We are looking at Romans 1 in which the apostle Paul is teaching what happens to us as humans and as a culture when we fail to honor God and give him thanks. Three times in Romans 1 we are told that God gives us over to our sinful desires (cf. Romans 1:24,26,28). In the last lesson we noticed that we are given over to our sexual desires which results in the degrading of our bodies with one another. But there is more destruction that comes from choosing to not live your life in honor, worship, and gratitude toward God. In Romans 1:28-32 we will see the apostle Paul describes more outcomes for us when we do not think that God is worthy of our worship, time, and praise. I noted this in the last lesson and it needs to be noted again. We are going to be naturally resistant to what Paul says here. What Paul says does not conform to our natural way of thinking. Remember that the apostle Paul noted what happens when we do not honor God or give him thanks. What happens is that we become futile in our thinking and our hearts become darkened (cf. Romans 1:21). This means that the way we look at life, culture, the world, other people, and ourselves is broken until we adopt God’s way of thinking. So we are not going to naturally like what Paul is teaching us. But it is the truth and God is telling us the truth so we can be saved from the wrath of God (cf. Romans 1:16-18).
The Problem of Following Your Heart (Romans 1:28-31)
Right now in our culture the highest good is that you find and be your authentic self. You need to be you. You need to follow your desires. You need to follow your heart. You need to do what is right to you. You need to live by your truth. But God wants to tell us the result of living this way. What we are going to see is that your ungoverned, true self without respect for God is an ugly picture. When we are not governed by God in our lives, God gives us over to a depraved mind so that we do the things that ought not to be done. We are being shown an important truth. We do not naturally do what is right. We do not naturally do what is pleasing to God. Failing to have God rule our lives does not make us good people but exposes the corrupt mind of humans.
The result of not seeing fit to acknowledge God is all kinds of unrighteousness and wickedness. Paul says that those who do not have God in their minds are filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, greed, malice, and wickedness. A culture that does not live with reference to God is a frightening society. A person that does not live in acknowledgement of God is a terrifying person. People become full of envy, murder, strife, fighting, deceit, and malice. Do we see that our culture and our world is being filled with these kinds of evil behaviors? Keep reading verses 29-30. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, and disobedient to parents.
Is this last description a surprise in a list like this? Being disobedient to parents is listed along with murder and deceit. Parents, it is not okay to overlook when your children are disobedient. When we overlook disobedience, we are teaching our children that they should follow their hearts to their own destruction. When we overlook disobedience, we are teaching our children that authority does not matter and that they can establish themselves as their own authority. Disobedience to parents comes from a heart that is rejecting the knowledge of God. Parents, we are responsible to teach our children that disobedience is spiritual disaster. Children, it is not right to disobey your parents. You do not have an equal vote in the family. Children are called to obey their parents. If you as preteen, teenager, or young person think you have the right to disobey your parents, then God is telling you that your heart is not right and you are ignoring the truth of God.
But let’s make the same point about the other sins that are listed here. There are a lot of sins that we sometimes think are acceptable sins. Look at verse 29. People who are not ruled by God are gossips. If we are talking about other people, then we are showing something about who is ruling over our lives and it is not God. We are not thinking it is worthwhile to acknowledge God in our lives when we choose to talk about others. Challenge yourself with this filter: would I say what I am saying to that person? If that person was standing next to me, would I say the same words in the same way that I am saying those things now? We need to talk a lot less about other people, especially when we say things that are snide, underhanded, and malicious. Our words show if we are slanderers. Our words reveal if we are boastful and arrogant. Look at the word “strife” in verse 29. Do we stir up issues? Do we say things to cause problems? Do we enjoy spinning things up to make people upset? Strife shows that we are not acknowledging God in our lives. Look again at verse 29 and the word “greed.” Are we content? Are we never happy with our lives or with what we have? Do we need more? Do we need things to be better? Is something never good enough? A lack of contentment shows we are not acknowledging God in our lives.
Paul continues in verse 31 that we will be without understanding, be untrustworthy, unfeeling, and unmerciful. A life without God means you are just not going to care. You will move to a point where you are callous and unfeeling. You will come to a point where you have no mercy for anyone. You do not care and have no compassion for others. You will become undependable and untrustworthy because you are living life only doing what you want rather that living life that does what is right. You will have no understanding of others and no understanding of God. What I want us to see are the chains that enslave us as we scan our eyes over these sins which began in verse 24. God’s immediate judgment for our sins is not to destroy us but to give us over to the outcomes of our broken minds and hearts. To say this another way, I hope we can see that these sins are a building snowball rolling down a snow-filled mountain. One sin leads to another which leads to yet another. The depraved mind goes down this road, accumulating every kind of unrighteousness and evil. Just look around in the world and you can see the warped thinking in it because God is no longer the basis for thought and understanding.
Approving God or Approving Sin (Romans 1:32)
Now Paul presents to us the shocking reality in verse 32. We know God’s right decree. What is God’s right decree? God’s righteous, just decree is that those who practice such things deserve to die. This goes back to what we studied in Romans 1:18-20. The wrath of God has been revealed against all unrighteousness and ungodliness that people do. We suppress this truth but God has revealed his wrath against all evil and all things that are not God-directed. The creation reveals the divine nature and eternal power of God but we suppress this knowledge. So we know the existence of God requires us to do what he told us because he is God and he made us.
Think about verse 32 carefully. We know God’s righteous decree of judgment against those who practice such things. But we continue to do these things anyway. Did you hear what Paul told us? God’s judgment is clear but we continue to do these things anyway. We are spiritually killing ourselves. We are absolutely destroying ourselves and, as we destroy ourselves, we know we deserve God’s eternal judgment on our souls. Practicing sin is our own death. Continuing in any of the forms of sexual immorality is to seal our eternal fate. Continuing in greed, gossiping, slander, malice, and the like is death to us. But we do it anyway. We keep doing it. Rather than acknowledging God and turning away from our desires, we keep doing what we want. It is the most ludicrous response to sin. But this is what we do when we stay rooted in our sins.
If this were not enough, read the rest of verse 32. Not only do we know that we are going to die for our sins and do it anyway, we give approval to others to practice these sins also. We keep practicing our sins and then we approve of others doing to the same. We are not content to destroy our own souls by our own decisions. We choose to encourage others to join us by spiritually killing themselves. Our selfish thinking knows no bounds. We will spiritually kill others with us rather than telling others to not join us in our doomed way of living. Our love for sin is killing us. Trading God only hurts us. Trading God is the worst decision you can make.
Why Acknowledge God?
As we conclude I want us to think about the whole paragraph, from Romans 1:18-32. Paul is showing us that we are making a choice. We either are approving our own sins and the sins of others or we are approving of God himself by glorifying him and giving him thanks. When we fail to honor God, then we begin the downward spiral of self-destruction leading to our eternal judgment. I want us to see how this matches with Jesus’ ministry. Listen to how the Gospel of Mark gives a summary of Jesus’ message.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15 ESV)
I want us to think about the word, “Repent.” Why did Jesus come, calling for every person to repent? Why do the apostles preach the need for repent as recorded throughout the book of Acts? Telling all humanity to repent means that if we do what is natural to us, what feels right to us, and what comes from the desires of our hearts, we are out of God’s favor and worthy of his judgment. Why didn’t Jesus come and just tell everyone that he loves them and they should follow the desires of the heart? Why don’t we read the apostles preaching to people God’s love and that all people should do what seems right to them? Why doesn’t Paul preach that people should change their way of thinking and change the way they are living? The answer is self-evident. The desires of our hearts are not aligned to the wisdom and love of God (cf. Romans 1:24). All of us are in the same boat of condemnation in Romans 1. Everyone is condemned for their sins. No one has honored God or given him thanks appropriately so that we have fallen into the various sins that are listed. Everyone must say no to their own worldly desires and say yes to God. No matter how strong the desire is, no matter how long we have had the desire, and no matter what the culture thinks about our desire, God calls us to transform our desires to him. Is God being mean and unreasonable by calling us to repentance? Not at all. Instead I want us to see that God calls us to repentance for at least two reasons. First, the only way we can be with God is by turning from our thoughts and ways and learning and applying his thoughts and ways into our lives (cf. Isaiah 55). Second, God calls us to repentance because he does not want us to be enslaved again. God does not want us to destroy ourselves. God is trying to protect us from our corrupted way of thinking by calling for us to listen to him. So this is not a power struggle. This is a passionate call from your loving Father in heaven who wants you to be with him and wants you to avoid the disaster that comes from living life without acknowledging him.