What Does Romans 3:6 Mean?
Never. For then how shall God judge the world?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?THE KEY
The world’s wrong cannot make its judge unjust without making judgment itself impossible.
THE MEANING
God’s judgment remains able to discern the world even when the world’s wrong is used to challenge the judge. Human injustice does not turn justice into injustice or place the world beyond God’s sight.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the claim that human wrong makes God unjust, or makes it impossible for God to judge.
THE ROOT
κρίνει
krinei
GROWS FROM
κριν-
krin-
to separate, distinguish, decide
“judge” in this verse is krinei. The verb carries the sense of discerning and deciding, not merely handing down a verdict. The verse’s question turns on that distinction: if God’s own justice were bent by the world’s wrong, there would be no sound judgment left to hold the world in view.
ALSO GROWS
krisis: judgment, decision
κρίσις
This related word names the act of judgment itself, showing the same root at work in both discerning and deciding.
kritēs: judge, one who decides
κριτής
The judge is the one who distinguishes and decides; the role depends on judgment remaining clear rather than becoming as distorted as the world.
τὸν κόσμον
ton kosmon
GROWS FROM
κοσμ-
kosm-
order, arrangement
κόσμος can name the world as an ordered whole, not only a place or planet. God’s judgment reaches the shared human order in which injustice occurs, not just isolated private acts.
ALSO GROWS
kosmeō: to arrange, put in order, adorn
κοσμέω
This verb from the same word family keeps the sense of arrangement close to κόσμος, the whole that is being judged.
kosmios: orderly, well-arranged, decorous
κόσμιος
This related form carries the family’s sense of order into human conduct, echoing the question of what makes judgment just.
μὴ γένοιτο
mē genoito
GROWS FROM
γιν-
gin-
to become, happen, come to be
“Never” in this verse is mē genoito. The Greek exclamation means, “May it not come to be.” It rejects the possibility raised in the preceding thought: that God’s justice could become injustice because of human wrong.
ALSO GROWS
genesis: origin, birth, coming into being
γένεσις
This related noun names a beginning or coming-to-be, clarifying the force of the reply: may that state never arise.
genēma: what is produced, fruit
γένημα
This related form names what comes into being; the exclamation refuses the proposed outcome before it can take shape.
THE PATTERN
God’s judgment holds the whole world to a just standard without letting the world’s disorder redefine justice.
Far be it from you to do according to this word, to put to death the aligned with the wicked, and the aligned be as the wicked. Far be it from you! Will not the judge of all the earth make judgment?And he judges the world in alignment; he pleads the case of the peoples in straightness.Because he has set a day in which he will judge the settled world in alignment, by the man whom he has marked out, giving all people trust through raising him up from among the dead.THE THREAD
Therefore, judge nothing before its season, until the Lord comes, who will light up the hidden things of darkness, and will make visible the plans of the hearts. And then the praise will come to each one from God.“Judge” here uses the same Greek verb, κρίνω (krinō), as Romans 3:6. This verse places judgment beside bringing hidden things to light, opening the thought that the world’s judge can discern what human sight misses.
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