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.
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