Click this link to hear an audio version of the below text narrated by SOTH member Jerry Rhinehart:
Romans 3:9-12 (NIV)
No One Is Righteous
9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands; there is 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.”
What is a church? It is the gathering together by the Holy Spirit of a bunch of broken, screwed up people in need of salvation! Paul’s often repeated statement that “none is righteous, no, not one” is merely a description of the way things are. This direct statement of reality is often called the doctrine of “original sin”. It reduces our understanding of humanity, and ourselves, to the essentials. No one is better than anyone else. Every single one of us live with the disease of sin infecting every nook and cranny of our being. When we gather as a church we are sinners gathering in our common sinfulness with our common need for a savior to hear the good news of forgiveness! Pray for the leaders of SOTH, our staff, our pastors, and for every person who gathers in worship to be reminded that we are not perfect, but we are all in need of salvation and forgiveness.