Romans 1:32

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, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 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.

Everyone knows that God has righteously declared these things as wrong, and that the penalty should be death. Interestingly, Paul says here that everybody knows that the big long list of 21 sins is wrong and committing them means that they deserve death. No one can claim ignorance. There’s no excuse. It may be true that all people don’t know everything there is to know about God’s Law, as revealed in Scripture as fully as God desires, but they know these 21 sins; and they know they’re guilty and deserving of death! Where does the unbeliever’s morality come from? Again, we come to the root cause, a denial of absolute truth. And God is truth. Apologetics teaches us to explain morality not as an evolution within an evolving culture, but as an objective fact-based law from the creator God, indeed God Himself.

Now look what Paul has done: Early on he said that from creation mankind knows Who God is, at least His eternal power and divine nature. They know it and see it clearly and actually understand it. Now Paul adds to what all of mankind knows. Mankind knows what sin is and that sin deserves death. Wow! Now certainly not all unbelievers will admit that they know these things. In fact, we’ve seen that suppression of these truths lead to depraved minds and darkened hearts, which easily keep folks from acknowledging the knowledge they have. After all, it’s worthless to them! Now how does this truth, that all people know God and that their sins deserve death, affect our evangelism? Should we say to those who question the existence or the goodness of God, “I know you doubt the reality of God and His glory and His goodness and His moral law and your guilt for disobedience. I know that. But the Bible teaches that you really do know these things already deep in your heart, which means that if you would humble yourself and ask God to free you from the blinding effects of sin, these things could take on a self-evidencing authority for you. You wouldn’t be dependent on me or anybody else. You would see the truth, because God has revealed it to you in nature and has written it on your heart. In fact, if you’re willing, I would like to tell you God’s remedy for this guilt. When you see that there is indeed a God Who is great and glorious and good, and when you see that He has a moral law that we have broken and that we all deserve death, know this: God sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to save sinners. He lived a perfect life. He died to take our place, so that everyone who has faith in Him to save them will be forgiven and will be counted righteous before God for the sake of Jesus. My prayer for you is that God will uncover the knowledge that He has already put in your heart in such a way that you will see the perfect fit between the gospel of Christ and your need to see God and be healed.”

But, they not only continue to sin, but approve of others in sin. Can we take this a step further to say that they encourage sin? The end-point of depravity is not just the suicidal love affair with sin, but the desire to bring others with you to destruction. This is the bottom of the downward spiral for mankind. The fact that we are not satisfied to engage in sinful behavior but insist on applauding and advocating it in others is the definitive proof of our wickedness. And this is rampant in our society. You see it with regard to pornography. It’s not just that somebody needs to be able to pick up a pornographic magazine. It’s that we can’t restrict it. It’s not just that people want to be able do their evil deeds behind closed doors. They want to have a statute requiring that their evil acts be allowed and actually publicized in our society.

Notice also the parallel between verses 20-21 and verse 32. In verses 20-21, people are without excuse, because they know God but don’t treat Him the way they should. And in verse 32, people are without excuse, because they know God’s Law but don’t treat others the way they should. Right back to godlessness and wickedness—impiety and immorality—irreverence towards God and disrespect of men. And notice finally that this place, at the bottom of this sin spiral, is exactly where Satan himself sits. He is wallowing in sin like a pig in the mud and he wants to bring others along for the party.

Romans 1:28-31

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 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, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Since they did not think it was worthy to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them a depraved mind, and they did what ought not to be done. Here again, in different terms, Paul is saying that when you exchange the truth of God for a lie, He will give you over to your desires. Why state it again in different terms? It confirms that God is just and again and again and again that we need the gospel, we need redemption. Everyone is under the wrath of God apart from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, they knew the truth, but the truth wasn’t worthy. The truth of God was rejected, unworthy. How contrary to Scripture that false thinking is! The Lord alone is worthy! Now last time, we talked of the depravity of the heart. Here we have the depravity of the mind. It’s just a further acknowledgement that all of man in his totality is depraved. The mind becomes so defective in regards to morality that it doesn’t have the framework to recognize evil for what it really is. Unbelievers don’t get why Christians think certain behavior is wrong. They treated knowledge of God as worthless, and so their minds are depraved. They’ve lost the ability to grasp morality—by their own choice. They have chosen to deny the truth of God and His Word, and one penalty is a depraved mind. There is no inclination to good among mankind; even civil good is done with wrong motives. Do you agree or disagree? Remember Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” And Romans 14:23 “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Matthew 19:17 “There is only One who is good.” James 1:17 “Every good and perfect gift is from above.” Matthew 7:17 “Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” Is mankind like good or bad trees?

Paul is helping us to understand the nature of the problem. It has to do with our desires. It has to do with our desires, it has to do with passions, and it has to do with our mind or with our heart, the very core of our being. When he speaks of a depraved mind, he’s speaking of the very seat of our thinking, our willing, our feeling and our actions. And he’s saying, at the very core of us, we are corrupt apart from the grace of God. The mind that is not God-centered, not God-honoring, will become a slave to its own carnal desires. Paul is saying when we see that happen, we are seeing the judgment of God against a mind, against a heart, against the person who wants to have nothing to do with the worship and honor and adoration of God in his heart of hearts. External solutions will never ultimately work. We can constrain sin with external solutions, but we can’t get at the interior problem. Only the grace of God can. The worst penalty for sin is to love sin. And Paul says here that God is giving these people over to the love of their own sin in their corrupt minds. God’s judgment is absolutely perfect. It’s absolutely just. He gives them exactly what they want and what they deserve. And that was us until we were changed, until our hearts were made new and our minds conformed. So praise God for making us His own!

Can you realistically say: The depth of our sin does not just deserve divine judgment, it is divine judgment? That is what Paul says. John Piper says, “You can’t really understand America (or any other country) today without this revealed truth. Even if we tried to boast over God that at least we have our self-determination in rebelling against God, God would answer: ‘Do you think so? Think again.’”

21 Signs of God’s wrath on man: wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, hatred of God, insolence, arrogance, boasting, mischievousness, disobedience to parents, senselessness, faithlessness, heartlessness, ruthlessness. Instead of looking at each of these words individually, which we could do, let’s see what Paul is trying to do by listing all of these words. Paul is suggesting, infallibly and inerrantly by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that a suppression of the truth of God leads to sinful behavior. He lists these sins to show that every type of sin and every kind of evil comes from failing to know God and love Him above all things. Notice all of these sins have to do with the inner-man. The corruption that Paul is getting at is not caused by societal problems or by deficiency in the legal code or in the social program of the nation. It’s a heart problem. Nothing can get at this heart problem but the power of God which is able to work in the heart.

Piper says, “If America has the highest murder rate in the western world, it has to do with God. If our executives are greedy, it has to do with God. If our politicians are deceitful, it has to do with God. If we gossip about each other behind the back, it has to do with God. If our talk show hosts are insolent and boastful, it has to do with God. If our children are disobedient to parents, it has to do with God. If we are untrustworthy and don't keep our marriage vows, it has to do with God. If we are blind to obvious wrongs and are unloving and unmerciful, it has to do with God. Sin and evil exist, because we deny Who He really is and what He’s really said and done.” How do we combat this list of evils and sins? We need help. We cannot do it. But God can. He can and He has reversed this decaying process, this slippery slope that leads to hell. He has revealed not only His wrath, which we’ve seen, but also His righteousness. The gospel can combat these evils, and it has accomplished a great victory in every believer. Praise God!

Romans 6:17 “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed (NASB).” The word “committed” or perhaps “entrusted” in your translation, is the same word in Greek for “handed over” in the passage today. Notice that Paul thanks God for what you have done. You were “handed over” or “committed” or “entrusted” by God to obedience in faith. That’s why salvation and justification and sanctification and glorification have nothing to do with you. It’s all of God, and that’s why He gets the glory, and not you. Psalm 66:5 “Come and see what God has done, how awesome His works in man’s behalf!” 1 Corinthians 12:6 “There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.” Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Philippians 2:13 “For it is God Who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” That’s why we thank God. He has taken us out of darkness and brought us into the light. (See 1 Peter 2:9; Ephesians 5:8; 2 Corinthians 4:6; Acts 26:17-18; John 12:46)

Romans 1:26-27

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Because they exchanged the truth for a lie, because of sin, God gave them over to shameful lusts, to more sin. Same idea as last time. Paul is still telling the believers in Rome about God’s wrath specifically against those who have exchanged the truth of God, Who He really is and what He’s really said, for a lie, an idol, a false god. And again, the penalty of sin here is more sin. The penalty of turning away from God is having God back away. God lowers His hedge of protection, His hedge of sustenance. John Piper says, “The root of all our disorders—sexual and social and physical and emotional—is the exchange of the glory of God for idols. Our soul was made to orbit around the glory of God as its sun. And the entire human race has exchanged the glory of God for weightless, substitute satellites that have no gravity and can hold nothing in proper orbit. Therefore the world is disordered and decaying and moving toward destruction.” And Paul gets specific. We’re talking about shameful lusts of the flesh, sexual immorality, and homosexuality.

Homosexuality is an unnatural shameful lust. They received in themselves the due penalty for this perversion. First of all, homosexuality is not only unbiblical; it is unnatural. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that 2 female parts don’t connect. Now why has Paul picked out homosexuality? He singles this sin out precisely because it is an example of the human heart working against reason, working against Scripture, and working against nature. Paul’s stress falls upon the unnatural character of the vice, and the peculiar gravity of the abomination. The implication is that however grievous fornication or adultery is, the desecration involved in homosexuality is on a lower plane of degeneracy; it is unnatural and therefore reveals a perversion more basic. Paul is saying, you want to see evidence of the power of sin unchecked? I give you female homosexuality. In Scripture, women are always the last ones to be swept under in pervasive societal moral degradation. Paul says, look, even your women have fallen prey to this. Paul says, I know that this is more prevalent amongst men than women, but the fact that even your women, upper-class women, educated women, women who know better than this had fallen into this practice. He said that’s an evidence of how pervasive sin is in your society. Paul is telling us here what can happen when sin unchecked by God’s grace is occurring in a society. It leads literally to inhuman deeds.

Second, remember Piper’s analogy from last time: The Ephesians 5 idea that an ideal relationship is monogamy between husband and wife to symbolize the intimacy of Christ and the Church. Remember that the farthest one can get from this ideal relationship is homosexual promiscuity. And I think that’s exactly what Paul is talking about here. Don’t get me wrong. Paul is talking about all kinds of sexual sin in general: pornography, prostitution, adultery, one-night stands, sex before marriage, sodomy, molestation, even perverted intimacy, etc. And the result is more sin, more idolatry, increasing lack of reverence for God. But specifically here, Paul says that the promiscuous homosexuals will receive in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. “In themselves” is judgment. “The due penalty” is judgment. AIDS? Maybe / maybe not. There will be not only consequences of behavior, but behavior is the consequence of behavior! Have you ever heard from a repentant homosexual? They are absolutely scarred for life. Yeah, they can move on and even marry and have children and live normal lives filled with a love for God. But they are scarred, and that scar is a punishment; they have received the due penalty for their perversion.

" " was deep into pornography while in college, before he became a Christian. He even struggled with pornography after becoming a Christian, and only with the help of his accountability group (and the Holy Spirit of course), was he able to regularly (even always) overcome the desires to look at pornographic images. Not to say he never has any desires like that. He still does. But he no longer yields to that temptation as a slave, and it’s because of God’s sanctification. But he's scarred. He's got a scar that depicts the due penalty for his perversion. His emotions are seared. His eyes have seen too much. The images are burned into his mind. And he hates it. Oh, how he wishes pornography had never been introduced! But it was. And now he's scarred. He knows God can take the scar away, but he doesn’t believe He will. God wants him to remember Him, and call on Him when a temptation arises. God wants him to say, along with Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

He could be wrong about that. But that’s his experience. And I think that homosexuals who leave the lifestyle are scarred like that. So the due penalty is received in yourself when you commit sexual sin. And it doesn’t matter if God leaves you to wallow in your sin or if He pulls you out. The scar remains if you are pulled out. Piper says, “We have forgiveness for sin now; we will have freedom from all sinning later.
We have reconciliation with God now; we will have complete intimacy later. We have the firstfruits and the downpayment of the Holy Spirit now; we will have the full harvest of his power and presence later. We have some healing now (from our sexual disorders); we will have full wholeness later. We see his beauty through a glass darkly now, later we will see face to face. We have peace with God now; we will have perfection later.” The due penalty continues in your body and results in destruction if you remain in that sin.

Lastly, Paul is not condemning only heterosexuals who occasionally or perhaps even regularly perform homosexual acts. Some of the liberal denominations will interpret this passage that way. They might say that Paul says it’s wrong if you are “naturally” heterosexual to engage in homosexual behavior. But, they would also say that it’s okay for “naturally” homosexual folks to be who God made them to be: homosexuals. That’s wrong. Paul clearly condemns all homosexual acts, regardless of “natural” orientation. By the way, what do you think of homosexuality being a genetic thing? There’s no proof of that, but what if it is? There’s still no excuse. It’s a moral decision. And we’ve seen that the problem is a moral one, not an intellectual one, not even a physical one. Alcoholism is genetic. But that doesn’t make it right. Addictive behavior is often classified as genetic, but that doesn’t make it right. In fact, it’s wrong to be addicted to anything. So you can’t say, “I was made this way.” You have no excuse, genetic or otherwise.

It is not unloving to condemn homosexuality. God does not accept any of us as we are. He does something better than that. He accepts us in spite of who we are. And then by His grace, He makes us into what we are not. And every single believer knows that experience.

Romans 1:25

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.

They exchanged the truth for a lie and worshipped and served the created instead of the Creator. I always think here of Creation vs. Evolution: the ultimate truth vs. the ultimate lie. But what Paul is getting at here is that we deny the totality of God, exchanging this truth, Who God really is, for a lie. Anything other than God’s True Self is a lie—a lie that is idolatry. When we think of idolatry, we may consider ancient peoples worshipping the sun and moon or just plain nature. This type of idolatry is still around in astrology, tree huggers, evolutionists, etc. But today, idolatry is seen more by folks who are very uncomfortable with the bothersome god of the Bible, always telling us what we ought to do. People want freedom. So we invent gods that don’t bother us. We use them when we want, and then we put them back on the shelf. That god of convenience, the god who is love, but who would never interfere with what I want to do, I have created in my own image. He doesn’t get in my way, doesn’t tell me what to do or make things difficult. Or we think maybe all religions are spokes on the wheel, where God is at the hub. After all, we are all the same, we are all one, and we all worship the same God, right? Wrong. That is a false god. And yet, that is a very popular teaching today. The Bahai faith manifests that particular belief.

Those are typical ways we make idols. But we also make idols out of worshipping things that are good, but aren’t God—family, for instance. Family is a wonderful thing. But if you see your ultimate significance, safety, fulfillment, and satisfaction as being a husband or a father, or maybe a son, you have made family an idol. No human being can possibly give you the satisfaction that you need as a creature created in the image of God. Only God can do that. When we place all of our significance in a marriage, we are ultimately disappointed, because no human being can fulfill what we need. If we find our hope, our significance, our satisfaction, or our comfort in family, money, work, popularity, appearance, even in who we are other than children of the Living God, then we are idolators. Idolatry is placing anything or anyone before the one true God. And Paul is saying to us, that is what we need to be saved from, because every human being has a sinful nature, a natural inclination to that idolatry.

God is FOREVER PRAISED. AMEN. Paul, greatly troubled by being in the midst of an idolatrous world that dishonors his God and does not worship his God as the one true God, gets to the word, “Creator,” and he just has to pause for a second and say, “He is forever praised.” God’s truth, God’s glory, God’s blessedness are independent of our assessment. God, in order to be blessed doesn’t need to have our approval. God, in order to be true, does not have to have our concurrence. Remember the bumper sticker, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” As far as Paul is concerned, that’s wrong. It should read, “God said it, that settles it, it doesn’t matter if you believe it or not.” God’s glory is not going to be in the least diminished by my refusal to glorify Him; but I will never participate in His glory, if I do not glorify Him. This is ironic: I can refuse to glorify God, and it is not going to decrease His glory one bit, but it will destroy me. If I refuse to give myself to Him, I am in the end destroyed; but if I give myself to Him, and I glorify Him, I find that I get to partake in that glory. Paul wants us to realize that God’s glory is not impacted by our rejection of Him. God will be glorified. The idols will not triumph. The question is this: Will you participate in glory or destruction? Are you prepared for glory or destruction? Romans 9:22-23 “What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath–prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory?” Do you have faith in Christ? Are your sins forgiven by Him? Has He born the wrath of God in your stead? Then He will fill you with His glory.