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A couple of weeks ago we launched into a series on the book of Romans. It's going to be a study that takes the majority of this year — 38 weeks to get through the entire book. If you're new, you've not missed much; you can go online to get the introductory sermons. Ultimately what we've been establishing through the book of Romans is this idea of how to get right with God — that's the overarching premise of the book.
Today we are looking at Romans chapter 1, verses 18-32. This is a profound letter, systematically theological — there's no greater book in the Bible that captures Christian doctrine. Some will refer to this as the believer's Constitution. We can find a lot of insight and instruction in it, and what we've already established is that Paul encompasses the entire gospel in two words: Grace and peace.
Peace is where we're going. Grace is how we get there.
Peace is the destination; Grace is the vehicle. Peace ultimately means that we can be reconciled to our God, reconciled to our maker, and made right with our heavenly Father. Today we are discussing the wrath of God.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Paul, tell us what you really think! As we go through this study — whether it's today, next week, in two weeks, three weeks, four weeks — at some point the book of Romans is going to make every single one of us uncomfortable. We have to find the ability, as a community, to continue leaning into God's word and asking: what does God say? What is his opinion? It's not man's opinion, not our preference — it's God's written and declared word over our lives.
Paul is writing a letter to the church in Rome, which sits in the center of the Roman Empire, on the doorstep of Nero's palace, with all kinds of evil, wickedness, and corruption circling about. Paul decides to write a letter in boldness, declaring God's truth in a space full of wickedness.
Before we can embrace what Paul is saying to us, we first have to understand what Paul was saying to them — who was he talking to, what was the context, what was the dialogue taking place, and why is he saying things the way he is.
The Greco-Roman world had a handful of key influencers who still to this day have influence on the way we think: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and — the maniac in office — Nero. Paul is writing to a culture that is steeped in and proud of its heritage, a culture that esteems its intellect.
As you read through Romans you'll discover a delineation between two groups of people — the obvious one being Jew and Gentile. They also use the terms foolish and wise, and Greeks and barbarians — in all three cases referring to the same two groups. The Gentiles looked down on the Jews, assuming they were morons who thought their morality made them more righteous. The Jews looked at the Gentile community and thought they were wicked and immoral despite their sophistication and philosophy. Paul is saying: okay, there are errors on both sides — maybe we can bring everybody into conversation together and establish some common ground.//
If you're ever going to defend your faith, one thing to do is consider where you and the person you're talking with actually agree. It's unproductive to immediately establish where you disagree — that will become apparent soon enough. Is there anything you can at least stack hands on and say,
The first five words of scripture are, "In the beginning God created." Fundamental to the Christian view is that there is a Creator — and if He designed it, He defines it. We build from this understanding at a fundamental level.
Paul is coming to a group of people and essentially saying: Come on, you have this hunch that there's an outside world, and you've been duped with the wrong worldview. Come on, you understand there's brilliance and order and intellect and truth and reasoning behind creation. Come on, you understand that living in agreement with this creation is critical.
What happened is this: God's invisible attributes were made plain to everyone, and people rejected it. They began to suppress the truth, which ultimately led to a futile way of thinking — a foolish mind — which then produced a darkened heart, where the light of truth can no longer get in. Then you arrive at a place where you're no longer suppressing the truth; you're exchanging the truth. And the moment you exchange the truth, you end up with a debased mind. You lose the foundation of your logic.//
You can disagree with me, but you owe it to yourself to ask the question: is there a greater foundation for your logic than the Christian worldview?
There's always this debate over faith and science — which I think is comical, because the majority, almost all, of the founding fathers of science were believers. I'll hear people say faith and science are at odds with each other, and I think, "That's exchanging the truth for a lie." I don't think faith and science are at odds with each other. I think faith and atheism are at odds with each other.
When you go throughout creation and you pump the brakes and take some time to think — wait a second, look at this wonderful place — am I really going to say it's just an accident, or am I going to give strong consideration to my goodness, how great is our God?
Most people are caught flat-footed when it comes to defending their faith. If you want to take some quick notes here, the creation approach is one of the most solid and strongest approaches to establishing your reasoning and worldview in the Christian faith.
The Cosmological Argument — The universe had a beginning; everything that begins to exist has a cause. The ultimate cause is either some incidental accident or God. Einstein, toward the end of his life, got to a point where he realized there clearly was a beginning.
The Fine-Tuning Argument — The precise conditions required for life to exist, the constants of physics, suggest intentional design. When you look at how brilliantly thought out, vast, and numerous the cycles and systems and dynamics of our world are — and that not only are they complex and brilliant but somehow compatible in their complexity — you have to think, wow, this was a pretty impressive accident, if that's what I'm going to adhere to. If some of these things were slightly off, life on this planet would cease to exist.
The Argument from Design — A different angle on the complexity and order in nature: things like ecosystems and DNA. Clearly there's a designer.
The Anthropic Argument — The universe was tailor-fit for humans to live here. Look at the things that make life possible and able for humans to flourish — it's tailor-fit to our existence.
The Moral Argument — The existence of objective moral values and duties is difficult to explain without a moral lawgiver. Do away with a lawgiver and you do away with right and wrong. This whole appeal to relative truth isn't really fleshed out, and we're too nearsighted in our solutions. Ask: if I subscribe to this way of belief, what kind of life, world, society, community, or family does that produce? You should always ask: what kind of Christian does your home produce?
The Argument from Consciousness — Human consciousness, self-awareness, and the ability to reason cannot be fully explained by material processes. The fact that you and I can sit in a room right now and reason together — again, you're going to have to choose accident or brilliance. This is much stronger than you think.
Universal Awe and Wonder — This is one of my favorites. It doesn't matter which culture or continent — everybody around the world loves to look at a sunset, loves to look at the ocean, loves to stare at mountains, loves to wish upon a star. The art may change, but everyone is still staring at creation thinking beautiful, wonderful, mesmerizing, inspiring. How do you explain this embedded response within all of human history that looks at creation and thinks it's outstanding? It's universal.
The Human Longing for Transcendence — You can do away with Christ, but you have to ask the same question the disciples asked: if not Jesus, who? If not Christianity, what? You will wrestle every day of your life with who am I, why am I here, what's the purpose of my life, is there any meaning to all of this. The quickest way to sign up for a life of despair is to do away with purpose, meaning, and true identity.
What is amazing about Paul — and about the person we haven't talked about — is that Paul is writing this letter while Nero is at the helm, calling the shots, and this church is on his doorstep. Nero was a confused and mixed-up man. I'll keep this high level since there are kids in the room: Nero chose to castrate a slave boy and take him as his wife, then later took another man as his husband, playing the wife in that relationship. He's married to two men — one his wife, one his husband. For Paul to write this bold a letter in that kind of culture took some courage.//
What I love about Paul is that he will not be guilty of malpractice. If you went to a doctor and that doctor discovered you had stage four cancer throughout your body, but the doctor thought, oh my goodness, I just don't have the guts to walk into the room and tell them — I don't want to disappoint them, I don't want to hurt their feelings — that doctor would be guilty of malpractice.//
Folks, there will never be an agenda, never an attempt, never a desire to ever be offensive from this pulpit — but there will always be a desire not to fall into malpractice. As a church, we will always do our best to delicately yet truthfully display the Word of God to the very best of our ability. I think that is what we have to commit to. But know this: God's Word will pierce your heart. God's Word will grip your soul. And God loves you enough to tell you the truth.
Paul is building this argument: you've suppressed the truth, you've disregarded God as Creator, foolishness, darkened heart — now you're exchanging truth for a lie, debased mind. What you have to understand in Paul's writings is that he's a great debater. At times he makes lists and gives examples. What he's not doing is laying these things out in terms of priority or severity — he's laying them out in terms of easiest to hardest to prove his point.///
If I got up here and said, "You're all deserving of wrath because you gossip," most people would say, "I don't know if I agree with that" — even though you'll find that people in church still gossip. So Paul begins with the creation approach and how people have exchanged truth for a lie — starting with what is most apparent to them. This is where you hear Paul using the language: they exchanged natural relations for unnatural relations.
I understand this is present all throughout our church. I understand many of you are wrestling with this, and it's a very real matter within your life and your home. That's the case for me too — I know that standing up here teaching the Bible will come with personal repercussions every single week, and that is a challenge.
I think the miss in reading this passage is that there will always be those who jump on the soapbox of the homosexual conversation and look past everything else it says. Just to provide some clarity, let's read it one more time:
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things are deserving of death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Folks, a lot of times the only difference between you and those you judge is that they just sin differently than you.
Paul is making an argument that's easy to establish from the creation argument: every person on this planet, from the very beginning, apart from Adam and Eve, is the byproduct of a very specific and narrow reproductive cycle between a man and a woman. Clearly there's a design here — this one's unanimous. To embrace something different is to reject Creator and Designer.
Here's the thing: I have so many peers developing what would be called an affirming gospel, and here's why I can't get in front of you and extend to you an affirming gospel — I still believe the gospel has the power to liberate and transform and redeem any person's life, and I refuse to accept the notion that it loses its transformative power based on our preferences.
Here's the other miss in the conversation: we love the ostracized individual with same-sex attraction, yet we don't want to talk about all the immorality within the heterosexual camp — the adultery and infidelity, pornography, and those sleeping outside of marriage together. It's just not God's design for our best. As your pastor, it would be irresponsible for me to get up here and do theological gymnastics, to tiptoe around the truth instead of extending to you God's desire.//
Paul says that when you begin this process, you lose the foundation of your thinking and become very disoriented in your thinking and your behaviors.
I grew up in Colorado, and we were always hearing of victims who lost their lives in avalanches. There's a very common reason why individuals pass away in an avalanche. When that snow comes rushing down the mountain, it pummels you — you're tossed and tumbled down the hill, and you find yourself covered in snow. Most people in an avalanche get so disoriented they no longer know which way is up and which way is down. When rescue teams find those individuals, they discover they exhausted themselves crawling, climbing, digging, scratching — in the wrong direction.///
If you're not a Christian, and I could be your pastor for five seconds: if you have not placed your faith in Jesus Christ, I personally believe you are exhausting yourself crawling, climbing, scratching, heading in the wrong direction. But it is by the grace of God — it is by the grace of God — that we get to sidestep our reality and step into eternal peace with our Maker. And if you can't apprehend the bad side of this news, you'll never fully appreciate the good side of this news. Amen.
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
A couple of weeks ago we launched into a series on the book of Romans. It's going to be a study that takes the majority of this year — 38 weeks to get through the entire book. If you're new, you've not missed much; you can go online to get the introductory sermons. Ultimately what we've been establishing through the book of Romans is this idea of how to get right with God — that's the overarching premise of the book.
Today we are looking at Romans chapter 1, verses 18-32. This is a profound letter, systematically theological — there's no greater book in the Bible that captures Christian doctrine. Some will refer to this as the believer's Constitution. We can find a lot of insight and instruction in it, and what we've already established is that Paul encompasses the entire gospel in two words: Grace and peace.
Peace is where we're going. Grace is how we get there.
Peace is the destination; Grace is the vehicle. Peace ultimately means that we can be reconciled to our God, reconciled to our maker, and made right with our heavenly Father. Today we are discussing the wrath of God.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Paul, tell us what you really think! As we go through this study — whether it's today, next week, in two weeks, three weeks, four weeks — at some point the book of Romans is going to make every single one of us uncomfortable. We have to find the ability, as a community, to continue leaning into God's word and asking: what does God say? What is his opinion? It's not man's opinion, not our preference — it's God's written and declared word over our lives.
Paul is writing a letter to the church in Rome, which sits in the center of the Roman Empire, on the doorstep of Nero's palace, with all kinds of evil, wickedness, and corruption circling about. Paul decides to write a letter in boldness, declaring God's truth in a space full of wickedness.
Before we can embrace what Paul is saying to us, we first have to understand what Paul was saying to them — who was he talking to, what was the context, what was the dialogue taking place, and why is he saying things the way he is.
The Greco-Roman world had a handful of key influencers who still to this day have influence on the way we think: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and — the maniac in office — Nero. Paul is writing to a culture that is steeped in and proud of its heritage, a culture that esteems its intellect.
As you read through Romans you'll discover a delineation between two groups of people — the obvious one being Jew and Gentile. They also use the terms foolish and wise, and Greeks and barbarians — in all three cases referring to the same two groups. The Gentiles looked down on the Jews, assuming they were morons who thought their morality made them more righteous. The Jews looked at the Gentile community and thought they were wicked and immoral despite their sophistication and philosophy. Paul is saying: okay, there are errors on both sides — maybe we can bring everybody into conversation together and establish some common ground.//
If you're ever going to defend your faith, one thing to do is consider where you and the person you're talking with actually agree. It's unproductive to immediately establish where you disagree — that will become apparent soon enough. Is there anything you can at least stack hands on and say,
The first five words of scripture are, "In the beginning God created." Fundamental to the Christian view is that there is a Creator — and if He designed it, He defines it. We build from this understanding at a fundamental level.
Paul is coming to a group of people and essentially saying: Come on, you have this hunch that there's an outside world, and you've been duped with the wrong worldview. Come on, you understand there's brilliance and order and intellect and truth and reasoning behind creation. Come on, you understand that living in agreement with this creation is critical.
What happened is this: God's invisible attributes were made plain to everyone, and people rejected it. They began to suppress the truth, which ultimately led to a futile way of thinking — a foolish mind — which then produced a darkened heart, where the light of truth can no longer get in. Then you arrive at a place where you're no longer suppressing the truth; you're exchanging the truth. And the moment you exchange the truth, you end up with a debased mind. You lose the foundation of your logic.//
You can disagree with me, but you owe it to yourself to ask the question: is there a greater foundation for your logic than the Christian worldview?
There's always this debate over faith and science — which I think is comical, because the majority, almost all, of the founding fathers of science were believers. I'll hear people say faith and science are at odds with each other, and I think, "That's exchanging the truth for a lie." I don't think faith and science are at odds with each other. I think faith and atheism are at odds with each other.
When you go throughout creation and you pump the brakes and take some time to think — wait a second, look at this wonderful place — am I really going to say it's just an accident, or am I going to give strong consideration to my goodness, how great is our God?
Most people are caught flat-footed when it comes to defending their faith. If you want to take some quick notes here, the creation approach is one of the most solid and strongest approaches to establishing your reasoning and worldview in the Christian faith.
The Cosmological Argument — The universe had a beginning; everything that begins to exist has a cause. The ultimate cause is either some incidental accident or God. Einstein, toward the end of his life, got to a point where he realized there clearly was a beginning.
The Fine-Tuning Argument — The precise conditions required for life to exist, the constants of physics, suggest intentional design. When you look at how brilliantly thought out, vast, and numerous the cycles and systems and dynamics of our world are — and that not only are they complex and brilliant but somehow compatible in their complexity — you have to think, wow, this was a pretty impressive accident, if that's what I'm going to adhere to. If some of these things were slightly off, life on this planet would cease to exist.
The Argument from Design — A different angle on the complexity and order in nature: things like ecosystems and DNA. Clearly there's a designer.
The Anthropic Argument — The universe was tailor-fit for humans to live here. Look at the things that make life possible and able for humans to flourish — it's tailor-fit to our existence.
The Moral Argument — The existence of objective moral values and duties is difficult to explain without a moral lawgiver. Do away with a lawgiver and you do away with right and wrong. This whole appeal to relative truth isn't really fleshed out, and we're too nearsighted in our solutions. Ask: if I subscribe to this way of belief, what kind of life, world, society, community, or family does that produce? You should always ask: what kind of Christian does your home produce?
The Argument from Consciousness — Human consciousness, self-awareness, and the ability to reason cannot be fully explained by material processes. The fact that you and I can sit in a room right now and reason together — again, you're going to have to choose accident or brilliance. This is much stronger than you think.
Universal Awe and Wonder — This is one of my favorites. It doesn't matter which culture or continent — everybody around the world loves to look at a sunset, loves to look at the ocean, loves to stare at mountains, loves to wish upon a star. The art may change, but everyone is still staring at creation thinking beautiful, wonderful, mesmerizing, inspiring. How do you explain this embedded response within all of human history that looks at creation and thinks it's outstanding? It's universal.
The Human Longing for Transcendence — You can do away with Christ, but you have to ask the same question the disciples asked: if not Jesus, who? If not Christianity, what? You will wrestle every day of your life with who am I, why am I here, what's the purpose of my life, is there any meaning to all of this. The quickest way to sign up for a life of despair is to do away with purpose, meaning, and true identity.
What is amazing about Paul — and about the person we haven't talked about — is that Paul is writing this letter while Nero is at the helm, calling the shots, and this church is on his doorstep. Nero was a confused and mixed-up man. I'll keep this high level since there are kids in the room: Nero chose to castrate a slave boy and take him as his wife, then later took another man as his husband, playing the wife in that relationship. He's married to two men — one his wife, one his husband. For Paul to write this bold a letter in that kind of culture took some courage.//
What I love about Paul is that he will not be guilty of malpractice. If you went to a doctor and that doctor discovered you had stage four cancer throughout your body, but the doctor thought, oh my goodness, I just don't have the guts to walk into the room and tell them — I don't want to disappoint them, I don't want to hurt their feelings — that doctor would be guilty of malpractice.//
Folks, there will never be an agenda, never an attempt, never a desire to ever be offensive from this pulpit — but there will always be a desire not to fall into malpractice. As a church, we will always do our best to delicately yet truthfully display the Word of God to the very best of our ability. I think that is what we have to commit to. But know this: God's Word will pierce your heart. God's Word will grip your soul. And God loves you enough to tell you the truth.
Paul is building this argument: you've suppressed the truth, you've disregarded God as Creator, foolishness, darkened heart — now you're exchanging truth for a lie, debased mind. What you have to understand in Paul's writings is that he's a great debater. At times he makes lists and gives examples. What he's not doing is laying these things out in terms of priority or severity — he's laying them out in terms of easiest to hardest to prove his point.///
If I got up here and said, "You're all deserving of wrath because you gossip," most people would say, "I don't know if I agree with that" — even though you'll find that people in church still gossip. So Paul begins with the creation approach and how people have exchanged truth for a lie — starting with what is most apparent to them. This is where you hear Paul using the language: they exchanged natural relations for unnatural relations.
I understand this is present all throughout our church. I understand many of you are wrestling with this, and it's a very real matter within your life and your home. That's the case for me too — I know that standing up here teaching the Bible will come with personal repercussions every single week, and that is a challenge.
I think the miss in reading this passage is that there will always be those who jump on the soapbox of the homosexual conversation and look past everything else it says. Just to provide some clarity, let's read it one more time:
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things are deserving of death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Folks, a lot of times the only difference between you and those you judge is that they just sin differently than you.
Paul is making an argument that's easy to establish from the creation argument: every person on this planet, from the very beginning, apart from Adam and Eve, is the byproduct of a very specific and narrow reproductive cycle between a man and a woman. Clearly there's a design here — this one's unanimous. To embrace something different is to reject Creator and Designer.
Here's the thing: I have so many peers developing what would be called an affirming gospel, and here's why I can't get in front of you and extend to you an affirming gospel — I still believe the gospel has the power to liberate and transform and redeem any person's life, and I refuse to accept the notion that it loses its transformative power based on our preferences.
Here's the other miss in the conversation: we love the ostracized individual with same-sex attraction, yet we don't want to talk about all the immorality within the heterosexual camp — the adultery and infidelity, pornography, and those sleeping outside of marriage together. It's just not God's design for our best. As your pastor, it would be irresponsible for me to get up here and do theological gymnastics, to tiptoe around the truth instead of extending to you God's desire.//
Paul says that when you begin this process, you lose the foundation of your thinking and become very disoriented in your thinking and your behaviors.
I grew up in Colorado, and we were always hearing of victims who lost their lives in avalanches. There's a very common reason why individuals pass away in an avalanche. When that snow comes rushing down the mountain, it pummels you — you're tossed and tumbled down the hill, and you find yourself covered in snow. Most people in an avalanche get so disoriented they no longer know which way is up and which way is down. When rescue teams find those individuals, they discover they exhausted themselves crawling, climbing, digging, scratching — in the wrong direction.///
If you're not a Christian, and I could be your pastor for five seconds: if you have not placed your faith in Jesus Christ, I personally believe you are exhausting yourself crawling, climbing, scratching, heading in the wrong direction. But it is by the grace of God — it is by the grace of God — that we get to sidestep our reality and step into eternal peace with our Maker. And if you can't apprehend the bad side of this news, you'll never fully appreciate the good side of this news. Amen.
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
