Romans – A Treatise
Chapter One
A SINFUL WORLD
Scripture Reading: verses 24-32
WHEREFORE GOD ALSO GAVE THEM UP TO UNCLEANNESS THROUGH THE LUSTS OF THEIR OWN HEARTS . . . WHO CHANGED THE TRUTH OF GOD INTO A LIE, AND WORSHIPPED AND SERVED THE CREATURE MORE THAN THE CREATOR, WHO IS BLESSED FOR EVER. AMEN. FOR THIS CAUSE GOD GAVE THEM UP UNTO VILE AFFECTIONS . . . AND EVEN AS THEY DID NOT LIKE TO RETAIN GOD IN THEIR KNOWLEDGE, GOD GAVE THEM OVER TO A REPROBATE MIND, TO DO THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE NOT CONVENIENT; BEING FILLED WITH ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS, FORNICATION, WICKEDNESS, COVETOUSNESS, MALICIOUSNESS; FULL OF ENVY, MURDER, DEBATE, DECEIT, MALIGNITY; WHISPERERS, BACKBITERS, HATERS OF GOD, DESPITEFUL, PROUD, BOASTERS, INVENTORS OF EVIL THINGS, DISOBEDIENT TO PARENTS, WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING, COVENANTBREAKERS, WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION, IMPLACABLE, UNMERCIFUL: WHO KNOWING THE JUDGMENT OF GOD, THAT THEY WHICH COMMIT SUCH THINGS ARE WORTHY OF DEATH, NOT ONLY DO THE SAME, BUT HAVE PLEASURE IN THEM THAT DO THEM.
In this age, we stand amid the havoc debris sin has wrought in the world. In this passage, the Spirit of God touches at the root of the whole thing, i.e., the heart of man corrupt in its inner spring. It begins with an abandonment of God in our knowledge. Endowed with intelligence graced to him by God, man chose rather to follow Satan into paths of rebellion against his Creator. Too often we think of our career as a one-sided affair in which we are not be answerable to any outside force or person for the things we do. True, men are freewill agents, but they are also creatures and have a Creator. God made man in His own image and likeness, endowing him with a conscience so that he would be aware of his responsibilities to his Maker – there is a sense of responsibility resident in every intelligent human heart. Man chooses the way of sin, but that is not the end of the story. Sin and unrighteousness are rebellion against God and God Himself has something to say to us when we depart from the channel of His will.
These are some of the things God has to say to those who are rebels: “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness;” “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections;”1 and in verse 28, “God gave them over to a reprobate mind.”2 The first statement has to do with our bodies: “He gave us up to uncleanness.” The second has to do with our soul, the seat of affection and emotion: “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections.” The third has to do with our spirit, our capacity to know God: “God gave them over to a reprobate mind.” Thus, because of self-will, in every entity of his being the creature is now at a distance from God. We stand in the midst of a wrecked world, ravaged and ruined by the depredations of sinful man.
To follow this indictment word by word and line by line in the first chapter of Romans, brings into sharp focus the sheer desolation – moral, spiritual, and material – existing in our world today. Never in all history has man stood so helplessly amid the ruins of his own handiwork. The unqualified indictment is that when he knew God, that is, when he had the opportunity to grasp the knowledge of God by the testimony of the created things around him, he glorified Him not as God, but debased the Name of his Maker, setting graven images and bowing down in worship even before reptiles. Do not think for a moment that this refers only to unbelieving nations where the Gospel of Christ has never penetrated. Idolatry is rampant amid the proud edifices of what we call “Christian civilization.” Just as in Daniel’s day in the land of Babylon they set up a great image to which every knee must bow, so it is in our enlightened age. Man has deified himself and by so doing has forgotten the true God. Concurrent with man's exercise of religious pride, idol worship, and seeking after materialism, the world has, with frightening speed, gone down the dark declivity of moral and spiritual disintegration, until today the tide of evil carries everything before it and sin is rampant in the world.
Let us not be too objective in thinking about it. It is true in the very community in which we live. Here in our own fair land, where the sun shines and where every prospect of the handiwork of God in creation pleases the senses, man is vile. Law enforcement is incapable of stemming the rising tide of iniquity, lust, and immorality. Crime and lawlessness are everywhere; jails are filled to capacity; obnoxious social diseases are common. The unspeakable bestial practices cited in chapter one of Romans are prevalent and out of control. Such is our present civilization.
Then, as we look across the world and see the growing political unrest, the pride, prejudice, and suspicion existing between nations, and the forward march of anarchistic forces in a world that is bruised and bleeding from the ravages of war, famine, and disease, every Christian heart cries out, “Lord Jesus, come.” Here is the dread category in Romans 1:29:
Unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.3
That is the indictment of sin that lies at the door of every human heart, for we all have our own part in making this world sinful, because “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
Footnotes:
1 These words affirm the judicial nature of the penalty enforced upon ancient apostate nations which overstepped the hidden boundary between God’s mercy and his wrath and were “given up.” This is the second time in this section that the fact of God’s judicial sentence has been mentioned, and here the emphasis is upon the cause of it, “for this cause” stressing the overflowing nature of their sins. In these verses, and preceding, sexual deviation is brought to attention, not merely as sin, which it is, but also as punishment for sin, Romans 1:26 dealing with the female deviate, and Romans 1:27 with the male. How is sin the punishment of sin? In the light of these verses, the debaucheries of the depraved are in themselves a punishment well-suited to the crime of turning away from God. The horrible lusts mentioned here, burning with ever greater and greater intensity, descending constantly to lower and lower levels of uncleanness, and, at last, leaving the sinner consumed by an insatiable lust, cause this terminal condition to be one of utter pitiableness and misery. This is what is meant by the statement that such persons receive “in themselves” the reward justly due their conduct.
2 This is the third time in half a dozen verses that it is written “God gave them up.” In each instance reference is made to the principle of retribution. God’s giving people up was not capricious, but founded upon the righteous premise that such conduct deserved the adverse judgment it received. There is also observed here the concept of punishment fitting the crime, or “retribution in kind”; for it is not said merely that God gave them up, but that “even as” they had refused to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them over to a reprobate mind, making their reprobacy correspond to the reprobate act of forsaking the knowledge of God. The same thought is expressed in Romans 1:27 where the judgment was mentioned as one that “was due.” Let us briefly consider when God gives up on people. Paul has affirmed that for just reasons God gave up on some people; but that was hardly a new concept. The psalmist noted that, “My people hearkened not to my voice; and Israel would none of me. So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart, that they might walk in their own counsels” (Ps. 81:11, 12). The martyr Stephen likewise said, “But God turned and gave them up to serve the host of heaven” (Acts 7:42). The extent of man’s ruin that inevitably follows when God gives him up involves the total moral, intellectual, and physical nature of man. The affections of people are corrupted (Rom. 1:26), and they reach a state of loving darkness rather than the light (John 3:20). The intellect is darkened, and people become vain, or foolish, in their imaginations (Rom. 1:21). Also, there is finally an adverse, punitive change effected in people – “Because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved; and for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:8-12 KJV). Thus, the ruin that ensues when God gives man up is fourfold: physical, moral, intellectual, and physical. The specific sins revealed in Scripture as causing God to give man up are: [1] sinning against the light (Rom. 1:21); [2] refusing to give God thanks (Rom. 1:21); [3] vain imaginations (Rom. 1:21-22); and [4] worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25). Perhaps these specifics are but facets of a greater sin encompassing all these things, namely, that of the deification of humanity. It is the invariable and instinctive thrust of hearts filled with Satan, that they would slay God and take His place, thus partaking of the primeval sin of Eve who believed the Satanic lie that “Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). In these times, people are still deifying humanity in a thousand ways, traveling old forbidden roads to ruin, as witnessed by the widespread neglect of religion and the worship of God, and the increasing secularization of the total life of the people. Wherever people exalt self, wherever people’s words are preferred and heeded, rather than God’s Word, wherever images that are “like” people are bowed down to and consecrated, and wherever may be accepted the foolish notion that the solution of man’s problems lies within man – there the creature is worshipped and served more than the Creator. The step-by-step progression of the spiritual condition of them that turn away from God is outlined in the three short paragraphs in this part of Paul’s letter, each of them beginning with the statement that God gave them up. What happens to the worship of God under conditions prevailing after God has given man up? [1] There is the conscious neglect of God’s worship, coupled with ingratitude and failure to give God thanks for all His mercies. As a consequence of this, the mind itself is darkened (Rom. 1:21). [2] Next, idolatry ensues with the worship of things more and more abased, first, images of people, then worship of birds, beasts, and finally creeping things – all of this accompanied by sensuality. [3] God gives them up to the sensuality they have preferred, with the resultant immorality. [4] God gives them up even further to the progressive erosion of the very principle of morality, leading to perversion and depravity of both sexes. [5] Finally, God gives them up to complete and irreversible reprobacy of mind, leading to conditions in people that deserve the sentence of death to be executed upon them (Rom. 1:28-32). All of the horrors of Gentile paganism began with neglect of the worship of God and the omission of thanksgiving due the Father, and this surely suggests that such sins are not merely “faults,” but are radical and determinative. Thus, there can be nothing more important for humanity than a willing acceptance of divine light and the constant love and pursuit of it, coupled with diligent worship, prayer, and thanksgiving, which things will polarize the soul with reference to its Maker, and perpetuate the knowledge of God upon the earth. Failure to observe such an important duty will cut all the roots which nourish the flowers of every truth and virtue.
3 There are several such lists of sins in Paul’s writings: 2 Timothy 3:1-8 and Galatians 5:19-21 being just two. In one of these, Paul attributes such conduct to the “corrupted in mind,” and in the other to those practicing the “works of the flesh;” therefore, the same type of sinner is in view in each one. The lists are by no means identical, although touching in a number of places. The effort of scholars to organize or classify these lists has been rewarded with little or no success. We recommend that the reader not spend time and ingenuity in arranging into distinct classes words whose meanings and vices whose characteristics differ from each other only by a shade. Perhaps one acceptable classification of these 21 words might be the following fourfold division: (1) The first four comprehend general descriptions of evil, but with special reference to property; (2) then come eight words which speak of a disregard of proper relationships; (3) these in turn are followed by three words descriptive of general depravity of character; and (4) last of all, there are six words expressive of unprincipled worthlessness of life. In any case, the list refers to sins of inward disposition and outward act, to sins of thought, word, and deed, to wrong against self, and against neighbor, as well as against God. Regarding the last verse of this portion, it is not clear why some believe capital punishment, as inflicted by man, is excluded. The outrageous nature of the evil deeds Paul mentioned is underscored by the fact that certain people not only practiced such things but encouraged and applauded that type of conduct. It’s reasonably true that the death referred to cannot be restricted to temporal death. The Greeks themselves taught a doctrine of retribution for the wicked after death, and the apostle must have taken this into account in the statement of that which he credited the nations with knowing. Furthermore, he is here defining that in which the ordinance of God consists, and in terms of his own teaching elsewhere he cannot confine it to the judgment of temporal death. Therefore, knowledge of God’s penal judgment as it issues in the torments of the life to come is recognized by the apostle as belonging to those with whom he is now concerned. Tellingly, this final verse of Romans 1 makes it clear that a certain minimal knowledge of God remains in the most depraved. The wicked people who were Paul’s subject here were surely at the bottom of the moral totem pole; but Paul credits them with the inward recognition that God’s righteous ordinance against their sins was just, or “righteous.” This shows that the most outrageously wicked are aware of the moral contradiction in their deeds and that they inwardly acknowledge them to be deserving of death; and it is a fair conclusion that such people can have only contempt for a society that tries to explain all criminality as “sickness,” and excuses the basest of human criminality on the basis that the perpetrator needed “help.” Sin is not sickness, at least in the ordinary meaning of either word. The type of sin under view by the apostle here is an arrogant and murderous rebellion against God and all righteousness, perpetrated by a bold and vicious enemy of all truth and goodness, who is properly judged only when such a one is recognized as a malignant parasite upon the body of mankind, amply deserving capital punishment in the present life and the suffering of eternal death in the life to come – only with this provision, that if, in the prospect of his deserved earthly punishment, the criminal truly seeks forgiveness in Christ through repentance and obedient faith, the latter and greater of the two penalties might, through God’s grace and mercy, be averted. And precisely here is one of the benefits of capital punishment, that the shock of it, as the grim prospect of it is realized by the sinner, may lead to his repentance where all other measures failed. The whole paragraph of wicked deeds should be understood as characteristic of the type of character Paul had in mind, that is, in a composite sense, the hardened sinner deserving death, being understood as manifesting all these evil qualities, and not merely some of them. The life-cycle of such a man is here presented in its aggregate, beginning with disobedience of parents in his childhood, running the full gamut of evil, and producing at last a man hated by God Himself. To be sure, no chronological or other order was observed in this depiction of the death-deserving sinner, the glowing words seeming to tumble over each other in swift succession, like hot boulders out of a volcano.
