“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 ESV).
Sean McDowell is a popular author, podcaster, and associate professor of Christian apologetics. In his book, Evidence That Demands A Verdict (an updated version of the classic apologetic work he co-authored with Josh McDowell, his father), McDowell made an important observation regarding the universal application of Romans 3:23…
“Apologist Clay Jones has spent decades studying the problem of evil. He closely examined the evil perpetrated in the twentieth century by Nazis in Germany, communists in Russia, China, and Cambodia, the Japanese in World War II, and other nations including Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Sudan, and the United States.
After immersing himself in these human tragedies, Jones concluded: ‘I first began to study human evil so that no one could disqualify me for having glossed over the immense sufferings that people perpetrate on each other. I didn’t want anyone to say that I had gotten God out of the problem of evil the easy way: by making evil seem less serious than it really is.
But as I read about one sickening rape or torture or murder after another, something strange happened: I was struck that evil is human. I realized that heinous evils weren’t the doings of a few deranged individuals or even of hundreds or of thousands, but were done by humankind en masse. I studied continent after continent, country after country, torture after torture, murder after murder and was staggered to discover that I hadn’t taken Scripture seriously enough: humankind is desperately wicked.’
Human fallenness makes the gospel powerful: we can only appreciate the extent of the work of Christ when we understand the evil and corruption we and the world truly contain.'” (1)
These observations underscore the depth and importance of our text from Romans 3:23: “…all have sinned.” The Biblical book 1 John offers some additional support for this conclusion with the following declaration: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8 KJV). The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes acknowledges this reality as well: “There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake” (Ecclesiastes 7:20 GNB).
Finally, we should note that our text from Romans 3:23 is rendered in the present tense. As such, we should guard against the tendency to apply this passage to previous generations that were seemingly less advanced than our own. Instead, this verse describes the present state of fallen humanity as we relate to God and one another.
(1) Jones, Clay. “Christians Don’t Take Human Evil Seriously So We Don’t Understand Why We Suffer:” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, New Orleans, LA, November, 2009. Quoted in McDowell, J., & McDowell, S. (2017). Evidence that demands a verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World.