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You'd have to say that there's nothing pretty
about the picture of the world that we find in this
passage from Romans ch1. Here we take off the rose
coloured glasses and look, with a degree of reality, at
the world we live in. I was talking to someone the other
day about watching television and they said they hardly
watch it because it's all too horrible. We've seen in the
past few months how people's view of the world seems to
have changed. But Sept 11 didn't actually make any
difference to the world. It just brought reality into a
slightly better focus. The world that Paul portrays here,
and the people who live in that world are no different
from now, yet the reality is that they seem to be so far
from perfect that there can be little hope for them. |
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Yet that isn't true is it? That's why I've
started us back at v16, where we were last week. You see,
the setting in which Paul gives us this jaundiced view of
the world is the statement that the gospel "is the
power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to
the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in
it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for
faith." Here is the thing to remember whenever we
look at our fallen world. There is a righteousness that
comes from God that overturns the evil that we see in the
world. But it's a righteousness that's gained only by
faith in Jesus Christ. |
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As I said last week, the great search by people
since the dawn of the world has been to get themselves
right with God. Even in a religion like Buddhism, that
doesn't have a concept of a personal god, the aim is to
attain perfection, righteousness. Even if it takes a
thousand lifetimes the aim of the Buddhist is to slowly
perfect their life to the point where they're good enough
to be incorporated into the godhead of all creation, in a
state of nirvana. |
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But the reality is that people have failed in
that quest. In fact their failure is so great that God's
wrath against them is being revealed. The proclamation of
the gospel in fact is a proclamation not just of the
righteousness that Christ has won for us. It's also a
proclamation of God's righteous anger at the lack of
righteousness in the world. God feels about our
unrighteousness, if you like, the way we might feel about
the way the refugees have been treated in the Woomera or
Port Hedland detention centres. Or about the behaviour of
Slobodan Milosevic during the Balkan war, or the acts of
genocide in Rwanda recently or in Uganda some years
before. Except of course that when God feels that sort of
anger it isn't compromised or distorted by sinfulness as
our anger so often is. When God expresses his wrath it's
the wrath of perfect goodness directed at what shouldn't
be in the world he created. |
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What's more, as we'll see as we go further into
the book, the gospel shows how this wrath, though
directed at one level towards sinful human beings,
ultimately is redirected to God's only Son, Jesus Christ,
on a cross on Calvary. |
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And look at the reason his wrath is being
revealed? Because people actually suppress the truth that
they have about God. He says: "what can be known
about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to
them. 20Ever since the creation of the world
his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though
they are, have been understood and seen through the
things he has made." He points out in the next
chapter that even God's moral law is known to people.
People show by their reaction to wrongdoing that there
are natural responses built into the human psyche that
tell us when we're doing wrong. |
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And apart from our awareness of God's moral law,
as we look around at the creation we can't help but see
the presence of God in the wonders that God has put
there. It's always amazed me that someone can study
science or medicine and not acknowledge the one who
created this amazing world. I worked in the area of
science and technology for 20 years before being ordained
and everything I saw simply confirmed me in the belief
that only an intelligence, a power, far beyond anything
we can imagine, could create this world with all its
complexity and beauty, with the various interactions and
interplay of forces that make it work. Yet people have
suppressed that truth. They've chosen to build their own
belief structures. They've created gods in their own
image. Just think about the gods of our age: our own
inventiveness, our belief in economic management, our
self-confidence. In fact we've become our own gods,
expressed most clearly, if you like, in our desire to
please ourselves before all others. And we're just the
last in a long line of peoples who have exchanged the
truth of God for a lie. |
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So, he says they are without excuse. Why?
Because they suppressed the truth that's so obvious in
the world around them. Notice the irony in the way he
puts it. Even God's invisible attributes of power and
deity have been seen and understood, since the beginning
of time, through the things that he made. People have
always recognised the God behind the creation. Yet,
though they recognised the presence of God through what
they saw in the creation, they refused to acknowledge him
as God or give thanks to him. And in so doing they became
futile in their thinking. Their senseless minds were
darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools. |
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You may remember that wonderful passage in Is 44
where God talks about the foolishness of idolatry. He
describes how a carpenter goes out into the forest and
cuts down a tree that he's grown, to make an idol. He
takes some of the wood and puts it on the fire to warm
himself as he works, while with the rest of the tree he
fashions an image in the form of a man. Half the wood
goes to warm himself and cook his dinner, while the other
half becomes an idol that the man then bows down to and
worships. He sits in front of the fire feeling good that
the burning wood is warming him, and he kneels down and
prays for his idol to save him. It'd be hilarious if it
weren't so sad, so foolish! |
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Instead of worshipping the true and living God,
they've chosen to worship mere images of created things.
And notice that there's nothing here to imply that he's
just talking about ignorant savages out in the jungle
worshipping something because they don't know any better.
No, he's talking here about all people. He says,
"Claiming to be wise, they became fools." There
are some very ingenious religious systems that have
sprung up over the centuries. People have applied their
minds to coming up with all sorts of systems of worship
that felt right, to an extent, at least. But in the end
none of them do justice to the God who made the heavens
and the earth. |
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So what has God done about it? How has he shown
his wrath towards sinful people, in the first place at
least? I think this is one of the most chilling sentences
you'll ever hear: "Therefore God gave them up."
It's as though God withdraws his support, his restraining
hand perhaps, and simply lets them do what they like. He
leaves them to their own foolishness, to their own path
of futility. Not forever, mind you. Remember that this
passage is premised on vs 16 & 17. God had a better
way prepared for those who would come to him in faith.
But while people chose to do their own thing, to pursue
their own methods of reaching God, he'd let them. But
sadly the results aren't pretty are they? |
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Impurity (24) |
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Instead of the pure worship of God, people
instituted means of worship that involved sexual
impurity, degrading acts that affected not just their
worship of God, but also their own bodies. And having
exchanged the truth of God for a lie, having validated
their impure practices through religion, they then
extended that to the rest of their lives |
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Degrading passions (26) |
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Again we get that expression: "For this
reason God gave them up to degrading passions." The
restraint of God that might have kept people living in
pure relationships with each other was removed. And what
happened? "Their women exchanged natural intercourse
for unnatural, 27and in the same way also the
men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were
consumed with passion for one another. Men committed
shameless acts with men and received in their own persons
the due penalty for their error." You see,
homosexuality is not a new phenomenon. Of course that
statement is used by the gay lobby as an argument for
normalising our view of homosexuality. They argue that
there have always been people with a homosexual
orientation. It's just because society has hidden them
away through moral blackmail that they haven't been more
open about it. But now that we're more enlightened we
should accept them as a normal part of our society. Well,
God's word would agree that homosexuality has been around
a long time. But it would also say that the rise of
homosexuality is a result not of God being happy with it,
but of God giving people up to all manner of unrighteous
living of which this is just one, more obvious, example. |
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A debased mind (28) |
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He says: "Since they did not see fit to
acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and
to things that should not be done." That word
'debased' was used by a blacksmith who, when he'd made
something like a horseshoe, would place it on his anvil
and hit it with his hammer to test whether it was
tempered correctly. If it failed the test it was said to
be debased, i.e. not quite right. So the idea here is of
a mind that isn't quite right, that has some flaw in it
that affects its ability to make right judgements. And
look at the sorts of behaviour that flow from such a
mind: "every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness,
malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness,
they are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters,
insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil,
rebellious toward parents, 31foolish,
faithless, heartless, ruthless." If we were in any
doubt as to whether this passage was still relevant
today, that list would probably answer our question
fairly, well wouldn't it? |
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As we look around our world today, what do we
see? Every kind of wickedness and evil. Covetousness is
what makes the world go round, according to the modern
economist. Malice and envy. Just watch your favourite
soap opera or even sitcom for a while. Dysfunctional
people and communities are the basis for most if not all
of the humour on television at the moment it would seem.
Murder. Remember how Jesus expanded the meaning of murder
to include even a desire to see the someone else put
down. And so we could go on. There's strife, deceit,
craftiness everywhere. People are gossips, slanderers,
God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of
evil, rebellious toward parents (we've got that down to a
fine art haven't we?), foolish, faithless, heartless,
ruthless. |
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But how often do we think of these things as
expressions of God's wrath against us. We think of them
as causing God's wrath. But here we're told that the rise
of these sorts of behaviour is actually an expression, a
sign, of God's wrath. It's as though God wants to teach
us a very important lesson. |
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I remember when we had little children we'd warn
them not to go near the oven when it was on because they
might burn themselves. But all the warnings in the world
weren't nearly as effective as the lesson they learnt for
themselves when they ignored our words and went and
touched it and found out what hot really meant. |
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Well, it seems that this is what God is saying
here. He lets us do what we want. If we choose to rebel
against his rightful rule over his creation, he'll let
us. Even if the result is even greater unrighteousness.
Why? Because he wants us to realise that by ourselves
we're constitutionally unable to do the right thing.
Rather our natural inclination is to do the opposite. Our
natural thinking, in the end, will lead us astray. Even
those of us who are very intelligent and exceedingly
wise, will be led astray if we rely only on our own
intellect and wisdom. |
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We'll discover more of the reason for that as we
delve deeper into the letter, but for now, this is just
how life is. By ourselves we're lost. All the efforts of
human beings to create religious systems to bring them
closer to God have been a failure. All we've managed to
do by ourselves is to raise God's wrath against us. So
there's only one solution. The solution offered in the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. We need the righteousness that
God gives to all who turn to him in faith. We need the
righteousness that comes by grace alone, that's based
wholly on Jesus' death and resurrection on our behalf. |
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Now I don't want you to be disheartened by this
dark view of humanity. I don't want you to go away
feeling there's no hope for humanity. Remember that this
is just the opening chapter of a letter that brings to us
the wonders of God's love, that brings to us the light of
the gospel of Jesus Christ. The point of what we've seen
today is to bring into stark contrast our flawed efforts,
our failure to get to God on our own, and God's
overwhelming righteousness found in Jesus Christ and now
offered freely to those who have faith in God's promises. |
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The light of the gospel is such that it dispels
all the darkness of the human heart and brings us to God
with a renewed sense of worth, of righteousness, because
of what Jesus Christ has done on our behalf. |
