Latest / Reformed Thinking / Not Ashamed of the Gospel (Romans 1) | John MacArthur

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Not Ashamed of the Gospel (Romans 1) | John MacArthur · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reform Thinking. You know, usually when we talk
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about a medical diagnosis, there is this expectation of absolute
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precision. Right, it feels clean.
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Yeah, it, it feels clean. It feels like engineering.
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If you fall and break your arm, you go to the hospital, they put
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you in front of a machine and the X-ray produces this stark
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black and white image. Oh, absolutely.
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The doctor just points to a jagged white line on the film
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and says, well, there it is. That is the fracture.
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Yeah, and it is entirely binary. I mean, the bone is broken or
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the bone is intact. The diagnosis is visible, it is
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categorizable and, you know, comforting and it's clarity.
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Right, because you know what the problem is, and you know what
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the cast is going to do to fix it.
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But then you step into the world of theology, you start examining
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the human heart and the spiritual condition of mankind,
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and suddenly that X-ray machine is well, it is useless.
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Yeah, we are looking at a diagnostic landscape that is
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incredibly murky. It really is, Yeah.
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We're taking a hard look today at the opening chapter of the
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Book of Romans. We are relying heavily on the
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commentary of John MacArthur to extract the most critical
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insights from this letter. And our mission for this deep
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dive is to examine the stark contract between the bad news of
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human sin and the glorious good news of God's grace.
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Right, because when you look at the human condition honestly,
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without the flattering filters we usually apply, we are gripped
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by this innate selfishness. We are.
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And that selfishness always leads to guilt, which devolves
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into meaninglessness and finally lands in complete hopelessness.
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Yeah, but against that incredibly dark backdrop, the
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good news of justification by Faith shines brightly.
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That contrast is essential to grasp before going any further.
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I mean, if you open any newspaper or scroll through any
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news feed today, the headlines are almost universally bad.
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Yeah, they really. Are and what is happening on a
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macro global scale is just a magnification of what is
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happening inside the micro individual human heart.
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Wow. Sin has selfishness at its
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absolute core by nature since the fall of Adam.
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We are self-centered creatures. We want our own way, on our own
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terms, on our own timeline. Right.
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And when that self will goes unchecked, a person consumes
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everything and everyone around them.
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They use people rather than loving people.
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Precisely. And that innate selfishness
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produces guilt. Now, guilt is essentially a
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God-given warning pain. Like a physical pain telling you
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to take your hand off a hot stove.
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Spot on. Guilt is the soul's alarm system
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screaming that something is morally wrong.
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But when people suppress that guilt instead of dealing with
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it, it creates anxiety, neurosis and despair.
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Yeah, life becomes this exhausting cycle of trying to
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fill a void that simply cannot be filled by anything on earth.
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Which leads to a crushing sense of meaninglessness.
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So before we can appreciate the grace of God, which is the cure,
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we have to understand the fatal nature of the disease.
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Well, let's unpack the messenger who brings this cure.
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Roman starts by introducing the man chosen to deliver the
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message. And his introduction requires a
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level of submission that is entirely foreign to modern
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years. It really is.
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Paul introduces himself right out of the gate as a bond
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servant of Christ Jesus. The Greek word he uses is
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doulos. We lose a lot of the gravity of
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that word in our modern English translation.
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We lose almost all of it, honestly.
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Doulos carries the basic, unvarnished idea of subservience
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right. In the 1st century Roman Empire,
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there were millions of slaves. They were illegally considered
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property, living tools without rights.
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But Paul is not just pulling from Roman civil law here.
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He is drawing on something older.
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Yes, a much older Hebrew concept to define his relationship with
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Jesus. The Old Testament Hebrew
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equivalent to doulos is ebed under the Mosaic Law.
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Specifically in Exodus chapter 21, there were provisions for
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indentured servants. If a man fell into debt, he
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could essentially work off his debt as a servant for six years.
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And then in the 7th year, the year of Jubilee, he was free to
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go. He could walk away debt free and
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start his life over. Right.
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But there was a massive caveat in that law for a specific kind
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of servant. Oh.
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Right, they're all in the year. Yes, Exodus 21 says that if the
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servant loved his master, if he looked at his master and
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realized, you know, my life is better under your authority than
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it would be out there on my own, he could make a permanent
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choice. He would tell his master that he
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did not want to go out as a free man.
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They would perform a very public, very physical ceremony.
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The master would take the servant to the doorpost of the
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house, take an awl which is a sharp metal spike, and drive it
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right through the servant's earlobe into the wood.
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That is intense. It is from that day forward that
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Pierced Ear was a physical brand.
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He was a permanent bond slave. It was not forced labor.
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It was a willing, permanent, joyful submission to a Master he
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loved. So when Paul calls himself a
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doulos, he is pointing to a spiritual all in his ear.
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He is saying he has given himself wholeheartedly in love
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to the divine Master who rescued him from sin and death.
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He owns nothing, he has no rights, and he prefers it that
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way. Yes, wait, but think about
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Paul's resume for a second. He was a Roman citizen by birth,
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which was a massive social advantage.
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What a huge advantage. He was highly educated, a
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brilliant scholar, taught by Camillial, who is essentially
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the Ivy League professor of his day.
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He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, right?
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So why on earth is a guy with that kind of pedigree
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deliberately choosing the absolute lowest, most socially
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insignificant title to describe himself?
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It is a great question. I mean later on in his letter to
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the Corinthians he uses the word hoopreet which translates to an
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under rower, A galley slave. Right, the lowest of the low.
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Yeah, the absolute bottom of the barrel, chained in the bottom of
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a Roman trireme ship. Why take that title?
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Well, the contrast you're pointing out defines the core of
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true Protestant Reformed theology.
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Any dignity, any skill, any intellectual brilliance a
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believer possesses is purely a gift of grace.
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The doctrine of total depravity dictates that we bring
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absolutely nothing to the table of our own salvation.
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We are sinful, depraved, and completely undeserving.
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God supplies both the calling and the ability to answer it.
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Yeah, Paul knew his own history. He knew he did not wake up one
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day and volunteer for this missionary position.
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No, he was hunting down Christians to imprison and
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murder them. Right.
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The text specifically notes that he was called as an apostle.
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He was drafted. Yes, on the road to Damascus,
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the resurrected Christ sovereignly intervened, knocked
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him to the dirt, blinded him, and appointed him to his role.
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This is the Reformed doctrine of the effectual call.
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So God sovereignly chooses, regenerates and equips his
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messengers. Absolutely.
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Paul knew he was the foremost of sinners, so looking at his own
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merit, he viewed his position as an under rower, a guy pulling an
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oar in the dark belly of a ship on the captain's orders, as the
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most accurate description of who he was.
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But at the same time, he recognized that his divine
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appointment to that OR was an incredible, unmerited honor.
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Precisely. If you're listening to this
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right now, evaluating your own view of your daily work, your
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family life, or your ministry, this is a phenomenal diagnostic
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tool. It really is.
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Do you see yourself as a volunteer, someone who is doing
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God a favor by showing up, tossing a little time or money
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into the offering plate and expecting a thank you note in
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return? Or do you see yourself as a
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joyful bond servant, someone with a metaphorical all through
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the ear, joyfully submitted to the Creator, acknowledging that
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every breath you take is owned by him?
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That is the crucial distinction, because Paul was not just
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defined by his submission, he was defined by the message he
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was carrying. Yeah, he immediately focuses on
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the dual nature of Christ. He states that Jesus was born a
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descendant of David according to the flesh, but declared the Son
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of God with might by the resurrection from the dead.
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That dual nature is a non negotiable pillar of the faith
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in his humanity. Jesus was a literal, physical
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descendant of King David. Fulfilling the Old Testament
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prophecy. Start on God promised David an
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eternal heir for his throne, and Jesus is that heir.
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He had to be human to identify with fallen mankind.
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He had to take on human flesh, live under the law, face human
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temptation, and experience human suffering without ever
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committing a sin. Yes, that makes him the perfect
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high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses and act as a
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valid substitute for human beings on the cross.
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But in his deity he was declared the Son of God.
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Now we have to be careful here. Right.
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He was always the Son of God from eternity past.
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The incarnation did not make him the Son, but the resurrection
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was the irrefutable public declaration of his deity.
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When the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead, it proved beyond
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all doubt that the man who bled out on Roman wood is God the
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Son. Death could not hold him because
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he is the author of life. So since Paul is this willing
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bond servant with this massive message, what does the internal
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life of a person like that actually look like?
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We were moving from his official job title into his private
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motivations. And looking at verses 8 through
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15, we see the clear marks of spiritual leadership.
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We see a thankful spirit, a concerned spirit, a willing
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spirit, a humble spirit, and a completely obedient spirit.
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Right. Paul is constantly praying for
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the believers in Rome. These are people he had not even
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met yet. Yeah, he is separated by
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hundreds of miles in the Mediterranean Sea, yet he
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unceasingly brings them up in his prayers.
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He wants to visit them to impart a spiritual gift.
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He is not looking to build a massive platform or tickle their
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ears with pop psychology. No, he wants to establish them
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in concrete truth. The shift in his motivation is
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fascinating when you compare it to his past.
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He specifically says God, whom I worship in my spirit.
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Because before his conversion, Paul was a Pharisee.
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Exactly, Phariseical religion was entirely external,
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mechanical and self interested. It was about making sure the
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outside of the cup looked pristine so other people would
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applaud your righteousness. While the inside was filled with
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dead men's bones. Yes, but after his regeneration,
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his motivation shifted inward. He is now driven by a genuine
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inner desire to please God simply for God's sake.
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His thankfulness is completely divorced from his external
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circumstances. I mean, remember, this is a man
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who wrote letters expressing deep, overwhelming gratitude
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while chained to a wall in the Mamertine prison in Rome.
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The Mamertine was a dark subterranean dungeon where the
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city's sewage system literally ran through the holding cells.
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It was freezing, dark and foul. Yet in conditions that would
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make any of us curse the day we were born, Paul is writing about
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joy. His concern for these Roman
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strangers was so genuine that he begged God for a way to reach
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them them not to gain their money or adulation, but to serve
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them. OK, well I'm going to throw a
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wrench in this right here. Go for it.
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Donald Gray Barnhouse, a brilliant theologian, addresses
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a massive elephant in the room regarding Paul's intense prayer
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life and his planning. Oh this is a great point.
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Right. If God is completely sovereign,
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as Reformed theology teaches, and if God has already
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predestined the outcome of all things from eternity past,
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including who will be saved and what will happen in Rome, why on
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earth do we need to pray? Yeah, that is the question.
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Why did Paul spend hours agonizing in prayer for a visit
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to Rome if God had already mapped out the itinerary?
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Does human action even matter in a universe governed by total
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divine sovereignty? Why not just sit on the couch
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and let God's predestined plan unfold on its own?
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That is the most common objection to the doctrine of
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God's sovereignty. Burnhouse uses an incredible
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analogy to answer it. The violin, right?
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Yes, imagine a man who buys a very fine violin.
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He brings it back to his apartment, tunes his radio, and
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finds a live, static filled broadcast of the Philadelphia
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Orchestra playing Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.
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OK, the music coming through that radio speaker is entirely
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predetermined. The orchestra is going to play
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the score exactly as Beethoven wrote it.
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The conductor is not going to suddenly improvise a jazz solo.
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The music is fixed. Makes sense.
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Now the man in his living room picks up his new violin and
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starts to play along with the radio.
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At first it is a disaster. He makes mistakes, he loses his
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place, he hits flat notes. He completely ruins the tempo,
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right? But he keeps listening to the
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broadcast and he keeps practicing.
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Eventually, over time, he learns to play in their exact tempo.
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He finds their key. He follows the genius of the
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score. The harmony and the joy he
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experiences come entirely from his submission and cooperation
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with the orchestra. Oh wow, that is a brilliant way
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to picture it. It is.
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Prayer is not about trying to grab the microphone and yell at
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the orchestra to play a different song.
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Prayer is not a mechanism to change the eternal perfect
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broadcast of heaven. Right Prayer is the process of
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learning to play the tune that the eternal plan of God already
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calls for. It is the act of aligning our
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own chaotic, out of tune hearts with the perfect will of the
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eternal composer. If you try to play a different
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song, you do not change God's will, you just create massive
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painful dissonance in your own life.
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Exactly. We act, we pray, we plan, we
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agonize over the lost, because God ordains the means just as
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much as he ordains the ends. He predestined that Paul would
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reach Rome, and he predestined that Paul's prayers and
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shipwrecks would be the exact mechanism to get him there.
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Our obedience is how we get the privilege of participating in
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His glorious Symphony. Yes, that makes the concept of
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obedient actions so tangible. We're called to use whatever we
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have, however limited it is as a bondservant.
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Right there is a great historical story about DL Moody,
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the famous 19th century evangelist, that drives this
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home. Moody had a very rough,
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unpolished background. He did.
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He was preaching to a massive crowd one night, and after the
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sermon, a highly educated, sophisticated man came up to
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him. The man looked down his nose at
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Moody and informed him that he had made 11 grammatical mistakes
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during the sermon. Yeah, but Moody did not get
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defensive. He just graciously replied,
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Well, my early education was very faulty, but I'm using all
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the grammar that I know in the master service.
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How about you? That response perfectly captures
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the spirit of a doulos. Every single believer is called
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to be a messenger. When God saves a person by his
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unmerited grace, he simultaneously calls that person
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to obedience. True saving faith is inherently
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an obedient faith. A theology that claims you can
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accept Jesus as your savior to get out of hell, but refuse to
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submit to Him as the Lord of your daily life contradicts the
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very essence of biblical Christianity.
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Salvation is not just a ticket to heaven, it's a transfer of
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ownership. Yes, you are bought with a
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price, and that includes bringing your limited grammar,
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your limited finances, your limited energy, and putting it
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all on the master's table to be used as he sees fit.
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Let's look at the specific message that fueled Paul's
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entire life, verses 16 and 17. Paul was eager to visit Rome,
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the capital of the known world, and his eagerness was fueled by
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one single truth, he writes. I am not ashamed of the gospel,
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for it is the omnipotence of God for salvation to everyone who
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believes. The Greek word used there for
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God's divine energy is dunamis. And that is the root of our
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English word dynamite. Right.
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It represents God's infinite might, His absolute unstoppable
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ability to bring about salvation.
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Dunamis is critical to understand here because humans
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are addicted to self improvement.
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We really are. People have this innate,
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restless desire to change themselves, to fix their
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internal guilt through self help books, meditation retreats, or
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sheer willpower. We treat our spiritual condition
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like a house that just needs a new coat of paint and some
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rearranged furniture. But humans cannot change their
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own spiritual nature any more than a leopard can change its
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spots or a dead man can perform CPR on himself.
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Absolutely not. The gospel is not a self help
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program. It is dunamis.
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It is a Wrecking Ball to human pride and the divine energy
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required to raise a spiritually dead corpse to life.
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Only the omnipotence of God can overcome man's totally depraved
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nature and impart new spiritual life.
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And this staggering salvation comes by faith alone.
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It goes to the Jew first because they were the historical
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custodians of God's covenants, and also to the Greek, meaning
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the rest of the Gentile world. This brings up the mechanics of
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how we actually become right with God, the imparting of
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righteousness. It is not a righteousness
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generated by human effort. It is God's own righteousness
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reckoned or credited to the believers account.
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But put yourself in Paul's shoes.
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Staring down the road to Rome. The societal context is
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intimidating. The Romans worshiped absolute
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strengths. They worshiped gladiators.
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They worshiped emperors who claim to be living God's
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conquering nations. To walk into that culture and
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say, you know, the actual Lord of the universe is a Jewish
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Carpenter who was publicly humiliated, stripped naked and
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crushed on a Roman cross, that must have seemed like absolute,
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utter foolishness. It's a social embarrassment.
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But how do we combat that same fear of embarrassment today,
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when the message of human sinfulness and a bleeding Savior
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is so deeply offensive to modern sensibilities?
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We combat it by realizing that an inoffensive gospel is an
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entirely inoperative gospel. If you remove the offense of the
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cross, you remove the dunamis. That is a great point.
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The modern church often falls into the trap of trying to
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rebrand Christianity to make it palatable.
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Look at the modern health and wealth prosperity movements.
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Those movements are not offensive to the secular world
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because they offer exactly what the fallen, sinful world already
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wants, money, physical comfort, career success, and self
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actualization. They take Jesus and turn him
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into a cosmic vending machine. But any attempt to soften the
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message of sin and repentance robs the gospel of its saving
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might. The ancient pagans mocked early
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Christianity relentlessly. There's an ancient Roman
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graffito carved into a wall on the Palatine Hill.
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It shows a man raising his hand in worship to a figure on a
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cross, But the figure on the cross has the body of a man and
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the head of a Jackass. The caption scratched beneath it
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reads Aleximenos worships his God.
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The ancient philosopher Celsus wrote scathing critiques of
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Christians, comparing them to a swarm of bats or a chorus of
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frogs holding a symposium in a swamp, arguing over who is the
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most sinful. Incredible.
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The cross has always been an intellectual and social scandal.
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It offends human pride because it tells the wealthy CEO and the
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homeless addict that they are equally bankrupt before a holy
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God. Because it requires total
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surrender. You cannot buy your way in and
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you cannot behave your way in. Yes, the Westminster Confession
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is incredibly clear on this point.
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Salvation relies entirely 100% on God's unmerited favor.
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It requires the complete abandonment of any human
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boasting. You cannot contribute your own
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good works to the equation. If you try to mix your own merit
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with Christ's merit, you ruin the whole thing.
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As Paul says, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to
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faith. The righteous man shall live by
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faith. To quote the theologian Jonathan
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Edwards, the only thing you contribute to your salvation is
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the sin that made it necessary in the first place.
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You bring empty hands to the cross.
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That is right. That sets up the absolute
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necessity of understanding what we are being saved from.
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Verse 18 shifts the tone dramatically.
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Yes it does. To fully grasp the brilliance of
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God's grace, we must look at the terrifying darkness it rescues
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us from. We move from the good news to
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the really, really bad news. The text defines God's wrath,
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stating that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
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ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
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The Greek word used for wrath here is orge.
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How does Orge contrast with our human experience of anger, which
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the Greek calls thumos? We project our own flawed
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experience of anger onto God and that leads to terrible theology.
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Human anger through most is volatile.
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It is a flash in the pan. It is emotional, reactive, and
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almost always an uncontrolled rage tainted by selfishness,
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bruised ego and sin. Think of someone cutting you off
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in traffic and you losing your temper.
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That is thumos, God's wrath, or is entirely different.
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It is a settled, determined, calculated indignation against
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evil. It originates from heaven,
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meaning it is pure. It is not capricious.
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No, God does not fly off the handle or lose His temper.
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His wrath is the cold, terrifying, flawless justice of
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a perfectly holy judge who has reviewed every piece of evidence
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and is pronouncing A righteous sentence.
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It is the only possible response that an infinitely holy being
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could have toward evil. Perfect holiness simply cannot
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tolerate unholiness. Many modern churches want to
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completely ignore this concept. They skip right over verse 18.
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They argue that a loving God couldn't possibly be angry.
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Yeah, they do. They picture God as this
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grandfatherly figure who just winks at our flaws and hands out
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candy. How do we reconcile perfect
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infinite love with perfect, terrifying fury?
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We reconcile it by understanding that God's attributes exist in
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complete, unbreakable harmony. You cannot separate his love
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from his justice. Because he is infinitely holy
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and perfectly good. He must perfectly hate anything
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that destroys goodness, right? Think about in human terms.
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A God who looks at human trafficking, at child abuse, at
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gross injustice, at murder, and is not filled with burning anger
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is not a good God. He would be a morally corrupt
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monster. Leaving in our own warped,
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fallen human societies, we expect our judges to be outraged
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by terrible crimes. We demand justice.
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Absolutely. How much more must the
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infinitely pure Creator of the universe be outraged by the
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cosmic treason of his own creation?
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The ultimate proof of this is not hell.
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The ultimate proof of God's wrath is the cross.
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God did not just sweep human sin under the rug and pretend it
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didn't happen. The full, unmitigated force of
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His righteous fury against the sins of His people was poured
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out, concentrated and exhausted on Jesus Christ acting as a
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substitute. If God were not a God of
21:55
absolute wrath, the violent execution of his own son would
21:57
be completely unnecessary. Spot on.
21:59
Paul notes 2 specific ways this wrath is revealed in the present
22:03
day. First, through the built in
22:06
moral cause and effect of the universe.
22:09
If you ignore the law of gravity and step off A10 story building,
22:13
you are going to hit the pavement.
22:14
The universe is hardwired that way.
22:16
Similarly, when you deviate from God's moral law, there is a
22:19
built in consequence that inexorably breaks you against
22:23
the reality of His design. Second, wrath is revealed
22:27
through God's direct personal intervention in history.
22:30
Like the global flood in Genesis or the destruction of Sodom and
22:34
Gomorrah? And this wrath is universal
22:36
against all ungodliness. It makes me think of the
22:39
historical illustration about the defiant farmer.
22:42
That story perfectly illustrates human arrogance versus divine
22:46
patience. There was a farmer who intensely
22:48
hated the local church and everything it stood for to make
22:52
a public point. He deliberately chose to plow
22:54
his fields every Sunday morning, right when the church bells are
22:57
ringing and the congregation was walking to the service.
22:59
He worked his fields on the Lord's Day all season long.
23:02
Come harvest time, he had the highest yield per acre of any
23:06
farm in the entire county. He was so proud of himself that
23:09
he wrote a mocking letter to the editor of the local newspaper.
23:13
Of course, he detailed how he had explicitly defied God's
23:17
commands regarding the Sabbath, yet he was more prosperous than
23:20
all the praying Christians in town.
23:22
He ended the letter by asking, How do you Christians?
23:25
Explain that and the editor's response is legendary.
23:29
It is the newspaper editor printed the man's defiant letter
23:32
in full, and right beneath it the editor printed a single one
23:37
line response. God does not settle all his
23:39
accounts in the month of October.
23:41
Ma'am, that is a chilling, sobering thought.
23:43
It really is. If God's wrath appears delayed,
23:46
if wicked people seem to be prospering and getting away with
23:48
murder, it is not because God is blind or apathetic.
23:52
It is because, as Paul warns later in Romans, two men are
23:56
actively storing up wrath for themselves on the coming day of
23:59
righteous judgment. The Ledger will be balanced
24:01
perfectly. That raises a massive question
24:04
about fairness. Which brings us to verses 19
24:06
through 23. If God is angry, and if this
24:10
Ledger is keeping track of every human soul, is his anger
24:14
justified against someone who has never heard the gospel?
24:16
Right, the unreached person. How can God hold a person
24:19
accountable who has never seen a Bible, never made a missionary,
24:22
and never heard the name of Jesus?
24:25
This introduces the crucial theological concept of general
24:29
or natural revelation. Paul argues that God's invisible
24:33
attributes, his eternal omnipotence, and his divine
24:35
nature are clearly seen in the physical creation.
24:39
The argument here is that God has never left himself without a
24:41
witness. Ever since the creation of the
24:43
world, His attributes have been clearly on display.
24:46
The physical universe is a massive screaming billboard
24:49
pointing to the Creator. Every single person, no matter
24:52
how geographically or historically isolated they are,
24:55
has access to this external evidence combined with the
24:57
internal God-given evidence of their own conscience.
25:00
But instead of looking at the stars and honoring him, or
25:03
looking at the complexity of life and giving thanks, humanity
25:06
universally engages in futile speculations.
25:09
We invent myths and the result is that our foolish hearts
25:12
become intellectually and spiritually darkened, Right.
25:15
The scientific facts that back up the sheer scale of this
25:17
natural revelation are mind bending.
25:20
Just looking at the macro level, at any given moment on this
25:23
planet there are roughly 1800 massive storms raging.
25:27
That is incredible. Generating a combined 1.3
25:29
billion horsepower of kinetic energy, the average farmer in a
25:33
place like Minnesota receives over 400,000 gallons of
25:35
rainwater per acre per year, lifted from the oceans,
25:39
desalinated, transported hundreds of miles, and dropped
25:42
gently on his crops entirely free of charge.
25:46
The Earth weighs an estimated 6 septillion tons, yet it is
25:49
suspended in the vacuum, spinning at 1000 mph at the
25:53
equator and careening around the Sun at 67,000 mph with absolute
25:57
mathematical precision. It is a masterpiece.
26:00
And then you zoom in on the micro level of biology.
26:03
Look at the Archer fish. This little fish swims near the
26:06
surface, spots an insect resting on a branch above the water, and
26:10
calculates the exact angle of light refraction to the water
26:13
surface to fire a precise jet of water, knocking the bug down to
26:17
eat it. That is wild.
26:20
For the Bombardier beetle, this insect has two separate chambers
26:23
in its abdomen. One holds hydroquinone, the
26:26
other holds hydrogen peroxide. If these chemicals mix normally
26:29
they would just sit there. But the beetle also secrets an
26:33
inhibitor enzyme that prevents them from reacting when a
26:36
predator approaches. The beetle squirts the chemicals
26:39
into a specialized combustion chamber as an anti inhibitor and
26:43
creates A literal boiling chemical explosion right into
26:46
the face of the enemy, all without blowing itself up.
26:49
That is just brilliant engineering.
26:51
Exactly, if you presented an engineer with the blueprints for
26:54
the Bombardier Beaters combustion chamber they would
26:57
marvel at the genius of the design.
27:00
So if the evidence of design precision and raw capability is
27:04
this overwhelming, why does humanity constantly invent,
27:07
substitute gods, or cling to blind evolutionary theories
27:11
instead of just bowing down and worshiping the Creator?
27:13
Well, because the core issue is not an intellectual lack of
27:16
evidence. The core issue is a moral
27:18
rebellion of the human will. The doctrine of total depravity
27:22
teaches that humans actively, violently suppress the truth and
27:26
unrighteousness. Accepting the reality of a
27:29
sovereign Creator means accepting that you are a created
27:31
being and therefore you are obligated to submit to His moral
27:34
authority. If there is a God who designed
27:36
the Bombardier Beetle and He designed you, He has the
27:39
absolute right to dictate how you use your body, how you spend
27:42
your money, and how you treat your neighbor.
27:44
And sinful men innately realize this threat to their autonomy.
27:48
Absolutely. As one prominent evolutionary
27:51
biologist famously admitted in print, his rejection of a
27:55
creator was not based on the biology.
27:57
He stated that he and his colleagues refused to believe in
28:00
God because the moral implications of a divine
28:02
designer interfered with their sexual Morris.
28:05
He actually said that. He openly admitted I refused to
28:07
believe in God, So what other alternative do I have but
28:11
evolution? It is not that the evidence
28:14
objectively led him away from a creator.
28:16
His fierce rejection of God's moral authority forced him to
28:19
construct an alternative framework to explain the
28:22
universe without a judge. Which perfectly explained the
28:24
devolution of human religion. So many modern sociologists and
28:28
anthropologists claim the human religion is an upward
28:31
evolutionary climb. Right, they do.
28:33
They teach that primitive man started in chaos, invented
28:37
animism, slowly progressed to polytheism, and finally evolved
28:41
upward into monotheism. But Paul argues the exact polar
28:45
opposite. Religion is a downward slide.
28:48
It is a catastrophic regression from knowing the one true
28:51
Creator down into the mud idolatry.
28:53
And secular archaeology in history actually backs Paul up
28:56
on this. The earliest records of the
28:58
ancient Persians show they had no idols or physical
29:01
representations of deities. Interesting.
29:03
The early Romans lived for the 1st 170 years of their
29:06
civilization without any statues or images of gods in their
29:09
temples. They started with an
29:11
understanding of a transcendent divine power.
29:14
The slide into carving statues of wood and stone is a moral and
29:18
intellectual regression. And why do we make idols?
29:22
Because an idol is incredibly convenient.
29:24
An idol makes 0 moral demands on your life.
29:27
Not at all. Whether it is a piece of carved
29:29
wood in the ancient world, a golden calf in the desert, or a
29:33
modern sophisticated idol. Like wealth, sexual freedom,
29:36
career, prestige, or sheer self fulfillment.
29:39
And idol exists to serve you. You can put a statue on a shelf,
29:42
offered a little food or incense, and then go live
29:44
wherever you want. We'll never tell you to repent.
29:46
It will never tell you to love your enemy.
29:48
Every form of idolatry, ancient or modern, is ultimately just a
29:52
thinly veiled form of self worship.
29:54
And behind all self worship lies the deception of Satan.
29:57
Paul points out how intellectually ludicrous it
29:59
becomes. He says they exchanged the glory
30:03
of the incorruptible infinite God for an image in the form of
30:06
corruptible man and of birds and four footed animals and crawling
30:10
creatures. The ancient Egyptians, who built
30:12
the pyramids with staggering mathematical genius, literally
30:15
worshipped the scarab, A dung beetle that rolls balls of
30:19
animal feces across the ground. It is wild to think about.
30:23
The Canaanites worshipped Balzabub, which translates to
30:26
the Lord of the Flies. It shows how utterly broken the
30:30
human mind becomes when it rejects the source of all truth.
30:33
They look at the creator of the Milky Way Galaxy, turn their
30:35
backs and bow down to a beetle rolling in manure.
30:39
And that horrific exchange forces a response from heaven.
30:42
God does not just watch this happen indefinitely.
30:45
He acts. Which brings us to verses 24
30:47
through 32, the most sobering, terrifying part of this entire
30:50
letter. When humanity continually,
30:53
generation after generation, replaces the Creator with the
30:56
creation, God finally responds by giving them over.
30:59
We are staring at the terrifying judicial concept of divine
31:02
abandonment. The Greek word Paul uses three
31:05
times in this section is parodomi.
31:08
What are the mechanics of God giving a society over?
31:11
Well, paradidomi is an intense, active judicial term used in
31:15
ancient Greek courts. It means handing A convicted
31:18
criminal over to the executioner or the prison guard.
31:21
OK, in this specific theological context, it means God actively
31:25
withdraws his restraining hand of common grace, Norma.
31:29
See, God restrains the full measure of human evil.
31:31
He keeps us from being as bad as we could be.
31:34
But in judgement he stops protecting a society from
31:37
itself. He lets go of the steering
31:38
wheel. Think of man in a small boat
31:40
rowing against a powerful, deadly current.
31:43
God's grace is the only thing giving the man the strength to
31:45
row. When God exercises parododomi,
31:48
he doesn't strike the boat with a lightning bolt.
31:50
He simply removes the oars. He allows the natural
31:54
destructive current of the man's own sin to pull him over the
31:57
waterfall. Like an untended garden.
31:58
Yes, when human nature is left entirely to itself without
32:02
divine intervention, the toxic weeds of sin aggressively choke
32:05
out everything good, decent, and beautiful.
32:07
Paul outlines a very specific three-step downward progression
32:11
of this divine abandonment. First, verse 24 says God gives
32:14
them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity so that their
32:17
bodies would be dishonored among them.
32:19
Then in verse 26, the floor drops lower.
32:22
He gives them over to degrading passions, specifically detailing
32:26
the inversion of natural sexual relations and homosexuality.
32:29
And finally, in verse 28, the bottom falls out completely.
32:32
He gives them over to a depraved, worthless mind.
32:36
It results in a total collapse of societal cohesion.
32:39
The list he provides is staggering.
32:41
Unrighteousness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife,
32:45
deceit, malice. They become gossips, slanderers,
32:48
haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of
32:52
evil. And, remarkably, he includes
32:53
disobedience to parents right in the middle of that list of
32:56
horrors. This progression shows the total
32:58
systemic failure of a culture. When men and women desperately
33:01
seek to elevate themselves and satisfy their physical desires
33:04
through shameful indulgence, their bodies are actually
33:07
degraded and dishonored. The text draws a very sharp
33:10
theological line here. It does.
33:12
Many sins are an illicit expression of a natural,
33:14
God-given desire. Stealing is an illicit way to
33:18
get food or wealth. Fornication is an illicit
33:21
expression of the natural mating drive.
33:24
But Paul highlights homosexuality as an inversion,
33:27
an expression of that which is neither God-given nor
33:30
biologically natural. It is a rebellion against the
33:33
very fabric of creation itself, the fundamental design of male
33:37
and female. And he notes that this behavior
33:40
brings its own built in, inevitable physical and
33:43
spiritual penalties. You know, if you present this
33:45
argument to a modern secular audience, they are going to push
33:49
back fiercely. Oh, without a doubt.
33:50
They will point out that modern progressive society praises
33:53
these exact behaviors. They celebrate them with
33:56
parades. They call them natural
33:57
biological functions. They call it living your
33:59
authentic truth or doing your own thing.
34:02
Is this rapid moral decay we are seeing right now just a modern
34:06
political or cultural cycle, or, as Romans 1 indicates, something
34:10
much more severe about the actual spiritual state of our
34:13
civilization? The claim Paul is making here is
34:16
absolute dynamite. He is stating that these rampant
34:20
celebrated behaviors are not merely the cause of God's coming
34:24
wrath, they are the empirical evidence that God's wrath is
34:28
already actively poured out on a society.
34:31
When a culture wholesale abandons God's design for human
34:34
flourishing, it proves that God has already abandoned that
34:37
culture to its own destructive lusts.
34:40
And it culminates in what the Greek calls the a Dokimos mind,
34:43
the depraved mind A. Dokimos.
34:45
A dokimos was a word used for testing metals.
34:48
If a coin was tested and found to be full of cheap impurities
34:51
rather than pure silver, it was a docomo's rejected, useless, a
34:56
worthless mind. The ultimate proof that a
34:58
society has reached this point of total reprobation is found in
35:01
the final verse, verse 32. Yes, it says that they not only
35:04
practice these destructive things, but they give hearty
35:06
approval to those who practice them.
35:07
They don't just sit in secret with a sense of shame.
35:10
They institutionalized the sin they do.
35:12
They build entertainment empires around it.
35:14
They let politicians who champion it.
35:16
They celebrate the very things that are dragging them into.
35:19
This vividly confirms the core Reformed doctrine that without
35:23
the active, intervening, restraining grace of God, human
35:26
beings will Sprint joyfully toward their own destruction and
35:30
cheer for everyone running alongside them.
35:33
There is a fascinating illustration from the natural
35:36
world that highlights the tragedy of this the Herman.
35:40
An Herman is a small weasel like animal found in the forests of
35:45
northern Europe and Asia. In the winter its fur turns
35:48
incredibly white, pristine and beautiful.
35:52
The Herman instinctively protects that white coat at all
35:55
costs. It will go to incredible lengths
35:57
to avoid getting dirt or muck on its fur.
35:59
In fact, fur trappers used to exploit this instinct.
36:02
They wouldn't set a mechanical trap to kill the Herman.
36:04
They would find the Herman's home in a hollow tree or the
36:07
rocks, and they would smear thick, filthy mud all over the
36:10
entrance. Then they would unleash their
36:12
dogs to chase the Herman. The terrified animal would run
36:15
back toward its home, but when it saw the mud blocking the
36:18
entrance, it would stop dead in its tracks.
36:20
It would rather turn around and face the jaws of the hounds,
36:23
then defile its white coat in the filth.
36:25
It would literally choose death over defilement.
36:28
But fallen humanity has the exact opposite inclination.
36:32
We have no such instinct for spiritual purity.
36:35
We are eager, practically desperate, to defile our own
36:38
bodies and our own souls. We run headlong, laughing right
36:41
into the mud. Yes, we demand a horrible,
36:43
unchecked freedom. We scream at God to leave us
36:46
alone, and in getting exactly what we ask for, we become
36:49
completely, helplessly enslave to our own sin.
36:53
It is tragic. Sin degrades humanity.
36:56
It systematically dehumanizes us in the name of modern humanism,
37:00
in the name of exalting human rights and human desires of all
37:02
else, Modern society actually abuses, commodifies, and
37:06
degrades human beings at every possible turn.
37:08
We forfeit all genuine virtue because we have proudly
37:11
forfeited God. That is precisely.
37:13
It this is an incredibly heavy text.
37:15
We have traveled a massive theological distance today.
37:17
We started with the glorious good news of justification by
37:20
faith, the dunamis, the raw omnipotence of God to save a
37:24
dead soul. And we went straight into the
37:26
sobering, terrifying reality of human rebellion and divine
37:29
wrath. We have seen how Paul,
37:31
understanding his own depravity, became a willing bond servant
37:34
with an all through his ear. He dedicated his entire life
37:38
enduring prisons and shipwrecks to sharing the cure because he
37:41
saw first hand the fatal, horrifying nature of the
37:44
disease. And we have to recognize that
37:47
this disease is entirely universal.
37:49
Not a single human being escapes it on their own merit.
37:52
The moral cause and effect of the universe, the inescapable
37:55
justice of God, is stacked completely against our
37:57
unrighteousness. Right in our natural state.
38:00
We suppress the truth. We rationalize our darkest sins.
38:03
We invent comfortable, substitute gods who demand
38:05
nothing of of us, and if God were to simply leave us to our
38:08
own devices, if he were to practice paradomi on us
38:11
individually, we would plunge straight into the abyss of a
38:14
completely depraved, worthless mind.
38:16
Is a terrifying reality. Yeah, if you are listening to
38:18
this, I will leave you with this final challenging thought
38:21
derived from these realities. If human nature is so entirely,
38:25
hopelessly bent toward rebellion that we would rather worship a
38:29
crawling insect or our own bank accounts than the glorious
38:32
creator of the cosmos, than any desire you have today to seek
38:36
God is not natural. If you have any desire right now
38:40
to love the truth, to repent of your sin, or to understand His
38:43
word that is not a product of your own superior intellect or
38:47
your own good character. It is a sheer, unadulterated
38:50
miracle. It means the infinite creator of
38:53
the jars has actively, mercifully reached into the
38:56
terrifying darkness of your specific rebellious mind.
38:59
Flip on the light switch. Let the weight of that unmerited
39:02
grace dictate how you view every single moment of your day.
39:05
That brings us right back to where we started that X-ray
39:08
machine. The diagnostic landscape of the
39:11
human heart is murky, muddy, terrifying water indeed.
39:14
We cannot fix ourselves, we cannot save ourselves, and we
39:17
cannot even properly diagnose our own sickness without the
39:20
illuminating light of the Creator breaking through the
39:23
darkness. Thank you for joining us on this
39:25
deep dive. Keep examining the text, keep
39:27
asking the hard questions and we will catch you next time.