📜WEB · Romans 3:23
What does Romans 3:23 mean?
"for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;"
— Romans 3:23 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified by the law and the prophets;
even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all those who believe. For there is no distinction,
for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus;
whom God sent to be an atoning sacrifice, through faith in his blood, for a demonstration of his righteousness through the passing over of prior sins, in God’s forbearance;
to demonstrate his righteousness at this present time; that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus.
Explanation
Romans 3:23 states a simple but sweeping truth: every single human being has sinned and, as a result, falls short of the glory of God. In plain language, Paul is saying there is no exception clause. Not just notorious sinners, not just people outside the faith, but all people—Jew and Gentile, religious and irreligious, moral and immoral—have missed the mark that God set. The phrase "fall short of the glory of God" suggests failing to measure up to the standard of who God is and what he intended humanity to reflect. Just as humans were made in God's image to display his character, sin causes people to fall short of that intended reflection of his glory.
The context of this verse is crucial. Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, likely around AD 57, to a church made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome, a congregation he had not personally founded but hoped to visit. In the opening chapters of the letter, Paul builds a careful argument: he first shows that Gentiles are guilty before God because they have rejected the knowledge of him available through creation and conscience (chapter 1), then shows that Jews, despite possessing the law, are equally guilty because they do not keep it perfectly (chapter 2). Romans 3:23 comes at the climax of this argument, right after Paul quotes a string of Old Testament passages proving that "there is no one righteous, not even one" (3:10-18). The verse functions as the summary verdict: the entire human race, without distinction, stands condemned before God.
Theologically, this verse establishes the doctrine of universal human s
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