\u00a0 God wants to use you just the way that He shaped you to make a positive difference in the lives of others.<\/p>\n

Romans 3:9b-20 (NIV)<\/strong>
\n9\u00a0<\/sup>\u2026We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.
\n10\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
\n11\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
\n12\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
\n13\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
\n14\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
\n15\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
\n16\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0ruin and misery mark their ways,
\n17\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0and the way of peace they do not know.”
\n18\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
\n19\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.
\n20\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.<\/em><\/p>\n

On verses 9b-20: Now Paul goes into one of the foundational points of the gospel.\u00a0 After saying that those who persistently do good will have eternal life (Romans 2:7), here\u00a0Paul\u00a0makes it clear that while this may be true in theory, the practical reality is that none of us has ever \u201cpersistently done good\u201d such that we can earn our way to eternal life.\u00a0\u00a0For while God may have given us the ability to do good, and while we may sometimes do some good, God’s standard is not about doing\u00a0some\u00a0<\/em>good\u00a0sometimes<\/em>.\u00a0 His standard of goodness is about being 100% good all the time and in every way, a perfect standard.\u00a0 If that’s God’s standard for goodness, then that means no one is good.\u00a0 All of us have fallen short of God’s perfect standard.\u00a0\u00a0 As Paul says in verse 9, \u201cWe have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then to show that he was not making this up, Paul quotes various Scriptures from the Old Testament to show that for centuries the Scriptures had been communicating the same idea that none of us is good in God’s sight (v10-18).<\/p>\n

In contrast, the popular wisdom of our day is that people are good \u2013 so good that we don’t need God, so good that some think through our own effort we can climb our way to heaven.\u00a0 But in\u00a0Romans\u00a03\u00a0Paul communicates a truth that is as politically incorrect and counter-cultural today as it was when he first wrote about it: \u00a0God is not impressed with our so-called goodness.\u00a0 In fact,\u00a0if you think you can impress God and reach heaven by trying to be good, then either your view of God is too small, or your view of yourself is too big. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

So if you think you can earn your way to heaven\u00a0through your own self-effort, think again.\u00a0 You can’t.\u00a0 We can’t impress God or earn our way to heaven by trying to obey God’s laws.\u00a0 So why did God give us His laws to obey?\u00a0\u00a0One of the biggest reasons God gave us His laws was to show us that His standard is something we can’t reach alone and that we need His help.<\/strong>\u00a0 Like verse 20 says, “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.”<\/p>\n

Praise God that while we ourselves could not meet His standard for being good, Jesus met God\u2019s standard perfectly.\u00a0 Then Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins so that sinners like us who were far away from God could be forgiven and brought near to Him.\u00a0\u00a0That’s what the gospel is all about: not that we are good, but that God is so good and sacrificed Himself for us.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Father, I know that, measured against Your perfect standard, I am not righteous at all.\u00a0 But thank You that You sent Your perfect righteous One, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for me, so that somehow a sinner like me could be brought back to You.\u00a0 Thank You also for shaping me uniquely to serve You.\u00a0 May I not look down on the ways You have made me uniquely, but embrace them and use them to serve for Your glory.\u00a0 In Jesus\u2019 name AMEN!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Romans 3:9-20.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n

Romans 3:9a (NIV)
\n9\u00a0\u00a0What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all!…<\/p>\n

On verse 9:\u00a0 Given Paul\u2019s Jewish heritage and his international upbringing outside of Jerusalem, Paul has the unique ability to relate to and identify with both Jews as well as Gentiles.\u00a0 So after talking to the Jewish Christians in Rome and warning them not to take their rich spiritual heritage for granted (Romans 2:17-3:8), Paul in verse 9 speaks to the Gentiles and says, \u201cWhat shall\u00a0we\u00a0conclude then?\u00a0 Are\u00a0we\u00a0any better?\u201d \u00a0Paul is using his unique shape to serve God (\u201cshape\u201d meaning his Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality and Experiences).<\/p>\n

Likewise,\u00a0you are uniquely shaped to serve God.\u00a0 There is not a single aspect of your background, your experiences, your gift set or your personality that God accidentally allowed.\u00a0 Rather you are a custom-made creation built for the glory of God.\u00a0 God wants to use you just the way that He shaped you to make a positive difference in the lives of others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gametime-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22916"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22919,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22916\/revisions\/22919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}