Romans 3:12-14 - The Mouths of Sinners

Romans 3:12-14 -
12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,”
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”;

Message: The first evil attribute: our tongue

Time: Paul probably wrote Romans between A.D. 57-58 while he was at Corinth in the home of his friend and convert Gaius. He planned to go first to Jerusalem to deliver a gift of money from the Gentile churches to the poor in Jerusalem. Then he hoped to visit Rome on his way to Spain. His hopes were later realized, but not as he had expected. When he finally arrived in Rome in early A.D. 60, he was a prisoner under house arrest (Acts 28:11-31).

What the Lord is Saying:

Reminder of Man's Depravity and Turning away from God
In Romans 1, Paul described the rejection of God by people. It was a process though. People start by not giving thanks to God (1:21) and then exchange God for something or anything else (1:22) and suddenly what people want is not God but their own desires, to the point that they are really in life serving their own needs (1:23-24). And then they reject God's intention and replace it with something else.

As I read these verses, I'm reminded of that description Paul has already given his readers of man's awareness of God and then rebellion. And yet that awareness is something God gave man. He gave man the knowledge of Him (1:19). God is evident within us.

Verse 12
The reality of these verses, is that on our own, there is none righteous. There is none who understands. None who seeks for God. And now in verse 12, we see that all have turned or bent themselves away from God. We have a bent, away from God. Like what was presented of the gentile in chapter 1, and so each of us needs to have more compassion on the lost. 

Moses, David, Isaiah, Jonah -- God reveals himself and the first thing we do is turn away.

We "become useless." This is the picture of rotten fruit. What a horrible verdict on man. And "none does good."

How quickly do I sometimes walk in to church and just start singing about the greatness of God without first reviewing the reality that I don't seek after God, understand Him, have turned from Him, and don't do any good apart from Him. Would by heart and voice be more impassioned if I began with that understand? I need to start with the idea that I am utterly offensive.

Verse 13
Psalm 5:9, "There is nothing reliable in what they say; Their inward part is destruction itself. Their throat is an open grave; They flatter with their tongue." What a horrible prognosis on mankind. Our throat reeks of death. Our speech threatens death. With our words, we push people into an open grave.

With our tongue, we keep deceiving. We lure people away from what is true. Deception is presenting a lie as truth. And this isn't a one time thing, but it is continuous in that we keep on doing it.

These are tough words about the tongue. The grave, deception, and poison. When a snake plants it's venom in a person, their is a quick need to cut it away. Asps refers to a bag of poison under the lips.

Verse 14
Cursing and bitterness. Cursing is blaming God or profanity. Bitterness is reproaching God because of the way He has run your life. Again, our first inclination is not to thank God, but to say to him, "why me?" Blasphemy is a frivolous use of God's holy name. Cursing is a declaration that God is to blame. Bitterness is all to common in my life as I look at the blessing of another and then look at me and say, "Why me?"


Promise: From Tabletalk: We do not serve God with the strength or focus that we ought, and if the standard by which one is declared righteous before Him is perfection, then outside of Christ we are indeed worthless servants of the Lord. Human beings are not born into a natural state of being on "God's side."