How Does Sin Affect Us?

“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Romans 3:11-18)

Paul gives a long list of sin's effects on us. Not only do we need to accept that we are sinners, we need also to begin to grasp the problem of the reality of our sinfulness. As Paul provides layer after layer of evidence, we see in stark terms who we are, and what this means for us. There are seven affects that sin has:

1. Our legal standing. No one is legally righteous, and no one's deeds can change that. We are guilty and condemned (v 10).

2. Our minds. "There is no one who understands" (v 11). Because our core nature is corrupted by sin, we don't understand God's truth. We are "darkened in our understanding...because of the ignorance of that is in [us] due to the hardening of [our] hearts" (Ephesians 4:18). Ignorance does not cause hardness of hearts (we don't know about God, so we don't love him); instead heart-hardness cause lack of understanding. That is because our sinful self-centeredness leads us to filter out a lot of reality. It is a form of denial, we are blind to many truths and our thinking does not compute data as it should.

3. Our motives. "No one seeks God" (Romans 3:11b). None of us really want to find him; rather, we are running and hiding from him in all we do, even in our religion and morality.

4. Our wills. "All have turned away (v 12). This carries echoes of Isaiah 53:6: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way" (KJV). There is a willfulness about our wandering. Sin can be defined as our demand for self-determination, for we choose our own paths.

5. Our tongues. "Their throats are open graves" (Romans 3:13). We are deceitful, poisonous, bitter and cursing in what we say (v 13-14). The image is that of a grave with rotting bodies in it. Sinful words are signs of decay. We use our tongues to lie to protect our own interests, and to damage the interests of others.

6. Our relationships. We are "swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark [our] ways, and the way of peace [we] do not know" (v 15-17). This is how sin affect our relationships; we are after each other's blood-sometimes literally, more often in seeking to push down those who get in our way. Why do we become angry with people? Because they have blocked us from access to an idol-they have compromised our comfort, or prevented a promotion, or made us feel out of control,or are enjoying a relationship we feel we need. When we do not live enjoying God's approval in the gospel, we do not know peace ourselves, nor can we live in peace with others.

7. Our relationship to God. "There is no fear of God before [our] eyes" (v 18).

Tim Keller, Romans 1-7 For You