Everyone’s Day in Court
10 As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 Now 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.
Romans 3:10-19
The topic of sin is a touchy one, no one wants to admit that they are sinners and have fallen short of what God has called them to be. Instead, we would rather go on pretending that we are good people who have some faults but surely none that would cause God to say “depart from me, I never knew you” Matthew 7:23. Surely if we are a good enough person, if we help those around us, if we go to Church, if we play nice, or if we follow the Mosaic Law then surely we will be good enough to enter heaven. This was definitely my line of thinking before I became a Christian, before I bowed my knee to Christ and admitted that I am a sinner, I know that I am not the only one. However, when we look at Romans 3:10-19, we can clearly see that there is not one human who is righteous enough to enter heaven on their own merit, we have all turned away from and are held accountable to God. How is it that we are held accountable? Well when you look at Exodus 20 we see that God has outlined a standard for us to meet, you are probably familiar with this standard even if you have not read it. The standard that God holds us all to is the Ten Commandments, and as outlined in Romans 3:10-19, I want to discuss how we have all fallen short of this standard.
1.) “You shall have no other gods before me” Exodus 20:3
The First Commandment seems like it would have been a simple one for the Israelites to have kept. The Commandments were given when they had been taken out of Egypt and were following God in the cloud of fire to the Promise Land. However, sin nature took hold and they forgot that they were told to only worship God, instead they began to worship the gods of the Moabites. “While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, 2 who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. 3 So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor. And the Lord’s anger burned against them.” Numbers 25:1-3. Here we can see that when the Israelites placed other gods before the one true God, it lead them to idolatry and adultery. But how do we fail this command today? We are failing when we do not know the God of the Bible. We sing worship songs that go against what He says He is, we are worshipping other religions and claiming that it is all the same God, we do not know and understand who He is that we worship a god of our own understanding. By doing this we are leading ourselves into idolatry. When we use our perceived notions of who God is to say that we are enough to earn our salvation. Rather than reading the Bible to know and understand our God, we become like the Pharisees in Matthew 23:27-28. “27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” On the outside we look like good people who are following God, but on the inside we are dead to any real form of righteousness and are full of idols.
2.) “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God” Exodus 20:4-5
I once heard a sermon that stated that an idol is anything that detracts from spending time with God. It is not just statues like the Israelites worshipped in Exodus 32:1-35, although for some that is the case. It is our work, desire to eat healthy, desire to exercise, desire to be involved in our communities, and so much more. While all of these look like good things, if they come before spending time with our Lord and Savior then they are nothing more than idols in our hearts. I ask you now to take a look at your day and see what is taking up the most time. For my husband and I, there was a time that we would be getting up only with enough time to get ready for the day, go to work, come home, have dinner, and then spend the rest of the time in front of the TV. It was only as we were getting ready for bed that we realized that we had not spent time with our Lord and quickly do a Bible study that never went in depth. Once we realized this, we made an effort to get up earlier so that the first thing we did was a Bible study, if the TV was on it was playing a sermon. We began to use the tools around us (TV, phones, etc.) as just that, tools that we could use to know more about our God. I do want to make a note here, while the internet is great in allowing us to hear different pastors, listening to these different pastors can also turn into an idol if it takes the place of reading our Bibles and asking the Holy Spirit to guide us in our Bible study. We are called to put to death any idols in our lives, Colossians 3:5. Why is it important to not have idols? Well not only is our God a jealous God, but He desires us to put away any idols because we become like what we worship. “15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. 16 They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; 17 they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. 18 Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.” Psalm 135:15-18 The aspects that take up most of our time shows us where our priorities are, the more time we spend focusing on our idols the more we are brought down, the more we spend time with our Lord, the better we can be like Him while on earth.
3.) “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name” Exodus 20:7
When we are called to not misuse the name of the Lord, it is calling us to not break any vows that we make. Jesus describes this very well in Matthew 5:33-37 “33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.” When we make a vow we are held to God’s authority, whether or not we swear by His name. If we break a promise, no matter how small, then we cannot be found righteous. The other way that humankind uses the Lord’s name in vain is when we use it in emptiness. What I mean is when we say that we are followers of Christ, but we use His name to commit sins. We are pretending to serve Him when we are not, we cherry pick Bible verses to make it seem like we are righteous in our sins. A great article on those who use the Lord’s name in emptiness can be found here.
4.) “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” Exodus 20:8
It is true that we are called to have a day of rest, Exodus 20:9-11 make this clear. So how is keeping this commandment causing us to fall short of what God wants for us? We fail in holding to this commandment when we so strictly follow it that we fail to cultivate a relationship with God. Since the law prohibits any work from being done on the Sabbath, the Pharisees took this to mean not helping anyone and were offended when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, Matthew 12:1-14. We forget Jesus’s words in Mark 2:27-28 “27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.””. When we focus on worshipping on a specific day we are cultivating that we are made for the Sabbath and not the other way around. All this is doing is creating another false idol in our lives.
5.) “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you” Exodus 20:12
There are many ways that we can honor our families, whether it is helping them keep the house in order, making sure our elderly parents have groceries, or just making sure to spend time with them. How this command is broken though can be found in Matthew 15:1-9 “Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: 8 “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 9 They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’” We see here that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were upset that the disciples were breaking human traditions rather then what the Word of God actually commands. They were placing human traditions over God, which is nothing more than an idol. Religion is the strongest and most seductive form of idolatry found, and when we idolize the sabbath higher than what it was meant to be, we are turning something meant as a symbol into a stumbling block.
6.) “You shall not murder” Exodus 20:13
This would seem like an easy commandment to follow, after all not everyone holds enough hatred in their heart to actually kill someone right? Well if you look at 1 John 3:15, you would see that that ideology would be wrong. “15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.” Holding hatred in our hearts is the same as actually committing murder according to John. It is why we are called to live peacefully with our brethren and to love as Christ did. Now this is not to say that there is never a need to be angry, in fact there is such a thing as righteous anger that would not be considered a sin. Righteous anger occurs when we are angry about the loss of innocent lives, mistreatment of the innocent, to sum it up, righteous anger is anything that God Himself would be angry about. People love to focus on the loving God, and He is a loving God, but they forget that He is also a God who drove merchants out of His house not once but twice for making the temple nothing more than a market place, Matthew 21:12 and John 2:13-16. There are times that righteous anger is needed and in those times, there is no sin.
7.) “You shall not commit adultery” Exodus 20:14
When discussing adultery, people automatically focus on the physical aspect of adultery. However, when you look at Matthew 5:28, you can see that sin is not just in physical actions but also in the mind. “28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” What we do in our private thoughts shows what we hold close to our hearts. We can put on a façade of righteousness to the outside world, but if on the inside we are focusing on sinful traits, then we have already committed sin whether or not we physically do the action. Again, when this is our practice we are nothing more than whitewashed tombs.
8.) “You shall not steal” Exodus 20:15
Again this seems like it would be an easy commandment to follow. However, we have already seen that sin is not in physically acting something out. We have already stolen an object when we begin to covet it, the act of coveting will be discussed more in just a moment.
9.) “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor” Exodus 20:16
The word testimony here give an impression of a court proceeding, and while that may definitely be true, false testimony occurs any time that we spread facts that we know to be untrue about someone. James gives a sobering description of the tongue. “5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” James 3:5-6. When we spread slander we are showing our alignment with the world and will be consumed by it.
10.) “You hall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:17
This is yet another command that shows how sinful actions are not just physical actions. The act of coveting something that does not belong to you begins in the mind. Look at King David with Bathsheba. David began to fall into sin when he stayed home rather than joining his armies in the battle against the Ammonites. Because he was not with his army, he instead saw a beautiful woman bathing (coveting and adultery), when she became pregnant David than ordered for her husband to not be protected in battle (murder, even though David was not the one to physically kill him). One sinful act will often lead us into another. It is why we must continually pray “Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, 9 lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” Proverbs 30:8-9
After looking at this list, you may be feeling disheartened. When you see how failing in one commandment opens us up to further sin it makes it seem impossible that we could ever been seen as righteous in our actions. And this is true, we cannot prove ourselves righteous to God through our actions. “20 because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.” Romans 3:20. However, there is a way that we can be found righteous, and that is through accepting Jesus Christ. You see, He is perfection represented as Man and God. He is the perfect sacrifice for you and I to become saved. It is through Him alone, through faith alone, that we can become righteous.
Seek the Truth and encourage one another,
Alex