Romans chapter 3

vs 10-12

Paul uses these verses to present the truth of his argument over the last two chapters - that Jews and gentiles are alike under sin. It is a classic Old Testament proof of his ideas.

However, the reason that the bibles with footnotes have Psalm 14, Psalm 53 and Ecclesiastes 7 as direct references for these verses is because, well, these verses aren't directly out of scripture. Paul's "as it is written" is really more of an "as the message of the OT says". It's an amalgam of ideas, not a direct quote. Now, some people would say that Paul was quoting from memory, so it's ok to get it a little wrong. But it is in fact quite different.

Now, this honestly doesn't bother me, because Paul does in fact exegete the OT passages well, and the resulting phrases in vs 10-12 here represent the truth of meaning behind the Psalms and Ecclesiastes. This shows us, if nothing else, that rephrasing scripture for the sake of clarifying its point when we are trying to reiterate that point is totally valid.

Paul's point, then, is that no one has ever made the grade when it comes to sin and righteousness. Although we may know people who are seeking God, we may know people who we see as righteous, it's actually more that those people are seeking God more than average, or that someone is more righteous than we are. But are they 'righteous'? Do they 'seek God'? When measured against a formal absolute, the answer is no.

vs 13-18

Paul pulls out the OT quoting stops here, and just writes down every OT verse he can think of that describes the fallenness of humanity. Completely out of context, too, I might add. Psalm 5:9 describes David's enemies, Psalm 140 describes 'the wicked', as does Psalm 10, while Isaiah 57 I am pretty sure describes Israel, Psalm 36 going back comfortingly to the wicked.

When David describes 'the wicked', he's almost always talking about his enemies (usually gentiles, sometimes Israelites against him). Whereas Isaiah is written primarily to kick the butts of Israelites. My point is that even though the psalms and Isaiah all have a specific context, Paul combines those contexts as an anecdotal, historical proof that what he is saying is true, and that it is repeated - that people are wicked.

vs 19-20

In an effort to push his point further home to the Jews (apparently the gentiles get it by now), Paul explains that the law of God exists not to provide righteousness. Rather, it exists to provide judgement and consciousness about how we cannot stick to it. Israel's history bears that out pretty well. But he is being inclusive - although he has said that any gentile who holds to the law can be considered circumcised, he is pointing out that even gentiles can't obey the whole law. So therefore it exists in judgement over them too.

So what is to happen, then? If God has established a law of perfection that no one can attain to, how does one become righteous? And not just 'more righteous than the next person', but attain to that absolute 'righteous' quality that God demands?

Find out tomorrow!