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