As we begin our study of Romans 2, we need to focus on this thought: mankind does not accept God’s assessment of human sin and the imperative of divine judgment. This is not to say that men will not admit they are sinners. It is very easy to get a non-Christian to agree that he is a sinner (“nobody’s perfect”), but it is almost impossible to get him to realize the gravity of his sin. Typically he has no trouble agreeing that those who are guilty of “big sins” like murder and rape and treason deserve judgment – even death. However, that God’s wrath should fall on those guilty of such “lesser sins” as envy or arrogance does not seem quite right to them.

Most people don’t take God’s word about sin and judgment seriously, but rather reject it and replace it with their own reasoning. “But everybody’s doing it”, “Nobody’s perfect”, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” Such thinking suggests that since we are human we are under moral obligation to sin, and that God is under moral obligation to forgive us. Inherent in the common thinking that because everyone is doing it, it is not so bad – as long as we don’t commit the “biggies” we will be okay – is the assumption that God does not mean what He says or say what He means.

This problem is twofold: first, man does not understand God’s holiness, and, second, he does not understand his own sinfulness. As to God’s holiness, sinful man’s idolatrous mind fails to see God as the transcendent, wholly other, perfect God who is infinitely above him, but rather imagines that He is like himself. As to sin, man forgets that he is made in the image of God and that every sin communicates a distortion of the image of God to the rest of creation. It is through such ignorance that the world suggests that if God does judge as He says, He insults His own integrity, holiness, and justice.

The eternal fact is, God means what He says and says what He means. Moreover, His judgment, despite moralisms to the contrary, is perfect. That is what 2:1-16 is all about. As we come to understand (or reaffirm our understanding of) the perfection of God’s judgment, we will bring health to our souls. For those of us who are believers, this will drive us toward a greater authenticity in life – and thus spiritual power. For the non-Christian, there will be strong encouragement to face fundamental issues about oneself and God.

There are three major points in this section, and the first, covered in verses 1-4 is this: We see the perfection of God’s judgment in that even the most religious people do not fool Him. Just as millions of religious people today think they are going to get by because they are good people and God must certainly forgive them, thousands in the Jewish nation in Christ’s time thought the same way. But they took it one step further. They believed everyone else would be judged except the Jewish race! Many Jews believed they were immune from God’s wrath simply because they were Jews. The self-righteous Jew never dreamed that he was under the same condemnation; he was blind to his actual condition. God sees sin in their hearts that they do not see, and condemns them.

The second insight, related to the first, is that the self-righteous have an intrinsic blindness to their own faults. They do not see they are doing the same things for which they condemn others. A classic example is found in the life of David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had Uriah her husband murdered (see 2 Samuel 12:5-7). The self-righteous person is not only blind but judgmental to the extreme. There is no one more severely critical of others than such a person. Hell will be full of judgmental, goodie-goodie people. Unfortunately, such thinking is not confined to the damned. It is also the favorite “indoor sport” of many Christians. There is nothing more destructive to the spread of the Good News than this. There is yet another facet of the psyche of the self-righteous religionist – he wrongly thinks he will escape judgment by taking God’s side in condemning the unrighteous.

The last insight of religious people is that he actually thinks the “kindness and forbearance and patience” of God in his life is a kind of divine OK on the course he has chosen, rather than seeing it as a chance for repentance (v. 4). Sometimes God brings people to Himself through difficulties as they come to the end of themselves and cast their lives upon Him. But He also draws people to repentance through “kindness and forebearance and patience.” No one should assume he all right with God just because life is easy for him at a given time. God calls people through sunshine as well as through rain.

So we see the psychology of the self-righteous: their ignorance of the nature and extent of sin, blindness to their own sins, extreme judgmentalism, siding with God against others’ sin, and interpreting God’s kindness as approval. God understands those who are truly self-righteous. He is never fooled. That is why His judgment will be rendered with unerring, terrible perfection. He sees all. In Psalm 139:4 David says, “Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.” God knows the real intention behind every spoken word. God knows instantly and effortlessly everything about us. A man may be a “good” person – upright, outwardly moral, sure of his goodness. But if he dies without Christ, Christ will say to him, “You have no excuse” (Rom. 2:1). And His judgment will be perfect.

Romans 2:1-4 Reflection Questions:

Do you take God for granted?

How often do you humble yourself before the God of all creation?

How often do you catch yourself in judging others? What does God see in your heart?

Are you building on your relationship with Christ daily?

Man reaches the lowest point of depravity when he heartily applauds those who give themselves to sin. To delight in those who do evil is a sure way to become even more degraded than the sinners one observes. This, I think, was one of the supreme horrors of the Roman Coliseum. Those committing the mayhem were supremely guilty, but those watching and applauding were perhaps even more wretched. It makes little difference whether the vices are real or portrayed; the effect is much the same – an increasingly debased mind on the part of the viewer. Approving another’s sin or encouraging another’s sin is a sign that life has reached its lowest dimension.

We Christians are not exempt from this. Satan knows that if he can get us to laugh at the things we believe we would never do, our defenses will fall. Maybe someday our unwitting approval will give way to action. We need to be careful what we watch and applaud.

According to Psalm 8 man is made a little lower than angels. This suggests that man is in a position somewhere between the angels above and the beasts below. Angels are spirits without bodies. (Sometimes they take on bodies, but they are spirit beings.) Animals are bodies without spirits. Man is in between because he is body and spirit. This puts man in a mediating position. It has always been man’s prerogative to move upward toward the spiritual or downward toward the animal, and we become like that which we focus. This is why we cannot sin “a little bit.” All sin moves us downhill individually, nationally, and culturally.

As our society has moved downward toward the beast, no one seems able to say “This far and no further.” No one can put a limit on sensuality. Incest is even being promoted by some. Our culture has been unable to draw the line on pornography. Such are the dimensions of depravity. What is the answer? Why does God give a civilization over to this kind of thing? He does it because when darkness prevails, and despair and violence are widespread, men and women are most ready to come to the light. He gives mankind up so that in their despair they might give themselves to His grace. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” (Isaiah 9:2)

In the first century mankind was sunk in the darkness of despair. Idolatry had penetrated the whole world. Men had turned from the true God, whom they could have known. In that hour, in the darkness of the night, over the skies of Bethlehem the angels broke through, and a great light of hope shone forth. From that hope all light streams. The angels’ message was the coming of the Lord Jesus, the availability of the gift of the “righteousness of God.”

Against the growing darkness of our own time we need to make this message as clear as we possibly can – by our testimony, by our lives, by the joy and peace of Heaven in our hearts. God has found a way to break through human weakness, arrogance, despair, and sinfulness to give us peace, joy, and gladness. Just as Jesus was born in Bethlehem so long ago, so He can be born in any person’s heart now. This is good news of the gospel. In this decaying world in which we live, we can see again the glory of this truth as it delivers people from their sins. “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).

In Ephesians 2, Paul paints a similar picture of the dimensions of man’s depravity, concluding in verse 3 with “[we] were by nature children of wrath.” However, he doesn’t stop there but continues:  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God… (vv. 4-8). Christ came in the darkest night, and He can meet us even in the midnight of our souls.

It’s true that our rejection of God has left us looking to the beasts and becoming increasingly like them – even worse than the beasts – and that 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.

Paul writes about this in 2 Corinthians 3 verses 16 and 18. When we come to Christ, the question is not “How low can you go?” We are done with that. The question is “How high can you rise?” And to that question the answer also is: no limit. We are to become increasingly like the Lord Jesus Christ throughout eternity.

Romans 1:32 Reflection Questions:

Are there movies or shows that you watch regularly that maybe you should stop watching?

How are you keeping yourself from sliding down the depravity slippery slope, and becoming increasingly like the Lord Jesus Christ?

In what ways are you making it clear to others of their depravity?

For several studies we have been studying the most dreadful description of the sinful human race in all literature, the description provided by the apostle Paul in Romans 1:18-32. It began with the rejection of God by all people and has proceeded to God’s abandonment of us, as a result of which human beings rapidly fall into a horrible pit of depravity, to their own hurt and the hurt of others. We come now to the last verses of Romans 1 where Paul rounds out his description by a catalogue of vices. It’s a long list, containing 21 items. How can we face such a devastating unmasking of ourselves? Some will not face it at all, of course. Even many preachers will not. These verses detail what theologians call “total depravity,” and people don’t want to hear about that. So many preachers change their message to fit today’s cultural expectations. They speak of our goodness, the potential for human betterment, the comfort of the gospel – without speaking of that for which the gospel is the cure.

Paul wrote in verse 18 that “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” In that verse the second use of “wickedness” refers to man’s suppression of the truth about God. But at the beginning of the verse, where the term is used for the first time, “wickedness” is distinguished from “godlessness”; godlessness and wickedness are employed to designate two great categories of human evil. The first embraces the sins of man against man, those of the first table of the law. The second embraces the sins of man against man, those of the second table of the law. Generally speaking, it is the sins of “godlessness” that we have been looking at to this point; they are fundamental. However, in these last verses Paul lists examples of man’s “wickedness” (wickedness, evil, greed, depravity).

Paul, having shown earlier in this chapter that human beings hate God and would kill Him if they could, he now shows how they also hate and attempt to destroy their fellow man. In other words, the first four terms describe sins against the property and well-being of others. In the next five terms Paul details sins against the very persons of other human beings. The sins are: envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice.

It’s hard to see any meaningful groupings in Paul’s arrangement, and it may be wrong to try. However, if the first four terms catalogue sins against the property or well-being of others, and the next five list sins against other persons, it may be that the next six terms could be those of which pride is the center. They are certainly among the most harmful of these vices (gossips, slanders, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful). Up to this point all the vices mentioned are but one word in Greek. But now Paul seems to need two words each to describe the next evils: “inventors of evil things” and “disobedient to parents.” Paul concludes this devastating catalogue with these last four terms: senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless.

It’s hard to imagine anything more horrible than this great list of human vices, not merely because they are horrible in themselves, but also because they are with us everywhere. Yet, as horrible as this is, it is only a foretaste of what hell itself will be like; for hell is only what is described in these verses, going on and on for eternity. The basic point is that the human race has chosen to go its way without God and that as a result of this choice God has abandoned the race to the result of its own sinful choices. We have made earth hell! And we will carry that hell with us into hell, making hell even more hellish than it is already!

We need to be reminded that it is only an awareness of the horror of our sin that ever leads us to appreciate the gospel when we hear it. What if we think we are basically all right before God? What is we think ourselves good? Then we think we do not need the gospel. We think we can do without God, which is exactly what these verses are describing. When our blinders are stripped off and the depravity of the race – to which we contribute – is unfolded before us, the glory of the gospel bursts forth, and Romans 1:16 and 17 becomes for us what Martin Luther found it to be for him, namely, “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.

We do not deserve this gospel. How could we? We couldn’t even invent it. But because God is not like us – because He is not “wicked,” “evil,” “greedy,” depraved,” “envious,” “senseless,” “faithless,” “heartless,” “ruthless,” or anything else that is bad – He not only could invent it, He did!

Romans 1:29-31 Reflection Questions:

Where in the gospel of Mathew does Jesus talk in detail about these sins?

Do you basically think that you are all right before God? Why?

Do you think of yourself as good?

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?

Our study of Romans 1:18-21 has shown what human beings have done in terms of their relationships to God. They have (1) suppressed the truth about God; (2) refused to glorify, or worship, God; and (3) neglected to be thankful. Because of the first and perhaps also because of the second and the third of these transgressions, the wrath of God has already begun to come upon them.

But the problem not only involves people’s relationships to God. It also involves what happens to them as a secondary result of their breaking of the ties that should exist between this holy and loving Creator and His rational creatures. When Adam rebelled against God it was not only his relationship to God that was broken. His relationship to Eve was broken also, and this, too, was to affect the history of mankind. Adam acted the fool, and he became one. So also with the race as a whole; thus, having spoken of that cosmic rebellion by which the human race has set its face against God, Paul goes on to declare verses 21-23. According to these words, the first result of man’s rebellion against God, so far as he himself is concerned, is that he became a fool. His heart was darkened.

The opening phrase of verse 21 tells how perversion to idolatry initially came about. “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God…” means there was a time when idolaters saw God as majestic, transcendent, all-powerful, infinitely greater than themselves. However, though they understood this, they did not honor Him but instead worshiped images like themselves. It’s important to see that what is involved is a falling away from high level truth, received by revelation, and not an upward climb to it.

It’s important to see this, because the world believes exactly the opposite. It tries to teach that the path of the race has been consistently upward from its original “animal” beginnings and that our present world religions or philosophies are a step upward from whatever religious sensibilities went before them. We have been taught that primitive ages of the race were marked by animism and that animism progressed upward to polytheism, which in turn produced monotheism. But this is not the way it happened. Research from anthropologists suggests that the original form of religion was monotheism and that the polytheistic or animistic religions we see today among certain “primitive” peoples are actually a falling away from that much higher standard. Claiming to be wise, we have become fools. For what could be more foolish that to have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God” for gods of our own devising?

In the midst of these important verses, Paul introduces another word that is extremely significant for understanding the nature of non-biblical religions and the human psychology that has produced them. This is the word exchanged. It occurs in verse 23 as well as verse 25. The word explains why the human race has been so determined to invent religions to replace worship of the one true God. The fact that people are religious does not prove that we are all seeking God. It proves the contrary. It proves that we are all running away from God. Although we are unwilling to know God and do not want Him, we are nevertheless unable to do without Him and try to fill the void with our substitute gods.

There is one more word we need to look at before we bring this study to a close, and that is the word darkness (v.21). Darkness is an image, of course. It’s the equivalent of Paul’s saying that “their thinking became futile” or “they became fools” or “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. When men and women turn away from God, they don’t admit this, of course. Instead, they speak of “bright new ideas,” “enlightenment” or “seeing the light.” But since God is the sole source of light, any ideas of enlightenment apart from Him that we may think we have are an illusion. And what we need is the revelation and power of God to bring us back from self-inflicted darkness into God’s light.

This is what has happened to Christians. We do not have any ability to rediscover the light of God by ourselves. Before God worked in us we were as much in the dark as anybody. In the case of Christians, God has uncovered for us the cause of our great spiritual trauma. He has dealt with our rejection of His revelation (as well as with all our other sins) in Christ, making that known to us. Then He has brought us back into harmony with Himself so that we no longer need fear Him or run away from Him but rather bask in His light.

We are also to live by His light. From Ephesians, Paul goes on to say: “Live as children of light (for the fruit of light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord” (Eph. 5:8-10). If we are of the light, we must live by the light. If we know God, we must show it by being like Him.

Romans 1:21-23 Reflection Questions:

Today in the 21^st century, what idols do we use instead of worshiping God?

Are you basking in God’s light daily? What does that mean to you?

Are you living by the light? What does that mean to you?