Our Spiritual X-Ray

There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.

–Romans 3:10–11

There are many people, including many Christians, who believe sin is not that big a deal; after all, we’re all flawed. But the Bible says we’re not just defective; we are spiritually dead.

Romans 3:10–12 lays out our spiritual condition: “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.” In other words, humanity is totally depraved. Some people might wince at that description. But as theologian J. Dwight Pentecost explained, total depravity doesn’t mean we’re all as bad as we could be, but we’re all as bad off as we could be. We’re all separated from God because of sin.

Let’s look more closely at two aspects of our spiritual X-ray:

There is none righteous, not even one. We have trouble with this because we see a great difference in human beings. In our eyes, there’s a considerable gulf between a man who murders his family and a firefighter who heroically saves people. But in God’s eyes, the difference is negligible. Let me illustrate that for you. If you were to walk the streets of New York City, you would notice buildings of many sizes, from one-story structures to skyscrapers. But if you were to look down at all those buildings from outer space, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. That’s how God views us. From His perspective, the difference between humans is negligible. No one is righteous.

There is none who seeks for God. You might say, “There are thousands of religions in the world. Isn’t that proof that people are searching for God?” No, the fact that there are many so-called approaches to God is a sign of our unrighteousness. Romans 1 says every person has an instinctive knowledge of the one true God, but when they reject that knowledge, they create their own gods to follow. There’s no one who seeks for the true God; instead, we try to create the god we want.

That’s the reality of our spiritual condition. We are in horrible shape, so we need a radical solution to our problem. In John 6:44, Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” It is only by the grace of God that anyone can be saved.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “What Every Christian Should Know About Sin” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2022.

J. Dwight Pentecost, Things Which Become Sound Doctrine (Kregel, 1965), 9–10.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.