Summary: the unrighteousness of all people
Support from Scripture
10 As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good, not even one.”
A casual reading of these verses could leave the impression that this section is a single block of quotation taken from a single book of the Bible. A closer look will show, however, that this is not the case. It is, rather, an artfully woven-together collection of numerous Old Testament passages. They have all been neatly assembled to make one point, namely, that there is a universal lack of righteousness that besets the whole human family. The reader is invited to check out the sources of the individual quotations Paul has put together with this collage, but that need not detain us just now.*
* Compare verses 10 to 12 with Psalm 14:1-3; 53:1-3; and Ecclesiastes 7:20. Compare verse 13a with Psalm 5:9; verse 13b with Psalm 140:3; verse 14 with Psalm 10:7; verses 15 to 17 with Isaiah 59:7,8 and Proverbs 1:16; verse 18 with Psalm 36:1.
Paul’s point will be served if we simply keep in mind his basic emphasis: Absolutely no one has any righteousness at all before God. Some subpoints that could be noted under that major heading would be a threefold division into sins of thought (10-12a), word (13,14), and deed (12b-17). Verse 18 identifies the root cause for all of the above, namely, “no fear of God.”
Paul’s collection of quotations starts out with the assertion that the heart of the human problem lies in an abysmal lack of understanding and a woeful lack of appreciation for who God is and what he has done for sinners. Quoting the psalmist, he says:
“There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, . . .
there is no one who does good,
not even one."