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.