Romans 3:9-18 :

What then? Are we better than they? No, in no way. For we previously warned both Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin. As it is written,

“There is no one righteous;
no, not one.
There is no one who understands.
There is no one who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside.
They have together become unprofitable.
There is no one who does good,
no, not, so much as one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb.
With their tongues they have used deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is under their lips”;
“whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Destruction and misery are in their ways.
The way of peace, they haven’t known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

None of us are born as good people and God is completely aware of it. The problem is that we don’t think we are that bad. The truth is that humanity is not at peace with God and because of this, we do not seek God and we violate his intentions for us. We naturally show a complete lack of respect for Him.

So, we ultimately destroy everything we touch. We like to think that we are making things better for ourselves, but we are actually tearing each other down and fighting against God. We end up bringing ourselves lower in the process, not higher.

I like how God emphasizes the problem we have with our mouths. Our mouths express the reality of what we hold in our hearts. If we say bad things it is because we have hearts full of bad things too. That is exactly what we see in our world today. The “deceit,” “cursing and bitterness” is so common that God says our “throat is an open tomb.” We may overlook it, but God places a great deal of emphasis on what we say and he holds us responsible for every word. Our mouths alone send us to Hell, not to mention the fact that our “feet are swift to shed blood.”

When we compare our sins with each other, we don’t look so bad because since two bad people don’t have many differences. Clearly, our standard of judging is too low. When we look at our performance from God’s perspective, we are horrible from the day we are born. Understanding this fact is important because without a good understanding of this bad news, it is difficult to understand the beauty and wonder of the Good News. The bad news is that a natural man does things every day that are evil that God cannot ignore, and that cause His anger to build up against them.