Romans 3:9

Third Jewish objection

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.

Paul has leveled a stinging rebuke against those in the Jewish camp who would distort his teaching about God’s grace and turn Christian liberty into sinful license. This response from Paul draws a third objection from his Jewish antagonists. They ask, “What shall we conclude then? Are we any better?”

Translators are divided on the handling of the second of those two questions. The NIV translators opted for the rendering “Are we any better?” In the footnote they suggest the alternative “Are we any worse?” Those sound like contradictory and conflicting statements, don’t they? How can two such different understandings be legitimate contenders for what Paul intended to say? For an explanation you will have to bear with a few grammatical technicalities.

Our English verbs have two voices: the active voice, where the subject does the action of the verb (the boy hit a home run), and the passive voice, where the subject receives the action of the verb (a home run was hit by the boy). The Greek language had a voice that fits between these two. It has come to be called—not very imaginatively—the middle voice. It conveys the sense of the subject doing the action of the verb for the subject’s own benefit or interest (the boy hit himself a home run).

A further complication is that the verb forms for the middle and passive voices sometimes look alike, so context has to decide which one of the voices the author intended. That’s the situation here. The Greek verb in question could be either middle (do we have ourselves an advantage?) or passive (are we being taken advantage of?). The translation “Are we any better?” would be taking the verb as middle. “Are we any worse?” would reflect the passive sense.

The NIV translators decided in favor of the former. Other translators have chosen the second alternative. A moment’s reflection will show that the answer to either of the questions would be the same: a resounding negative. Are Jews any better than other people? Not at all! Are Jews any worse than other people? Not at all!

Why is that? Paul’s answer is, “We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.” Both groups are lacking the righteousness that God looks for. The whole previous section, from 1:18 on, has been a devastating description of the spiritual bankruptcy of both the Jews and the Gentiles.

Both groups are “under sin.” That means they are dominated by sin. It’s not just a chance or accidental thing that occasionally happens to them. Sin permeates them; it brands them. It’s the dominant force in natural human life, for both Jews and Gentiles. Paul substantiates this double indictment with Scripture, which asserts that total domination by sin marks the life of every man, woman, and child.