Romans 3:22b-23: “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God”
The Emperor
There is a Disney movie, The
Emperor’s New Groove. Basically what happens is that some people try to
kill the emperor with a magic potion but they get 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 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 escaping
the guards 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 other nations cannot be the means of salvation (as some in Paul’s time
had suggested). They merely point out the fact of sin.
William Tell
For all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God. The Greek word for ‘sinned’ in this passage, hamartanō,
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 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&2 tell us that because of this we deserve to die.
The Guards
I read a story
by John Phillips:
‘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 Bible here. 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’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. 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.
Algebra 11
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 realized 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. Rather like a student auditing a course, He still wants
us to complete it. 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.
Grace, there is no difference...
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 special
little present that a dad buys his daughters. It also is like 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 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.
Originally presented to TSA Swift Current Corps, 12 July 2009
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