The Unity

Take heart, for I have overcome the world!!!

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. Romans 3:9 (NIV)


So it appears that this is saying that Jews and gentiles are equal under sin and that although God had initially made the Jews his people, that due to their rejection of him, that the gentiles are now equally deserving of his law and fulfillment of that law. This is due to the newly christianized Jews' pride in being "the circumcision". Paul was fighting against this attitude to show the Jews that the gentiles are now too equal under sin.

I think that though it seems like a cut and dry statement, that this is a problem that we too face in the church today. People develop allegiences to their denomination and because they like their denomination best (otherwise they'd probably be elsewhere) they tend to look down on people from other denominations thinking that they are not [fillintheblankwith charismatic /scholarly /worshipful /contemporary /traditional] enough. I wish that there was a way that we could cut down denomination lines. If we were all just the church, as we should be, then the differences in each church baptist/ methodist / presbyterian wouldn't be so well defined. And then a church could go by its name instead of by the sect it represents. Ah well but then I would probably lament on how hard it is to find a church with similar doctrine as myself.

Adam Clarke points out that though the Jews were priveleged because they had the law, that they too had sinned and fallen short of it, this losing the privelege that they had been born to. For though they had the law which should have given them an additional advantage over the unknowing - they still could not keep it, which puts them in the same position of the gentile.

Guzik points out that Paul too is Jewish and the "we" truly is a "we jews". That the pagan, the jew, and the moralist are all under sin by law and then condemnation. He mentions that we are under the power of sin. That we are under it, and slave to it. The only one that can free us from this slavery is Christ and the cross.

The mystery / plan of God as we learn in Ephesians is that Jews and Gentiles would come together in Christ to form one body, the church. So this is a statement that certainly supports that notion, and give a means to seek equality under Christ, which would be necessary to find unity.

This verse should also convict us in our heart of hearts that we are under sin, that we would be condemned without Jesus and that ought to lead us back to Christ.