He states that twice in this passage (vs. 20 to 24), and it underlies
his view of the purpose of law. In verse 20 he asserts that 'by the
works of the law shall no flesh be justified,' and in verses 23 and
24 he advances from that negative statement to the positive assertion
that all have sinned. The impossibility of justification by the works
of the law may be shown from two considerations: one, that, as a
matter of fact, no flesh has ever done them all with absolute
completeness and purity; and, second, that, even if they had ever
been so done, they would not have availed to secure acquittal at a
tribunal where motive counts for more than deed. The former is the
main point with Paul.
In verse 23 the same fact of universal experience is contemplated as
both positive sin and negative falling short of the 'glory' (which
here seems to mean, as in John v. 44, xii. 43, approbation from God).
'There is no distinction,' but all varieties of condition, character,
attainment, are alike in this, that the fatal taint is upon them all.
'We have, all of us, one human heart.' We are alike in physical
necessities, in primal instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the
common experience of sinfulness.
Paul does not mean to bring all varieties of character down to one
dead level, but he does mean to assert that none is free from the
taint. A man need only be honest in self-examination to endorse the
statement, so far as he himself is concerned. The Gospel would be
better understood if the fact of universal sinfulness were more
deeply felt. Its superiority to all schemes for making everybody
happy by rearrangements of property, or increase of culture, would be
seen through; and the only cure for human misery would be discerned
to be what cures universal sinfulness.
III. So we have next Paul's view of the remedy for man's sin. That is
stated in general terms in verses 21, 22. Into a world of sinful men
comes streaming the light of a 'righteousness of God.' That
expression is here used to mean a moral state of conformity with
God's will, imparted by God. The great, joyful message, which Paul
felt himself sent to proclaim, is that the true way to reach the
state of conformity which law requires, and which the
unsophisticated, universal conscience acknowledges not to have been
reached, is the way of faith.
The message is so familiar to us that we may easily fail to realise
its essential greatness and wonderfulness when first proclaimed. That
God should give righteousness, that it should be 'of God,' not only
as coming from Him, but as, in some real way, being kindred with His
own perfection; that it should be brought to men by Jesus Christ, as
ancient legends told that a beneficent Titan brought from heaven, in
a hollow cane, the gift of fire; and that it should become ours by
the simple process of trusting in Jesus Christ, are truths which
custom has largely robbed of their wonderfulness. Let us meditate
more on them till they regain, by our own experience of their power,
some of the celestial light which belongs to them.
Observe that in verse 22 the universality of the redemption which is
in Christ is deduced from the universality of sin. The remedy must
reach as far as the disease. If there is no difference in regard to
sin, there can be none in regard to the sweep of redemption. The
doleful universality of the covering spread over all nations, has
corresponding to it the blessed universality of the light which is
sent forth to flood them all. Sin's empire cannot stretch farther
than Christ's kingdom.