As we will begin to see in Romans chapter 2, Paul’s style of writing is called diatribe. He answers questions and objections from an imagined critic. As Paul dictates his letter to Tertius, we can easily imagine him pacing back and forth, passionately relaying his case for the righteousness of God and interrupting himself to argue against imagined objections. It’s like his thoughts are racing faster than his words and certainly faster than Tertius’ pen. There are leaps in thought and even fragmented sentences and breaks in Greek construction as he gets passionate about his topic.
Verse 1. You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things.
Paul begins his diatribe with the moralist and the Jew. We mentioned Seneca as one of the most respected and noted moralists of the day. It is easy to imagine him saying, “But Paul, I agree with you wholeheartedly. How can you condemn me?” As we will see, Paul has an answer for these. Anyone who sets himself up in judgment without first inspecting his own shortcomings is passing judgment on himself. Sounds like the whole ‘if you point at someone you have 3 fingers pointing back at you’ thing.
In high school there I had a teacher who was the epitome of left over hippie. He and I had VERY different worldviews. I remember sitting with him after class and discussing my faith and how that affects my worldview and who I am. He was very respectful and we were having a great conversation when suddenly another female student over heard some of what I was saying and butted into the conversation to tell me how close minded I was and that I shouldn’t push my views on others. She was doing the very thing that she was accusing me of and didn’t realize that my thoughts were invited by my teacher while hers weren’t. In her judgment she was passing judgment on herself.
Let’s discuss judgment….As Christians, do we have the right to judge or don’t we?
Matthew 7:2-4
For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. 3 “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? 4 How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?
Luke 6:37 Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.
These passages are both from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is giving a lot of practical Christian living advice. It is full of the concept that you reap what you sow, what goes around comes around, and treat others the way you want to be treated. The idea here isn’t don’t judge between right and wrong, but don’t be judgmental. In this list of practical ways to live without being judgmental we could find: don’t make false accusations, be gentle in correction, have mercy and be forgiving, take into consideration a person's heart and motives more than their actions, assume the best of others, etc. I imagine that Christ would have in mind the people you see standing on street corners with signs that say ‘turn or burn’. They are right that a person with an unrepentant heart, living in sin will go to hell, but how is a ‘judgmental’ sign like that going to change anything? After all, Jesus himself hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes. He didn’t condone their sin, but he loved them and gently showed them the truth. The concept is if you harshly judge others you can expect that you will be treated the same way. My mom worked with a lady that was homosexual. The only thing the lady knew about my mom was that she was a Christian and the lady treated my mom so rude and harshly all of the time. My mom couldn’t figure out why because they had hardly interacted and my mom had been nothing but nice to her. At one point my mom was able to ask her why she seemed to dislike my mom so much and if she had done something to offend this woman. The lady verified that mom was a Christian and then said, “well you hate me because I’m a lesbian.” My mom was shocked and told her not at all. She didn’t agree with the lifestyle and according to the Bible believed that it was wrong, but she liked the woman and would still be her friend. This opened a huge door of opportunity for my mom to have a great friendship with her and witness to her on an ongoing basis. The woman who could hardly stand to be around men because of prior abuse even became friends with my dad. This woman had been ‘judged’ by Christians and so my mom was being judged by her.
James 4:11-12 Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. 12 God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?
This passage is talking about judging how someone else is carrying out the law. This was common for Pharisees. They created so many rules to support the laws that they made the laws a burden. For example you could only walk so far and carry so much on the Sabbath because you were supposed to rest on that day. They made a day of rest into a burden because everyone was afraid of breaking one of the rules. It is our job to obey the law not judge if someone else is upholding it the way we think that they should. In this case if you judge someone else you are really judging the law and how it applies to you and others and that is God’s job not ours.
Romans 14:10 So why do you condemn another Christian? Why do you look down on another Christian? Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat of God.
We still do this today. We look at other’s walk with God and we decide if they are doing it right or not. This is not talking about sin. This is being petty and legalistic. One may choose not to listen to non-Christian music and look down on the person who does. A personal conviction is between you and God and we need to leave others personal convictions alone and not decided that we are serving God better than they are.
Matthew 18:15-20 “If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. 16 But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. 17 If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.
18 “I tell you the truth, whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.
19 “I also tell you this: If two of you agree here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. 20 For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”
People today say don’t judge me and they mean, don’t tell me that what I’m doing is wrong. This passage makes it clear that we are supposed to ‘judge’ or determine if someone is living in sin and approach them about it to help them get back on track. We are not supposed to publicly ridicule them or talk behind their back about it. We are supposed to lovingly and also firmly deal with the issue. The goal is restoration not mortification.
I Corinthians 5:1-5 I can hardly believe the report about the sexual immorality going on among you—something that even pagans don’t do. I am told that a man in your church is living in sin with his stepmother. 2 You are so proud of yourselves, but you should be mourning in sorrow and shame. And you should remove this man from your fellowship.
3 Even though I am not with you in person, I am with you in the Spirit. And as though I were there, I have already passed judgment on this man 4 in the name of the Lord Jesus. You must call a meeting of the church. I will be present with you in spirit, and so will the power of our Lord Jesus. 5 Then you must throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved on the day the Lord returns.
I Corinthians 5:12-13 It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. 13 God will judge those on the outside; but as the Scriptures say, “You must remove the evil person from among you.
We discussed these passages a few weeks ago, but the same idea is here. We cannot judge those outside the church, but sin in the body of Christ is not to be ignored. It is to be dealt with and if the person refuses to repent we must be decisive in our actions, but if the person repents we are to forgive and help restore them (as the Corinthians were instructed to do with this man in II Cor 2) Non-Christians can't be judged for their actions because they don't adhere to the same set of standards. It would be like getting upset at a pig for being dirty. They don't know any better.
I John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world.
This is an important one. We are instructed to judge in the sense of using discernment. We have to make sure that the ones we are listening to for spiritual instruction are speaking truth from God. We have the Holy Spirit in us to help us determine truth from lies. There are so many false prophets out there that use scripture and twist it or take it out of context to make it say what they want it to say. This is so dangerous and the sad thing is that tons of people listen to them. They hear some scripture and assume that it is being used correctly. We have to study and be familiar with God’s Word so that we will know if it’s being used incorrectly and listen to the warning of the Holy Spirit inside of us. If we stand back and say, ‘it’s not my place to judge’ we are opening ourselves up to being led astray. If we see others being led astray by false prophets we need to speak up and lovingly show them the truth through proper use of scripture.
In summation here are 5 guidelines to Christian judgment:
1.Every time the Bible commands us to judge it’s inferring on each other not on non-believers.
2.Check your attitude and motivation. A good question to ask yourself is how eager are you to confront?
3.Use Biblical commands not social expectations IE: personal convictions.
4.Judge the act not the person and be willing to forgive.
5.Examine yourself first and more stringently.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Humanity Diagnosed (Romans 1:18-32)
In vs. 15-17, as discussed in the previous blog, Paul used Habakkuk 2:4 as the premise for his letter. Before Paul goes on about God’s righteousness in the Gospel, however, he first explains the situation humanity is in. If we don’t know how bad off we are then we don’t see the need for the grace that is offered us. The rough overview is: We are in the wrong. We have broken God’s moral law. We now face the consequences of our choices and desperately need to be pardoned. We are unable to change the situation or save ourselves.
Paul begins by pointing to a group of people that all moralists of the day could agree were immoral; pagans. The term pagans is not used generally in this context to mean any non-Christian. Rather it is a form of religion that involves Animism and Polytheism. God was displaying Himself to humanity through all that He made and people were taking that glory and giving credit and praise to the created object instead of the creator. This is the definition of Animism and it is idolatry. It is clear from Greek literature and other contemporary writings of that time that paganism was out of control and disgusting. Seneca, one of the purest moralists of Rome, who died A.D. 65, says of his own time,
"All is full of criminality and vice; indeed much more of these is committed than can be remedied by force. A monstrous contest of abandoned wickedness is carried on. The lust of sin increases daily; and shame is daily more and more extinguished. Discarding respect for all that is good and sacred, lust rushes on wherever it will. Vice no longer hides itself. It stalks forth before all eyes. So public has abandoned wickedness become, and so openly does it flame up in the minds of all, that innocence is no longer seldom, but has wholly ceased to exist," (Seneca de Ira, ii. 8.)
Greek mythology and the great pantheon of gods that were worshiped show how immoral and misguided people’s religious thoughts were. Wisdom 14:12 (book written by King Solomon, but not in the Cannon of the Bible) ‘For the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them was the corruption of life.'
In vs 19-20 Paul’s talk about the visible creation being a source of knowledge about the invisible creator can be compared to his speeches at Lystra (Acts 14:15-17) and Athens (Acts 17:22-31). As we will see in this passage ignorance is not bliss. Men had the truth right in front of them but they chose to embrace the lie instead.
18. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
Why does the modern church have a hard time acknowledging God’s wrath/anger? In human terms anger or wrath gets carried out in a sinful manner. It most often springs out of pride or selfishness. With God, however, it is a response of His holiness to wicked rebellion. We are made in God’s image so every emotion we have comes from a pure form found in God. What kind of anger is ok in us? Righteous anger provokes us to make changes. It causes us to work for justice and to right wrongs. Ephesians 4:26 says, “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.
Although wrath is an aspect of God’s personality it is one that He is slow to act on. In the Old Testament it feels like God is more wrathful than in the New Testament. Has God changed? Isaiah calls God acting on his wrath as His ‘strange deed’ (Is 28:21). The Old Testament is a huge span of time while the New Testament is a focused time slot. God warns His people over and over and over to change their ways. It's not until they continue to rebel despite the warnings that God pours out His wrath. Even when He does, however, it is short lived and as soon as there is repentance God begins to restore His people. God’s wrath sets the stage for His work of mercy which we see Him pouring out more often on those who don’t deserve it.
The truth that is being suppressed by their wickedness is the truth about God as we will see in vs 25.
19. since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
(CF: Romans 2:14-15) There are two verbs in this phrase: literally ‘being understood and perceived’. One refers to physical sight and the other to intelligence. Basically, we have physically seen with our eyes and have been able to understand with our minds enough from nature to tell us that there is a Creator and that the glory is not in the created thing itself.
Psalm 19:1-4 says, The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
21. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
Folly doesn’t mean just that they were intellectually challenged. It means that they were moral idiots. There are some very “intelligent” people out there that are looking at the clear evidence of the existence of God and because they cannot stand to assent to a higher power are twisting the evidence to fit their pre-conceived notions. Nick went to listen to Richard Dawkins speak at IU last year. The guy had so much animosity against God fearers that he was making himself sound like an idiot as he ranted and raved and didn’t cover any facts or statistics. He was just name calling.
23. and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
There are many cultures both then and now that worship idols, but even the Israelites chose to trade in what they knew about our glorious God for a golden calf. Psalm 106:20 They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. There is a distinct reversal of the verses in Gen 1:20-26 where God creates the creatures from every classification and makes man in His image to rule over them. Here we are created in the very image of God and put in dominion over the earth to care for it and we instead begin to worship these creatures and even make idols in our own image.
24. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
(CF. vs 28) This language is used in several places in the Bible like in Psalm 81:12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. What does this mean? Is God causing them to sin? C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain (1940), pp. 115 says, the lost ‘enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved.’ God will call us and pursue us, but when we continue to reject Him and demand our own way He will eventually allow us to dive head long into our sin. We begin to experience all of the consequences of that sin. We can see this happening to the Israelites over and over in the OT. What happened as a result? When they were no longer under the protection of the Lord and they hit bottom they began to turn their hearts back to God. While the choice to repent is still theirs, sometimes a person has to hit bottom in order to see their need for God. Another example of this is I Corinthians 5:5 where it says, 'hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord'. Paul is instructing the church to stop harboring a man who is blatantly sinning and is unrepentant. The hope is that if he is left to the full consequences of his sinful acts, the suffering will cause him to turn back to Christ. In this particular case it is also the act of excommunication that causes that man to recognize his sin and need for repentance.
25. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Some versions say, ‘they traded the truth’. This is not language that implies they were mistaken or tricked or accidentally believed a lie. They knew what they were trading in and they chose the lie over the truth. Why would they do that? II Thessalonians 2:10-12 says, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. They choose to ignore truth so God gives them the thing that they are seeking after and they begin to believe the lie and fall deeper and deeper into their own delusion. A good example (a la Jerry Springer) might be a husband or wife who so badly doesn’t want to admit that their own actions caused the end of their marriage that they start making up lies about the other person and eventually start truly believing their own lies. They cannot see that they are to blame.
26. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other.
Makes me think of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII did not disagree with the Catholic church’s teaching, he just wanted the right to divorce his wife Catherine and marry Anne. He began a new church just so he could marry Anne. Sexual desire isn’t the only reason that people choose to ignore the truth of God’s Word and believe a lie, but it is a very common reason. They do not want to be held accountable for their actions. They want to believe that they don’t answer to anyone, but themselves. In Greek literature even the pantheon of god’s themselves were promiscuous. If those are the gods you serve, why would you have to behave any differently? Pastor Ray Pritchard of Keep Believing Ministries in Elmhurst, IL. has an interesting comment:
"Why is illicit sex singled out as the first major step away from God? The answer is not hard to find. Sex is closely related to the human spirit. The way you conduct yourself sexually is a good barometer of what's going on in your heart. After all, what is sex but the desire to be worshiped by another person? Sound strange? It shouldn't. When two people come together, they are seeking much more than physical release. At a very deep level, they are looking for love, acceptance, fulfillment, freedom and meaning in life. By giving themselves to someone else, they hope (and secretly pray) that through this self-giving, they will discover a way to fill the void within. They "worship" through sex hoping someone will "worship" them back. Sex and worship are thus closely related in their ultimate purpose. It is as if God is pulling back the covers in order to show us how empty our hearts are without him. By turning to illicit sex, instead of fulfilling our dreams we only expose the emptiness within. It never works out like we hope it will. Immorality never satisfies because it always involves deception. We lie to each other, we lie to ourselves, and ultimately we lie to God."
27. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.
This speaks of the self-destructive nature of sin. While people look for fulfillment they receive emptiness, hopelessness, and disease. We are not saying that this sin is worse than all other sin or that it alone has physical consequences. All sin has consequences. The point is that the penalty is not just a spiritual one received after death. There are consequences for our actions now. Most of the time we have to live with those consequences for the rest of our lives even if we repent and come back to God.
28. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. 31 They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.
While verses 26-27 point out a very externally obvious indicator that the pagans had rejected the truth of God displayed in creation and instead had believed a lie, verses 28-30 give a long list of other less immediately obvious, but just as damning evidence. Another good interpretation of the word ‘foolish’ thinking is ‘counterfeit’ thinking. It is not foolish in the sense of silly. It is a fake trying to impersonate the real thing. It is fraudulent. Verse 31 follows up with they refuse to understand. My mom used to say of her dad, “Don’t confuse him with the facts. His mind is made up.”
How interesting that disobeying their parents rounds out the list of evil behavior. In today’s society it sounds almost as silly as saying, ‘and they don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom’; distasteful, but not as serious as murder or hate. Why does this make the list? If we can't obey our parents then we certainly can't obey God and vice versa. It indicates rebellion against God given authority. The culture of this time was honor based. There was so much more than just concern for personal consequence. People weighed their actions by how it would affect their family's standing in society. To dishonor your family was a huge deal and so it follows that disobeying your parents was a huge deal.
32. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
Talk about hedonism! They know the consequences, but are so self-absorbed and devoted to self-gratification that they don’t care. It is not sin of ignorance. It is sin of blatant rebellion. It’s not uncommon to hear people say things like ‘live fast, die young’ in today’s society. Consequences mean nothing. Not only are they going to be held accountable for their own actions, they will be held accountable for leading others astray.
John Piper refers to this section as ‘Committing Spiritual Suicide and Taking Others Along... In other words, the end-point of depravity is not just the suicidal love affair with sin, but the desire to bring others with you to destruction. It's not just that people choose death for themselves in the passion of sin, but that they become Dr. Kevorkians (a medical doctor who advocated "euthanasia") at the spiritual level, and assist others in eternal self-destruction by approving their sin."! (Romans 1:28-32 Doing and Endorsing Evil)
Pastor Ray Stedman writes that...
Knowing that harm is coming from their wickedness, nevertheless they attempt to spread it more fully. They invade the field of education; they dominate the media; they seek legal status for their wickedness and defy all attempts at control. As you can well recognize, this is what is going on today. (Romans 1:24-32 The Deepening Darkness)
If I can make everyone around me join into my depravity and make society give it legal status then I won't feel guilty for what I am doing.
Isaiah 57 (The Message) fits very well with this description of society.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2057&version=MSG
Paul begins by pointing to a group of people that all moralists of the day could agree were immoral; pagans. The term pagans is not used generally in this context to mean any non-Christian. Rather it is a form of religion that involves Animism and Polytheism. God was displaying Himself to humanity through all that He made and people were taking that glory and giving credit and praise to the created object instead of the creator. This is the definition of Animism and it is idolatry. It is clear from Greek literature and other contemporary writings of that time that paganism was out of control and disgusting. Seneca, one of the purest moralists of Rome, who died A.D. 65, says of his own time,
"All is full of criminality and vice; indeed much more of these is committed than can be remedied by force. A monstrous contest of abandoned wickedness is carried on. The lust of sin increases daily; and shame is daily more and more extinguished. Discarding respect for all that is good and sacred, lust rushes on wherever it will. Vice no longer hides itself. It stalks forth before all eyes. So public has abandoned wickedness become, and so openly does it flame up in the minds of all, that innocence is no longer seldom, but has wholly ceased to exist," (Seneca de Ira, ii. 8.)
Greek mythology and the great pantheon of gods that were worshiped show how immoral and misguided people’s religious thoughts were. Wisdom 14:12 (book written by King Solomon, but not in the Cannon of the Bible) ‘For the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them was the corruption of life.'
In vs 19-20 Paul’s talk about the visible creation being a source of knowledge about the invisible creator can be compared to his speeches at Lystra (Acts 14:15-17) and Athens (Acts 17:22-31). As we will see in this passage ignorance is not bliss. Men had the truth right in front of them but they chose to embrace the lie instead.
18. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
Why does the modern church have a hard time acknowledging God’s wrath/anger? In human terms anger or wrath gets carried out in a sinful manner. It most often springs out of pride or selfishness. With God, however, it is a response of His holiness to wicked rebellion. We are made in God’s image so every emotion we have comes from a pure form found in God. What kind of anger is ok in us? Righteous anger provokes us to make changes. It causes us to work for justice and to right wrongs. Ephesians 4:26 says, “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.
Although wrath is an aspect of God’s personality it is one that He is slow to act on. In the Old Testament it feels like God is more wrathful than in the New Testament. Has God changed? Isaiah calls God acting on his wrath as His ‘strange deed’ (Is 28:21). The Old Testament is a huge span of time while the New Testament is a focused time slot. God warns His people over and over and over to change their ways. It's not until they continue to rebel despite the warnings that God pours out His wrath. Even when He does, however, it is short lived and as soon as there is repentance God begins to restore His people. God’s wrath sets the stage for His work of mercy which we see Him pouring out more often on those who don’t deserve it.
The truth that is being suppressed by their wickedness is the truth about God as we will see in vs 25.
19. since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
(CF: Romans 2:14-15) There are two verbs in this phrase: literally ‘being understood and perceived’. One refers to physical sight and the other to intelligence. Basically, we have physically seen with our eyes and have been able to understand with our minds enough from nature to tell us that there is a Creator and that the glory is not in the created thing itself.
Psalm 19:1-4 says, The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
21. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
Folly doesn’t mean just that they were intellectually challenged. It means that they were moral idiots. There are some very “intelligent” people out there that are looking at the clear evidence of the existence of God and because they cannot stand to assent to a higher power are twisting the evidence to fit their pre-conceived notions. Nick went to listen to Richard Dawkins speak at IU last year. The guy had so much animosity against God fearers that he was making himself sound like an idiot as he ranted and raved and didn’t cover any facts or statistics. He was just name calling.
23. and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
There are many cultures both then and now that worship idols, but even the Israelites chose to trade in what they knew about our glorious God for a golden calf. Psalm 106:20 They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. There is a distinct reversal of the verses in Gen 1:20-26 where God creates the creatures from every classification and makes man in His image to rule over them. Here we are created in the very image of God and put in dominion over the earth to care for it and we instead begin to worship these creatures and even make idols in our own image.
24. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
(CF. vs 28) This language is used in several places in the Bible like in Psalm 81:12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. What does this mean? Is God causing them to sin? C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain (1940), pp. 115 says, the lost ‘enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved.’ God will call us and pursue us, but when we continue to reject Him and demand our own way He will eventually allow us to dive head long into our sin. We begin to experience all of the consequences of that sin. We can see this happening to the Israelites over and over in the OT. What happened as a result? When they were no longer under the protection of the Lord and they hit bottom they began to turn their hearts back to God. While the choice to repent is still theirs, sometimes a person has to hit bottom in order to see their need for God. Another example of this is I Corinthians 5:5 where it says, 'hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord'. Paul is instructing the church to stop harboring a man who is blatantly sinning and is unrepentant. The hope is that if he is left to the full consequences of his sinful acts, the suffering will cause him to turn back to Christ. In this particular case it is also the act of excommunication that causes that man to recognize his sin and need for repentance.
25. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Some versions say, ‘they traded the truth’. This is not language that implies they were mistaken or tricked or accidentally believed a lie. They knew what they were trading in and they chose the lie over the truth. Why would they do that? II Thessalonians 2:10-12 says, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. They choose to ignore truth so God gives them the thing that they are seeking after and they begin to believe the lie and fall deeper and deeper into their own delusion. A good example (a la Jerry Springer) might be a husband or wife who so badly doesn’t want to admit that their own actions caused the end of their marriage that they start making up lies about the other person and eventually start truly believing their own lies. They cannot see that they are to blame.
26. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other.
Makes me think of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII did not disagree with the Catholic church’s teaching, he just wanted the right to divorce his wife Catherine and marry Anne. He began a new church just so he could marry Anne. Sexual desire isn’t the only reason that people choose to ignore the truth of God’s Word and believe a lie, but it is a very common reason. They do not want to be held accountable for their actions. They want to believe that they don’t answer to anyone, but themselves. In Greek literature even the pantheon of god’s themselves were promiscuous. If those are the gods you serve, why would you have to behave any differently? Pastor Ray Pritchard of Keep Believing Ministries in Elmhurst, IL. has an interesting comment:
"Why is illicit sex singled out as the first major step away from God? The answer is not hard to find. Sex is closely related to the human spirit. The way you conduct yourself sexually is a good barometer of what's going on in your heart. After all, what is sex but the desire to be worshiped by another person? Sound strange? It shouldn't. When two people come together, they are seeking much more than physical release. At a very deep level, they are looking for love, acceptance, fulfillment, freedom and meaning in life. By giving themselves to someone else, they hope (and secretly pray) that through this self-giving, they will discover a way to fill the void within. They "worship" through sex hoping someone will "worship" them back. Sex and worship are thus closely related in their ultimate purpose. It is as if God is pulling back the covers in order to show us how empty our hearts are without him. By turning to illicit sex, instead of fulfilling our dreams we only expose the emptiness within. It never works out like we hope it will. Immorality never satisfies because it always involves deception. We lie to each other, we lie to ourselves, and ultimately we lie to God."
27. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.
This speaks of the self-destructive nature of sin. While people look for fulfillment they receive emptiness, hopelessness, and disease. We are not saying that this sin is worse than all other sin or that it alone has physical consequences. All sin has consequences. The point is that the penalty is not just a spiritual one received after death. There are consequences for our actions now. Most of the time we have to live with those consequences for the rest of our lives even if we repent and come back to God.
28. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. 31 They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.
While verses 26-27 point out a very externally obvious indicator that the pagans had rejected the truth of God displayed in creation and instead had believed a lie, verses 28-30 give a long list of other less immediately obvious, but just as damning evidence. Another good interpretation of the word ‘foolish’ thinking is ‘counterfeit’ thinking. It is not foolish in the sense of silly. It is a fake trying to impersonate the real thing. It is fraudulent. Verse 31 follows up with they refuse to understand. My mom used to say of her dad, “Don’t confuse him with the facts. His mind is made up.”
How interesting that disobeying their parents rounds out the list of evil behavior. In today’s society it sounds almost as silly as saying, ‘and they don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom’; distasteful, but not as serious as murder or hate. Why does this make the list? If we can't obey our parents then we certainly can't obey God and vice versa. It indicates rebellion against God given authority. The culture of this time was honor based. There was so much more than just concern for personal consequence. People weighed their actions by how it would affect their family's standing in society. To dishonor your family was a huge deal and so it follows that disobeying your parents was a huge deal.
32. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
Talk about hedonism! They know the consequences, but are so self-absorbed and devoted to self-gratification that they don’t care. It is not sin of ignorance. It is sin of blatant rebellion. It’s not uncommon to hear people say things like ‘live fast, die young’ in today’s society. Consequences mean nothing. Not only are they going to be held accountable for their own actions, they will be held accountable for leading others astray.
John Piper refers to this section as ‘Committing Spiritual Suicide and Taking Others Along... In other words, the end-point of depravity is not just the suicidal love affair with sin, but the desire to bring others with you to destruction. It's not just that people choose death for themselves in the passion of sin, but that they become Dr. Kevorkians (a medical doctor who advocated "euthanasia") at the spiritual level, and assist others in eternal self-destruction by approving their sin."! (Romans 1:28-32 Doing and Endorsing Evil)
Pastor Ray Stedman writes that...
Knowing that harm is coming from their wickedness, nevertheless they attempt to spread it more fully. They invade the field of education; they dominate the media; they seek legal status for their wickedness and defy all attempts at control. As you can well recognize, this is what is going on today. (Romans 1:24-32 The Deepening Darkness)
If I can make everyone around me join into my depravity and make society give it legal status then I won't feel guilty for what I am doing.
Isaiah 57 (The Message) fits very well with this description of society.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2057&version=MSG
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