So far in our study of Romans we have been concentrating on human rebellion against God, and we have seen – as Paul has explicitly told us – that the wrath of God “is being revealed from heaven” against men and women because of this rebellion. It’s clear what we have done. We have (1) suppressed the truth about God; (2) refused to glorify, or worship, God as God; and (3) declined to be thankful. As a result human beings have become “darkened” in their thinking. We have become fools. Nevertheless, up to this point we have not been told specifically of anything that God has actually done to unleash His wrath upon humanity. Now this changes. For the first time in the letter we are told – three times in succession – that God has abandoned men and women to perversion (vv. 24, 26, and 28). But here is the irony. Man’s punishment is to be abandoned by God. But, of course, this is precisely what man has been fighting for ever since Adam’s first rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Man has wanted to get rid of God, to push Him out of his life. Like the Prodigal Son, He releases the rebellious child, permitting him to depart with all his many possessions and goods for the far country.

Well! Isn’t that what we want? Yes, it’s what we think we want. But the problem is that it doesn’t turn out as we anticipate. In fact, it turns out exactly the opposite. We think of God as a miser of happiness, keeping back from us all that would make us happy. We think that by running away from Him we will be happy, wild, and free. But it doesn’t work that way. Instead of happiness we find misery. Instead of freedom we find the debilitating bondage of sin. When we run away from God we think our way will be uphill, because we want it to be so. But the way is actually downhill. We are pulled down by the law of moral gravity – when God lets go.

Down! Down! Down! It’s a sad life history, but it is the experience of all who run from God, and Paul says all men and women do run from God, trying to rearrange the universe to fit their own desires. In Romans 1:24-28, Paul marks this downward rush of the human race in three stages. We don’t know why, when he set out to trace this downward moral path of human beings, the apostle Paul concentrated on sexual sins, since he could clearly have chosen other sins as well. Perhaps it’s because sexual sins are so visible (sins of the spirit are harder to detect) or because the damage in this area is so evident or because this was the obvious, stinking cesspool of corruption of his day and, therefore, something those to whom he was writing would clearly understand. Whatever the reason – and there may be more reasons than these – it is an excellent example.

At the start of this path the Prodigal Son would no doubt extol it for its freedoms. He would speak of being free to think new thoughts, have new experiences, and shake off all that old inhibiting sense of guilt that bound him previously. But given time, the feeling changes, and the one who is running away comes inevitably to feel used, taken advantage of, dirty, and betrayed. There was once an hour-long TV special on the freewheeling lifestyle in California, interviewing particularly many women who had been caught up in it. Interestingly, their nearly universal opinion was that they have been betrayed by the sexual revolution. As one woman said, “All men want from us is our bodies; we have had enough of that to last a lifetime.” Isn’t it the case that these women were expressing precisely what Paul says in verse 25, when he observes that those who act this way “have exchanged the truth of God for a lie”?

Paul’s description of a declining society in this great first chapter in Romans unfortunately, becomes even more apparent as Paul, with almost shocking candor, begins to talk about sexual perversions, namely lesbianism and male homosexuality (vv. 26-27). For centuries these matters were hardly spoken of in western society. Although some were no doubt practicing these acts, they were considered reprehensible that a moral person not only was not to speak about them, but he or she was not even to know what such vices involved. But today? Today they are written about with explicit detail in virtually every media in our land. Grade-school children discuss them. Not only are we not shocked – but we have become complacent, as if this were a natural expression of an upright spirit.

“Natural” is the important word here – Paul uses it in verse 27, and the opposite term, “unnatural,” in verse 26 – because it explains why this stage is a further step along the downward moral path. Perhaps this is why at this point, and at no other point in his discussion of the results of our rebellion, Paul speaks of a specific judgment of God upon the sin itself (v. 27).

We have come to understand that when men and women abandoned God, God abandoned them: first, to sexual impurity and, second, to sexual perversions. Now we find that God abandons them “to a depraved mind” (v. 28). Paul is writing not just any sinful mind – he has earlier talked about the generally foolish minds and generally darkened hearts of human beings – but about the specifically “depraved mind” created by continuing down this awful path for a lifetime. At the end is a mind not merely foolish or in error, but totally depraved. It is a mind so depraved that it begins to think that what is bad is actually good and that what is good is actually bad. The evidence of this bottom stage of depravity is disclosed in Romans 1:32. A person might be ashamed of his or her action, and then repent of it. But here, at the very end of this awful downhill path of judicial abandonment described in this chapter of Romans, the individuals involved actually come to approve of what is evil.

Hopeless? Yes, but not for God. For if it were, why would Paul even be writing this letter? Although in a sense God has certainly given the race over to the natural out-workings of its rebellious ways – a judgment we see about us on all hands – in another sense God has not “given up” at all. At least He has not given up on those whom He has set His affection. If God actually did give up on humanity forever, all would be hopeless. The Lord Jesus Christ would not have come. He would not have died for our sin. There would be no gospel. But that’s not the case, Jesus did come. There is a gospel. The way back to the eternal, sovereign, holy God is open. This is the Good News. Hallelujah!

If there is the gospel, if this is still the age of God’s grace, if God has not given up on us ultimately and forever – though He will eventually do that for some one day – then we are not to give up on other people either. How can we, if we have tasted the elixir of grace ourselves? We tend to give up, at least if the sin of the one we are abandoning is different from our own. We think of others as too far gone, or as having sinned beyond the point of a genuine repentance. Or, terrible as it is, we think of their sin as proof, evidence, that God has abandoned them forever. Many have done that with homosexuals. They regard AIDS as the kind of divine judgment on this sin. Is AIDS a judgment? It may be, just like many other consequences of sin. But it is not the final judgment. And until that final judgment breaks forth on our race, it is still the day of grace in which all who know the Good News and are obeying the voice of Christ in taking it to the lost can be hopeful. The consequences of sin are dreadful. But they alone, if nothing else, should compel us forward as agents of God’s great grace and reconciliation.

Romans 1:24-28 Reflection Questions:

What’s another classic example of man running away from God found in Scripture?

Have you given up on someone or a group of people?

What could you be doing for them or how can you reach out for the lost?