24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They 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, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although 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.
Dig Deeper
So, do you want to take a guess as to the number one cause of tools and household items being broken? You might think its old age, overuse, or even shoddy construction but you would be wrong. The number one reason that household items and tools are broken is from misuse of purpose. We’ve probably all experienced that, when you think about it, at one time or another in your life. I know I have. Recently, I was trying to break apart a pack of bratwurst. I didn’t want to cook all of them so I figured that I would cook half and put the rest back in the freezer. To accomplish this job I took a knife that was supposedly unbreakable. Maybe that’s true if I had used the knife for it’s designed purpose of cutting, but it didn’t prove to be true when it came to using it as a pry bar. The end of the knife snapped off like a twig but I guess that’s what I should expect when I use something outside of it’s intended purpose. That tipless knife now stands as a testament forever to it’s misuse.
In this first chapter of Romans, Paul is laying his foundation for his argument that the gospel, the centerpiece of which is the resurrection of Christ, reveals the covenant justice of God in his dealings with both Jews and Gentiles. It especially, believed Paul, demonstrated God’s righteousness despite the potentially confusing situation that Jews were not streaming into the kingdom of God. As Paul lays out his charge against all humans who have rejected God and turned to foolishness that they label as wisdom, we will do well to remember that Paul is arguing in terms of humankind rather than individuals. If we forget that Paul is talking in terms of human groups, both in this passage and throughout the letter, we can easily get confused and off-track from what Paul is really saying. His basic point in this passage is that humans don’t know God because they have willingly rejected him, and that his very rejection has caused a serious misuse of purpose in human beings. This misuse stands as a testament to humans’ loss of purpose but also, as we should carefully follow Paul’s argument, it reveals God’s wrath and judgment in the present age which is anticipation of his final judgment.
In order for us to understand the full breast of what Paul is saying in this passage, it is vital that we keep in mind that he is writing this letter to demonstrate the justice of God that is displayed once-for-all in the Messiah’s resurrection. The underlying question, however, is how can you tell in the present age who the people of God are? The way you answer that question has profound implications for answering a question of God’s covenantal faithfulness. This underlying question leads to a duality throughout Paul’s letter because he is writing of both status in the present but also the final verdict. We will see, as the letter continues, how Paul will demonstrate that the people of God can be identified in the present and how that verdict correlates and anticipates their final judgment and vindication but here Paul is dealing with those that are not the true people of God. They will certainly be judged at the final judgment, but just as the people of God can be detected in the present as they anticipate the life and verdict of the age to come, so do those who have rejected God’s way demonstrate that life and verdict in the present age.
Three times Paul says that “God gave them up” as he discusses the results of mankind’s rebellion against God. In using that line, Paul once again makes subtle reference to Israel’s relationship with God by alluding to Psalm 81:11-12 which states that God brought his people out of Egypt but “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” Thus Paul is talking primarily of the pagan’s rejection of God but subtly implying that ethnic Israel shares that same plight. When humans, both Jews and Gentiles, reject God he allows them to reap the harvest of what they sow. They do not just face future judgment, they face God’s wrath and judgment in the present. When people, when communities, when nations reject God, God turns them over to their own desires and wills which stands in stark opposition to God’s people who live by faith according to God’s will and the leading of his Spirit (a truth Paul will discuss thoroughly in chapter 8). The very conditions in which nations and people groups find themselves are not the display of their own wisdom that they think but a sign of God’s wrath, guaranteeing their final rejection of God and the final judgment before God.
To put it simply, God made human beings in his image to represent him and rule over his creation (Gen. 1:26-27), bringing him the appropriate glory and worship in the process. This is the purpose of man. As a result of sin, man surrendered vital aspects of that image (Gen. 5:3) which destroyed man’s ability to achieve that purpose. Human groups that have exchanged their proper desires and appropriate wisdom for lies are sad displays of that loss of purpose. They have, as Paul says, “exchanged the truth about God for a lie,” and lost the full measure of what it means to be human. When the true desires of love for God and other humans is distorted into sexual impurity, humans are feeling God’s wrath in the present whether they realize it or not. When humans exchange genuine worship of God for idolatry, it is the result of our loss of purpose as God’s image bearers rather than the cause of it.
This exact logic is what leads Paul to an ever-so-brief discussion of homosexuality and lesbian behavior. It is not that he is horrified by homosexuality more than other sins. Modern religionists have often used this as an explanation to wipe away Paul’s arguments and excuse homosexual behavior. They claim that Paul is merely demonstrating a culturally biased Jewish abhorrence for homosexuality that no longer fits in our enlightened society. But neither this groundless argument nor such hateful behavior towards homosexuals (truly, telling someone they are fine when they are engaged in image destroying behavior is the worst kind of hate) does justice to Paul’s line of reasoning. Paul is arguing about exchanging our created purpose for a distorted one. He argues that this living a distorted purpose is the result of rejecting God and God giving humans over to their own twisted lusts as a sign of judgment. Paul is using homosexuality as an obvious demonstration of what happens when humans exchange the true God for idols. When that happens, our genuine humanness is exchanged for becoming something less than our designed purpose as human beings. But what if they are born with that proclivity, some might argue? Paul has answered that. If they are born with certain proclivities then, in their rebellion against God, God has turned them over to these tendencies (the same way he has any other sin listed in this passage) rather than rescuing them from them. Remaining in that state is a sign of separation from God not the cause of it.
Sexual Perversion, then, like any other rejection of God’s intended order and purpose is an anticipation of the judgment of God, not the cause of it. The rejection of God is the cause of our condemnation, the resulting sin from that rejection is the sign that God has turned us over to our own will and that we stand in his wrath. To get this all straight we need to think in terms of the final destination of those in Christ. We are, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, being transformed back into the image of God by being in Christ. Jesus was the genuine human being (see Ps. 8) and the process of us walking in the Spirit (Rom. 8) and being transformed into his image (see also Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:10) anticipates the final transformation when we will be fully restored to the intended state of genuine human beings (Phil. 3:21; 1 Jn. 3:2). Because the life of Christ is the destination, living by faith in that life is the anticipation or the demonstration that we will receive a vindication or justification from God at the final judgment. In the same way, the ultimate punishment for those outside of Christ is the complete loss of God’s image and the purpose of genuine humanness. Thus abandoning the state of genuine humanness for which God made us is a demonstration and anticipation that we already stand in God’s judgment, just awaiting the final verdict.
This is not a politically correct message in our culture, especially when we see that Paul Paul describes societies turning to homosexuality as a penultimate example of a society that has completely rejected God and standing in the state of judgment and wrath, but a necessary one. As we look through these verses we can be frightened at how much they sound familiar. We know these people. We live, we might even think, in this country; a country that has already rejected God and thus stands in his judgment, as demonstrated by already being given over to image-destroying behavior. But we should take great care to not become arrogant and begin to angrily look down on “everybody else” thinking that they are the cause of the problems; we should be very aware of this dangerous sort of Pharisee-like attitude. As theologian Tom Wright has pointed out, the line of good evil, of genuine humanity and idolatry doesn’t run between countries or neighborhood, but quite frankly, it runs right down the middle of our own hearts. We each have the potential to give ourselves over to this kind of degrading behavior.
Paul reminds his readers, that there is, in a sense, a final step to this image-robbing depravity. It is one thing to lie, to hate, to steal, to degrade and then to know that you have engaged in evil behavior and feel guilty about it. There is hope for the one who feels guilt. But it is another thing entirely when communities begin to exalt degrading and sinful behavior as good. What is left for a society that has called good to be evil and declared evil to be good (Isa. 5:20)? Nothing but the final judgment that will confirm the present reality, as Paul is about to demonstrate in the next chapter. But before we turn the page on this section we should be clear that what Paul is done is to show that both Jews and Gentiles stand firmly separated from God. The outpouring of God’s wrath and judgment will be well deserved. But, of course, that’s not the end of the story. Paul is not primarily defending God’s righteousness in judgment but in the pronouncement of the gospel. Before he can get to that, however, he has laid out the need for a solution of some type apart from what has existed before. And that is exactly what we have in the gospel.
Devotional Thought
How does it change your perspective to know that people living in their own wisdom rather than God’s are actually an anticipatory sign of their rejection of God? How does it change your perspective on evangelism?
No comments:
Post a Comment