Romans 3:9-20

"(9) What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. (10) As it is written:

"There is no one righteous, not even one;
(11) there is no one who understands,
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) "There throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deciet."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
(14) "Theri mothes ar full of curisng 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. (20) Therefore no one will be decliared righteous in his sight by observing the law, rather, throug hthe law we become conscieous of sin."

Paul spent a lot of time in chapter 2 talking about the law - he talked about how God will judge us based on the law and he talked about a more sinsiter aspect of the law such as judging others by it, but not holding yourself to the same standards. In this section Paul tells us the function of the law. But before he does that, he makes it very clear that no one on the face of the planet is better than another because we all sin. The middle section of these verses are all verses from the Old Testament where everyone is tossed into the same category - sinners. Read back over those verses...no one is righteous, we have all turned away from God and our ways are full of ruin and misery. Wow. We all have a serious problem don't we? So what is the law there for? If we follow the law can we become righteous and go to heaven when we die? Nope. In verse 20 Paul says that the laws are only there so that we can know what sin is and have that in our minds as we go through our days. Stay tuned tos see how we make it to heaven and become righteous :-)