main point with Paul.

In verse 23 the same fact of universal experience is contemplated as
both positive sin and negative falling short of the 'glory' (which
here seems to mean, as in John v. 44, xii. 43, approbation from God).
'There is no distinction,' but all varieties of condition, character,
attainment, are alike in this, that the fatal taint is upon them all.
'We have, all of us, one human heart.' We are alike in physical
necessities, in primal instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the
common experience of sinfulness.

Paul does not mean to bring all varieties of character down to one
dead level, but he does mean to assert that none is free from the
taint. A man need only be honest in self-examination to endorse the
statement, so far as he himself is concerned. The Gospel would be
better understood if the fact of universal sinfulness were more
deeply felt. Its superiority to all schemes for making everybody
happy by rearrangements of property, or increase of culture, would be
seen through; and the only cure for human misery would be discerned
to be what cures universal sinfulness.

III. So we have next Paul's view of the remedy for man's sin. That is
stated in general terms in verses 21, 22. Into a world of sinful men
comes streaming the light of a 'righteousness of God.' That
expression is here used to mean a moral state of conformity with
God's will, imparted by God. The great, joyful message, which Paul
felt himself sent to proclaim, is that the true way to reach the
state of conformity which law requires, and which the
unsophisticated, universal conscience acknowledges not to have been
reached, is the way of faith.