Romans 1:21-32
Before I write a single word based on my own thoughts, I’m going to start off this week with a brilliant insight that comes to us from the apostle Paul. This is from his letter to the Romans, chapter 1, verses 21-32.
Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.
So, God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So, they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.
Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
Whenever I teach out of Romans, I’m quick to point out how amazing it is that this ancient text has only grown in relevance over the centuries. Look at the world we’re living in today and it’s not hard to see that this doctrine of secularism Paul’s warning us about has all but overtaken the good news that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is being twisted to not just accommodate sin but to tolerate and celebrate sin as well, particularly sexual sin. There’s a broad-based rejection these days to the idea of trying to live as Christ lived. We’re being sold this lie that Jesus would be okay with today’s sinful choices so long as we try to be “good” people. We’ve developed what we see as brilliant loopholes in the expectations Jesus has for us to live in obedience to His Word and for that, Paul’s response is pretty direct.
“You knuckleheads that think you’re so smart? You are in fact utter fools.”
One of the stark realities of how God interacts with us vis a vis our sin is that if we commit to disobedience, He will abandon us or give us over to that behavior. Not because He stops loving us, not because He’s angry, vengeful, and full of wrath. God allows us to surrender ourselves to our sin so that in time we may come to see the pain and futility that way of life leads to. With that realization, God’s desire is that we’ll come back to Him, assured that we will be covered in His grace. And notice that Paul pays special attention once again to sexual sin. For those of you who may not be keeping up, sexual immorality in all its many forms has become Satan’s favorite means of attacking the Christian Church.
We need to be mindful of that because if the enemy can get us to compromise God’s gift of sexual intimacy, it kicks the doors down to all sorts of other compromises. As much as secularists try to tell us that Jesus would be fine with same sex marriage and transgenderism and all these newly created gender identities out there, the Bible couldn’t be clearer on this subject. The fact that many in the capital C church are preaching tolerance on these things presents many risks, pitfalls, and a very slippery slope.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 a stark warning about the devastation that comes about from sexual sin…
Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.
I recently heard a pastor share an insight about how, throughout the Bible believers are encouraged to, powered by faith, stand firm against sin. It’s only sexual sin where we’re told to turn tail and run, flee. If you’re saved, you have an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Your physical body is a “temple” housing that Spirit. Sexual sin is a direct attack against the Holy Spirit living in you and although sin is sin, this particular sin has a unique quality to it that Paul warns we need to be very aware of. God the Father made the Spirit available to us at a high price – the blood of His Son. You do not belong to yourself! There’s a dose of humility that mankind today really struggles to swallow.
That needs to change. And the only way it changes is for those of us who trust in Jesus to be as bold in proclaiming our faith in Him as the secular world is in attempting to deny Him. That change can only begin with you and me and every other faithful believer with a voice. Be bold and confident in proclaiming Jesus Christ!