What Does Romans 3:9 Mean?
What then? Are we ahead of them? Not at all. For we have already charged both Jews and Greeks, that they are all under falling short.
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
What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;THE KEY
The verse does not rank Jews and Gentiles by how often they miss; it places everyone under the same condition of missing.
THE MEANING
The question of who stands higher has no answer: every person is under sin. That shared condition reaches the reader now; background and moral comparison cannot place anyone outside it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that religious identity or a better moral record makes one group clean and superior before God.
THE ROOT
ἁμαρτία
hamartia
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτ-
hamart-
The Greek word family carries the sense of missing or going wrong.
“falling short” in this verse is hamartia. The English word “sin” can sound like a label for separate bad acts, while “under sin” describes a condition shared by everyone. The word’s family connects that condition to the act of missing: no group stands outside it as the exception.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: to miss, to err, to sin
ἁμαρτάνω
This verb from the same word family shows the action associated with the shared condition named in the verse.
hamartōlos: one who sins; a sinner
ἁμαρτωλός
This related word names a person by the same word family, showing how the language links the miss with the person who misses.
THE PATTERN
No human group or individual can claim a record entirely free of missing.
For there is no aligned human upon the earth who does good and does not miss the mark.Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no living one is aligned before your face.If we say that we have no falling short, we lead ourselves off the path, and the truth is not in us.THE THREAD
For all have missed the mark, and fall short of the weight of God.Romans 3:9 says everyone stands “under sin”; “have sinned” in 3:23 comes from the same Greek word family, ἁμαρτάνω (hamartanō), meaning to miss or err. The shared root links the condition to what people do: the verse’s “all” leaves no group outside the pattern.
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