Romans 3:19

Plain English Version

You know, it’s like this. God gave his law to the Jewish people for them to follow. And God is the judge of everybody in the whole world. And nobody has kept all of that law, so nobody can argue with him. Nobody can tell God, “I have kept all those laws, so I’m all right. You can’t punish me.” We can’t say that, because we all broke that law at some time. So why is the law there? It is there just to let us know that we always go wrong. That’s what it is there for.

Cross References

John 15:25

A long time ago, God told one of his men to write about this, and they have it in God’s book. He wrote, ‘I didn’t do anything bad to them, but they hated me anyway.’ And that mob are doing that to me now.

John 8:9

Those men heard his words, and then the oldest man turned around and walked away. Then the next oldest man went away too, and the other men followed one by one. Soon they were all gone, and the woman was the only one standing in front of Jesus.

Romans 1:20

Even though we can’t see God, we can know about him. If we look at the things he has made, we can know about him, that he is really great and really strong. Ever since he made the world, we can look at everything that he made, and we can know about him from those things. So nobody can say that they don’t know about God.

Romans 3:23

We all went the wrong way, and we did bad things. Nobody is properly good, like God wants us to be.

Romans 3:9

So what about those of us that are Jewish people? Will God be more good to us than to other people? No way. Both Jewish people and other people do bad things, just like I already said.

1 Corinthians 1:29

God does that so that nobody can ever get up in front of God and say, “I’m really good. I’m better than other people.”

Galatians 3:10

You see, God will make trouble for those people that reckon they are all right by just following the law. They think that, in the end, God will agree that they are all right. But they are wrong. God says this in his book, “You have to keep on doing everything in the law book, or God will punish you.”

Galatians 4:21

Listen, you mob that want to follow the Jewish law, you don’t really know what that law says.

Galatians 4:5

And then he took the payback for all of us, the payback for the bad things we did, and he set us free. So God took us into his family to be his proper kids, and we don’t have to follow that law any more.

Galatians 5:18

But if you let God’s spirit control you, you will do good things, and you will not need to have the Jewish law as your boss.