Aren't most people good enough?

The short answer Settled

No one is. Every person has sinned and stands accountable to God, and God's law clears no one on his own record. Sin brings death, and death has spread to every person, because every person has sinned.

How it began

God made the first man and woman and gave them the whole garden, with one exception: "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17). The command was plain, and so was the warning.

They ate (Genesis 3:6). Then God called them to answer for it. "Where are you?" He asked the man (Genesis 3:9), and then, "Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" (Genesis 3:11). Each passed the blame along, and each admitted the same thing in the same words: "and I ate" (Genesis 3:12-13). From the first sin on, people have been accountable to God for what they do.

All under sin

Paul brings the whole human race into one courtroom: "we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin" (Romans 3:9). The Jews had God's law and the Greeks did not, and neither is left out. He gathers the verdict from the Old Testament: "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10), and "There is none who does good, no, not one" (Romans 3:12).

The law cannot lift anyone out of this. Whatever the law says, it says "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God" (Romans 3:19). Paul draws the conclusion: "by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20). The law shows a person his sin. It does not clear him of it.

Then Paul sums it up: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). "Have sinned" looks at what has been done. "Fall short" is present tense: it is where every person stands now. An Olympic long jumper will land a good deal farther out than a man who trips at the edge, but neither one is getting across the Grand Canyon. Some people are better than others. None reaches the glory of God.

Sin brings death

Death came in with sin. God named it before anyone had sinned: "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Paul traces what followed: "through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned" (Romans 5:12). Death is not presented as a neutral part of nature. It is what sin brings, and it has reached everyone.

Paul puts it in terms of pay: "the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). Death is earned. Life is given.

The usual objection

Many people hold that salvation is for the especially wicked. A decent person who works hard, treats people fairly, and perhaps goes to church has nothing to be saved from; he can stand before God on his own conduct. On this view Genesis is an old story with no bearing on anyone now, and death is simply part of nature.

Scripture does not grade on that scale. Its charge includes the religious and the decent. Jews who had God's law stood under sin together with Greeks who did not. The law gave no one a way to stand on his own record. Instead it stopped every mouth. The question is not whether a person is better than others, but whether he has sinned, and "all have sinned." Nor is death just nature. God attached it to sin before the first sin, and it reached every person because every person sinned.

The words behind it