Romans Part Four The foolishness of removing God from your world.

In verse Sixteen of Romans Chapter one, the Apostle Paul reveals to us the spiritual understanding his heart so desires  to impart to these believers. He has written this letter to the Roman Christians being motivated by the reports of their faith which has become well known in the Christian World of that day. His instruction and understanding here is presented from the position of a Jewish Israelite which he was. Paul, having been a renown teacher of the Jewish Law and someone who has been converted to Christianity himself, understands the struggles a Jew converted to Jesus must face. He writes:

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel (good news) of Christ, for it is God’s power working unto salvation [for deliverance from eternal death] to everyone who believes with a personal trust and a confident surrender and firm reliance, to the Jew first and also to the Greek,

For in the Gospel a righteousness which God ascribes is revealed, both springing from faith and leading to faith [disclosed through the way of faith that arouses to more faith]. As it is written, The man who through faith is just and upright shall live and shall live by faith.

This then, is the truth that the Apostle will build his entire letter around.

We see that, in the Gospel God’s righteousness is revealed, to be freely given to us who believe. We can regard this righteousness ‘as ours’ simply by our faith in Him. We actually become righteous because He (through our faith) makes it so… but to those outside of the safety of the Gospel, God’s wrath is revealed. As he tells us in verse eighteen:

For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative.

Let us watch carefully the decent of mankind into the situation we see around us today.

19 For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them. For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification],

The universe around us and the natural world we live in is a testimony to who He is (God) and the everlasting power that is His. Mankind realized it because God Himself revealed it to them in their inner consciousness. But something happened- So here is the beginning.

Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks.

So, they understood what they needed to understand about Him- and yet they refused to respect and fear Him as God. They refused to give Him the honor that was due to Him as God. Neither did they acknowledge who He was in their thoughts or, as a result, in their lives. They were ungrateful in their hearts and saw no reason to be thankful in their attitudes towards Him or what they knew about Him.

But instead they became futile and godless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened.

This has the earmarks of the enemy. His prime sin is pride and it’s been that way since the beginning  He hit them in the pride of their thinking. Exulting them in their own eyes to the point that they replaced the knowledge of God in their thoughts with their own vain imaginations, their own reasoning and speculations. In effect, they extinguished God’s light. When His light went out, all that remained for their minds was darkness and senselessness. Satan did a thorough work.  Their walk downward begins.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves].

Because they honored their pride more than God, their foolishness really begins to take hold. Because they have fallen for the wiles of the king of pride, Satan, they are persuaded that pride is an honorable trait.  (Like today) The smarter they, in their pride, believe they are, the dumber they become. Watch now how this begins to show.

And by them the glory and majesty and excellence of the immortal God were exchanged for and represented by images, resembling mortal man and birds and beasts and reptiles.

The truth of their foolishness busts open full bloom. Moving beyond mere thinking, they do something. They complete an exchange, and teach others to follow, trading their knowledge of the glory and majesty and excellence of the immortal God for images. Lifeless, empty images. Images which represent and resemble mortal man (like themselves). Images representing and resembling  birds and beasts and reptiles. Images gained at the loss of God’s glory and His majesty and His excellence in their lives. This then, is the result of their overthrowing God. Overthrowing Him out of their minds. Eventually, like today, they succeed in ridding him out of their lives entirely. Yet things still have only just started.

Therefore (because of this) God gave them up in the lusts of their [own] hearts

He gives them up- in the lusts of their own hearts… God gives them up… something to think about. Imagine, you and I who are born again and love the Lord, what if God were to give us up. Unthinkable! Thank God for His Son who will never leave us or abandon us. What we’re witnessing here is before Jesus came, but remember, to the unbelievers in this world it is still before Jesus came. Watch now what is waiting to enslave them-

to sexual impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin],

Sex and Sin. Ever notice how everything that’s presented to us today is laced, one way or another, with sex-  Movies, advertisements, comedy, clothes, homosexual rights and marriages, it goes on and on. As this nation and the world throw off God and His thinking (like the ten commandments no longer in our courts or schools) they echo the life style and pride that Paul exposes here in Romans. God is giving the unbelievers up in the lusts of their own flesh. It all started with pride and thinking. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the Apostle  Paul stresses that we not be conformed to this world but that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds in Romans Chapter Twelve. Somewhere else we’re told that that the power of God is in the pulling down of strongholds and bringing every thought into the captivity of Christ. Restoring us. You will see as we go further that emptying their minds of God was all Satan had to accomplish. The rest just follows. How unbelievably important is the way we think! Once the enemy has our thinking, the rest happens like a chain-reaction.

Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever! Amen (so be it).  For this reason God gave them over and abandoned them to vile affections and degrading passions.

So the consequences grow worst. Now God goes further and abandons them to affections (things they are attracted to and love) which are vile. They are now in a position where they can’t resist the pull of vile things. Also they find themselves captured by and passionate for, degrading behaviors with no strength to resist. Repentance from these behaviors is impossible. They have been abandoned by God to them. Watch now what behaviors result.

For their women exchanged their natural function for an unnatural and abnormal one, and the men also turned from natural relations with women and were set ablaze (burning out, consumed) with lust for one another—men committing shameful acts with men and suffering in their own bodies and personalities the inevitable consequences and penalty of their wrong-doing and going astray, which was [their] fitting retribution.

OK then. Think for a moment of someone with the sickness of Measles. They break out in a sort of hives of red spots. Now would it do anybody any good if we could stop the rash? No, because the rash is a symptom of the greater problem which is the virus that causes Measles in the first place. So it is here. The homosexuality that we now see around us and that Paul is speaking about here in Romans is also a symptom. The problem in the first place is that they have removed God from their minds and life.

Now the thing that may surprise you is: The position they find themselves in and the slavery they suffer to vile and degrading behaviors is the wrath of God manifested!

And so, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or approve of Him or consider Him worth the knowing,

Here again is the problem in their hearts that leads to all the rest.

God gave them over to a base and condemned mind to do things not proper or decent but loathsome, until they were filled (permeated and saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, iniquity, grasping and covetous greed, and malice.

Now Paul sums up the many symptoms that seem so natural to us. Symptoms that every society has tried, in many different ways, to deal with. They pass laws, they try to teach their children (teach them something that is already in them with no cure except for Jesus- but they don’t want Him around-) they recommend psychiatric care, a million things but the world just gets worst. Eventually, people give up resisting and decide that these things they crave to do are good, Like homosexuality. And they don’t want anything like the ten commandments in their face because it just brings condemnation and they won’t admit to that because of their pride.

Now, how many of the things listed below are more or less normal in the world around us…

[They were] full of envy and jealousy, murder, strife, deceit and treachery, ill will and cruel ways. [They were] secret backbiters and gossipers, slanderers, hateful to and hating God, full of insolence, arrogance, [and] boasting; inventors of new forms of evil, disobedient and undutiful to parents. [They were] without understanding, conscienceless and faithless, heartless and loveless [and] merciless.

Though they are fully aware of God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them themselves but approve and applaud others who practice them.

I want you to grasp what a simple thing it was that launched this. Just the removal of the things of God from their minds. I want you to realize that after they listened to their pride and said to themselves ‘we don’t need Him, we have plenty of good ideas on how to live our lives’ and after they cast Him out, their free will had little to do with the downward spiral that followed. Because God just abandoned them to the irresistible power of the lusts of their own flesh.

I couldn’t move on without first covering this. My next blog will be looking at Romans Chapter four.

May God bless all of you and yours-

I love you in the love of Christ