ROMANS
CHAPTER 1

¹Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God-- ²the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures ³regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, ⁴and who through the Spirit^[1] of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God^[2] by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. ⁵Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. ⁶And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
⁷To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice seven points in these first seven verses, which is Paul's introduction. It is also the longest introduction found in any of Paul's letters:

1. Paul calls himself “a servant.” “Servant” is the Greek word, doulos, which means “slave” or “bondservant” or “devoted to another to the disregard of one’s own interests.” Paul was humbly bound to Christ. He was not serving Himself, nor was he lording his influence over his brethren, but he was serving Jesus, a dead man to the world. Paul had become a slave, a voluntary slave, of Christ. Paul was Christ’s slave, because Christ bought him. To some people this is an offensive image. They resist the idea of being anyone’s slave. The reason for this is twofold: (1) our images of slavery are all negative; we envision abusive task-masters, and (2) our definition of freedom does not include slavery.

   What does it mean to be a slave? What does it mean to be free? Webster’s defines “free” as: (1) “not subject to the control or domination of another” or (2) “not determined by anything beyond one’s own nature or being” or (3) “relieved from something burdensome” or (4) “not bound, confined, or detained by force” or (5) “having no obligations.” These definitions require us to think about what it means when Scripture says in John 8:36: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed,” and again in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 7:22-23: “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God…For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave. You were bought at a price…” I suggest that Christians are both free and slaves. We are free from sin, but not free to disobey Christ. We are slaves no longer to sin, but to Christ and His law. What about non-Christians? The freedom / slavery issue is a major theme in Romans, and we’ll discuss it more as we go along.

2. Paul considers himself “called” and “set apart.” Paul was called to be an apostle. He was set apart for the gospel. Paul’s significance was not in what he did, but in what had been done to him. This first verse does not tell us who Paul is, but Whose Paul is. He had authority to teach, and that authority came from God. He came humbly knowing that the authority to teach was not from himself. He did not determine that he had authority. God determined that. Are we called to be apostles? Not likely. Are we set apart for the gospel? Maybe. When was Paul set apart? From birth or from his mother’s womb (Galatians 1:15). This means that before Paul was called, confronted by Christ, on the Damascus road and before he was even born, God set him apart for the gospel. God prepared Paul from his mother’s womb to be His slave for the gospel—which is an astonishing thing when you realize the pathway that led from the womb to the Damascus road, namely, Paul’s unbelief and persecution of the church. Do you see God’s involvement here? God took no chances. It was certain, fixed, predetermined, that Paul would serve Christ before Paul was born. There was no contingency plan. This was it. God’s purpose cannot fail. Plan A is all God has. And it is certain to come to pass. Does this offend you? Does this decrease Paul’s freedom? No. Now, Scripture offers evidence of multiple callings: Calling to service; calling to salvation; etc. We’ll come back to this theme later.

3. The gospel was promised beforehand by God. The promise was revealed through the prophets in Holy Scripture. The New Testament presentation of the grace of God in Jesus Christ in the gospel is the fruition or fulfillment of what God had already set forth in the Old Testament Scriptures. Did God keep the promise? Yes! When was the promise made? Proverbs 8:23 “[Christ] was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began.” 1 Peter 1:20 “[Christ] was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” Ephesians 1:4-5 “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love [God] predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will.” Revelation 17:8 “The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast.” What are the implications of these verses? We could discuss predestination / foreknowledge / foresight / free will / God’s sovereignty for days, and we will discuss these topics as we work through Romans. For now, we can safely say that God foresaw the need for a Savior before creating the universe. Thus, He appointed Christ before creation. Therefore, God’s will was that evil should come into the world. Do you agree or disagree? I suggest that God’s primary purpose in creating the universe was to glorify His Son as Savior, and a Savior would only be needed if there was sin, or evil.

4. The gospel is regarding Christ. Christ is the Word, the gospel, promised and slain, fulfilled, before creation. The gospel is not about man and his response. The gospel is about God and His redemptive plan through His Son and by His Spirit; the gospel is about His grace, His mercy, His justice, His holiness, His love, and ultimately His glory. Christ was both a man, in the line of David according to the Scriptures, and the Son of God. One Person–Two Natures. Historic Christians argued about this for 400 years. Do you get it? Christ was no longer lowly in the human state, but He was declared powerful by His resurrection. He was called Lord, because He defeated death. Believers were devastated when He died. But His true power was revealed by and in His resurrection. This is why Christianity falls without the resurrection.

5. We received grace and apostleship to call Gentiles to obedience. Who is “we”? Paul and his traveling companions? Paul and his fellow apostles, such as Peter? Paul and those to whom the letter was written? All believers? This particular grace and apostleship was given so that Paul could call Gentiles into obedience through faith. The Gentiles were included! This is a primary theme of Romans. What does “the obedience that comes from faith” mean? The two choices are: “the obedience that comes from faith” (NIV), or “the obedience of faith” (NASB), because faith is the obedience that the gospel demands. “Faith” and “obedience that comes from faith” are both Paul’s goals in ministry. Is Paul talking about actual faith or obedience as a by-product of faith? Is obedience faith? Is faith obedience?

   Regardless, the gospel is not something that we accepted and then went on with our lives. The gospel transformed us. If you have not received the gospel (note the difference between receiving and accepting), then you do not know Christ. You may have intellectually assented to the facts of it, accepted it as truth, you may know who Christ is, but you do not know Christ intimately. He has not become the most important Person in the world to you, and until He is the most important Person in the world to you, I cannot say with certainty that you have received the gospel. But God knows the heart.

   There is no grace apart from Christ. Paul’s calling to be an apostle was a gift of grace. Grace is not God’s response to our deserving or meriting, neither is grace God’s response to our faith. Grace is God’s free gift; it is his enabling of us to believe and do good. Ephesians 2:8-10 “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Do you see that grace comes first? Grace is before faith and in order that we would have faith. You do not have faith in order to get grace. Grace must come first in order to believe. There are 4 primary views of how grace operates in salvation:

   • Pelagianism – (MAN ALONE)
   • Semi-Pelagianism (MAN FIRST; THEN GRACE)
   • ARMINIANISM (GRACE FIRST; THEN MAN)
   • CALVINISM (GRACE ALONE)

   We’ll discuss the latter two views in great detail as we continue through Romans, as both Calvinism and Arminianism both try to uphold grace. Only one really does…

   Why grace? Why is salvation / service / all that we are, why is it all by grace through faith? For the glory of Christ, the glory of God. For His name’s sake! God’s purpose in EVERYTHING is to glorify His name, to glorify Himself, to hold Himself high; and He will not be thwarted in that purpose.

6. You also are among those who are called. We said earlier, there is calling to a particular service; there is calling to salvation. What type of calling is this? This is a calling to belong to Christ, a calling to believe, to be saved. Are all people ever to exist called to salvation, called to belief, called to belong to Christ? Perhaps. Consider two kinds of callings to be saved: (1) The external call of gospel, and (2) The internal call of the Spirit. Are all people called in both of these ways? No. The Golden Chain of Salvation is found in Romans 8:29-30 “Those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.”

   Certainly not all men are called in this way, because not all men are justified. Do you see the connection? All who are called in this way are certain to be justified. So certain that Paul describes it in the past tense. It is as good as already done. God does not justify everyone. But He does justify all the called. What then is this call? The calling to salvation Paul mentions here is a special calling. It is the calling by which Abram was chosen. It is the calling that Jeremiah and Paul experienced. I would say that this calling was of the same sort as Christ having been chosen before creation. 1 Corinthians 1:9 “God, who has called you into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.” God calls certain people, and the aim of the call is to put them into fellowship with Christ. God will not miss the mark. His calling is fruitful. This call of God, as Paul uses the term, is special and particular. The people who receive this call in time are the chosen ones of God. When were the believers in Thessalonica chosen? 2 Thessalonians 2:13 “From the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.” When were you chosen by God to believe? From the beginning. When were you called? In time.

   If God calls anyone, it is grace, free and totally undeserved. And He is not obliged to call everyone if He calls anyone, because He does not call any on the basis of human merit or human distinctive. All divine condemnation is just; all divine salvation is gracious. The fact that anyone is called from darkness to light is a wonder of grace. This theme will be discussed more as we progress.

   We know from this intro and elsewhere that Jews and Gentiles are called. This was radical and offensive to the Jews. Does this include all Gentiles? Not necessarily. The text says “people from among the Gentiles.” Because not everyone is called in this special way, are we not to preach the gospel to everyone? Indeed we are. Jesus scattered the seed of the Word indiscriminately on every kind of soil. Paul did the same: he came to a city and he preached the gospel in the synagogue and then in the whole town square. He would call everyone to repent, without exception. Acts 17:30 “God commands all people everywhere to repent.” That is the universal call of the gospel, which is the same as evangelism and missions; it is not the call that Paul is talking about in Romans 1:6-7 and Romans 8:28-30, or Romans 9:24, which we will read down the road.

   When the gospel is preached, why do some believe and some not? Why did you believe? 1 Corinthians 1:23-24 “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Paul preaches indiscriminately to all–God means for every ethnic group to be reached with the gospel. As Paul preaches to all and offers salvation to all, most Jews regard a crucified Messiah as a stumbling block and reject him. Likewise, most Gentiles regard a crucified Lord as foolishness, and they reject him. But in those two groups, some are called (a different call from the universal call to all). And the effect of this call is that Christ no longer looks like a stumbling block and no longer looks like foolishness; rather He looks like the power and the wisdom of God, just as the text says.

   The special, particular, effectual call awakens the dead, gives sight to the spiritually blind, opens the ears of the spiritually deaf, humbles the proud, softens the hard, and brings forth faith. The call of God makes Christ irresistibly attractive, so that we willingly and freely believe. Until God effectually calls us and makes His light shine in our hearts the way He called light into being at the creation, we will not see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 4:6) in the gospel. If we don’t see it, we will not love the light and come to it (John 3:19-20). But if and when we do see it, we will immediately come and cleave to Him and love Him and trust Him. That is what Paul meant in Romans 1:6. God said to our hearts, “Let there be light,” and thus we see His glory and come to Him and call on Him; He has saved us, forgiven us, and accepted us and poured out His love in our hearts. We were called by the Spirit. That is what has happened to us. We must understand this, if we are to understand the grace of God.

7. Paul wrote specifically to those “who are loved by God and called to be saints.” He wasn’t writing to anyone that did not fit this description. Is there such a person that is not loved by God and not called to be a saint? YES and NO. All men ever to exist are loved generically by God—they are made in His image—and all men have a responsibility to obey God’s commands to be saints, to be holy; at the same time, none will obey. As we’ll see in Romans 3, there are none who seek God. So God has loved some with a special love. It is this group that Paul is writing to in Romans 1. Paul doesn’t want Christians to say, “God calls me ‘loved’ because he loves everybody the same, and, since I am one member of the group named ‘everybody’, then I am also loved.” That’s not what verse 7 means. Paul says, “I write ‘to all in Rome who are loved by God.’” But he does not mean everybody in Rome. He is writing to those who are “the called of Jesus Christ.” I don’t mean that there is no love in God’s heart for other people. I mean that God has a special love for His people. He has a covenant love for His chosen ones. He chose them to be His people; and He made a covenant with them; and God sealed the covenant with the blood of Christ (Luke 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 11:25). The love of God for His people is utterly different from His love for any other people. God had a special love for Jacob that He did not have for Esau—and not because Jacob deserved it more than Esau; on the contrary, God poured out this special love on Jacob before either of the twins was born. This is the doctrine of election, and we’ll talk more about it when we get to Romans 8-11.

   Our vision of the love of God must be enlarged, not reduced. In other words, if God loves “the called of Jesus Christ,” the church, with a special covenant love, don’t conclude that He is less loving than He would be if He loved all people with this same type of love. Scripture declares that God loves the whole world, but that He chooses his bride, “the called of Jesus Christ,” and loves her (i.e. Believers) with a special, precious, covenant love. God says in Jeremiah 32:40 “I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear Me, so that they will never turn away from Me.” Do you see what kind of love this is? This is more than the general love of invitation and offer. This is a love that puts the fear of God in the heart. This is the kind of love that works powerfully and effectively. This is not a general love for all; it is a special and precious love, a love that transforms and puts the fear of God in our hearts and keeps us from turning away: the new covenant.

   This is what we should feed on daily. This is sweet and strong. To know that I am loved by the creator God of the universe in this special way is the very heart of my assurance. That God has called me, that He has shone in my heart to give the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, that He will work infallibly to keep me and bring me to everlasting glory–this is what it means to be loved by God. This is not the general love of God that offers eternal life to the world, nor is it the sustaining love of God that gives sun and rain even to His enemies. This is the love of God for His bride, His chosen people. He calls us from death to life, and He keeps us from falling away. This is the new covenant love of God. This is what Paul means in Romans 1:7 when he says, “to all who are loved by God in Rome.” And it is what God means when He says to believers today: “You are the called of Jesus Christ; you are my loved ones. I have chosen you for My own; I have called you; I have justified you; I will keep you; I will work in you what is pleasing in My sight (Hebrews 13:21); nothing will separate you from Me; because I love you with an everlasting love. You I love, just as I love my own Son, Jesus Christ.”

Paul's Longing to Visit Rome

⁸First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. ⁹God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you ¹⁰in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
¹¹I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong-- ¹²that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. ¹³I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.
¹⁴I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. ¹⁵That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.

1. Thanksgiving comes FIRST. Paul begins all of his epistles, except Galatians (due to his urgency to write it) with thanksgiving to God. Why such a priority on thankfulness? We have received mercy, forgiveness of a debt that we could have never paid off, of which the designated penalty is death and eternal damnation. That’s why thanksgiving comes first. There is nothing we have that we shouldn’t be thankful for, for all is from God—both good and bad, as seen from our perspective.

   Paul thanks God for the Romans, specifically because of their world-renowned faith; he thanks God for making the faith of the Romans known all over the world. Can we say here that Paul is thanking God for the faith of the Romans? Should we be thankful to God for faith, for the fact that we believe, and for the fact that others believe? Philippians 1:29 “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for Him.” 1 Corinthians 4:7 “What do you have that you did not receive?” 2 Peter 1; 1 Thessalonians 1; 1 Timothy 1:14; Romans 11:36. If faith is produced by us, not a gift from God, why would we thank God for it? If faith is not given or generated by God, how would it glorify Him? Rather, faith would glorify us, because we are the ones who generate it. I suggest that faith is not generated by us. Faith is a gift from God! Thus we can thank God for the faith He gives His people. Why pray for others to believe?

   Paul was excited that the faith of the Romans was proclaimed worldwide. Do you know anyone whose faith is proclaimed worldwide? Billy Graham? Are you thankful to God or to the individual for that faith? Both? Are you excited to see "" "" becoming a Deacon, thirsting and hungering for the Word? He hungers for righteousness and desires to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants more grace. Does that excite you? That sort of thing excited the apostle Paul. What causes you joy and thanksgiving tells a lot about what you care about and who you are. So our prayers ought to be filled with thanksgiving and rejoicing over the truth, and what the truth is accomplishing in the hearts of people worldwide.

2. Thanks to my God through Jesus Christ. Paul prayed to his God through Christ. What was his purpose in using the word “my”? Christ was Paul’s mediator, his intercessor. Paul had no right to pray to the Father, except through the Son. Likewise, for us. When we pray, our words are childish and imperfect, unholy to be quite frank. The Spirit translates our words into Godly words, and the Son prays to the Father, and the Father hears. Romans 8:26 “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” 1 Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Hebrews 7:25 “Therefore [Christ] is able to save completely (or forever) those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them.” Hebrews 9:15 “Christ is the Mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.”

3. God is my witness: Paul’s oath. Paul “swears” with God as his witness that the Romans are on his heart in constant prayer. Should we swear? “As surely as the Lord lives…” God Himself swears often throughout Scripture. Isaiah 45:23 “By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear.” Notice He does so only in His own name. We can swear only by the name of God, for no other name holds any merit or value to enforce the oath. Do not swear by what is false, but only by what is true, and God is true. Have you ever heard, “I swear on my mother’s grave”? That’s idolatry. It credits attributes that only belong to God to others. Isaiah 65:16 “Whoever invokes a blessing in the land will do so by the God of truth; he who takes an oath in the land will swear by the God of truth.” Should we take oaths or make special promises? Leviticus 5:4 “If a person thoughtlessly takes an oath to do anything—whether good or evil—in any matter one might carelessly swear about—even though he is unaware of it—in any case when he learns of it he will be guilty.” Matthew 5:33-37 “Again, you have heard… ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is His footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” James 5:12 “Above all, do not swear...”

4. Thy Will Be Done. Paul prays according to the Lord’s principle and the Lord’s Prayer. Paul is reporting his desire to come to the Roman Christians, but he does so in explicit submission to God’s will. Paul makes it clear that he longs to be with these Roman Christians. He prays that God would bring him to the Roman Christians, but he is entirely submissive to the will of God. He wants to get there by God’s will. Paul had no idea when he wrote these words how or if he would get to Rome. Finally, at the end of his life, he gets to Rome as a prisoner who would be executed if he lost his trial. Paul was delighted, because God had long before given him a burden of heart to be with those Roman Christians, and he was entirely submissive to the will of God. Paul gives us a model here for submitting to the providence of God in life and in prayer, no matter what. Paul does not question that God is in control. He knows that the only way he’s getting to Rome is in accordance with the will of God. Notice that Paul, relying on God’s will, does not lead him to be passive and to say, “Well, if I’m ever going to get to Rome, it’s going to be up to God.” In fact, Paul had on numerous occasions tried to get himself to Rome. It’s just that the Lord had blocked those plans. Ligon Duncan, a preacher friend of mine, said, “You know, we talk about the Lord closing doors, and a lot of times it’s well, the Lord closed the door on that and we kind of mean that we rattled the knob and we decided that the door was closed. You know, the apostle Paul didn’t take that approach. When the apostle Paul came to a closed door, he tried to kick it down three or four times before he decided the Lord had closed that door.” That’s exactly what he did with the Romans. He tried to get to Rome numerous ways. He prayed continually that God would get him to Rome. And finally in the end the Lord got him there. Not just that he trusted in God’s providence, not just that he was active even though he trusted in God’s providence, but also that he was entirely submissive to that providence.

5. Why the desire to visit Rome (Part I)? Paul wanted to serve, to minister, and to give spiritual gifts. He was unselfish. We want to go to church for what we get out of it. Paul wanted to go for what he could give to it. Paul tells them specifically that his purpose is for them to be strengthened—established in the faith—through spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts come from the Spirit; Paul could not dole out spiritual gifts like Santa spreads packages—neither can we! But he knows that the Spirit can and will give these gifts as the gospel is preached. Paul knows these Romans are genuine believers. Yet he still wants a harvest among them. But he says for them to be strengthened, they need to hear the gospel. The gospel isn’t something that we listen to at conversion, the beginning of our Christian experience, and then it set aside to move on to something more profound. The gospel is to be infused throughout our lives as Christians. As our understanding of the gospel increases, our faith and trust in God increases.

   1 Corinthians 3:5-7 “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe–as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” It is the Spirit Who brings growth, and that’s why Paul is so anxious to be there preaching and teaching the Word. The Spirit is the only One Who, through His gifting, establishes us in the faith. Yet Paul says, “I’m eager to be with you in order that you might be strengthened.” What’s Paul thinking?

   Paul knows that the ultimate source of spiritual life and spiritual growth is the Holy Spirit. And he also knows that faith comes by hearing. The ministry of the Word of God is the Spirit’s ordained choice, the instrument, for how He brings people to faith. Paul sees no contradiction between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Paul shows us his reliance on the sovereignty of God, and yet still holds to complete human responsibility. So often people who are unfamiliar with Calvinism think that Calvinists hold to God’s sovereignty only and not man’s responsibility. And that means that if God has chosen people, then they’ll come to Christ on their own. There’s no need for us to get involved. But that’s wrong. True Calvinism holds to God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. God must make us willing and able to respond, and once we are made willing in the day of His power, then we must respond. It’s the Spirit’s job to make people willing to respond to the gospel and grow in faith; but it’s our responsibility and our privilege to share the gospel. And so the coherence of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are presented even in the way Paul talks to the Romans in this little passage.

6. Why the desire to visit Rome (Part II)? Paul here is humbly acknowledging that if he goes to the Roman church with a desire to bless and build them up, with a desire to encourage and establish them, the strange and true reality of it is that he will be built up. He will be blessed and encouraged. The irony of Christian service is that when you die to yourself, you find life. When you give yourself away, you find yourself. When you put yourself last, you find yourself first. When you devote yourself to serving others, you always receive more than you could ever give. And here the apostle Paul, maybe the greatest mind and greatest preacher ever in the Christian church, is saying to these Roman Christians, “As I come to give to you, one of the things that’s going to happen is that I’m going to be blessed by you, and our faith is going to be strengthened together as we fellowship.” What an incredible thought! And it’s true!

   Paul’s ultimate goal in going to Rome was evangelism and edification. He wants fruit; he wants to see the fruit of believers growing in Christ. Perhaps fruit is the “obedience of faith” mentioned last time. Faith is only true faith when it is fruitful. There is no such thing as an unfruitful faith. There is no such Person as Savior Jesus Who is not also Lord Jesus. Do we, when we fellowship, strive to see fruit and produce fruit among our Christian brethren? Let us be committed to bringing about the obedience of faith in each other and among the peoples of our neighborhood and all the nations.

7. Obligated to whom? Greeks and non-Greeks. Cultured and non-cultured gentiles. All people! Why? What has “everybody” done for him that requires something of him? 1 Corinthians 9:16 “Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” Paul is not indebted to God for His grace; rather he is indebted to the people of the world. God’s grace given to us does not indebt us to God. Because of the grace of God, we are obligated to share the gospel with everyone. There is no one who is any less or more deserving than us. And that makes us a debtor to all. Grace is free. God gives it freely; nothing is required to get grace—lest it not be free. When you hear good news about how to escape from a common misery, you become a debtor to tell the good news to others so they can escape the misery too. You owe it to them. Why? Because if you withhold the good news of grace from others, it’s as if you were qualified for it, and they were not, then you show that you have never known grace. Now we are debtors to God not because of His grace, but because we have stolen His glory by sinning against Him; and it is His grace that pays for those debts. God’s grace calls us out of darkness into the light and bestows eternal covenant love on us in order to create what it commands—faith. Grace makes us willing to believe. We will not believe without it; we are certain to believe once made willing by it. God’s grace creates our faith.

   God sent His Son to die in my place, and He redeemed me from my sin. He united me to His Son so that now my heart is His Son’s heart. I want to think the way His Son thinks, I want to live the way His Son lives, and I want to do the things His Son wanted to do. What did Christ want to do? The Will of the Father. What is the Will of the Father? That people from all nations will come and worship Christ to the glory of God. Therefore, we should want to see the nations worshipping Jesus Christ; furthermore, Jesus has told us to go to all the nations. Paul was once an enemy of Christ; now he is His apostle. And Paul was overwhelmed that God would give a sinner like him that kind of an obligation. We should be too.

8. Paul was eager to share the gospel. The obligation was not burdensome for Paul; rather, it was a delight. It was voluntary slavery. Paul was eager to share the gospel—with believers! Are you eager to share the gospel with believers? With unbelievers? We don’t usually think about preaching the gospel to believers. Paul wanted to preach the gospel to these Romans, and they were already believers. Paul is not merely interested in getting professions of faith, as crucial as that is, by first-time preaching of the gospel. (My father-in-law, Bo Bowen, is amazing when it comes to this!) Rather, Paul is interested in bringing to God the offering of sanctified gentiles—perhaps the “obedience of faith” is sanctification. It’s the gospel of grace that converts, and it’s the gospel of grace that sanctifies. We must tell people the gospel the first time; and we must remind people again and again of the meaning and implications of the gospel of grace. So the gospel of grace is what we preach to unbelievers, and the gospel of grace is what we preach to believers. That is what Paul says in Romans 1:15. He desires to preach not to get them saved, but to keep them saved through sanctification. Our faith feeds off the good news of the grace of God. And our obedience feeds off of faith. Therefore, to bring about the obedience of faith, we must hear the gospel of grace over and over.

   Now, we don’t think of duty and obligation in terms of eagerness. We hear duty, ought, obligation, and we immediately cringe. There are a lot of people that will say, “Once you become a Christian, you don’t have to do anything; it’s just that you want to. You don’t have to obey the commands, you just want to.” That is incorrect theology. Paul says he’s under obligation. Does a husband have to love his wife? Yes. I hope he wants to, but he has to. Do parents have to love their child? Yes, I hope they want to, but they have to. Obligations don’t change when we become Christians. God’s commands are still there, but those obligations cease to be burdensome, because our hearts have been renewed. Paul is obligated and eager. There’s no contradiction between obligation and desire. Paul’s willing, but it’s also a command. He has to, but he wants to. Here’s an analogy:

   Martin Jones is a junior executive. He’s sitting in his office, it’s early afternoon, he’s working on some accounts, he’s really kind of bored by the work he’s doing. His boss comes down the hall and says, “Jones, we’ve got a guy in town with huge potential, and I want you to do this. I want you to go out with Mr. Phillips over there. Head out to the country club, and play a round of golf with him.” Now Jones happens to love golf. And in fact while he was doodling on the notepad, he was thinking about golf. Now is he happy about going out to play golf with a huge potential client. He’s thrilled; he’s willing. Does he have to go? Oh yes, he does. His boss told him to. He has to, but he wants to. Paul’s mission statement as an employee of Christ and his life’s passion are one in the same. He loves his work. Do you?

   So here is the summary of what we’ve done so far: grace came to us unconditionally and absolutely free from God when He called us to Himself and loved us as His own. This grace makes us debtors to everyone who, like us, needs grace, because not to share the grace we received would imply that we qualified for it and they don’t; and that would nullify grace. And what we share is the gospel of this great free grace. This is how we pay our debt to others: freely we received, freely we give. Every believer is a steward of grace to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of the glory of God’s Holy Name.

¹⁶I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. ¹⁷For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,^[3] just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."^[4]

This is Paul’s theme in writing Romans. He completed his introduction and gave thanks. Now it’s down to business.

1. Paul is NOT ashamed of the gospel. Paul is certain of its truth. Paul is eager to share it, because he is loyal to it and confident in it. And why shouldn’t he be? See 2 Corinthians 11:23-26. He was convicted like no other, literally blinded by Christ’s light and softly spoken to by Christ Himself. Rome may have thought the believers within its limits were shameful, pathetic, pitiable fools, and if the resurrection of Christ did not happen, then they were right. But Paul, along with hundreds of other eye-witnesses, knew that Christ was resurrected, so the contrary was true. It is the unbelievers who are fools; it is the unbelievers who should be pitied. But believers are not to be ashamed. There is no shame in the gospel, no matter how foolish it may be in the eyes of the world.

   Sometimes Christians are ashamed of the gospel because they want things that are different than the things that God wants for them. I often think myself ashamed of the gospel. At work, I struggle to speak it. I’m just afraid to let co-workers know how much the Lord Jesus and the gospel means to me, because I might be rejected. Not that I act like a pagan, but why can’t I be bold, unashamed, like Paul? I always justify my lack of boldness by turning to 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” One of the early church fathers, Apollinaris of Laodicea, said, “The Son of God bore the shame of the cross on our behalf. It could not be but out of place for us to be ashamed of His suffering for us.” If I really believe that God’s Son died for me, bore my shame, how could I possibly be ashamed of Him around anyone for any reason? While Polycarp, an early church bishop, was being roped to the stake to be burned at age 86, they gave him one last chance to renounce his faith in Christ. He said, “Eighty-six years I have served Jesus Christ, and He has never done me wrong. How could I do Him wrong now?” Lord, make me unashamed of your power for salvation. Make me like Christ, who despised the shame of the cross (Hebrews 12:2).

2. The gospel is the power of God. The gospel, according to 1 Corinthians 1:18, “is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” What is the gospel? It starts first of all with understanding the bad news. Mankind was created by God and in a covenant with Him; we owe loyalty to Him, but we rebelled against Him. As we rebelled against Him, we were plunged into a state of sin and misery. There’s nothing we could do to help ourselves in that state. Thus, God in His providence from the very time of Genesis 3:15 set a plan in motion to redeem His people. He promised in the old covenant that He was going to send a redeemer. Jesus is that redeemer. Jesus is the incarnate Son of God who lived and died in our place that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus not only lived and died; He was raised again from the dead as a pledge of our hope and resurrection and redemption. Jesus is now exalted, and He will come again to judge. So the gospel is all about what God has done for our predicament. But, in all the presentations of the gospel in the New Testament, it doesn’t stop there. Repentance and faith are demanded. What’s the response to the gospel? Believe, trust in Christ, and repent of your sins. This is the power of God revealed in Scripture, and however it’s presented, this gospel, the power of God, is very offensive to people in our culture today.

   What is it about the gospel that is offensive? (1) The claim to absolute Truth, with a capital T. Today’s culture doesn’t mind if everybody has their own truth with a little t, but a capital T is dangerous, scary. (2) The claim that Christ is the only way to God. We want to believe that Christ is just one of the spokes on the wheel of faith that leads to the hub, where God is seated. Today’s culture thinks Christianity is arrogant, biased, narrow-minded, and even bigoted. They think it leads to persecution, intolerance, etc.

3. The gospel saves. The gospel message is the God-appointed means for salvation. It’s the instrument that God chose to save people from sin. What is salvation? By salvation, Paul means at least two things. Negatively, Paul means that salvation is God’s rescue of us from guilt, slavery to sin, the penalty of sin, alienation and eternal separation from God, and the wrath of God. Positively, the gospel is a bringing of us into a new relationship, a righteous relationship with God, whereby when we stand before God, we can be confident before Him. We’re accepted! But the gospel not only brings us into acceptance by God, it brings us into a state in which we are actually made holy. The Holy Spirit begins to work in us the life of heaven, so that we love the things that God loves, we hate the things that He hates, and we begin to even live like the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel brings freedom. Though we may have thought we were free when we were doing what we wanted to, we’re really not free until we’re doing what God wants us to do. In salvation, He brings us into an experience of true freedom, not freedom from obedience, but freedom to obedience. Salvation brings us to fellowship with God, into the presence of God.

4. The gospel saves all kinds of people. It is regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or cultural background. There is one way to be saved for all people. The Jews are the historic chosen people of God. They are the guardians of God’s special revelation, the Old Testament Scriptures. The Messiah and Savior, Jesus, came to the world as a Jew to Jews. Salvation is from the Jews, since everyone who is saved is saved by being connected to the covenant with Abraham by faith. The Jews were evangelized first when the gospel penetrated a new region. Regardless of Old Testament or New Testament, Jews could be saved only by grace through faith in the promised redeemer. Now, just because the Jews have first access to the gospel does not mean they deserve it more. On the contrary, neither Jew nor gentile deserves the gospel. It is a gospel of grace! And praise God that it truly is for ALL who believe; literally, this phrase would read, “everyone who continues to believe.” And who is it that believes? Why does one person believe and not another. If the difference is anything in man, then there is a problem.

5. Righteousness from God is revealed in the gospel. We would have written that God’s mercy, love, and salvation were revealed in the gospel. And those are correct. But Paul writes that God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel. It is the very righteousness of God that has us in dire straits! The righteousness of God is what should cause us to fear Him. So what does Paul mean here? He means that God has saved us without compromising His justice. God has saved us by grace so that He has been perfectly righteous. God has not swept our sins under the rug. He has actually dealt with them. He has not just cancelled them. He’s liquidated them.

   Now the wrath of God is a scary thing. Wrath is righteous judgment, or justice. And this is what we deserve. So it would be perfectly righteous of God to give us hell. Yet it is also perfectly righteous of God to save us by punishing someone else for our sins. And this is what gives Paul assurance. Paul says that God’s righteousness is the thing that gets him so excited about the gospel. God has righteously saved us by grace! He has caused the penalty for our sin to fall on His Son so that justice is served. And because justice is served, we can be absolutely assured. Because if God has put the penalty for our sin on the head of His Son, God cannot righteously require the penalty from us. The reason we’re secure from the wrath of God is because God would be unrighteous to punish us if He punished His Son for our sins. God, in His own design, has saved us by grace, by the work of His Son, by the righteousness of His Son, by the righteousness of His plan, and Paul was excited about that. And that’s what we’re going to be studying by God’s grace over the weeks to come.

6. Righteousness and faith. Paul tells us that in grace, God gives to us what He demands from us. God demands righteousness, and we don’t have it. Thus He gives it to us. He takes from us our unrighteousness; He gives us the righteousness of Christ. A channel is needed to enact this transaction, this debit of sin and credit of righteousness. That channel is faith. The righteousness is by faith from first to last. The righteousness is from faith to faith. What God demands from us (righteousness / faith), He gives to us (righteousness / faith). Thus God’s righteousness is by faith from first to last (or from faith to faith). It begins with faith and continues to faith. This is perseverance! The gospel is that God removes His own wrath from us and gives us His own righteousness, all by the work of Christ on the cross through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the meaning of SALVATION BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH. It is by grace that God has done this; His channel to accomplish it is faith. Faith is the glorious, gracious means by which God accomplishes His salvation among men. Why did He choose to conduct this transaction by faith? So that no one could boast. So that no one could take from God the glory that is all His in salvation.

7. The righteous will live by faith. The unrighteous become righteous through faith and maintain their righteousness by faith. Through faith, by the righteousness of God, we are justified, made legally righteous in the sight of God. This is justification—the act of declaring sinners righteous through faith in Jesus, a major theme throughout the next few chapters of Romans. The death of Jesus purchased not only a declaration of our right standing before God, but also a development of our right living before God, thus “the righteous will live by faith.”

   By persevering faith, and by persevering faith only, we will be saved from judgment, from the wrath of God. God reveals righteousness for us that is first perceived and embraced by faith, and then has the effect of preserving the faith needed to be saved. The gospel saves believers, because the gospel keeps believers believing. Finally, consider that justification (God’s righteousness completely imputed to us, credited to us legally though we are not really righteous) by faith is the foundation of glorification (God’s righteousness completely imparted to us; we really are righteous now!), which we will experience. Again, revisiting the Golden Chain of Salvation found in Romans 8:29-31: “Those God foreknew, He also predestined…Those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Who can separate us from His love?

God's Wrath Against Mankind

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 worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.

1. Wrath of God. Paul acknowledges that God has wrath. Webster says wrath is “retributory punishment for an offense or crime; divine chastisement.” Simply put, wrath is righteous judgment, retribution, giving sinners what they deserve. Without wrath, the Gospel is meaningless. Likewise, without sin there is no need for the Gospel. Why would we need salvation if there is no such thing as God’s wrath or our sin? To be technically correct, when we are saved, we are not only saved from sin, but from the wrath of God against our sin. Paul begins here to introduce the bad news, and he takes it seriously. He will take from Romans 1:18 all the way to Romans 3:20 talking about nothing but the bad news—that we are sinners and that God has wrath that’s being revealed; there is a consequence to sin.

2. Men—godless and wicked. Paul says that all of mankind, who all suppress the truth, are godless and wicked—impious and immoral. There is rebellion against both God Himself and His Word. There is no respect for Him as Who He is, as to His character, nor is there reverence for His Law, the decrees He has revealed. The wrath of God is against this irreverence. Nothing is worse than irreverence toward God.

   Now we as Christians are not subject to this wrath. Paul here is describing the situation for mankind before anyone has been reconciled. He is telling the believers in Rome about the wrath of God against pagans, against those who profess no faith in the True God. Throughout the New Testament Epistles, written to believers, there is acknowledgement that “once you were not a believer.” Ephesians 2:3 “All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature [or our flesh] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” Colossians 1:21 “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of [or as shown by] your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” 1 Peter 2:10 “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Thus we can say that everyone has a conversion from false faith or non-faith to true Christian faith. We have gone from objects of wrath to objects of grace; from objects of justice to objects of mercy. But Paul is taking the time to explain that once we were not believers, and even now there are many who are not believers. And that being the case, God’s wrath is upon unbelievers, and it was upon us. Paul is explaining that here.

3. Men suppress the truth by their wickedness. There is no such person has an atheist or agnostic. All of mankind knows the truth. We just suppress it. There was a time when we suppressed it. Indeed, we may still do so today. We might think, “Did God really say…?” There will be people who cry out “Lord, Lord!” who suppress the truth, the reality of Who God is and what He has done. They cry out to a false god, one who did not create the world and does not sustain it, one who is merciful and loving but not just, one who cannot save, or maybe one who is certain to save but will not punish or be wrathful. Thus Christ will say to them at the end, “Depart from Me. I never knew you.”

   There are a lot of people who think they will argue with God on the last day. They’re thinking that they’ll give Him a piece of their mind. Paul says that every mouth will be shut on that day, because there is no defense. We are created in the image of God, yet we were ungodly. We had the law of God written on our heart, yet we were unrighteous. We are in rebellion against God, everybody in the world, unless they’re in Christ Jesus. And even those in Christ were once not. Whether you like it not, that is the situation. We stand before Him without an excuse. We have nothing to say for ourselves. If you deny the bad news, the good news ceases to be good. And what’s worse, God ceases to be God. God’s justice is part of Who He is. We must worship all of God! When you pick and choose which attributes of God to cherish, you begin to cherish a false god. But although the bad news is true, we can be certain that the good news is true; God is faithful. The bad news can obviously be proven in this life; everyone knows they are imperfect. We are imperfect, and God requires perfection. That’s bad news! It’s suppressing the truth when we fail to acknowledge how bad our sin is. It’s suppressing the truth when we fail to acknowledge God’s Holiness.

   The problem for the suppressors of the truth of God is not an intellectual problem, as many would claim. The problem is a moral problem. Why not murder? Because men know it’s wrong. Why not steal? Because men know it’s wrong. Morality exists, because men know the truth. Moral questions exist, because men suppress the truth. It is wickedness that causes men to suppress the truth. It is the sin nature inherited from Adam that causes people to deny the whole of truth. Some may acknowledge and even respect some aspects of the truth, but the totality of truth, the magnitude and fullness of God Himself in His glory, men deny. And the reason is a moral one—not an intellectual one.

4. God has made it plain to see from creation that He exists, and also that He has invisible qualities: eternal power and divine nature. Paul says that God is known by all of mankind. God is evidenced by creation. Again, there is no excuse. No one on Judgment Day can say, “I didn’t know!” or “No one told me!” Everyone knows clearly Who God is. Unbelievers will stand defenseless before God.

   So what about the person who has never heard the gospel? They still know. They understand; it’s just that they suppress the truth by impiety or irreverence and immorality or unrighteousness. So those who have not heard the gospel are still condemned—whether unbelieving scientists in university labs or tribal people groups unreached with the gospel. And rightly so, as we learn from Paul here. How do feel abou that? We’ve already seen that everyone intellectually knows God and about God. The reason we share the Gospel to the nations, is not because they don’t know, but because they do know; they suppressed that truth. And only the Gospel can savingly liberate them from that self-imposed bondage. If it was true that people are only condemned by hearing the gospel and rejecting it, then the best way to make sure that people got to heaven would be not to tell anybody the gospel. And that way, they couldn’t reject it; they could get to heaven by ignorance of God. But Paul says no; the problem is not that people don’t know. The problem is that they do know, and they still reject God. That is why we need the Gospel.

   Paul here is not just saying that when you look at the universe, you will see a designer. He takes it farther. Paul says you see Who the Designer is. By the universe, you see that God is divine and eternal. You see His power, His wisdom, His goodness, and even His judgment. Paul says that God is not just seen, but clearly seen and even understood. We don’t just see His power and wisdom, as we might see a tree off in the distance; we understand it. We know the texture of the bark and see the veins on the leaves. We see Who God is, and we understand, just by our existence as God’s creatures in His creation. Do you agree?

5. They failed to glorify God as God and failed to thank Him. Their thinking became futile. Their hearts were darkened. They claimed wisdom, but were fools. Paul continues with the theme: When we know God and understand that He is God, and then fail to glorify Him as God, by worshipping Him and thanking Him for His kindness and loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we are suppressing the truth. Mankind fails to glorify Him and fails to thank Him. And there are consequences of suppressing the truth, in addition to the judgment day wrath of God. It is the Judgment Day wrath that should cause unbelievers to tremble, but as we will see in Romans 3:18, quoting Psalm 36:1, “there is no fear of God before their eyes.” How sad! Paul mentions 3 specific effects of suppressing the truth:
   1. Thinking becomes futile; speculations become empty and vain. Generally speaking, the more intelligent a person, the less likely that they will embrace Christianity. 1 Corinthians 1:19-31 “For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. …Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus…’”

      “Smart” people like to think of God as… you fill in the blank… something other than Who He really is. Where do you think other religions, besides Judaism and Christianity come from? It’s from smart people, as their thinking becomes futile. Their minds wonder away from the truth about God and into new realms of blasphemy against God, and they come up with totem poles, Karma, Scientology, Feng Shui, Bahai, etc.

   2. Hearts are darkened. The truth is represented by light, and the more darkness there is, the farther from the light the heart is said to be. The heart is the deepest, most important part of a person. The heart is what controls us; decisions come from the heart of man. Proverbs 16:1, 9 “To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the reply of the tongue. …In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” Proverbs 27:19 “As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.” Matthew 15:18 “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’” Luke 6:45 “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” We make decisions from the heart. And the more we suppress the truth, the more evil, the more sinful our hearts gets.

      Now, the Calvinist idea of Total Depravity is formed here at the heart, the core of a person’s being. Isaiah 6:10 (Matthew 13:15; Acts 28:27) “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” A Calvinist points out that man’s heart (and therefore his entire being) is totally depraved and both unwilling and unable to change, unwilling and unable to incline itself towards the things of God. The heart of man cannot incline itself, regardless of the amount of wooing, to spiritual good. It’s like trying to woo a thief into a police station, or like trying to woo water out of a well. This is laid out here in Romans, and elsewhere. We have seen that God’s righteousness is revealed in the Gospel and that God’s wrath is revealed against unrighteousness. Unrighteousness is simply, from the heart, loving sin more than God and His truth. We see the same thing in John 3:19-20 “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” We’ll discuss this idea more as we go. Do you agree?

   3. Foolishness is displayed while professing wisdom. Have you ever heard on radio or television or read a headline about some hi-tech, in-depth study of something, and the conclusion is something a child would have known without even looking into it? How about this one: “Million-dollar study shows that fathers are important in the lives of children.” Do you ever watch Leno on The Late Show with his stupid newspaper headlines? This is the type of thing Paul is talking about here. Proclaiming wisdom, they show their foolishness. Proclaiming a vast intellect, these suppressors of the truth show how truly ridiculous and worthless their knowledge has become. How foolish is it to declare Darwinian evolution a proven fact? Psalm 14:1; 53:1 “The fool (one who is morally deficient [because he says it in his heart]) says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Knowledge comes from God, and when it is not used to glorify Him and thank Him, it is utterly worthless. Romans 14:23 “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Go even farther here—back to the garden before there was sin. What did the serpent say in the garden to get Eve to eat the fruit? Genesis 3:5-6 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” Here the quest for wisdom apart from God is where idolatry begins…

6. They exchanged God’s glory for an image. If you want to assume the role of God in governing your life, you will perceive this exchange— the glory of God for idolatry—as the wisest thing in the world. But in reality, idolatry is a pitiful, corruptible substitute for the incorruptible, real glory of God. John Piper offers an analogy: “This exchange is like trading a masterpiece for a copy of a copy of a copy.” The glory of God is the apex, the pinnacle! And how stupid it is to exchange this for a likeness of an image of man (NASB), who is an image of God. Ever heard, “Image is everything”? Well, it’s not. The glory of God is everything.

   Idolatry is the consequence of futile thinking, darkened hearts, and foolish wisdom, all of which result from suppressing the truth of God. You will worship anything if you refuse the One True God, Who has revealed Himself in you, to you, and around you. Idolatry is the central religious problem. God has made us to be religious people, and if we won’t worship Him, we’ll find someone or something else to worship. There is a god we want (mostly to serve us), and there is a God Who is (Whom we are to serve), and the two are not the same. If we don’t want the God Who is (which we won’t), we will invent the god we want (which we do), and we worship him or it. This is why doctrine is so crucial. How many denominations today are struggling with issues that seem so simple to us? Homosexual marriage? Lesbian preachers? Child-molestation? Pro-choice attitudes? Etc. All this is due to a denial of sound Biblical doctrine. We must worship the One True God, and we must do so according to His revelation, in Spirit and in Truth.

   When we misdiagnose the human problem by misunderstanding Who God is, we will always provide the wrong solution. New Agers say the problem is that we have lost touch with the divine in us. Their solution is to come together and unite in order to find the divine nature in each person. Wrong Problem = Wrong Solution. Perhaps some people in this church might diagnose the problem as this: People simply don’t know that Jesus died for them to save them. If that’s the problem, then the solution is to tell people that Jesus saved them by His death on the cross and thereby inform them of the “truth.” Again, a misdiagnosis of the problem leads to a bad solution. That’s not the problem. But here is the problem: Idolatry—not that mankind doesn’t know God, but that mankind has denied God. We have rebelled against God in one way or another. We need redemption from that rebellion. Redemption is by repentance and faith in Christ alone. Diagnose the problem correctly and the right solution can follow.

7. Therefore, God gave them over to their desires. Paul shocks the system with this pronouncement. Ask yourself, how does God judge sin in the world today? Is it by natural disasters, like tsunamis and earthquakes? Is it by terrorist attacks? Yes. But what Paul says here is that God judges sin in the world by giving sinners over to more sin. God’s judgment against sin is seen in sin itself. That is, sin unchecked is in itself God’s judgment against sin. We see God’s hand of judgment against sin, when we see Him withdrawing the restraints in our society against that sin and when that sin begins to work itself out in our conduct, both individually and corporately. God’s judgment against sin is sin. We might think, “Lord, if we continue to commit this crime of abortion, You will bring judgment against this nation.” Paul would say, “His judgment against this nation is abortion.” You are killing your own kind. Animals know that you cannot do that and survive. Sinners manifest even in their own conduct God’s judgment against sin.

   “God gave them over” is the same language used when the Jews handed Jesus over to Pilate. It is the same language used of Pilate handing over Jesus to His executors. It is the same language used in Romans 8:32 to speak of God delivering over His Son to pay the penalty of our sin. God removes the constraints and allows you to go the way of your own wicked hearts. When a human heart says, “I rebel against You God; I want to be my own god; I want to do it my own way.” Then God says, “Okay, have it your way.” And that judicial deliverance, that abandonment into our own desire becomes our own punishment. C.S. Lewis said, “The doors of hell are locked from the inside.” Those in hell don’t want to get out of it, they have chosen it. They have chosen their sin, they have chosen their wickedness. They love it. And God abandons them to their own desires. Does this abandonment to our desires mean freedom? Or slavery?

8. Sexual Impurity. Paul connects sexual sin, immorality, and idolatry. Paul was writing this letter to the Romans from Corinth, a famously immoral city. In Paul’s time, ‘to act like a Corinthian’ meant to act in a sexually immoral way. It was a sailor’s port town. It had a temple in the city center with 1000+ cult prostitutes servicing it. Paul could see the connection visibly displayed between the idolatry of the Corinthians and their sexual immorality. If your desires are not conformed to the truth, then you will try to conform the truth to your desires. And thus, there is always an inseparable connection between idolatry and immorality. Idolatry is simply immorality worked out. And immorality is simply idolatry worked out.

   Paul says that sexual sin is a result of God’s giving us over to our desires. Sometimes people ask, “Is AIDS the judgment of God on homosexuality?” The answer from this text is that homosexuality itself is a judgment on the human race, because we have exchanged the glory of God for the creature—and so is AIDS and cancer and arthritis and Alzheimer’s and every other disease and every other futility and misery in the world, including death. That’s the point of Romans 5:15-18 and Romans 8:20-23, which we will see down the road. Paul will discuss homosexuality specifically in the next section of Scripture that we study, but for now, he says that sexual impurity, which includes but is not limited to homosexuality, for the degrading of our bodies with one another is a desire that sinful man has, and it is a judgment of God.

   John Piper says: Paul, in Ephesians 5:31-32, tells us that from the beginning, men and women existed to represent both God’s relation to His people and Christ’s relation to His bride, the Church. The man represents God or Christ and is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church. The woman represents God’s people or the Church. And sexual union in the covenant of marriage represents pure, undefiled, intense worship. That is, God means for the beauty of worship to be expressed in the right ordering of our sexual lives. But instead, we have exchanged the glory of God for images of man. The beauty of worship is destroyed. Therefore, in judgment, God has determined that this disordering of our relation to Him be dramatized in the disordering of our sexual relations with each other. And since the right ordering of our relationship to God in worship was dramatized by heterosexual union in the covenant of marriage, the disordering of our relationship to God is dramatized by the breakdown of that heterosexual union. Homosexuality is the most vivid form of that breakdown. God and man in covenant worship are represented by male and female in covenant sexual union. Therefore, when man turns from God to images of himself, God hands us over to what we have chosen and dramatizes it by male and female turning to images of themselves for sexual union, namely their own sex. Homosexuality is the judgment of God dramatizing the exchange of the glory of God for images of ourselves.

   Simply by showing the pervasiveness (regularity or commonness) of sexual immorality in the world, Paul has proven two things. He has proven the doctrine of depravity and the doctrine of the wrath of God. You don’t have to look for mudslides to see the wrath of God against sin. The wrath of God against sin is seen when He breaks lose the restraints of sin in a society and lets sinners go their own way.

9. They exchanged the truth for a lie and worshipped and served the created instead of the Creator. I always think here of Creation vs. Evolution: the ultimate truth vs. the ultimate lie. But what Paul is getting at here is that we deny the totality of God, exchanging this truth, Who God really is, for a lie. Anything other than God’s True Self is a lie—a lie that is idolatry. When we think of idolatry, we may consider ancient peoples worshipping the sun and moon or just plain nature. This type of idolatry is still around in astrology, tree huggers, evolutionists, etc. But today, idolatry is seen more by folks who are very uncomfortable with the bothersome god of the Bible, always telling us what we ought to do. People want freedom. So we invent gods that don’t bother us. We use them when we want, and then we put them back on the shelf. That god of convenience, the god who is love, but who would never interfere with what I want to do, I have created in my own image. He doesn’t get in my way, doesn’t tell me what to do or make things difficult. Or we think maybe all religions are spokes on the wheel, where God is at the hub. After all, we are all the same, we are all one, and we all worship the same God, right? Wrong. That is a false god. And yet, that is a very popular teaching today. The Bahai faith manifests that particular belief.

   Those are typical ways we make idols. But we also make idols out of worshipping things that are good, but aren’t God—family, for instance. Family is a wonderful thing. But if you see your ultimate significance, safety, fulfillment, and satisfaction as being a husband or a father, or maybe a son, you have made family an idol. No human being can possibly give you the satisfaction that you need as a creature created in the image of God. Only God can do that. When we place all of our significance in a marriage, we are ultimately disappointed, because no human being can fulfill what we need. If we find our hope, our significance, our satisfaction, or our comfort in family, money, work, popularity, appearance, even in who we are other than children of the Living God, then we are idolators. Idolatry is placing anything or anyone before the one true God. And Paul is saying to us, that is what we need to be saved from, because every human being has a sinful nature, a natural inclination to that idolatry.

10. God is FOREVER PRAISED. AMEN. Paul, greatly troubled by being in the midst of an idolatrous world that dishonors his God and does not worship his God as the one true God, gets to the word, “Creator,” and he just has to pause for a second and say, “He is forever praised.” God’s truth, God’s glory, God’s blessedness are independent of our assessment. God, in order to be blessed doesn’t need to have our approval. God, in order to be true, does not have to have our concurrence. Remember the bumper sticker, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” As far as Paul is concerned, that’s wrong. It should read, “God said it, that settles it, it doesn’t matter if you believe it or not.” God’s glory is not going to be in the least diminished by my refusal to glorify Him; but I will never participate in His glory, if I do not glorify Him. This is ironic: I can refuse to glorify God, and it is not going to decrease His glory one bit, but it will destroy me. If I refuse to give myself to Him, I am in the end destroyed; but if I give myself to Him, and I glorify Him, I find that I get to partake in that glory. Paul wants us to realize that God’s glory is not impacted by our rejection of Him. God will be glorified. The idols will not triumph. The question is this: Will you participate in glory or destruction? Are you prepared for glory or destruction? Romans 9:22-23 “What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath–prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory?” Do you have faith in Christ? Are your sins forgiven by Him? Has He born the wrath of God in your stead? Then He will fill you with His glory.

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 the due penalty for their perversion.
²⁸Furthermore, 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.

1. Because they exchanged the truth for a lie, because of sin, God gave them over to shameful lusts, to more sin. Same idea as last time. Paul is still telling the believers in Rome about God’s wrath specifically against those who have exchanged the truth of God, Who He really is and what He’s really said, for a lie, an idol, a false god. And again, the penalty of sin here is more sin. The penalty of turning away from God is having God back away. God lowers His hedge of protection, His hedge of sustenance. John Piper says, “The root of all our disorders—sexual and social and physical and emotional—is the exchange of the glory of God for idols. Our soul was made to orbit around the glory of God as its sun. And the entire human race has exchanged the glory of God for weightless, substitute satellites that have no gravity and can hold nothing in proper orbit. Therefore the world is disordered and decaying and moving toward destruction.” And Paul gets specific. We’re talking about shameful lusts of the flesh, sexual immorality, and homosexuality.

2. Homosexuality is an unnatural shameful lust. They received in themselves the due penalty for this perversion. First of all, homosexuality is not only unbiblical; it is unnatural. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that 2 female parts don’t connect. Now why has Paul picked out homosexuality? He singles this sin out precisely because it is an example of the human heart working against reason, working against Scripture, and working against nature. Paul’s stress falls upon the unnatural character of the vice, and the peculiar gravity of the abomination. The implication is that however grievous fornication or adultery is, the desecration involved in homosexuality is on a lower plane of degeneracy; it is unnatural and therefore reveals a perversion more basic. Paul is saying, you want to see evidence of the power of sin unchecked? I give you female homosexuality. In Scripture, women are always the last ones to be swept under in pervasive societal moral degradation. Paul says, look, even your women have fallen prey to this. Paul says, I know that this is more prevalent amongst men than women, but the fact that even your women, upper-class women, educated women, women who know better than this had fallen into this practice. He said that’s an evidence of how pervasive sin is in your society. Paul is telling us here what can happen when sin unchecked by God’s grace is occurring in a society. It leads literally to inhuman deeds.

   Second, remember Piper’s analogy from last time: The Ephesians 5 idea that an ideal relationship is monogamy between husband and wife to symbolize the intimacy of Christ and the Church. Remember that the farthest one can get from this ideal relationship is homosexual promiscuity. And I think that’s exactly what Paul is talking about here. Don’t get me wrong. Paul is talking about all kinds of sexual sin in general: pornography, prostitution, adultery, one-night stands, sex before marriage, sodomy, molestation, even perverted intimacy, etc. And the result is more sin, more idolatry, increasing lack of reverence for God. But specifically here, Paul says that the promiscuous homosexuals will receive in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. “In themselves” is judgment. “The due penalty” is judgment. AIDS? Maybe / maybe not. There will be not only consequences of behavior, but behavior is the consequence of behavior! Have you ever heard from a repentant homosexual? They are absolutely scarred for life. Yeah, they can move on and even marry and have children and live normal lives filled with a love for God. But they are scarred, and that scar is a punishment; they have received the due penalty for their perversion.

   " " was deep into pornography while in college, before he became a Christian. He even struggled with pornography after becoming a Christian, and only with the help of his accountability group (and the Holy Spirit of course), was he able to regularly (even always) overcome the desires to look at pornographic images. Not to say he never has any desires like that. He still does. But he no longer yields to that temptation, and it’s because of God’s sanctification. But he's scarred. He's got a scar that depicts the due penalty for his perversion. His emotions are seared. His eyes have seen too much. The images are burned into his mind. And he hates it. Oh, how he wishes pornography had never been introduced! But it was. And now he's scarred. He knows God can take the scar away, but he doesn’t believe He will. God wants him to remember Him, and call on Him when a temptation arises. God wants him to say, along with Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.” He could be wrong about that. But that’s his experience. And I think that homosexuals who leave the lifestyle are scarred like that. So the due penalty is received in yourself when you commit sexual sin. And it doesn’t matter if God leaves you to wallow in your sin or if He pulls you out. The scar remains if you are pulled out. Piper says, “We have forgiveness for sin now; we will have freedom from all sinning later. We have reconciliation with God now; we will have complete intimacy later. We have the firstfruits and the downpayment of the Holy Spirit now; we will have the full harvest of his power and presence later. We have some healing now (from our sexual disorders); we will have full wholeness later. We see his beauty through a glass darkly now, later we will see face to face. We have peace with God now; we will have perfection later.” The due penalty continues in your body and results in destruction if you remain in that sin.

   Lastly, Paul is not condemning only heterosexuals who occasionally or perhaps even regularly perform homosexual acts. Some of the liberal denominations will interpret this passage that way. They might say that Paul says it’s wrong if you are “naturally” heterosexual to engage in homosexual behavior. But, they would also say that it’s okay for “naturally” homosexual folks to be who God made them to be: homosexuals. That’s wrong. Paul clearly condemns all homosexual acts, regardless of “natural” orientation. By the way, what do you think of homosexuality being a genetic thing? There’s no proof of that, but what if it is? There’s still no excuse. It’s a moral decision. And we’ve seen that the problem is a moral one, not an intellectual one, not even a physical one. Alcoholism is genetic. But that doesn’t make it right. Addictive behavior is often classified as genetic, but that doesn’t make it right. In fact, it’s wrong to be addicted to anything. So you can’t say, “I was made this way.” You have no excuse, genetic or otherwise.

   It is not unloving to condemn homosexuality. God does not accept any of us as we are. He does something better than that. He accepts us in spite of who we are. And then by His grace, He makes us into what we are not. And every single believer in here knows that experience.

3. Since they did not think it was worthy to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them a depraved mind, and they did what ought not to be done. Here again, in different terms, Paul is saying that when you exchange the truth of God for a lie, He will give you over to your desires. Why state it again in different terms? It confirms that God is just and again and again and again that we need the gospel, we need redemption. Everyone is under the wrath of God apart from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, they knew the truth, but the truth wasn’t worthy. The truth of God was rejected, unworthy. How contrary to Scripture that false thinking is! The Lord alone is worthy! Now last time, we talked of the depravity of the heart. Here we have the depravity of the mind. It’s just a further acknowledgement that all of man in his totality is depraved. The mind becomes so defective in regards to morality that it doesn’t have the framework to recognize evil for what it really is. Unbelievers don’t get why Christians think certain behavior is wrong. They treated knowledge of God as worthless, and so their minds are depraved. They’ve lost the ability to grasp morality—by their own choice. They have chosen to deny the truth of God and His Word, and one penalty is a depraved mind. There is no inclination to good among mankind; even civil good is done with wrong motives. Do you agree or disagree? Remember Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” And Romans 14:23 “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Matthew 19:17 “There is only One who is good.” James 1:17 “Every good and perfect gift is from above.” Matthew 7:17 “Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” Is mankind like good or bad trees?

   Paul is helping us to understand the nature of the problem. It has to do with our desires. It has to do with our desires, it has to do with passions, and it has to do with our mind or with our heart, the very core of our being. When he speaks of a depraved mind, he’s speaking of the very seat of our thinking, our willing, our feeling and our actions. And he’s saying, at the very core of us, we are corrupt apart from the grace of God. The mind that is not God-centered, not God-honoring, will become a slave to its own carnal desires. Paul is saying when we see that happen, we are seeing the judgment of God against a mind, against a heart, against the person who wants to have nothing to do with the worship and honor and adoration of God in his heart of hearts. External solutions will never ultimately work. We can constrain sin with external solutions, but we can’t get at the interior problem. Only the grace of God can. The worst penalty for sin is to love sin. And Paul says here that God is giving these people over to the love of their own sin in their corrupt minds. God’s judgment is absolutely perfect. It’s absolutely just. He gives them exactly what they want and what they deserve. And that was us until we were changed, until our hearts were made new and our minds conformed. So praise God for making us His own!

   Can you realistically say: The depth of our sin does not just deserve divine judgment, it is divine judgment? That is what Paul says. John Piper says, “You can’t really understand America (or any other country) today without this revealed truth. Even if we tried to boast over God that at least we have our self-determination in rebelling against God, God would answer: ‘Do you think so? Think again.’”

4. 21 Signs of God’s wrath on man: wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, hatred of God, insolence, arrogance, boasting, mischievousness, disobedience to parents, senselessness, faithlessness, heartlessness, ruthlessness. Instead of looking at each of these words individually, which we could do, let’s see what Paul is trying to do by listing all of these words. Paul is suggesting, infallibly and inerrantly by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that a suppression of the truth of God leads to sinful behavior. He lists these sins to show that every type of sin and every kind of evil comes from failing to know God and love Him above all things. Notice all of these sins have to do with the inner-man. The corruption that Paul is getting at is not caused by societal problems or by deficiency in the legal code or in the social program of the nation. It’s a heart problem. Nothing can get at this heart problem but the power of God which is able to work in the heart.

   Piper says, “If America has the highest murder rate in the western world, it has to do with God. If our executives are greedy, it has to do with God. If our politicians are deceitful, it has to do with God. If we gossip about each other behind the back, it has to do with God. If our talk show hosts are insolent and boastful, it has to do with God. If our children are disobedient to parents, it has to do with God. If we are untrustworthy and don't keep our marriage vows, it has to do with God. If we are blind to obvious wrongs and are unloving and unmerciful, it has to do with God. Sin and evil exist, because we deny Who He really is and what He’s really said and done.” How do we combat this list of evils and sins? We need help. We cannot do it. But God can. He can and He has reversed this decaying process, this slippery slope that leads to hell. He has revealed not only His wrath, which we’ve seen, but also His righteousness. The gospel can combat these evils, and it has accomplished a great victory in every believer. Praise God!

   Romans 6:17 “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed (NASB).” The word “committed” or perhaps “entrusted” in your translation, is the same word in Greek for “handed over” in the passage today. Notice that Paul thanks God for what you have done. You were “handed over” or “committed” or “entrusted” by God to obedience in faith. That’s why salvation and justification and sanctification and glorification have nothing to do with you. It’s all of God, and that’s why He gets the glory, and not you. Psalm 66:5 “Come and see what God has done, how awesome His works in man’s behalf!” 1 Corinthians 12:6 “There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.” Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Philippians 2:13 “For it is God Who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” That’s why we thank God. He has taken us out of darkness and brought us into the light. (See 1 Peter 2:9; Ephesians 5:8; 2 Corinthians 4:6; Acts 26:17-18; John 12:46)

5. Everyone knows that God has righteously declared these things as wrong, and that the penalty should be death. Interestingly, Paul says here that everybody knows that the big long list of 21 sins is wrong and committing them means that they deserve death. No one can claim ignorance. There’s no excuse. It may be true that all people don’t know everything there is to know about God’s Law, as revealed in Scripture as fully as God desires, but they know these 21 sins; and they know they’re guilty and deserving of death! Where does the unbeliever’s morality come from? Again, we come to the root cause, a denial of absolute truth. And God is truth. Apologetics teaches us to explain morality not as an evolution within an evolving culture, but as an objective fact-based law from the creator God, indeed God Himself.

   Now look what Paul has done: Early on he said that from creation mankind knows Who God is, at least His eternal power and divine nature. They know it and see it clearly and actually understand it. Now Paul adds to what all of mankind knows. Mankind knows what sin is and that sin deserves death. Wow! Now certainly not all unbelievers will admit that they know these things. In fact, we’ve seen that suppression of these truths lead to depraved minds and darkened hearts, which easily keep folks from acknowledging the knowledge they have. After all, it’s worthless to them! Now how does this truth, that all people know God and that their sins deserve death, affect our evangelism? Should we say to those who question the existence or the goodness of God, “I know you doubt the reality of God and His glory and His goodness and His moral law and your guilt for disobedience. I know that. But the Bible teaches that you really do know these things already deep in your heart, which means that if you would humble yourself and ask God to free you from the blinding effects of sin, these things could take on a self-evidencing authority for you. You wouldn’t be dependent on me or anybody else. You would see the truth, because God has revealed it to you in nature and has written it on your heart. In fact, if you’re willing, I would like to tell you God’s remedy for this guilt. When you see that there is indeed a God Who is great and glorious and good, and when you see that He has a moral law that we have broken and that we all deserve death, know this: God sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to save sinners. He lived a perfect life. He died to take our place, so that everyone who has faith in Him to save them will be forgiven and will be counted righteous before God for the sake of Jesus. My prayer for you is that God will uncover the knowledge that He has already put in your heart in such a way that you will see the perfect fit between the gospel of Christ and your need to see God and be healed.”

6. But, they not only continue to sin, but approve of others in sin. Can we take this a step further to say that they encourage sin? The end-point of depravity is not just the suicidal love affair with sin, but the desire to bring others with you to destruction. This is the bottom of the downward spiral for mankind. The fact that we are not satisfied to engage in sinful behavior but insist on applauding and advocating it in others is the definitive proof of our wickedness. And this is rampant in our society. You see it with regard to pornography. It’s not just that somebody needs to be able to pick up a pornographic magazine. It’s that we can’t restrict it. It’s not just that people want to be able do their evil deeds behind closed doors. They want to have a statute requiring that their evil acts be allowed and actually publicized in our society.

   Notice also the parallel between verses 20-21 and verse 32. In verses 20-21, people are without excuse, because they know God but don’t treat Him the way they should. And in verse 32, people are without excuse, because they know God’s Law but don’t treat others the way they should. Right back to godlessness and wickedness—impiety and immorality—irreverence towards God and disrespect of men. And notice finally that this place, at the bottom of this sin spiral, is exactly where Satan himself sits. He is wallowing in sin like a pig in the mud and he wants to bring others along for the party.

Footnotes

1. 1:4 Or who as to his spirit
2. 1:4 Or was appointed to be the Son of God with power
3. 1:17 Or is from faith to faith
4. 1:17 Hab. 2:4

---

Bible text from Gospelcom.net.  Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

BACK TO MENU   NEXT CHAPTER