All People

'For all have sinned...'

Romans 3:23

 

Nowhere do we find more generalizing statements than in the Bible. When a rich young man approaches Jesus and addresses Him as "good Teacher," Jesus's first reaction is to ask, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except One, God..." According to Jesus, no one is good, not a single person. Only God. He's saying quite a lot there! In Paul's letter to the Romans, too, all humanity is tarred with the same brush: "For there is no one who does good. There is no one righteous, no, not one. There is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. They have all gone astray; together they have become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one." (Rom.3:9-12) That, according to Paul, is also the reason for death—not the sun, not air pollution, not bad food, but: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death came to all men, because all sinned.” (Rom.5:12)

 

There is only one reason why the Bible can make such generalizing statements: it is not the word of man, but the word of God. And God is omniscient because He creates and sustains the universe in all its facets, from the largest galaxies to the tiniest particles, moment by moment. Therefore, He knows everything about everyone, down to the deepest stirrings of the soul.

That is why David cries out (Psalm 139):

'O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

You know my sitting down and my rising up,

You understand my thoughts from afar.

You search my path and my lying down,

You are familiar with all my ways.” Even before a word is on my tongue,

See, Lord, you know everything.

You hem me in behind and before,

you lay your hand upon me.

This knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too high, I cannot reach it.

Where can I go from your Spirit,

where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I lie down in the grave, behold, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning,

if I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

even there your hand will lead me,

and your right hand will hold me.

If I say, "Yes, darkness will swallow me up!"

then the night is light around me.

Even the darkness is not dark for you,

but the night shines as the day,

the darkness is as the light.

For you created my inward parts,

knit me in my mother's womb.'

 

One day, every human being will come to the startling discovery that all the information about every second of his entire life, from birth to death, both inside and out, is stored somewhere and, even more shocking, is being retrieved and used as evidence. Then "books will be opened"! (Rev.20:12)That will be a bitter pill to swallow. Fortunately, God has already indicated that every human being will be weighed and found wanting. And fortunately, God has found a solution for every person willing to face the truth about God and himself. That solution is that the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth Himself would descend to earth in person as a human being, something humanity commemorates annually at Christmas. However, this is not just about the baby in the stable, but much more about the perfect life of that baby that followed in the 30+ years that followed, and especially about the death in which that life ended: death on the cross. Hanging between heaven and earth, Jesus paid God the immensely high price for the guilt that people had incurred through their shortcomings.

Because Christ Himself is also God, the reckoning on the cross was essentially an internal matter within God Himself. The blood of the cross was God's own blood. (Acts 20:28) Something happened there that no human can ever fathom. That is why the cross was enveloped in impenetrable darkness for three hours (Mathew 27:45). For everyone who accepts this sacrifice of Christ in faith, God has dealt with Christ and blotted out the "handwriting that testified against him." (Col.2:14) He is reconciled to God. His name is written "in the Lamb's book of life." (Rev.13:8) The Lamb represents Jesus, who, with the sacrifice of his life, blots out the sins of all who believe in Him (John 1:36). In a generalizing text, Paul summarizes this enormous miracle of grace as follows:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood.”