romans road: righteous
Romans 3:10 NIV - “As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one”
No one.
No one is righteous.
Not even one.
Not even you.
Not even me.
I was sitting with Aziza and another friend of ours in Bold Bean when Aziza asked me to write this.
She waited until after I said “yes” to send me the verse I would be talking about, which was a smart move on her part because I might not have agreed if I had known this would be the verse she’d give me. For the record, she claims she didn’t read it beforehand - I’m not sure I believe her.
However, I’m a woman of my word, so I dove headfirst into learning everything I could about this verse.
It is widely believed that the Book of Romans was written to the Church in Rome by Paul while he was in Corinth. In the first chapter of Romans, Paul offers these words:
Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Romans 1:5-7 NIV
These words tell us that Paul was writing to the Church as a whole - the Jews and the Gentiles, specifically those in Rome. At the time, the city of Rome was not even ten square miles in size and was home to roughly a million people. It was the diverse epicenter of a massive empire that held, at the time, unmatched power. So, when Paul says “to all in Rome”, it is a statement of radical inclusion. Paul is declaring that all are loved by God and are welcome at the table of Jesus.
Another translation offers an even more radical view of what Paul believed God’s view and call of this diverse church to be with the following address:
To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Romans 1:7a ESV
Now, for me, when I hear the word “saint” one of the words that immediately comes to mind is “righteous”. Surely those called saints are among the righteous people, and Paul said all are called. Perhaps this is why I find it so surprising that Paul then, about 3 chapters later, proceeds to inform his readers that there is not a righteous person among them. That doesn’t seem like the most loving statement, nor does it seem compatible with his early declaration that they are called to sainthood. It seems even more odd to me then that we, as a Church, have chosen this verse to be one we commonly use to “evangelize”. I find it counter-intuitive that, in an effort to “share God’s love”, we start with essentially telling people they aren’t good enough. We start our “good work” by condemning people for existing and capitalizing on their fear… as far as I can see, there is no love in that.
You aren’t good. You were not perfect from moment one. You were corrupt from moment one. You have come up short too many times to achieve righteousness. It is out of your reach. Righteousness is not for you.
For quite some time, this is what I believed about myself. I’ll spare you the details, but it was not some college class or a friendly atheist who convinced me of this - it was the Church.
The way the Church traditionally approaches goodness, holiness, and righteousness were damning for me and my faith. I saw too many inconsistencies in their teachings, too much hurt because of those teachings, and felt too much pressure to be someone I’m not and can’t be. I couldn’t - and still can’t - believe that outside of God people are not “good”. That somehow those who have “accepted Jesus” are more moral, upright, and upstanding citizens. I’ve seen too much goodness in the lives and actions of those who follow a different deity and in those who follow none. I’ve felt the love that emanates from those who do not call themselves “Christians” and I’ve seen their hearts for people, for love, and for justice. And, when I myself stopped being a “Christian” for awhile, that was where I began to rediscover my goodness and righteousness.
In the dictionary, the word “righteous” has a few definitions:
acting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin
morally right or justifiable
arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality
The word righteous also has a number of noteworthy synonyms, including ethical, good, honest, just, and moral.
If you search the word “righteous” in the NIV translation of the Bible on Bible Gateway, you are confronted with 493 results.
If you try to find the word “righteous” in Greek, you'’ll find that there are two Greek words we have sometimes translated as such, but in Romans 3:10 the word is dikaios, meaning:
equitable (in character or act); by implication, innocent, holy (absolutely or relatively):--just, meet, right(-eous).
righteous, observing divine laws
in a wide sense, upright, righteous, virtuous, keeping the commands of God
of those who seem to themselves to be righteous, who pride themselves to be righteous, who pride themselves in their virtues, whether real or imagined
innocent, faultless, guiltless
used of him whose way of thinking, feeling, and acting is wholly conformed to the will of God, and who therefore needs no rectification in the heart or life
only Christ truly
approved of or acceptable of God
in a narrower sense, rendering to each his due and that in a judicial sense, passing just judgment on others, whether expressed in words or shown by the manner of dealing with them
Sometimes dikaios is translated as just or right, appearing a total of 81 times in the New Testament.
Now that you’re probably feeling completely overwhelmed by all of that information, here’s my point: the conventional definition of righteous often necessitates a perfection that no human can achieve. In short, righteousness as perfection is out of our grasp because inevitably, to quote everyone’s favorite pop star Hannah Montana, “Nobody’s perfect!”, so there will be a moment when we will mess up, and that’s okay.
If we look deeper into the definitions and synonyms surrounding righteousness, we see that it is “only Christ truly” who can be righteous in the conventional sense, but we have been given an outline for what striving to be righteous looks like. It looks like being a seeker of justice, like being equitable and fair. It looks like pursuing goodness and honesty and loving people. It looks like making an effort to be the best person you can be, and not guilt tripping yourself when you make a mistake.
After all, while there is no one completely righteous in the literal, exaggerated writer’s theatrics, human sense, Noah and David are called “righteous” by God, and they surely sinned. Perhaps God is not looking for perfection, so much as they are looking for someone willing to try their best. Perhaps God is more interested in our effort - our hearts - than if we actually did or did not sin yesterday morning at 7:52 a.m. Perhaps we need to redefine what it means to be righteous. Maybe instead of righteousness being defined as perfection, righteousness should be defined as an effort to bring about love, justice, and peace into the world. Maybe at its core, righteousness is the embodiment of love.
In John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes on Romans 3:10 it says:
All men are under sin appears from the vices which have raged in all ages. St. Paul therefore rightly cites David and Isaiah [“As it is written:”] though they spoke primarily of their own age, and expressed what manner of men God sees, when he "looks down from heaven;" not what he makes them by his grace.
God’s grace is freely given to all the world. When God birthed the world, she saw that it was good - perfect from moment one. God so loved the world that they sent Jesus to die for the people of the world - even before they had accepted Christ. Clearly, God saw something in humanity to choose to do this - to give us grace, to make us, and to love us. I’d like to think they saw righteousness. Not perfection-based righteousness, but effort-based righteousness. God saw it in us from moment one, and he continues to see it to this day where others do not. God sees us - even if we don’t know them - as righteous because, at our core, we are love.
When it comes to evangelism, we often ask people to join us - the Church - because we have the answers they’ve been looking for. We ask them to come sit in our service on Sunday because “it’s so good” and “it’ll bless you”, without listening to why they may not be in Church in the first place. Too often, we ask them to come back to a place that has deeply hurt them, without first hearing their story and apologizing for the harm we as a church have inflicted upon people. We fail to confess our own sins before asking someone else to confess theirs. We accuse them of being wicked without actually getting to know them, and tell them if they just do x, y, and z their life will be so much better. We’re more concerned with how many people we have “saved” this month, than the number of people who we are in meaningful relationship with, or who are experiencing growth beyond their conversion. We’ve created this 3-step process to scare people through the door without any regard for the lasting effects such a system might have on those people who are, from moment one, deeply loved by God.
So, what do we do now? How do we approach evangelism with the knowledge that righteousness is not what we may have thought it was, and that maybe we haven’t been leading with love?
Maybe instead of asking people to join the Church and the Trinity on a pre-existing path because they are otherwise doomed to be forever wicked, we should instead ask them if we - despite all the harm we’ve done and are doing, despite the things we don’t know, and despite the fact this is faith and not fact - can join them on their journey and bring along our complicated trinitarian friend? If that maybe, together, we can all strive for perfection, justice, and love, knowing that we will come up short and that it’s okay.
Maybe we can acknowledge our original goodness and natural imperfections - because the two are not mutually exclusive - for the sake of joining people on the journey? Maybe we can do this not with the intent to teach them something because they are somehow lesser than those in the Body, but because they are a co-sharer in the human experience who we can learn from? Because, if we were ALL made in the image of God and if God so loved the world, then we are all a part of the Body, the same Body, and not one part of that Body is more important than another. Not one part is superior, not one part is better than, not one part rules over the other.
If we are called “righteous” by God, then maybe we should strive to approach life, and evangelism, with a heart for learning, with a heart for listening, with a heart for all people, with a heart for goodness, with a heart for justice, with a heart for love, and with a heart for the imperfect journey.
This is what the Bible says: No one is in the right - nobody at all!
Romans 3:10 The Bible For Everyone
No one.
No one is perfect.
Not even one.
Not even you.
Not even me.
And that’s okay.
Note from the author: In CCW, we value generous orthodoxy. This means that we value a difference in beliefs, and that you don’t have to believe a certain way to be a part of our community. So, with that said, I welcome your disagreement with my take on Romans 3:10. I’m probably wrong about some stuff. After all, faith is a journey and an evolution that should never become stagnant. However, please know that I wrote this from a place of honesty and love for people and for God. Know that I have done my best to tell the truth as I know it, in a way that doesn’t cause harm and brings about good. Know that I have made an effort - an honest, vulnerable, authentic, justice-minded, loving effort to write about Romans 3:10 in a way that redeems the harm some may have experienced because of the Church’s use of this verse. And if this came up short of that, I am sorry and I would invite you to tell me that so that I can continue to grow, but know that my intentions were nothing short of righteous. - Sara