Does Romans 3:23 say "We all ***DO*** sin and fall short of the glory of God? Why does the next vs say "Being justified freely..." (v24)?

When Socrates was sentenced to death for his philosophical investigations, and for blasphemy for challenging the gods of the city — and he accepted his death — he did say, "well, if we are lucky, perhaps I'll be able to hold conversation with other great thinkers and philosophers and doubters too."

 In other words the discussion about what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble, what is pure, and what is true could always go on.

Why is that important? Why would I like to do that? Because that's the only conversation worth having.

And whether it goes on or not after I die, I don't know. But I do know that that's the conversation I want to have while I'm still alive.

Which means that to me, the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can't give way, is an offer of something not worth having.

I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don't know anything like enough yet; that I haven't understood enough; that I can't know enough; that I'm always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

And I'd urge you to look at... those people who tell you, at your age, that you're dead till you believe as they do — what a terrible thing to be telling to children!

And that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority — don't think of that as a gift. Think of it as a poisoned chalice. Push it aside however tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

Salvation is not a one-time event. It's a process -- we are "being transformed" from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18). We were saved by the death and life-giving resurrection of Jesus Christ; we are saved by God's grace (Eph 2:8) ; we shall be saved (Rom 5:10) by his life.

Search the scriptures -- see that God's redemption of his beloved creatures is past, present, and future. We can point to a time when we first made a decision to follow Christ -- but that's neither the beginning of salvation nor the end of it. It is ongoing. That's why repentance is also ongoing -- to stay on the path, to get up and dust ourselves off when we fall, to take the hand of God again, and resume the journey to our final home in God.

Forgive me.

/Orthodox

Do you mean to tell all of us here that you haven't had so much as a sinful thought since your holy spirit baptism?

If you have, and we all know you have--we've seen the results of some of them, you are also STILL a sinner--just like the rest of us.

The difference between you and someone who hasn't been "baptized" is that you can repent and rid yourself of all the sins you commit....and that's what Paul is referring to. As believers, we shouldn't want to live a whole life of sin, but that doesn't mean we won't, on occasion, commit a sin or two....for which we have to repent.

UPDATE: Most of us here are saying the same thing--you admit in the comments to this question that you do "sin." So that is not the argument.

The problem is the definition of the term "sinner." Most of us here are using the term in it's most basic English version--one who sins--which is all of us. Norine is using the term in the Biblical sense. A "sinner" being someone who has not repented, and lives still "in sin."

Norine sins, but she is saved and can repent. Her use of the word "sinner" refers to someone who has not yet been saved, and still needs to repent. I think we're all on the same page given these differences.

Water baptism?

............

Read on. The rest of the verse and the next explain it.

we all do.

this includes you.

"All have sinned and [DO] fall short of the glory of God." One contributor, N., likes to edit scripture as suggested here.