Romans 3:23

I mentioned in my last post that I am thinking about Romans 3:23 and whether or not the "all" there refers to all humans without exception or all humans without distinction. I argue for the latter, because of the phrase "For there is no distinction" in verse 22 and the phrase "and are justified by his grace as a gift" in verse 24.

In talking with unbelievers it is not somehow inappropriate to reference 3:23 to speak God's word on sin. However, when engaging in discussions with others who claim the name of Christ, we need to be careful with how we interpret the word "all" throughout Scripture to come to right understandings of various doctrines - it has shades of meaning as do all Greek and English words.

It seems to me that grammatically speaking, the "all" who are sinners in verse 23 is obviously also the "all" who are justified in verse 24. Since only one "all" is used in that sentence we cannot say that it refers to every human in the first clause, but not every human in the second clause. I hope I am not splitting hairs - because no doctrine is affected, but our hermeneutics are at stake - I want to avoid exegetical gerrymandering that can quickly lead to isogesis if we are not careful.

At a practical level, I think we should work harder to quote verse 24 whenever we quote verse 23 (which rarely happens, I find). Think about it. If, in evangelism and theological discussion, we quoted 24 along with 23, we would necessarily be driven beyond our slothful laziness to memorize 3:10-20 in order to understand and prove what God says about our nature.