Romans 1 “The Big Take-Away”

And so I come to the end of chapter 1.

This has been a very rewarding study. I feel like it has definitely helped me understand the Lord and His heart in ways I’ve never seen before. It also helps me to put some important truths together in ways I’ve not seen before.

I’m still amazed at the very basic questions which are answered here in Romans 1 and yet the world (and even the church as a whole) is still asking. In particular, I’m thinking of the doctrine of Creation. Romans 1 lays it out very clearly for us: “The invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead …” No wonder the world so vigorously hates the doctrine of Creation. “…being understood from the things that are made.”  No wonder here we are in the Last Days and, just as He warned us, they scoff and ask, “Where is the sign of His Coming? All things continue as they have from the beginning (evolution).” The very created world around us is shouting that God is present.

Then there is the question (which isn’t even asked anymore) of “Where did the natives come from?” The whole world is so completely steeped in the lie of evolution, it is now universally understood that “primitive” peoples are remnants of the cavemen we all used to be and of course our “religions” are the collective beliefs we’ve come to accept because we think they somehow make our world work better. Instead, Romans 1 says, “Knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, neither were thankful, therefore their foolish hearts were darkened…” and so began the horrible devolution of the human race.

Of course, Genesis 1-3 clearly teaches us that our race started with two intelligent, capable people who did in fact know the one and only true God and especially the church should have been answering this question resolutely all along, but, just in case we missed it, Romans 1 tells us (and has been telling us for over 2,000 years!) exactly where the natives come from. They are the us we will become when we push God out of our hearts, out of our homes, our schools, our nation.

What then utterly amazes me is to see God’s judgment on all this sin. Romans 1 tells us that’s God’s “judgment” is nothing less than letting people have what they want. His judgment is to “give them up.” In His utterly unfathomable love for us, even today, He is kindly restraining our bent for evil, our passion for every possible form of self-destruction. Eight billion people are determined to kill themselves and wreck their lives, but, while they spit in His face, He very graciously restrains them and actually gives them some measures of joy and peace in this world. And it is only when they utterly refuse His kindness and deliberately push Him out of their hearts that He finally (and lovingly) grants them the dignity to choose for themselves to make their world a living hell.

But that then brings us full circle. Therein is the real problem – pushing God out. Romans 1 would have us know that people’s problem is not their sins. The answer is not that they need to “stop sinning” (although they do). The answer is they need to be restored in a living relationship with God. “Although they knew God, they glorified Him not as God…” To “fix” the human race, we need go no further back than that.

Which brings us to the Gospel. Jesus is the Way and in this case we could say He is the Way Back. As Paul says so succinctly in v. 16, the Gospel is “the power of God unto salvation (deliverance)…” It will take Paul two more chapters to fully illustrate man’s utter inability to fix himself, but here, in a nutshell he’s already begun laying it out clearly for us.

Finally, I want to note how, even within this first chapter, we’ve already seen the power of the Gospel. From verse 18 on, we trace man’s devolution down to the horrible catalog of hate and evil listed in vv. 29-32. It truly is horrible to see just how evil people can be. There really was a Holocaust. Every day, people all over the world live in shocking cruelty and moral squalor. Yet, in the first 17 verses, we observed the Apostle Paul himself and found there a man who genuinely cared about other people, who lovingly communicated with them, and sincerely wished for them grace and peace.

That is what the Gospel should do – restore humans to the image of God Himself – make them like Christ – make them people of love. And so it does.

Romans 1 isn’t about condemning the world. It’s about saving them. It isn’t about an angry God furiously throwing lightning bolts at pathetic sinners. It’s about a God who loves people, who only wishes them well, and who offers to us a very simple remedy. Unfortunately, Romans 1 also tells us the vast majority of the human race always has and always will reject God’s simple remedy and so, in fact, will bring down God’s judgment on themselves. But it isn’t because the Lord is unwilling.

The answer is finally and completely to embrace the love He offers.

That is my “big take-away.”

Romans 1:32 “Resurrection”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

³²Such ones, knowing the decree of God, that ones practicing such things are worthy of death, not only practice them but also approve those practicing.

I have pondered on this verse for a while. It is curious to me that the persons in view it says, “know the decree of God, that those practicing such things deserve death…” That makes me wonder exactly who the Lord has in mind. It is definitely true today that wicked people openly approve of and encourage wickedness in others. But I wonder, do the same people “know the decree of God?” Do they “know that those practicing such things are worthy of death?” I guess my first inclination is to say no. I rather suspect that wicked people today are plodding blindly to their own awful judgments.

That leads me to believe that the Lord specifically has in mind the antediluvian people who would have rejected the preaching of Adam and Enoch and Noah and literally carried the human race to such a pit that the Lord destroyed it all with the Flood. I’ve noted before how in different verses from 18 on, there have been a couple of places where the sins were expressed in the singular – leading me to wonder if He didn’t have the entire human race in view as a singular entity.

But that said, it sort of doesn’t matter, since even the collective sins of the entire race are but an expression of every heart individually. Either way, the Lord is describing us – or rather, the us we are each capable of becoming. The same rotten heart beats in every human breast. Here in America, grace has be-knighted us with birth in a basically Christian land, given us parents and teachers of at least noble intentions, and allowed us to begin the journey of life somewhere above ignorant savages eating each other.

What Romans 1 has been showing us is how badly we need God. It has been showing us the awful, awful consequence of rejecting Him – the only force in all the universe which can save us from ourselves. But I want to record that, I think, in a way, verse 32 really does sum up the final end of man’s devolution.

What do I mean? What I mean is that, having turned our backs on God, we will not only devolve – more than that, we turn into demons ourselves. It is bad enough to sin and bring judgment on ourselves, but what is a demon? It is a being created with intelligence and dignity and no doubt beauty, created in the very presence of God, with the power to choose whether to acknowledge that God or not – and who knowingly, willfully rejected Him to follow instead their evil leader Satan. And having plunged themselves full length into all of that sin and judgment, and who know (literally) that God’s judgment will mean death, now spend every minute trying to deceive human beings into the same judgment.

Stop and ponder how utterly evil that is. It’s always a wonder to me how one generation after another of movie stars and entertainers fall hopelessly into addictions and ultimately early deaths, only to see another generation rise up, run headlong into the same drunkenness, drug abuse, and immorality, and end up in the same addictions and self-destruction. How can people be so blind? How awful to think there are actually demons who, seeing all that self-destruction and misery, yet actually enjoy all day every day leading more young people down the same path! They know they’re leading people to their deaths and do it anyway!

Then add to that picture that the fallen people themselves join the invisible demons to openly encourage other people’s destruction. The party life – that’s the life to live, yes? Drive fast. Be immoral. Drink yourself into a stupor. Try it, you’ll like it. Human beings trumpet those old ideas, knowing full well it has utterly destroyed people around them, and knowing too the misery it has brought into their own lives. They do it, knowing they’re leading other people to their deaths. When a person does that, what has he become? A demon – one “knowing the decree of God, that ones practicing such things are worthy of death, [yet who] not only practice[s] them but also approve[s] those practicing...”

And, as the old saying goes, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”

The only reason I am not a demon ultimately is God Himself. He very kindly has placed all through my life forces and restraints of all different kinds to keep me from being as bad as I could be. And He took upon Himself the robe of flesh to come here and die in my place so that even my very heart could be redeemed! Coincidentally, as I type these words it is Easter morning of 2019. Resurrection Sunday! And what is resurrection all about? It’s about Jesus conquering (our) death and rising again. It’s about Him winning the war with Satan for the souls of men and women and boys and girls! And think about it – though I am literally (or at least have the potential in me) to be a demon deserving the Lake of Fire, yet He would pay the price of my sin, and carry this willfully wicked (redeemed) sinner once again into the loving embrace of my heavenly Father. He gives to each of us literally life from the dead.

Amazing.

I don’t want to be a demon. I don’t want other people around me to become demons. I don’t want them taken captive by the devil to do his evil will and kill themselves.

May you and I so draw near to our Father’s heart that others might see there is available to them a world of life and light and peace and joy – a world where they don’t have to live in hate and fear and confusion. May they see the resurrected Jesus in you and me!

Romans 1:29-31 “Without Him”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²⁹[they are]ones having been filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, badness; [they are] full of envy, murder, contentiousness, deceitfulness, malignity; [they are] whisperers, ³⁰slanderers, haters of God, overbearing, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents; ³¹[they are] undiscerning, unfaithful, without natural affection, pitiless.

This is sure a crazy world we live in. We call good evil and evil good. We run away from God, the source of all that is good and right, and jump into the arms of the devil who is the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning. We could live in the joy and peace of angels but instead we choose the hatred and enmity of demons.

I believe we need to note carefully that the catalog of evil listed in these verses is the consequence of ignoring God. In other words, people aren’t like this simply because they’re bad. They are like this because they pushed away the only One who could have saved them from themselves. They are bad. We are bad. “The heart of man is desperately wicked, deceitful above all things; who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). But, though this is a fallen, cursed world, and though we are each of us capable of the absolute most heinous sins in the book, yet our amazing God in gracious love actually holds us back. He very patiently keeps us from the frantic race of self-destruction into which we would in our foolishness plunge.

The only answer for the human race is God. The only hope for our nations, our cities, our families, even for our own souls is an intimate, personal, on-going relationship with this wonderful God who would do us good, if we’d only let Him. But without Him, and being allowed to chase our every evil desire, we see in these verses what we and our nations, and cities, and families – and churches! – become. Loveless, peaceless, malignant demons.

No one will believe us but history proves what this passage is telling us – that only the truth of the Bible will create nations and families and lives of love. Where the truth of the Bible goes, people learn to be kind, faithful, and peaceful. Without it, people will go from worse to worse until they are literally killing and eating each other. The American Revolution succeeded, being led by men who at least respected the Bible. The French Revolution was a colossal disaster, a monstrosity of murder and cruelty second only in horror to the Holocaust – led by people who openly mocked at the worship of God.

We who live in America don’t realize how much peace and quiet we enjoy entirely because those who went before us acknowledged and worshipped God. I get to go to work every day and really enjoy very pleasant people. Granted I am an engineer and the industry in which I work is built around and among generally decent people. But why are they decent? It is because we still live in the glow of our grandparents’ faith. Whether anyone acknowledges it or not, it is God who is still graciously restraining us and helping us to be “decent.” I’ve often wondered what it is like to be a policeman – where one spends all day every day dealing with the absolute worst elements of our community. I don’t know how they do it. I’m glad for the world I work in!

But…we have a huge segment of our population determined to extinguish all mention of God from our country. Oh, the horror into which they would plunge us all. Romans 1:29-31 is here telling everyone exactly where we are headed – and it’s not pretty. So, so, so foolish. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…” but we choose to become demons instead. So sad.

Note too, that what we’re reading about is the wrath of God. Note the flow of this entire passage from verse 18 on – it’s not a matter that the wrath of God comes because of all our sin (although it does). Realize, all this sin is the wrath of God. That He leaves us to plunge to our own self-destruction is His wrath. In a sense, He doesn’t have to throw any lightning bolts. He only needs to let us have what we want. As it says in Proverbs, “By his own folly a man ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the Lord.”

But blessed be the Lord Jesus! The whole point of this whole passage is that we need a Savior, and the good news (the Gospel!) is that He has come. The good news is that no matter how far we’ve fallen, we’ve only proved how badly we need Him, and He is always there to pick us up, always ready to be our God, always ready to start the intimate personal relationship which is our only hope. I am so thankful week after week for how He is always drawing me closer to Himself, how that, in Him and in knowing Him, I’m drawn toward love and joy and peace and away from the foolish self-destruction that is me.

If only people could understand, their lives are nightmares simply because they are without Him.

Romans 1:28 “Amazing”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²⁸Just as they did not approve to have God in acknowledgment, God also gave them up into an unapproved mind, to be doing what is not proper.

This has sure been an amazing study in this first chapter of the book of Romans. I realize now that, in a sense, I’ve never really understood God’s judgment before. I think the way I’ve seen it was basically people pushing God beyond the limits of His patience, then Him justifiably resorting to the angry God throwing lightning bolts at pathetic fleeing sinners. That didn’t bother me since, in my mind, they (I) “deserved” it, while at the same time the same God was offering forgiveness through Christ to those who would accept it. That seemed very neat and tidy to me.

However, now I see it all in a very different light. In this chapter, we get to see God’s heart. I guess what really floors me is to see that His judgment is not a matter of  Him throwing lightning bolts, so much as it is Him simply letting people have what they want. In this fallen world of people rejecting God and spitting in His face, still He is very lovingly and kindly restraining them from the evil their heart is capable of and frankly longing to pursue. Even as I type, a world of 8 billion people hates Him and says of His Son Jesus, “We will not have this man to rule over us.” They want to chase their sexual desires and take their neighbor’s wife to bed. They want to lie and murder and steal – whatever it takes to get what they want. Rather than angels, they want to be demons. And certainly in too many ways and too often they succeed.

But into this morass of evil hearts and evil, self-destructive intentions, steps this spurned God and what does He do? He judges them, right? Well, actually no. He first of all maintains a very, very kind and deeply undeserved restraint over them. He holds them back. Like a loving parent, He holds them back from running and jumping into the Niagara River and getting swept over its edge to be dashed to pieces on its rocks. At this very moment, our amazing God is lovingly restraining a world of people bent on their own self-destruction.

Judgment is not so much lightning bolts as it is Him letting them have what they so passionately desire.

That is so amazing. I’ve noted before I think the supreme dignity of a human being is the freedom to choose. God did not create us to be robots. Out of all His creation, He gave man a mind to think and a heart to decide what we truly want. He did this knowing full well that too many, if not the vast majority, would choose badly. …But it was our choice. Therein lies the dignity. God is treating you and me with an almost incomprehensible dignity, to actually let us choose. I would go so far as to say that is even an infinite expression of love itself. It is amazing to me He would do that.

But that same God, knowing we would choose badly, and while granting us the freedom to choose, lovingly ordered His world so that He would restrain us from much of the evil we would choose to run into. That is amazing love. Even as I ponder this thought, my own mind is a flood of memories of situations where I easily could have plunged to my own complete destruction and yet something was there holding me back. That “something” was God Himself – protecting me from myself!

And yet, because He does grant to humans the dignity to choose, there is a point where He must and will withdraw that restraint. As our passage says three times, “He gave them up.” He gave them up to go where they wanted to go, to do what they wanted to do. And when He does, they ultimately turn into savages with bones in their noses killing and eating each other. They degrade their bodies with one another. They exchange natural use and suffer for their own perversion. In the last few verses of the chapter, we’ll see the horrible, hateful pit into which they plunge themselves.

What a loving God – to hold us back, and yet it is love itself to finally give us our way.

That is amazing to me.

But then what is equally amazing is to realize that all of this is an expression of how much you and I need God. All of this is an expression of how we were not created to be independent from Him. The very essence of our reality is life lived in intimate relationship with Him. Once again, what is the real problem? It is that, when “they knew God, they did not acknowledge Him as God.” In the passage before us, “They did not approve to have God in acknowledgment.” “They did not like to retain God in their knowledge.” “They did not see fit to acknowledge God.” In a sense, we cut off our legs, then marvel that we can’t walk. We need Him. We are incomplete without Him.

Once again, one almost shudders to realize that hell itself is God giving people what they want. They don’t want God around. They don’t want Him in their life. They don’t want Him ruling over them. So He sends them to the one place in His universe where they can have what they want – hell. A world without God. What too many of us never figure out is that by pushing God out of our hearts and lives, we turn this world into a smaller version of our own hell. On the other hand, to the extent we invite Him in, we get to enjoy a semblance of Heaven!

The verse before us speaks to all of this. “Whereas they did not approve to have God in acknowledgment,…” There is the real problem. The words I’ve translated “did not approve” are a sort of play on words with those in the second half, the “unapproved” mind. It doesn’t translate easily into English, but the horrifying idea is that they used their God-given ability to think and to evaluate and decided to knowingly, deliberately reject God, to deny the truth of their need for Him, and so He gave them up to a mind incapable of rightly thinking and evaluating. They’d rather have their lusts than the truth, so God let them have their lusts and took away their ability to discern the truth.

That is precisely where we are in America today. There is a huge segment of the population that is utterly shocking for their complete inability to think. We ask ourselves, “How can anyone be that stupid?” Romans chapter 1 answered that question 2,000 year ago. They can’t think. They chose immorality and a life without God and He has literally taken away their ability to think. He gave them what they wanted. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to go on living in the same world with them, while they would self-destruct not only their lives but everyone else’s as well.

What to do? Understanding all of this, you and I ought the more energetically to draw the Lord into our hearts and lives. We ought the more energetically to realize how much we desperately need Him. We should sincerely, humbly seek to know and live His will in our daily lives and literally fear even the possibility that He might give me what I want!

He is an amazing God, even in what He withholds.

He is an amazing God in how much He loves even those who utterly reject Him.

He is amazing.