<p>3:9- see on Rom. 2:4.</p><p><i>What then? Are we better than they?</i>- RV &ldquo;in better case&rdquo;, do we have a better legal case than them? The &ldquo;they&rdquo; could be the Gentiles- as if Paul is saying that we Jews have no better case than the Gentiles. In this case our retranslation of Rom. 3:1 see there would be the more justified- for Paul would be saying that actually Jews have no real advantage over Gentiles. But the &ldquo;they&rdquo; contextually would more comfortably refer to the unbelieving world (3:6). We have no better case than them, because both Jew and Gentile are all sinners.</p><p><i><br /></i><i>No, in no way. For we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Gentiles</i>- To legally accuse, RV &ldquo;laid to the charge&rdquo;. It is in fact God who does the accusing; but Paul for a moment sees us as on His side, accusing all humanity, ourselves included, of sin.</p><p><i><br /></i><i>That they are all under sin-</i>Paul alludes here when he says that &ldquo;I am carnal, sold under sin&rdquo; (Rom. 7:14). And yet he also draws the contrast between being &ldquo;under the law&rdquo; and now after baptism being &ldquo;under grace&rdquo; (Rom. 6:14). Paul sees himself from outside himself when he says that he has legally accused all men of being sinners- and he includes himself in that mass of humanity. Repeatedly, he wishes to emphasize that he too is a sinner and not, as the teacher, somehow separate from sinful humanity. He sets a great example to every teacher and preacher in the ecclesia. For he previously warned against the human tendency to assume that what happens to all men will somehow not happen to&nbsp;<i>me</i>&nbsp;(Rom. 2:2,3).&nbsp;<br />Paul speaks of both Jew and Gentile as being &ldquo;under the power of sin&rdquo; (Rom. 3:9 RSV) &ndash; which in itself suggests that he saw &ldquo;sin&rdquo; personified as a power. If sin is indeed personified by the Bible writers &ndash; what real objection can there be to the idea of this personification being at times referred to as &lsquo;Satan&rsquo;, the adversary? It has been argued that Paul was well aware of the concept of dualism which the Jews had picked up in Babylonian captivity, i.e. the idea that there is a &lsquo;Satan&rsquo; god opposed to the true God; but he reapplies those terms to the conflict he so often describes between flesh and spirit, which goes on within the human mind.<br />3:10 The quotation from Ps. 14:1-3; 53:1-3 is about the fools who say in their heart that there is no God. Yet Paul applies this to every one of us, himself included. What he&rsquo;s doing here is similar to what he does at the end of Romans 1- he speaks of the grossest sins such as lesbianism and reasons that we are all in essence guilty and condemned as serious sinners before God. Here he quotes passages which speak of effective atheism and applies them to us all, himself included- even though atheism was abhorrent to the Jews, and Paul may have seemed the last person to be an atheist. But the &lsquo;atheism&rsquo; of Ps. 14:1 occurs within the psychological thought processes of the human mind- the fool says in his heart that there is no God. In the context of Romans, Paul is arguing that we call God a liar when we disbelieve His offer of justification and salvation. To deny this is to effectively say in our hearts that there is no God. If God is, then He is a Saviour God. To deny that He will save me is effectively to say He doesn&rsquo;t exist; for a God who won&rsquo;t save me may as well not exist. Far too many people claim some level of belief in God&rsquo;s existence, but in their hearts deny Him, in that they personally doubt whether His promised salvation is really true for me.</p>