“and the way of peace they do not know.”
Romans 3:17 (NIV)
In Romans 3, Paul stacks layer upon layer of evidence from the Scriptures for what he said in verse 9: Jews and Gentiles alike, we are all under sin. Most of these quotes come from David’s Psalms, songs the Jewish people sang that testified of our evil and unrighteousness. Woven into those layers is a word of prophecy through Isaiah that shows us the root issue.
Isaiah 59 says we hurry into sin. We rush into it, we run quickly to do evil, and our thoughts are evil. If you look behind us, at what we’ve done in the past, ruin and destruction stand out. This is the big why: the way of peace they do not know. God had a path intended for us, a way of speaking, thinking, and doing that produces peace instead of ruin. But we’ve turned God’s way into our own crooked paths.
Those roads will never let us know peace, because they aren’t God’s path; they’re leading us further away from Him. Everything around us is dark, like we’re blind, groping even in the brightest day and stumbling as if it were night, longing for justice and deliverance. But it’s far away, because this crooked road lacks justice, peace, and light.
Here’s the key in Isaiah 59:12: our offenses, our sins, our rejections of God are many. Our unrighteousness and evil deeds testify against us. But when we recognize our offenses and confess our sin, God can come. He can put us on the way of peace and restore us to His path. Paul makes the evidence of our sin abundant, so we’ll see our need for saving, for cleansing, and for a righteousness we will never earn. It is only by the blood of Jesus that we can be made righteous and restored to the way of peace God designed for us. And it begins with acknowledging our iniquities.