He Helps Us Want the Path of Peace
Read: Romans 3:9-20
9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” 14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 in their paths are ruin and misery, 17 and the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
Will any person seek out God on their own? We’d like to believe that the eternal things about God and what we can see through creation would draw one of us to actually understand Him.
In another message, Paul talks about how close God is, so that even if a person could reach out just a bit, they would find God (Acts 17:27). And that’s true! The problem is, without His help, we will never reach out. We don’t even consistently want His way of Peace.
Oh yes, we might approve or condemn ourselves based on our own conscience. Paul has also said people can do reasonable things to satisfy their own personal conscience (Romans 2:26-27). But ultimately, we just don’t get it completely right: “no one is righteous;” no one is completely innocent of crimes against the Creator.
We can’t Think our way to God. Additionally, it’s not that we only do wrong things, like some malfunctioning machine that simply needs a bit of adjustment. It’s that we think wrong things: “no one understands; no one seeks for God.” Even the best person gives up on trying to find God on their own. When we read the classical philosophers like Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, or when we read words from religious founders like Buddha or Zoroaster, we can see hints that they understood wisdom at least in part. They say wise things! But they had all stopped looking and began to lead their followers astray. Before any of these great minds lived, Yahweh, the God of Abraham and Moses, had already revealed His truth in written form. He had established places of writing and learning where “the way of peace” (verse 17) could be found and learned. Many in the ancient world, such as Job, had evidently been drawn to the one True God.
And beyond this inability to think rightly, we communicate wrongly. Without God’s help, we use all our words — our tongue, our lips, our throats – to deceive others. Of course, we don’t do this continuously, but we all deceive and mislead at times and prove our disregard for truth. Why? Because no person, even those who see the greatness of creation or know their own conscience, has an accurate “fear of God before their eyes.” (Verse 18)
We cannot DO enough or even BE enough. Paul has addressed several objections, several questions, about how a person can be right with God. One question is whether a person can do the works of the Mosaic law (Torah) and achieve a “not guilty” verdict; the answer is no (verse 19). As James says elsewhere, they even break the Torah, and he continues on in another letter to the Church, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” (James 2:10)
Paul’s point goes deeper: it’s not just the failure of acting out certain tasks which shows we cannot save ourselves, but it’s the failure to be like God – our thinking, our understanding, our intentions, our words, our planning. It all aims away from God. Every bit of our capacity is against God.
We can find the Way of Peace and have the Fear of God. In this passage, Paul has strung together multiple Psalms and quotes from Prophets to explain how the human being condition is deformed, but he leaves us with beautiful hints of the life-giving plan of God: for those with a corrupted mind, with perverse intentions, who have given up on seeking ultimate truth, there is still a way of peace. God has promised us a path to walk in where we can experience Him and His kindness and gentleness. God reveals through His Word and through Jesus that He desires to heal and to give us new hearts that replace our stony, hard ones. And He gives us a new mind to fear Him — respecting and even desiring to know His greatness — even His ability to rescue.
I pray that the strong words of scripture will help you clearly see your inability to achieve your rescue or even help you wish for the right rescue. Throw yourself afresh on God’s mercy!
