Romans 3:23

‘For all have sinned, and are falling short of the glory of God,'

The reason why this righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ is necessary is now given. It is because, as had been demonstrated in Romans 1:18 to Romans 3:20, all have sinned and are continually revealing it by falling short of the glory of God. Note the change of tense. All ‘have sinned' (compare Romans 5:12), thus being in a state of sin, and they are now continually falling short of His glory. Here the ‘all' is universal. It covers all men and women. The equating of sin with falling short of the glory of God brings out the root nature of sin. It is to come short of what God intended, and still intends, that we should be. It is to come short of absolute perfection, to come short of divine purity. It is to come short of God's moral glory. It is to fail to be God-like. Any man who claims that he has not sinned must recognise that he is talking about achieving complete God-likeness. For the glory of God is His glory as revealed in the beauty of holiness (1 Chronicles 16:29; Psalms 29:2). We may consider in relation to this verse Isaiah 43:7, ‘I have created him for my glory', in other words so that through his perfection God might be glorified.

We may see examples of this in Isaiah 6:1 where Isaiah experienced the glory of the LORD and cried out, ‘woe is me, for I am totally undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I come from a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts'. And again in Job 42:5 where the sight of the glory of the LORD made Job aware of his utter sinfulness, so that he cried out, ‘I abhor myself, and repent in sackcloth and ashes'. Compare also, ‘let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD Who exercises covenant love, justice and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the LORD' (Jeremiah 9:24). See also Psalms 90:16. So the glory of God is found in His love, justice and righteousness.

These ideas may be related to the Jewish tradition that in the Garden Adam shone with the glory of God, something which he lost when he sinned, thus indicating that all fall short of man's original innocence, an idea to which all Jews would have given consent. But it is questionable whether Paul has this in mind here.

Others see doxa tou theou as signifying ‘the praise of God' (compare John 12:43) or ‘the approbation of God'. The idea then is that they are falling short of being what God can praise (compare 1 Corinthians 4:5), which really contains the same idea as above.