1. Romans 3:10–19 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

Why does Paul combine several citations from the Old Testament in Romans 3 to affirm the universal nature of human depravity?

Romans 3:10–19 (ESV)

10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;

Paul wants to affirm the fact that there is no special privilege for the Jewish people by showing what even their own law itself already says about them (Romans 3:10–19). Paul lists a large number of statements from the Old Testament in which the people are condemned because of their sins. The diverse contexts of these pronouncements are not important here. By combining all the separate fragments Paul constructs an independent collage that is entirely biblical in terms of its theology. He simply provides the biblical message about the general pervasiveness of sin its own literary form.1