August 21, 2000
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Sept. 10 Lesson
___By Charles Walton
Wrath & salvation are holy responses of a loving God
___Romans 1:18-32
___18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For 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 men are without excuse.
___21For 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. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
___24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
___26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves due penalty for their perversion.
___28Futhermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
___When I was a student in high school, I took great interest in the guitar. I was soon visiting music stores in our city learning all I could about this instrument and music in general. My limited income prevented me from purchasing many of the things I wanted.
___One day I left a music store without paying for a capo I had been admiring. A capo helps a guitarist change keys quickly without playing new chords. Driving home I was overwhelmed by guilt and shame. I had not only stolen the capo, my younger brother had been with me and saw what I had done. Too late to return to the store, I spent a sleepless night regretting my deed. Early the next day, I returned to the store, confessed to the clerk and paid for the capo.
___The Holy Spirit led me to repentance and to restitution. But what happens to us as adults when we refuse to repent of our sins under the conviction of the Holy Spirit or in the face of what we know as wrong? This is the focus of today's study.
___Righteousness and wrath
___Our study begins with God's "righteous attitude toward sin" (wrath), that opposes and condemns the "godlessness and wickedness" of all humanity. God's ultimate purpose regarding man is not condemnation but salvation. Our salvation is accomplished through Jesus Christ and is available to any (all) who receive him by faith. However, Paul confronts his readers with the truth that the same holiness of God which produces the offer of salvation also produces the awfulness of wrath.
___Notice that both salvation and wrath are the responses of a holy God toward the unholiness of humankind. God's wrath should never be compared to human anger. God's wrath is his attitude toward the harm caused by our sin. All of us are equally guilty before God, but all of us have equal access to God.
___We should notice the two expressions used to refer to the evil of man's heart. "Godlessness" refers to that form of evil which is religious in character. "Wickedness" is a reference to that which is moral in character. The phrase "suppress the truth by their wickedness ..." is somewhat awkward in Greek, but the idea is simple: When we are evil, we "hold back" God's goodness in our lives and ultimately in the created order. Our sin produces a faulty, blemished image of God for those who view God through our lives.
___The wrath of God is "revealed" against those who practice idolatry and immorality because their sin is not committed in ignorance, but by choice. Unlike the animals, humans have the ability to discern godliness (regardless of cultural influences) and the capacity to live by godly principles.
___Wisdom and foolishness
___In spite of the gift from God to understand and follow godliness, humankind has chosen "darkness." Paul means the evil that we have embraced has led us to not only ignore God, but to purposely sin against God.
___The phrase "For although they knew God ..." is not a reference to the unique knowledge of God available to believers through Jesus Christ, but to the more generic understanding of God in creation. All around us the universe sings God's praises. We are offered the privilege of joining the praise band. Instead, we choose to sing discordant notes. In addition, we claim by our flawed reasoning that when the notes are sour and the melody is flat it is God who is singing off-key.
___A few years ago, the bank my daughter used for checking privileges made an honest mistake with her account. Their error caused her no small embarrassment. Because her college studies did not give her time to solve the problem, I went to the bank for her. I asked to see the branch manager, and with a bit too much indignation, pointed out the error. The nice gentleman tried to interrupt my lecture several times, but I would not be silenced. Finally I demanded an answer. "I am right, am I not?" I asked. "Yes, sir," he replied, "You are. However, you are in the wrong bank. Your daughter's bank is across the street." How quickly the mighty fall!
___The arrogance of fallen man would be laughable were it not so ruinous. We demand to be right even in our sin. We have cast God out of his glory and demanded to sit in his seat of authority. We are in the wrong place, with the wrong spirit, demanding the wrong things. Our foolishness has brought even more sin. Removing the Creator as the object of worship, we replaced him with images of animals. We who were created "a little lower than the angels" (Psalm 8) insist on worshipping "creeping things" (KJV). The apostle is not railing against primeval religious expression--the beliefs of ancient cultures--but against rebellion and foolishness even though the participants "knew God" (v. 21).
___Truth and lies
___Paul reminds his readers that there inevitably arrives a day when continuous rebellion comes full circle and we are "given over" to the lie we have demanded. Seven hundred and fifty years before Christ, the prophet Amos reminded his audience that God will not tolerate sin forever--not even from pagan peoples (Amos, chapters 1 and 2). Paul echoes the preaching of this great prophet ("For three sins, yea for four ...") as he indicates the time of retribution is at hand. If we choose to worship something (anything) less than God, then we reap that which is false and superficial in all of life.
___John Murray, in his commentary on Romans in the New International series, writes, "The mind of man is never a religious vacuum; if there is an absence of the true, there is always the presence of the false ..." (p. 42). Paul makes a similar assertion when he speaks of "exchanging the truth of God for a lie ..." (v. 25). The emphasis is on the willful believing of a lie, that is, the willful believing of the opposite of the truth that God has made known about the world and about himself. Such sinfulness has tragic and eternal consequences.
___The phrase, "God gave them over ..." does not mean God "cast them" into sexual impurity as punishment for false worship. Instead, Paul means God abandoned them in the place where their false religion had already taken them. Unlike the prodigal who "woke up" and left his sin (Luke 15), these are still in their sin and still in the pigpen.
___A few weeks ago, Texas officials conceded the state lottery had failed to yield anticipated revenues. The lottery is a failure. Their solution? Add four more numbers increasing the difficulty of winning to one in more than 25 million. The rationale? The payoffs will be larger and more people will be enticed to play. The result? No one knows, but if the effort fails, would this sort of logic dictate the addition of even more numbers? With this sort of "wisdom" in mind, return to the first line of verse 24, "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts. ..." God does not need to cast us into foolishness. We are there already.
___Love and lust
___The author will now clearly state what he means. Those things to which sinful humanity has been abandoned ("given over") are "passions of dishonor." Though he writes with Christian modesty, he leaves little to doubt. "Even their women ..." is an attempt to emphasize the complete degradation which is produced by the homosexual lifestyle. The emphasis on "even" indicates this bastion of holiness and morality in society (women) has been invaded, and some have been caught up in this sin. The stress of the verse is on the "unnaturalness" of such behavior.
___Notice that verse 24 and verse 26 begin with references to a cause. In both cases, we must return to verse 21 to find the source of God's displeasure. Sexual perversions, accepted as "normal" in society, are the results of the refusal of society to "glorify" the God we know in our hearts. Notice Paul's words are for every society, not just those influenced by the Christian faith. The practice of homosexuality is shown as especially degenerate, leading to a "depraved mind" (v. 28). Homosexuality is ultimately lust not love, and can never satisfy the human need for sexual expression.
___After a long list of "every kind of wickedness" (v. 29), Paul indicates the final insult toward God is not only that individuals reject the truths of God, but encourage (approve) others to reject God also (v. 32). The picture is one of revaluing God's ordinances in such a way that good becomes evil and evil good. The shame of such a society is that its members are led down the path of destruction by those who are not satisfied with their own sin.
___Paul's message is that we should be ashamed of our sin, not of our Creator. Notice how triumphant and noble verse 16 now sounds. "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes ..." The gospel can never be shamed by this sinful world. On the contrary, the world is always shamed by the gospel.
For thought and discussion
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