Romans 3:22b-23: “There
is no difference, for all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God”
There is a Disney movie entitled The Emperor’s
New Groove. Basically what happens is that some people try to kill the
emperor with a magic potion but they get it mixed up and accidentally turn him
into a lama instead. The emperor does not like being a lama. As the movie
progresses, the emperor attempts to regain his throne and turn back into a
person. There is one clip at the climax of the movie where the emperor finds a
number of magic potions without labels and all the bottles have been mixed up.
While the royal guards, who are trying to kill him, are in hot pursuit he is
drinking these potions very quickly, trying to turn back into a person –
because he does not like being a lama.
Some potions are more advantageous than others.
One potion turns him into a turtle (not so good for eluding the guards who are
chasing him). He turns into a small bird from another potion. He is frantically
trying to turn back into a person as he drinks potion after potion: turtle,
small bird, giant whale, and then finally he drinks this one potion and looks
down and he changes and cheers, “yeah!… I’m a lama again! … Oh wait…I don’t
want to be a lama”: all those potions and adventure and there is no difference,
he still isn’t a person. There is no difference.
Romans 3:22b-23: There is no difference, for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. In this letter to the Romans,
the Apostle Paul has already been building his argument about how neither the
Jew nor the Gentile is saved any differently than the other. According to Paul
in Romans 1&2, anyone who denies the abundant evidence of God’s eternal
power and divine nature is rightly exposed to the wrath of God which results in
being given over to unnatural desires. As a consequence of their sin, their
rebellion, they are condemned and deserve to die. At the conclusion of the
second chapter of Romans, it is clear that both the Jew and the Gentile stand
on equal footing. The practices that mark Israel out from among the nations cannot
be the means of salvation as some in Paul’s time had suggested. They merely point
out the fact of sin (Ro 3:20, 2:17-24, 5:20, 7:7-25).
For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory
of God. The Greek word for ‘sinned’ in this passage, hamartanÅ, carries
with it the classic definition of sin that we have probably heard before: that
of ‘missing the mark’. It brings to mind the idea of an archer shooting for a
target and falling short, missing the target. On the surface this seems
innocuous enough but… if we find out that that archer is William Tell – who is
famous because he shoots apples off of people’s heads – and if we then find out
that the apple is about to be placed on our head, it becomes important. You
don’t want him to miss the mark. William Tell, of course, was to shoot the
apples off the heads of his own sons and as if he missed, the consequences were
most devastating for both father and son (as is our own sin). When we
continually sin the consequences are often fatal. Romans 3 tells us that we
have all sinned, fallen short of this glory of God and Romans 1 and 2 tell us that because of
this we deserve to die. I read a story by John Phillips; he tells us:
‘Paul
describes sin as a coming short of the divine standard.
Two men went to the
recruiting office in London to join the guards regiment. The standard height
for a guardsman was a minimum of six feet. One man was taller than the other,
but when they were measured officially both were disqualified. The shorter of
the two measured only five feet seven inches and was far too short; his
companion measured five feet eleven and a half inches and, stretch to his
utmost, as he did, he could not make it any more. Nor did his pleas avail. It
mattered nothing that his father was a guardsman, that he promised to be a good
soldier, that he had already memorized the drills and knew the army regulations
by heart. He was short of the standard.
Now this could be playing out in a couple of
different ways in the text before us. It could be speaking about each of us
falling short and missing the mark on our own accord - that happens. Ignoring
the heretical idea that ‘we all sin all the time without even realizing it’
(this is simply neither true nor possible), every one of us has transgressed
the will of God. Each of us has sinned but this passage may be simply referring
to the first sin when Adam and Eve originally disobeyed YHWH in the garden and
then tried to hide from Him (Genesis 3): this was St. Augustine of Hippo’s idea
of ‘Original Sin’. Biblical scholar Tom Wright tells us that here the verb tense
indicates a single moment thus Paul seems to be thinking of Adam (The Letter to the Romans, p. 470) But,
as Biblical scholar F.F Bruce tells us, Paul also may be simply referring to
the fact that each of us on our own have sinned and therefore fail to make the
grade (Romans, p. 96).
Failing to make the grade reminds me of when I
was in high school. There was this fellow, John, in my Algebra 11 class. John
–in those days- was not exactly the scholarly type. His friends mercilessly
nicknamed him ‘Scarecrow’, from the Wizard of Oz: “I wish I had a brain.” The
last day of Algebra 11 the teacher decided to read out everyone’s mark in
descending order from top to bottom. Now this actually made John very happy
because even though he received a meagre 11%, he looked over at a friend’s
paper and saw that his friend had achieved only 4%: for once he was not the
lowest mark in the class. As the names were read down the list: Tony, 88%;
Janet, 86%; Suzy, 84% - and all the way down past the failing marks – Andy,
49%; Mark, 32%; you could see John actually getting more and more excited
because THIS TIME he was not going to have the lowest mark – someone else could
earn the moniker of ‘Scarecrow’, Silvia 22%, John 11%… and then… the moment he
was waiting for… and… the teacher stops reading out the marks… and dismisses
the class. As everyone is quickly exiting the room, “what about Mike?” John
yells, “what about Mike? Read out Mike’s mark”…John knew I had only 4% but the
teacher showed me grace. He refused to read my mark out loud so poor John - who
did all on his own manage to fail Algebra 11 - indeed wound up being last on
the list again. Now there are a few things to be cleared up here, two that are
relevant to our text and one that is quite irrelevant:
1) Totally
irrelevant – I, who earned 4% in the course, passed Algebra 11 in Summer School
with an ‘A’ and later went on to actually teach Algebra 11 for a few years.
2) Not
irrelevant - In the grand scheme of things it really didn’t matter for John in
any tangible way what mark I, or anyone else earned, John still received a
failure on his report card. He missed the mark; he failed to obtain the prize.
Just like us. It doesn’t matter if you are a better person than Charlie Manson,
Adolph Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, or your next-door neighbour – that is not what
is going to ‘get you into heaven’ as they say for ‘all have sinned and fallen
short’. (And you know that if anyone repents –preceding list included- and
accepts Christ, they may actually be with the Lord.) It is not our actions that
gain us eternal life. It is God’s gift that saves us.
3) Relevant
- I didn’t actually fail Algebra 11. I did only get 4% on the course but
because I realised that I was doing horribly in Algebra 11, I dropped the
course and audited it instead. This means that I had to do all the same
homework as everyone else. I had to write all the same tests as everyone else
and I fell short just like John did. However, it didn’t matter because by
auditing the course I was saved the failing mark.
That is not entirely
dissimilar from the case we have before us in Romans 3. In the heavenly
classroom, we have all scored less than a passing mark; we have all fallen
short and deserve to fail. Jesus, however, does not read our marks aloud nor
does He condemn us (John 3:17). Rather like a student auditing a course, He
still wants us to complete it (1 Corinthians 9:24, Galatians 5:7, 2 Timothy
4:7, Hebrews 21:1). In my case, it didn’t matter how the class was passed (in
regular school or summer school) what mattered was that the class was passed –
the 4% mark was erased forever from my transcripts and replaced with an A-range
mark. This is somewhat like the Biblical idea of justification.
‘Justification’ is thus the declaration of God, the just judge, that
someone is (a) in the right, that their sins are forgiven, and (b) a true
member of the covenant family, the people belonging to Abraham. That is how the
word works in Paul’s writings. It doesn't describe how people get in to God’s forgiven family; it declares that they are in. That may seem a small
distinction, but in understanding what Paul is saying it is vital.
We know that “There is no difference, for all
have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22b-23) and we also
know that we “are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that
came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). This is good news. Like so much in this
world, it is not ‘what you know’ but it is ‘who you know’. Now to some this
sounds unfair but when you take into account that no one knows enough to actually
pass the test and merit salvation, then we really do appreciate this grace.
Speaking of grace, I don’t know if everyone knows
what the word ‘grace’ actually means? Grace means ‘a gift from God’. It is a
present. It is not a trophy we can earn like the Grey Cup, the Stanley Cup, the
World Cup, or the Super Bowl. Grace is something even more precious than that.
It is a special present from our father. It is like a little unicorn named
‘Lovely’ that I bought for my daughter Rebecca on her third birthday. It is
like a little lamb that I gave my daughter Sarah-Grace when she was just born.
It is like a little present I bought Heather one day as we were looking in a
toy store. It is each of my daughters’ first pictures they drew that I have
sitting on my desk at home. Our salvation is a ‘love present’, a special gift
from God that He gives us because He loves us and all we have to do is accept
that gift of His love.
Now God loves the world so much that He did send
his only begotten son to die so that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish
but have everlasting life. He sent His son into the world to save the world not
to condemn the world (John 3:16-17) and since He did that at such a great
personal expense, let us please accept that gift today and let us not be
ashamed of this good news (Romans 1:16-17), let us let all our friends and
family know that the Lord our God loves us all. He has purchased this special
gift of salvation for every one of us and all we have to do is not decline it;
so please let us each accept that love present, that gift of eternal life
today. As we accept this gift, our lives will never be the same again.
Let us pray
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