Romans 3:12
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The first time I rode Space Mountain, it was 1999, and I lied to my grandfather, Winford, and told him that the roller coaster was not fast and was not scary. He threw out his back. Thankfully, his toupee stayed on, but he did throw out his back. The second time I rode Space Mountain, it was 2022, and I lied to my son, Johnny, and told him that he would be tall enough to join me. Now here's the thing. We went to Disney World last year. We came prepared. Melanie even made sure to buy some extra tall tennis shoes so that Johnny would be a little bit taller. He was basically wobbling around the Magic Kingdom in high heels.
Not exactly high heels, but you know, I confess though, as we spent more and more time at Disney World, I began to realize how hard this trick would be to pull off. Just for example, this place was not Malibu Jacks, okay? So at Malibu Jacks, like a baby can take a puppy on the indoor roller coaster that they have there. It is not the case at Disney World. These workers were exacting and uncompromising, and they were determined to follow the standard. What was the standard?
Well, something like 44 inches. How tall is Johnny Duke? Something like 42 inches, maybe 43 with his high heels. So we walk up to Space Mountain. He's nervous. I'm nervous. The worker looks like kind of a mixture between Dolores Umbridge and Agatha Trunchbull, okay? And I'm like, this is not going to go well. And so we walk up there. He stands up to the little thing. He cranes his neck, willing himself to be 44 inches.
And then comes the bad news. Your son cannot ride Space Mountain. Can you guess what comes next? That's not a rhetorical question. Can you guess what comes next? Tears. Yes. And then, meanwhile, his 45-inch best friend, Wendell Hamilton, is rushing towards Space Mountain's interest. Can you guess what came after that? More tears. And then his dad joined his best friend and his best friend's dad. Oh, my goodness. I'm kidding.
I'm not sure that I'm kidding. I tried everything to cheer him up. If we can get ice cream, I'll buy you a $30 bubble dispenser. Nothing worked. He had failed to be 44 inches tall, and the news of his failure crushed him. Tonight, I'm going to try to help us figure out what to do with the news of our failure. Our passage this evening is from Romans chapter 3. How did we get here to Romans chapter 3? Well, here's a very brief overview.
Romans was written by Paul. Romans chapter 1 says, everyone is a sinner, and the Jews are reading it, and they're like, yeah, the Gentiles are awful. And then Romans 2 comes, and Paul says, actually, no, the Jews, we're sinners too. And then Romans 3 comes, and the Jews, he expects them to be like, hold up, really? Are you serious, Paul? We are really just as bad as the Gentiles. He's like, yes, I am serious. Let me prove it from our own scriptures. Which brings us to Romans chapter 3, verse 12. In this verse, Paul is quoting King David from Psalm 14 in support of his argument that both Jews and Gentiles are guilty before God.
They cannot save themselves. Romans chapter 3, verse 12. It's on the front of your bulletin. Paul writes, all have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. To put it another way, we, all of us, yes, including you, all of us are failures. Three questions I want to briefly ask and answer so that we understand what this verse means.
First, what does Paul mean and not mean when he says all have turned aside? Well, he does not mean that some have turned aside. He does not mean that some people are in a different class of sinners. He does not mean, with this news, to make us feel good. As if we could be like, oh, you're a sinner too, Brett. Elliot, you're a sinner too. I'm a sinner. Jack's a sinner. That kid's a sinner. It's just a human condition. What's the big deal? He does not tell us to make us feel better.
He does mean, though, for us to think about the worst person that we know. Seriously, do it. Think about them. Don't point to them. Think about them. Picture them. The worst person that you know, and then remind yourself, I need as much help as that guy. We are more the same than we are different. What does Paul, second question, what does Paul mean and not mean when he says that we together have become worthless?
This is a bit trickier. He doesn't mean that human beings have no value, right? Like Bitcoin, right? Or like pre-season college basketball rankings, right? Which always has Kentucky number one and they're never number one, all right? He does not mean that we are worthless in that sense. He does not mean that human beings are just fleshly bags of blood and bones and brains. That's not what he means. Some people believe that. That's not what Paul means. What Paul means when he says we are worthless is that our sin has a kind of compounding interest, but in the negative direction.
In other words, our sin has societal effects. If you want to know more about that, read Romans 1 or read more closely Isaiah 1 through 5 from this morning. Third question. What does Paul mean and not mean when he says no one does good, not even one? Well, he does not mean that saving puppies and trying to cure cancer and buying a Big Mac for a homeless person and giving money away and not even telling anyone about it or studying really hard and getting an A on a test, he does not mean that those things are not good.
He does not mean that no one does good things. He does not mean that we are all as bad as we possibly can be. He does not mean that we cannot do things that adhere to God's law. He does mean that we cannot be good enough to make an eternal difference. He does mean that the good we may do may be good enough to make a difference for a year, or a decade, or a century.
It may change a life, or save a puppy, or cure a disease, or win you the Nobel Peace Prize, or make you valedictorian. It may do something amazing for you, but friends, it is not good enough. The good we do is not good enough to reacquaint us with God. That's what Romans 3.12 teaches. It tells us bad news. We're sinners, all of us. And when it comes to saving ourselves, when it comes to pleasing God, we are failures.
We get an F. It is an exacting standard that we cannot reach. Here's a brief intermission before we get to some closing applications. Brief intermission. What is sin? Christians say words sometimes, and we all act like we know what they mean. So let's just for a second, what is sin? Well, here's some bad definitions of sin. Sin is brokenness, it's weakness, it's alienation, it's frailty. Those are effects of sin, but they're downstream from its definition.
Here's a better definition of sin, you may have heard it. Sin is missing the mark. Well, that's true. That's kind of like calling war countries disagreeing. Like, it's technically true, but it doesn't really get at the heart of what sin is. So here's a definition I often use when I'm teaching the youth group. Sin is rebellion against the God who made us. It's saying no to him while looking him in the eye. What does our sin do to us?
Well, it cuts off our access to God. It wrecks our righteousness. Friends, we, human beings, all of us, we are bleeding out, and no amount of moral or religious pressure can stop the bleeding. You can keep reading in Romans 3, we're not going to do it, but 13 to 18 kind of summarizes the depth and degree of our sinfulness. Our tongues are bad news. We deceive, we curse, we are bitter, our feet are bad news, we are swift to shed blood, we do not share Christ, we are ruined and miserable.
and unfamiliar with peace. We do not fear God. That's the end of the intermission. Romans 3, 12 teaches us that our sin is bone deep. It has sprawled inward and outward when it should have caused us to look upward. That's what Romans chapter 3, verse 12 teaches. I am convinced if we believe that truth, and we swallow it whole, we will realize that our failure to be good is good news.
At least three things will happen to us when we realize our failure to be good is good news. Three good things, then we're done. Good thing number one, we will stop comparing ourselves to one another. So imagine for a second that you're in a hospital full of wounded soldiers. Do you know what you won't hear? You won't hear soldiers bragging. I only got shot in the leg. That idiot over there, he lost his arm and his eye.
And then the guy who lost his arm and his eye is like, well, yeah, I lost an arm and an eye. But, I mean, that guy over there, he lost both of his legs, and he's never going to see again. How stupid would it be for a room of wounded, rescued people to compare themselves to one another? Why would they do anything but thank the one who rescued them? The one who placed them around others who have had the exact same humbling experience. How stupid would it be for a church full of wounded, rescued people to compare themselves to one another?
Why would we do anything but thank the one who rescued us and who has placed us, by grace, around brothers and sisters who have all had the exact same humbling experience? What's that experience? Perhaps better asked, who is that experience? Well, it's Jesus, of course. No doubt. He has rescued us from our sin. We realize, if we're Christians, we realize that we would be toast without him.
We need his righteousness. His righteousness leads to eternal life. Our righteousness leads to death. Maybe you're here tonight and you don't know Jesus, you should get to know Jesus. Good thing number two, we will love Jesus more. Some of us, when we think about our sin, we wince, right? Our failure to be good makes us want to hide from ourselves and from others and certainly from the Lord.
We think that our sin disqualifies us from God's attention and God's affection. But brothers and sisters, I hope you realize that rather than providing an obstacle to Jesus' love, our sin provided the best opportunity for Jesus to show us his love. Romans chapter 5, verse 8, just a little bit later than this passage. God showed his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Our failure creates the platform for God's success in Christ. Our sin evokes his loving action on our behalf. And his loving action on our behalf, which is his death and his resurrection, should evoke an action of our own, which is not self-reliance. Not, ooh, I think I can do that, but a little bit better. that action that it evokes in us is repentance. And that's the Christian life, over and over and over again, where we look to his love to motivate our happiness and our holiness.
Good thing number three, and then we're done. We won't doubt our salvation. If you realize that your failure to be good is good news, that your failure to be good is essential to what it means to be you, and you followed Christ, then you will not doubt your salvation. Johnny Duke, love him to death. He could not will himself to be 44 inches tall. He could not will himself onto Space Mountain. You cannot will yourself to righteousness.
You can't. You cannot do good enough to earn your way into glory. You can't do it. So stop trying. Stop. Just stop trying. You'll only end up in tears. Stop it. And you know what? This is great news because if we could succeed at being good, then guess what? We would constantly wonder if we've been good enough. A few bad weeks would send us into a tailspin of self-doubt.
You can imagine the timeline, right? It's like, okay, we're way in, and then we're like safely in. and then we're barely in and then it's like oh we're sitting on rager's edge 50 50 and then we're barely out and then we're definitely out and then we're way out well let's make a little bit more personal we're doing good spiritually right you are just reading the bible all the time and whatever you're here at sunday evening service you can go to members meeting wow that's amazing so so you're loved and then you're liked and then you're tolerated and then you're kind of left in the dark. And then you feel ignored. And then you feel disliked. And then you feel hated.
That's a timeline of self-righteousness. If that describes your experience, I would just encourage you, stop it. Look to Jesus. What an exhausting life that would be. Thankfully, it's not the life that we have in Christ. See, the beautiful thing about being a Christian is that Christ's righteousness is stuck to us, like stuck to us. What's the glue? It's faith. Romans chapter three, here's how he resolves this problem.
Romans chapter three, verse 21 and 22. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Christ for all who believe. brothers and sisters our failure to be good is good news because if we get it it pushes us towards faith in Jesus which is the only solution to our biggest problem let's pray Father in heaven thank you for being merciful to sinners like us I pray that every single person in this room would have faith not in their own good works or their own family tree or anything, but the perfect work of Jesus on the cross. We pray all this in his name. Amen.