God Verses Humanity

By Steve Clark

February 12, 2026

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

There’s something wrong in the world. You don’t even need a Bible to tell you that. When God created the world he said, “it was good.” 

So what has happened? S-I-N, sin. You can almost hear the hiss of the serpent as you say sin. And when you look in the middle of that word sin you see the letter I. Think about it, the only thing we do perfectly is sin! 

Sin fascinates and then assassinates. It thrills, then kills! You’ll get what you want, but you won’t want what you get!  And you know the old saying: Life is short, death is sure, sin the curse, but Christ is the cure. 

But you’re not going to get the cure until you have a proper diagnosis, until you see the problem. 

In Romans, Paul begins to lay down the problem so we can see it and understand it. First, in chapter one is the sin of those who’ve never heard. In chapter two, he talks about the sin of the hypocrite. In the last part of chapter two, he talks about the sin of the Hebrew—those who thought that because they were God’s chosen, because they’d heard so much, because they have the Bible, because they knew much truth, that somehow, sin did not affect them. 

So after he deals with the sin of the heathen, the hypocrite, and the Hebrew, then he just sums it up, and he comes to the sin of humanity, and that is all of us. He says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. 

What Paul is doing is this—He is becoming a prosecuting attorney, and he is bringing the human race before the judgment bar of Almighty God, and he’s making an indictment against humanity. 

Reflection—Challenge: Who have you warned that there is a penalty for sin? Paul made sure everyone around him knew. Are we doing the same?