Romans 3:9-18

“What then? Are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have previously proved both Jews and Gentiles, that all under sin;

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

There is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that does good, no, not one.

Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes.’” 

Paul drives his point home to both groups in his audience, by declaring, as the Scriptures assert, that both the members of that nation for whom knowledge of God was supposed to be the defining characteristic, and those for whom the lack of knowledge of God was their defining characteristic, had been and continued to be guilty before God of unfaithfulness and disobedience. The Jews who had the Law were just as guilty of sin against their God as the Gentiles who were outside the Law. Here was the point of tension, which Paul sought to resolve: that the Law the Jews resorted to for their justification proclaimed them as guilty as it declared those non-Jews who rejected the God of that Law.

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