The Suppression of Truth & Consequences
This is an exegetical sermon from Romans 1:18-32. It examines the suppression of truth and the consequences God sets aside for those who deny the provision of Jesus. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Justin Bragg at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA. Audio unavailable.
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:: The Resolved ::
Justin Bragg (elder)
Romans 1:18-32
Paul gives us a stark, vivid, horrifying, unrestricted analysis of why society degenerates into debauched, destructive unrestrained evil. It doesn’t fit current depictions of society, and it is offensive for us to hear. The reason it is offensive for us to hear, is that when a society is sinking into moral decay, it is impossible, because of the nature of decay, to see what is happening. The social mind becomes so defective in the moral decadence, that it doesn’t have the categories or framework to recognize evil for what it really is.
Paul’s message extremely relevant for today, and we need to hear this teaching tonight because it seems so foreign. The title, or theme for the night is “the human condition.” If we put it in the form of a question, what is the human condition? The answer, being shouted in clear and plain language is totally depraved. Every human being, is, by nature, evil, wicked, wrong, wretched, sinful, and a thousand other adjectives to describe our horrendous state of depravity.
Before we look at depravity, let us go back and remember that it was not always this way. In the beginning, the human condition was not as it is now, and the way it is now is not the way it is supposed to be
Genesis – Creation and Fall
Genesis
1:31 God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
3:1-13 – it all gets destroyed. Man disobeyed God, and destroyed perfect harmony with God, putting a gulf of separation between man and God
The result of the fall – knowing good from evil (from Bonhoffer)
“Man, at his origin knows only one thing: God. He knows all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with his origin. (3:5)”
Man now knows himself as something apart from God, outside God, and now we only know ourselves, and not God at all, for we can only know God only if we know only God. The knowledge of good and evil is separation from God. Only against God can man know good and evil. Originally we were made in the image of God, but now our likeness to God is a stolen one. We have forgotten how we were at our origin, and have made ourselves our own creator and judge.
We attempt to receive what God gave us through ourselves, rather than through God. We are not meant to know good and evil. Only God is. We are only supposed to know good, and that is how it was before the fall. In becoming like God man has become a god against God. We are now in disunion with God, with men, with things, and with ourselves. Do you get it? We are jacked. We aren’t supposed to have to make ethical and moral decisions.
We aren’t supposed to have to worry about getting too drunk. We aren’t supposed to lust, we aren’t supposed to be greedy. We aren’t supposed to steal, and lie and hurt others. This isn’t the ultimate reality of God’s plan.
In God’s perfect kingdom – the way it was before the fall, and will be in heaven, we don’t get hurt, and we don’t hurt those around us. We don’t lie and cheat and steal, because we don’t know wrong. It isn’t a problem. There isn’t supposed to be a choice between good and evil, right and wrong. We aren’t supposed to even be aware of wrong.
And if you think that is an infringement upon your freedom, then look at Jesus, who could not sin, and look at what we will be like in heaven, where there is no temptation or sin, and realize that you are most free when there is no evil, when there is only good. You are not free, because you are a slave to sin. You are under the curse of depravity, and it is all that you know.
We, as humans, since the inception of sin in humanity, are totally depraved. Define: man’s nature is totally corrupt, perverse and sinful throughout. Total does not mean we are all as bad as we possibly could be, but rather, that the whole of man’s being has been affected by sin. The corruption extends to every part of man, his body and soul; sin has affected all (the totality) of our being. As a result of this inborn corruption, we naturally are unable to do anything spiritually good. We are so spiritually bankrupt that we can do nothing pertaining to our salvation
Those who are unsaved are dead in sin, and their wills are enslaved to evil nature. When it comes to our nature as people in relation to God, it’s as bad as it can get.
The effects of suppressing the truth of God…in our this passage today it is no surprise that we find humanity in a giant mess.
In this text, there are 21 ways of sinning, or 21 kinds of evil.
Why does Paul give us this list, and where does such evil come from?
It all started back in verse 18 where Paul gave the reason for why the gospel of the gift of God’s righteousness is so desperately needed. Verse 16 that the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Why? Verse 17: “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous shall live by faith.’” In other words: the gospel is the power of God to save believers because in it God gives us what we need and could never produce on our own, namely, his own righteousness. The righteousness that he demands from us he freely gives to us, if we will trust him. This is the great truth of justification by faith. This is the only truth that will save you from misery in this life, and in eternity.
Then in verse 18 he tells us why this gospel of the gift of God’s righteousness is so desperately needed: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” We need the righteousness of God because it is the only thing that can protect us from the wrath of God. And we need to be protected from the wrath of God because we are unrighteous by nature and suppress the truth of God. By nature we don’t like God and we don’t want him in our lives.
So what Paul does in the following verses is describe for us the effects of suppressing the truth of God. He wants us to see all the evil of the world as a river that flows from this spring. Reject God, suppress God, distort God, recreate God in your own image to your own liking, and the effect is worse than we expect. And the thing that is worse than we expect is that God joins our crusade against God, as it were, and delivers us into the debasing effects of our own rebellion against him. We’ve seen it three times.
In verse 23, we exchange the glory of God for images, and verse 24 says, “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts.” In verse 25, we exchange the truth about God for a lie, and verse 26 says, “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions.” And tonight in verse 28 we see it again: “They did not see fit to acknowledge God (or literally: they did not approve to have God in their knowledge), [therefore] God gave them over to a debased (depraved) mind, to do what ought not be done.”
This is what Paul means by the wrath of God being revealed (verse 18): God’s wrath is being revealed against the world, as human beings all over the world set their affections on other things more than on God. God’s response to this worldwide disloyalty and treason against our Creator is not, first, to send us to hell, but to see that we sink into the swamp we have chosen.
He says something horrifying about God’s wrath. He says that the root problem is that we don’t like having God in our knowledge. “They did not see fit to acknowledge God.” That is the fundamental problem in the world. That is the essence of the human condition. We don’t want God. We want self-determination and self-exaltation. That was the first sin in the garden. And that is the root of all evil today. We do not want to know God or have him in our lives.
The effect of God’s giving us over and removing his common restraints is that we are imprisoned by a “depraved mind.” “God gave them over to a depraved mind.” Our minds become more and more defective in sin. Not only do we use them to sin, but we can’t even think clearly about sin. We can’t recognize it. Our defective mind produces all kinds of evils. Paul goes on to list twenty-one of them as samples.
So now we have our answer to the first question, namely, where does such evil come from? It comes from:
1) our desire not to have God in our knowledge; and
2) from God’s judgment on mankind to give us over to sink in the swamp we love; and
3) from the depraved or defective mind that we sink into.
Look at the list, and ask why it is here? So now we can ask the question: What is this list of evils? What are we to make of this long list and why is it here?
Let’s read it again. Verse 28b-31:
Of course, a person could raise an objection against Paul here: this is not the way all unbelievers are. Some are very conscientious, law-abiding, philanthropic, courteous, decent people. Yes, that’s true, and Paul knew it was true. But the point of this list is not to say that every society which refuses to love the true God will look just like this. We know this because, in verses 26-27, Paul says that homosexual desire is also a result of not loving God above other things, and being handed over by God, and yet Paul clearly does not think that every unbeliever has homosexual desires.
Similarly, here in verse 28-31, when he says that all these sins are the result of refusing to acknowledge God, and he doesn’t mean that every unbeliever, or group of unbelievers, has all these sins or in the same measure. Instead, these are samples. They are the sort of thing that comes from rejecting God, and the more God gives a people up to their own unrestrained depravity, the more their society will have these sins in greater and greater measure.
So what’s the point of listing all these sins? Give us enough examples to show that virtually every form of evil has to do with God and comes from failing to know him and approve him and love him above all things. In other words, he gives us a sweeping array of evils to waken us to the fact that the ruin of any area of life is owing to the abandonment of God.
Verse 28: they did not see fit to acknowledge God therefore . . . and then he gives his list of evils.
In other words: the point of the list is to connect God with every sin in the world. And we’ve seen that the connection is twofold: every sin is rooted in our preferring something else to God; and every sin gets worse as God takes away his restraints and gives us up to sink in the swamp we have chosen.
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 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.
That’s the point of this list. Wherever we are sinking in sin, it is because we have abandoned the glory of God for sin.
We find, in v 32, the culmination, or summit of our sinfulness. In one sense verse 32 brings chapter one to an end with a very bleak view of human nature. We not only sin and choose death; we approve sin and recruit for sin and fail to be outraged at sin, and we create a climate for sin to flourish, and so we take others with us to death.
Calvin is explicitly clear in this: men left nothing undone for the purpose of giving unbridled liberty to their sinful propensities; for having taken away all distinction between good and evil, they approved in themselves and in others those things which they knew displeased God, and would be condemned by his righteous judgment. For it is the summit of all evils, when the sinner is so void of shame, that he is pleased with his own vices, and will not bear them to be reproved, and also cherishes them in others by his consent and approbation. What Calvin is saying is that even worse than sinning and doing evil, is the fact that we are so evil, that we applaud and cheer others on to sin. Calvin calls this the summit of sin, and says in this state, there is no hope:
“for he who is ashamed is as yet healable; but when such and impudence is contracted through a sinful habit, that vices, and not virtues, please us, and are approved, there is no more any hope of reformation.
This is why sin is a trap. You can’t just sin a little bit. You can’t just dip into to the murky waters of sin for a little taste, and then walk away. It is a downward spiral, and the bottom rung of the ladder of wickedness is when you give approval to these things.
I want to point out – to give hope, that there is a real knowing of moral things that is deeper than consciousness. I say this because there are, no doubt, many people who would say that they don’t believe in moral standards set by God, especially if they say they don’t believe in God.
But verse 32 says, “though they know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die.” Note the phrase, “God’s decree” (“ordinance of God.”). Paul teaches us that, even if people don’t think they know ordinances of God, they, in fact, do know at least one, namely, that doing the things listed in verses 29-31 deserves death. This must mean then that there is a knowledge deeper than consciousness.
What verse 32, together with verses 18-21, teaches us is that every person we know, and every person we will ever talk to, already knows God, deep down, and knows God’s law. That is an astonishing truth for everyone who wants to communicate the gospel. It is also an incredible challenge I want to give everyone who does not “believe” in God.
We will never try to coerce or trick or force you into becoming a Christian. But what we will do is try to show you the truth and beauty of God and the relationship that is possible to have with him. If you don’t believe in God, think deep, there is a knowledge in every person that he exists. We just suppress it, because we are uncomfortable with the idea.
Ask what the solution is to these kinds of thing? Which brings us finally to the third and last question: What is the solution? How shall we battle back against these destructive evils in our own lives and in our culture?
Left to ourselves there can be no end to this grim descent into depravity. But the gospel, for the sake of which Romans was written, tells us that God has not left us to ourselves. In Christ, he has acted to restore what we are intent on destroying. The answer is what the whole book of Romans is about 1) We need the reversal of God’s wrath against our unrighteousness. 2) We need the reversal of God’s handing us over to a depraved mind. 3) We need the reversal of our mind’s moral decay so that it can be renewed for right and proper use in God’s service.
The good news is that God has provided every one of those reversals. You do not have to sink any further if you will embrace God and his provision. Here is the key verse for each of these reversals.
The key verse for the reversal of God’s wrath against us is Romans 1:17: In the gospel of Christ, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” In other words, the righteousness that God demands from us, he freely gives to us, if we will turn back to him and trust him to be our greatest Good. And if you have the righteousness of God, you are not under the wrath of God any more.
The key verse for the reversal of God’s handing us over to a depraved mind is Romans 6:17. “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 handed over [same word as Romans 1:28].” This is the exact reversal of the hand-over in Romans 1:28. Here it is to a form of teaching that is true and holy, not false and dirty. And notice that it is God who does it. “Thanks be to God,” Paul says, that you became obedient to this teaching. God gives us over to truth and righteousness as much as he once gave us over to sin.
Finally, the key verse for reversing the defectiveness of our minds is Romans 12:2. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
When God has given us his righteousness by faith in Jesus, and when he has handed us over to a new teaching of truth and begun to make us obedient to it, then little by little we are transformed in the renewing of our minds and the long list of sins in Romans 1:29-31 becomes shorter and weaker to the glory of God.
This is the key to life. I call you and urge you to receive these three reversals from the hand of God by faith: 1) the reversal of God’s wrath through the gift of God’s righteousness; 2) the reversal of being handed over to depravity through being handed over to truth; and 3) the reversal of a depraved mind through the transformation of a renewed mind.
The last effort for hope that I want to try to give, is that this is not the way it is supposed to be…
Plantinga on how this is not the way its supposed to be:
“The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more that mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs to which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.
God hates sin not just because it violates his law, but, more substantively, because it violates shalom, because it breaks the peace, because it interferes with the way things are supposed to be. God is for shalom and therefore against sin.
Whether or not you recognize it, you need to be saved from you wickedness. When our blindness is stripped away and the depravity of the race is unfolded before us, the glory of the gospel bursts forth, and Romans 1:16-17 becomes the door to paradise. The gospel is then seen to be “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” – no matter how sinful, no matter how corrupt
That’s the message for you who do not believe. The message to you tonight is that you are bad. You are really bad. And you deserve to suffer under the wrath of God for how bad you are. Along with that message, I want to shout as loud as I can, that no matter how bad and evil and wicked you are, the righteousness of God is given to you. It was given to you through Jesus Christ.
You are not a good person. your attempts to justify yourself as a good person, and thinking that you can somehow earn a place in heaven or whatever you think happens after you die – is evidence of your self-righteous depravity. How dare any of us think that we are somehow good, and able to make it on our own. Give up – let go – receive the righteousness of God given by grace through faith.
And since I did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave me up to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. I was filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. I am full of envy, murder, strife, deceitful, maliciousness. I am a gossip, slanderer, hater of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, I am an inventor of evil, and disobedient to my parents, I am foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. And though I know God’s decree, not only do I do these things and deserve to die, but I cheer others on to do the same.
