Exposition on select Bible verses: Romans 1:16-28
[Romans 1]
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth: to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17 For God’s righteousness on the principle of faith to [such as have] faith is revealed in it [the gospel]: just as it is written, “The righteous on the principle of faith shall live.”
Here we have the text of the whole Epistle of Romans: First, the words “the gospel”—so dear to Paul, as will appear. Next, the universal saving power of this gospel is asserted. Then, the secret of the gospel’s power—the revelation of God’s righteousness on the principle of faith. Finally, the accord of all this with the Old Testament Scriptures: “The righteous shall live by faith.”
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel,”
“For it is the power of God unto salvation,”
“For a righteousness of God is revealed in it”;and the “for” of the next verse, which makes this gospel necessary:
“For the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness, and unrighteousness of men.”Verse 16: For I am not ashamed of the gospel—
First then, we have Paul’s willingness, all unashamed, to go to Rome, mistress of the world, with this astonishing message of a crucified Nazarene, despised by Jews, and put to death by Romans. “The inherent glory of the message of the gospel, as God’s life-giving message to a dying world, so filled Paul’s soul, that, like his blessed Master, he ‘despised the shame.’” So, praise God, may all of us!
For it is the power of God unto salvation—The second “For” gives the reason for Paul’s boldness: this good news concerning Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, and appearing,
“is the power of God unto salvation unto every one that believeth.”
There is no fact for a preacher or teacher to hold more constantly in his mind than this. It is not the “excellency of speech or wisdom,” or the “personal magnetism,” or “earnestness,” of the preacher; any more than it is the deep repentance or earnest prayers of the hearer, that avails. But it is the message of Christ crucified, dead, buried, and risen, which, being believed, is “the empower of God”!
“The word of the cross is to them that are perishing, foolishness; but unto us who are being saved it (the word of the cross) IS the power of God” (I Cor. 1:18).
Again we repeat that it is of the very first and final importance that the preacher or teacher of the gospel believe in the bottom of his soul that the simple story, Christ died for our sins, was buried, hath been raised from the dead the third day, and was seen, IS THE POWER OF GOD to salvation to every one who rests in it,—who believes!
The word gospel (evaggelion), means good news, glad tidings,— of course, about love and grace in giving Christ; and Christ’s blessed finished work for the sinner, putting away sin on the Cross. (There is no other good news for a sinner!)
The other word, for “preached,” is kerusso, which properly means to proclaim as a herald, to publish. And if we would understand Paul’s attitude in preaching the good news, we must not forget what he says in I Cor. 1:21: The reading in I Corinthians 1:21 should be,
“God was pleased through the foolishness of the proclaiming to save them that believe.”
The word (kērusso) means, to announce as a herald, to proclaim. It does not carry the thought of the proclamation’s content, of a glad message, as does the other word (evangelidzo). Therefore God selects the word kērusso to show in the great message I Corinthians 1:18-25 how he absolutely passes by the intellect of man, and sets aside all his possible reasoning, ability, philosophy and wisdom—in this amazing way: “by the proclaiming”! Here comes a small and weak Jew upon the assembly of the earth’s “wise” at Mars’ hill: “proclaiming Jesus and the resurrection.” It is “foolishness” to them. Yet “certain men”—including one Mars’ hill philosopher, and a prominent woman, and others with them, cleave unto him and believe the proclamation, and will spend eternity with God.
No; when you reflect on God’s plan of proclamation—of Christ, dead, buried, raised, living: it does get right past everything of man. A herald —he does not stop to argue—he has a message; yonder he is; here he comes; yonder he goes—and the message is left. Man is set aside!
It pleased God through the proclaiming to save them that believe! Praise God! Anyone can hear good news!
Therefore the herald does not hearken either to “Jews,” who would say, “We have wonderful forms of religion.; we have a great temple!” No, the herald proclaims “a Messiah crucified” by these very Jews!—and passes on!
Nor does he hearken to the “disputers of this age”—the “wise,” who call to him, “We have a new philosophy to discuss—let us hear your philosophical system.” No; he proclaims a crucified, dead, buried and risen Son of God, and passes on. And as many as are ordained to eternal life will believe. All others are offended, or stirred to ridicule.
Paul’s preaching was not, as is so much today, general disquisition on some subject, but definite statements about the crucified One, as he himself so insistently tells us in I Corinthians 15:3-5
“The power of God unto salvation” is a wonderful revelation! As Chrysostom says, “There is a power of God unto punishment, unto destruction: ‘Fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’” (Matt. 10:28). “The use of the word ‘power’ here, as in I Corinthians 1:24, carries a superlative sense,—the highest and holiest vehicle of divine power” (Alford). This story of Christ’s dying for our sins, buried, raised, manifested, is the great wire along which runs God’s mighty current of saving power. Beware lest you be putting up some little wire of your own, unconnected with the Divine throne, and therefore non-saving to those to whom you speak. T. DeWitt Talmadge said at the funeral of Alfred Cookman, one of the most holy, devoted men of God America has known, “Strike a circle of three feet around the cross of Jesus, and you have all there was of Alfred Cookman.”
The gospel “is the power of God unto salvation.” God does not say, unto reformation, education, progress, nor development; nor “fanning an innate flame.” Salvation is a word for a lost man, and for none other. Men are involved either in salvation, or in its opposite, perdition (Philippians 1:28).
To the Jew first and also to the Greek—The Jew had the Law. They had the temple, with its divinely prescribed worship. Heretofore, if a Gentile were to be saved, let him become a proselyte and come to Jerusalem to worship as did the Ethiopian eunuch. Christ came “to His own things” (John 1:11), to Jerusalem, to His Father’s house (literally, “the things of My Father”). The apostles were to be witnesses—beginning from Jerusalem (Luke 24:47). The Holy Spirit fell upon the hundred and twenty at Jerusalem. Upon the persecution that arose in Jerusalem from Stephen, the disciples “were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles,” but Jerusalem was the gospel’s first center, then Antioch in Syria, whence Paul and Barnabas, afterwards Paul and Silas, went forth. Afterwards, the center of God’s operations was Ephesus, the capital of proconsular Asia, where after being rejected by the Jews in many cities, Paul separates the disciples, and all distinction between Jew and Greek in the assemblies of the saints is gone. Then he goes to Jerusalem to be finally and officially rejected—killed, if it were possible. God waits two years at Caesarea for Jewish repentance: there is none, but the direct opposite. Then the apostle, having been driven into the hands of the Romans by the Jews goes to Rome, the world’s center, only to have the Jews reject his teaching (Acts 28). Thereupon it is announced:
“Be it known therefore unto you, that this salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles: they will also hear."
Therefore, in expressing to the Jew first, Paul is not at all prescribing an order of presentation of the gospel throughout this dispensation. He is simply recognizing the fact that to the Jew, who had the Law and Divine privileges, the gospel offer had first been presented, and then to the Gentile. As Paul says in Ephesians
“And He came and preached peace to you that were far off [the Gentile], and peace to them that were nigh [the Jews]” (Eph. 2:17).
We might just as sensibly claim that Ephesians 2:17 gives Gentiles priority because they are mentioned first—“you that were afar” over the Jews who were mentioned last,—“them that were nigh.”
To claim that the gospel must be preached first to the Jew throughout this dispensation, is utterly to deny God’s Word that there is now no distinction between Jew and Greek either as to the fact of sin (Rom. 3:22) or the availability of salvation (Rom. 10:12). Paul’s words in Galatians 4:12 are wholly meaningless if the Jews still have a special place.
The meaning of the word “first” (prōton) is seen in verse 8 of our chapter: “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all.” That is, thanksgiving to God was the first thing Paul wrote to the Romans in this Epistle. Then he proceeds to other things. It is an order of sequence; just as the gospel came “first” to the Jew and then to Greek, and now, since the “no difference” fact, is proclaimed to all indiscriminately, Jews and Greeks.
Verse 17: For God’s righteousness on the principle of faith to [such as have] faith is revealed in it [the gospel]: just as it is written, “The righteous on the principle of faith shall live.”
This third “For” gives another reason why Paul was not ashamed of the good news*: in this message concerning God’s Son,—that He died for our sins, was buried, was raised,—there was brought to light,—made manifest—a righteousness of God which had indeed been prophesied, but was really (especially to the Jew under law) absolute news (Note, it is the righteousness of God, not the righteousness of Christ. It is God’s acting righteously upon the basis of Christ’s redeeming work): God acting in righteousness, as we shall find, wholly on the basis of Christ’s atoning work,—to be believed in, rested upon, apart from all human works whatever. It was on the principle of faith** by means of a message, and those exercising faith in the message would be reckoned righteous,—apart from all “merit” or “works” whatever. This is the meaning of “from faith unto faith”—literally, out of faith [rather than works] unto [those who have] faith.
*(“In these days of “respectable” Christianity, with its great cathedrals, churches, denominations, colleges, seminaries, “uplift movements,” etc., you may say, Men no longer have any temptation to be “ashamed of the gospel.” But lo, and behold, it is not the gospel they preach; but a man-reforming, world-mending message of fallen flesh! Who today preaches of the wrath of God? But Paul speaks of wrath twelve times in Romans, and says: “If God visit not with wrath, He cannot be the Judge of the world.” Who preaches of the awful things we are about to find true of the Gentile world in the end of this chapter? Who preaches, that even among the moral philosophers, the “better” classes (in the first part of Ch. 2); or the “religious” world as represented by the Jew (last part of Ch. 2); or in the whole world (3:10-20), that “none is righteous,” “none doeth good”? Who preaches that the whole world is under the Divine sentence of guilt, and that no man is able to put this guilt away? that the shed blood of Christ as the vicarious sacrifice for human guilt is absolutely the only hope of man? who preaches this, today? Here and there, one! It is blessed for you, brother, if you are preaching the gospel Paul preached, and are not ashamed thereof! It is blessed if you art not sucking the poison-honey of Modernism; nor allured by earth’s Kagawas into the fool’s paradise of the “social-gospellers”; nor deceived by the Neo-Romanists,— the Man-Confessionalists, the Buchmanites (falsely called the “Oxford Movement”). Better be in prison with Paul, with Paul’s gospel!)
**(A word concerning the preposition ek as used in verse 17, “a righteousness of God from (ek) faith,” etc., or “faithwise.” There has been much objection to the translation of ek by “on the principle of”; yet that is about the expression nearest to the truth of any we have found, unless it be “faithwise.” Literally, ek means out of, or from. We ourselves use “out of” thus: “He acted out of prudence,”—(as animated by that principle) or, “He gave out of kindness.” But it is of imperative importance that we get the great fact quickly and forever fixed in our hearts that God declares men righteous not by faith as the procuring cause, for the blood of Christ was that; not by faith as the putting forth of a certain faculty innate in man, much less by the keeping of divine commands, however holy and just; but out of reliance upon His own word as true, and on that alone.)
The “For” of verse 17, For God’s righteousness therein is revealed—in the gospel,—is also a logical setting forth of the reason why the good news concerning Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection is the power of God unto salvation. And this verse is the essence of the text of the whole Epistle:
“Therein God’s righteousness is revealed.”
God could have come forth in righteousness and smitten with doom the whole Adamic race. He would have been acting in accordance with His holiness: it would have been “the righteousness of God” unto judgment, and would have been just.
But God, who is love, though infinitely holy and sin-hating, has chosen to act toward us in righteousness, in a manner wherein all His holy and righteous claims against the sinner have been satisfied upon a Substitute, His own Son. Therefore, in this good news, (1) Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, (2) He was buried, (3) He hath been raised the third day according to the Scriptures, (4) He was manifested (I Cor. 15:3 ff),—in this good news there is revealed, now openly for the first time, God’s righteousness on the principle of faith. We simply hear and believe: and, as we shall find, God reckons us righteous; our guilt having been put away by the blood of Christ forever, and we ourselves declared to be the righteousness of God in Him!
Habakkuk prophesied of it (Paul quotes him in verse 17); but ah, how little he dreamed of the fulness and wonder of it! It is the gospel that brings these to light!
And now in the next section (verses 18 ff) will come Paul’s fourth “For”: showing man’s frightful state of guilt; and his need of the gospel:
18 For there is revealed God’s wrath from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness [of life]; 19 because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world, made known to the mind by the things that are made, are clearly perceived,—both His eternal power and divinity; so as to render them inexcusable: 21 because, though knowing God, they did not glorify [Him] as God, nor were they thankful [towards Him] but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of quadrupeds, and of creeping things.
It will not only fail to help us, but will seriously harm us, to study the awful arraignment of God against human sin, unless we apply it to ourselves, thereby discovering our own state by nature. Therefore we have sought to make plain these terms which Paul uses, in view of today’s sin. Christendom is rapidly losing sin-consciousness, which means losing God-consciousness; which means eternal doom: “As were the days of Noah . . . as it came to pass in the days of Lot . . . they knew not.” Because iniquity abounds, the love of many professing Christians is waxing cold; so that we see a Sardis condition everywhere, “a name to live, while dead”: on many faces, the horrid lack of spiritual life; the lightless, sightless eyes; the chill,—the corpse-like chill, of the lifeless, the unfeeling.
On the other hand, among God’s real saints, those born from above and indwelt by the Spirit of God, there is everywhere, thank God, a gathering, an eagerness, a hunger for His Word, for news from Home,—for their citizenship is in Heaven!
Therefore let all who have ears to hear give the utmost attention to what God says about our state by nature. Do not apply the threefold “God gave them up” of Romans One to “the heathen,” as most do. Behold, we are those of whom God says:
“There is no distinction: all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
ALL are brought under the judgment of God. O saints, beware of the “select” circles, the “we-are-better” societies of pride! For all human beings are alike sinners: for
“The Scripture shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe” (Gal. 3:22).
The more you discover yourself to be a common sinner, the more you will realize God’s uncommon grace! And the more deeply you despair of man, of yourself, the more simple and easy it will be to rest in Christ and in His work of salvation for you.
Verse 18: Wrath revealed from heaven—This is the tenor of all Scripture as to God’s attitude toward defiant sin.
“Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven,”
we read in Genesis 19:24. We know that
“God has appointed a day in which He will judge the world” (Acts 17:31);
that He will “visit with wrath” at that time (Rom. 3:5).
However, in the thrice-repeated “God gave them over” of verses 24, 26 and 28, there is to be seen the character, the beginning, and the working of God’s wrath in this world, in His judicial handing over of rebels to go further into rebellion. But the awful arraignment of humanity in Chapters One, Two, and Three; together with the particular account of their apostasy and lost condition, however terrible it be, is not a description of the finally damned, but of the at-present-lost: and,
“The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
“Such were some of you,” says Paul to the Corinthians, after an enumeration of those who “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 6:11). “Effeminate, and abusers of themselves with men,” the very kind of sinners described in our chapter, are in this enumeration. Let us admit, therefore, the judicial “delivering over” of humanity which has “exchanged the glory” of the God they knew for horrid idolatrous conceptions,—a present judicial action of God on earth, where and when He “lets men go their own way.” But let us distinguish this apart from the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God from Heaven. At the Great White Throne of Revelation Twenty there will be no liberty left to the creature to indulge his lusts as in this present world. The lusts, indeed, will remain, and probably intensify forever: “He that is filthy, let him be made filthy yet more”; but the ability to indulge lust will be eternally removed, and the damned placed under the visitation of Divine anger.
Thank God, we may still cry with Paul,
“Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation!”
Grace is still ready to reach the worst wretch on earth!
Note that ungodliness is direct disregard of God, which to the Jew would connect itself with the first table of the Law, the first four commandments; while unrighteousness has reference to wickedness of conduct, in itself and toward other men. Note further that it is distinctly said that the human race, in order to live an unrighteous life, held down the truth. The meaning of the verb translated “hold down” is seen in its use in II Th 2:6: “Ye know that which restraineth,” referring to the present restraining of the sin and wrath of man by the Spirit of God. It is also true, turning this about, that man in his wickedness restrains the truth he knows. (See also same word in Luke 4:42, “would have stayed Him.”) Almost all men know more truth than they obey. They call themselves “truth seekers”; but would they attend a meeting where Paul preached the facts of this first of Romans?
Verse 19: That which is known of God is manifest . . . God made it evident—Noah’s father, Lamech, was for over fifty years a contemporary of Adam. Knowledge of God was held and imparted by tradition from the beginning. The fact that the “world that then was” became so corrupt as to necessitate destruction (Hebrew, “blotting out,” Gen. 6:7, margin), only supports the awful account. Not only was the world bad unto judgment at the time of the Flood; but the world after Noah became such that God called out His own (from Abraham on) to a separate, pilgrim life. Sodom, and later the Canaanites, again filled up iniquity’s measure and were “sent away from off the face of the earth” (Jer 28:16). Utter uncompromising, abandonment of hope in man is the first preliminary to understanding or preaching the gospel. Man says, “I am not so bad; I can make amends”; “There are many people worse than I am”; “I might be better, but I might be worse.” But God’s indictment is sweeping: it reaches all. “None righteous; all have sinned; there is no distinction.” And the first step of wisdom is to listen to the worst God says about us, for He (wonderful to say!) is the Lover of man, sinner though man be. You and I were born in this lost race, with all these evil things innate in, and, apart from the grace of God, possible to us. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and is desperately wicked.” Only redemption by the blood of Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit, can afford hope.
Verse 20: For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world . . . are clearly perceived—
“The heavens declare the glory of God.”
But humanity today prefers Hollywood’s “sound-pictures” to seeing the “things” of the glorious God in the heavens,—beholding His works, and hearing their speech. How long since you have gone out and gazed at moon and stars, made by the blessed God, travelling in such quiet glory, beauty, power, and order? Men know, if they care to know, that an infinite Majesty made and controls this. Even His eternal power and divinity*—Paul connects the observing of the mighty and beautiful things of the universe with the consciousness of a personal God. Human science, through its telescope, observes the vast courses of the stars, moving with amazing accuracy in their orbits, but often counts it a mark of wisdom to doubt whether an intelligent Being exists at all! But, “the undevout astronomer is mad,” as said the great Kepler. No really great scientist today supports the Darwinian theory; and many,—and some of the most prominent scientific men are saying, There must be a God, a Creator.
*(Divinity (theiotēs)—what pertains to God; rather than deity (theotēs)—“the state of being God”:—the Godhead. That there is divinity, men know from creation; God,—the Godhead, Deity, is known by His saints.)
*(Divinity (theiotēs)—what pertains to God; rather than deity (theotēs)—“the state of being God”:—the Godhead. That there is divinity, men know from creation; God,—the Godhead, Deity, is known by His saints.)
Next the reason for God’s wrath is stated: men are without excuse—Men had the light, and that from God. His eternal power and divinity were, from creation onward, plain to men, from His works. Napoleon, on a warship in the Mediterranean on a star-lit night, passed a group of his officers who were mocking at the idea of a God. He stopped, and sweeping his hand toward the stars, said, “Gentlemen, you must get rid of those first!” Men secretly believe there is a Power above them, and that their evil deeds deserve the wrath of that Power. In sudden peril, they scream like the guilty wretches they are, “God have mercy!” Knowledge of God, though not acquaintanceship with Him, lay behind Pharaoh’s words, “I have sinned against Jehovah and against you” (Ex. 10:16); and behind the words of the Philistines in I Samuel 4:7,8, and 5:7,8,11; and the proclamation of the King of Nineveh (Jonah 3:7-9).
Verse 21: Because that, though knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful—Every human being knows he ought to give his being over to his Creator’s worship and glory, and ought to be continually thankful for life itself, and for its blessings; but men refused both worship and gratitude: they became godless and thankless. But they could not free themselves thus easily from conscience and terrors: so came on idolatry. First they resorted to vain speculations and “reasonings,” to escape the thought of God and duty. Then the judicial result: as Alford well renders, “Their heart (the whole inner man, the seat of knowledge and feeling), became dark (lost the little light it had), and wandered blindly in the mazes of folly.” Think of a whole race of created beings knowing, but refusing to recognize, their Creator! of their eating from His hand daily, but refusing even one thanksgiving! Yet such ungodly ones, such unthankful ones, are all about you, now.
Verse 22: Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools—Rejecting the light of God’s knowledge in their consciences, men now arrogated to themselves wisdom, and became—what? Fools! “The fear of the Lord is the beginning”—of both knowledge and wisdom (Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 15:33; Ps. 111:10; Job 28:28).
The silliness of these “modern” shallow-pan days! How men are rushing back to the old pagan pit out of which God’s Word and His gospel would have delivered them! They suck up sin; they welter in wickedness; they profess to be wise! They sit at the feet of “professors” whose breath is spiritual cyanide. They idolize the hog-sty doctrines of a rotten Freud: and count themselves “wise”! They say, “God is not a person; men evolved from monkeys; morals are mere old habits; self-enjoyment, self-expression, indulgence of all desires—this,” they say, “is the path of wisdom.” It is the path of those who go quickly down to the pit and on to judgment! The very morals of Sodom, as our Lord foretold, are rushing fast upon us, and God will bring again the awful doom of Sodom (Luke 17:28-31).
Now if someone objects, saying, This is a strange introduction to the gospel of God’s grace, we answer, It lies here before us, this awful indictment of Romans One, and cannot be evaded! Moreover, until man knows his state of sin, he wants no grace. Shall pardon be spoken of before the sinner is proved a sinner? While the evidence is being brought in, the whole attention of the court is upon that. If the evidence of guilt be insufficient or inconclusive, there is no necessity for a pardon!
Preachers and teachers have soft-pedalled sin, until the fear Of God is vanishing away. McCheyne used to Say, “A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hands of God” A preacher who avoids telling men the truth about their sin as here revealed, is the best tool of the devil.
Verse 23: And changed the glory of the incorruptible God—Incorruptibility is of the essence of God’s being. From the beginningless eternity past to the endless eternity to come, He is the glorious self-existent One. Now came the high insult: having rejected knowledge of God, but unable to escape the consciousness that He exists, men, like Israel later,
“changed their glory for the likeness of an ox that eateth grass” (Ps. 106:20).
The more you reflect upon the infinite glory and majesty of the eternal God, the more hideous will the unspeakable insult to Him of any kind of idolatry appear to you! Men first likened God to man; but, being given over, they rushed rapidly downwards: a bird, a quadruped; and finally, a reptile!
Vincent remarks “Deities of human form prevailed in Greece; those of bestial form in Egypt; and both methods of worship were practiced in Rome. See on Acts 7:41. Serpent-worship was common in Chaldaea, and also in Egypt, where the asp was sacred.” Israel evidently learned calf-worship from Egypt’s sacred bull.
24 Wherefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, so that their bodies were dishonored among themselves:—25 such ones as they! who changed the truth of God into the lie! and worshipped and served the created thing rather than the Creator,—Who is blessed unto the ages! Amen. 26 On account of this, God gave them over to shameful passions: for their females 26 changed the natural use into that contrary to nature: 27 and in like manner also the males 27 having left the natural use of the females, were inflamed in their lust one toward another, males with males working out shame, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was due.
Verse 24: God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts. This is deeper than the mere lusts of the flesh. Flesh has natural desires, which may or may not be yielded to. The lusts of the heart continue after the flesh is dissolved; and even when, in the tormented bodies of the damned, the lusts of the flesh cannot be conscious or controlling, “the lusts of the heart” will forever exist.
Notice that when man is delivered from Divine restraint, the lusts of his heart plunge him into ever deeper bodily uncleanness, and bodily vileness. History backs up this fact with terrible relentlessness. What an answer is here to all the boasting of proud men of a “principle of development” in man; to the lying claim that man is ever “making progress.” The “Golden Age” of Grecian literature, and that of Roman letters,—in both of them we find remarkable minds; but their works must be expurgated for decent readers! No printer, even in this corrupt age, would dare to publish books with literal descriptions of the orgies of “classical” days.
Verse 25: For they changed the truth of God into the lie—That God is glorious, incorruptible, infinite, is the truth; that any image whatsoever, be it gold, silver, wood, stone; picture or symbol, is God,—God here names this the lie!* Any such thing, connected with worship, is a fearful travesty of the divine Majesty. Think of it! They worshipped and served the created thing rather than the Creator—who made the creature! This is that desperate hiding away from God by wicked-hearted man, called idolatry. (See Appendix III in the author’s “Book of the Revelation.”)** Who is blessed unto the ages. Amen. Paul’s adding these humble, worshipful words after “Creator” both glorifies God and also differentiates Paul from the abandoned devotees of sin thronging the dark alley of human history; showing him to be a child of light, as is every real saint of God, though passing through a world of thick darkness.
*(The expression in II Thess. 2:11 is exactly the same: God sends them who refuse the love of the truth “a working of error, that they should believe the lie”: in this final case it is the apotheosis of idolatry,—Satan’s false Christ, the Antichrist, himself a lost man, whom they worship!)
**(There is no Scripture record of idolatry before the Flood. The solemn presence of the Cherubim at the gate of Eden, probably continued long. Sin was increasing, but the Spirit was striving with man (Gen. 6:3 Then the 120 years passed; man was given up and the Deluge—judgment came. After the Deluge, came Nimrod, son of Cush (hence Bar-Cush, which becomes Bacchus), and the Satan-invented plan of idols to obscure God,—by demons (I Cor. 10:20). God permitted this as a judgment on a race that did not desire knowledge of Him.)
Verse 26: For the second time we read, God gave them over—and now, unto shameful passions—There are natural and normal appetites of the body: God is not speaking of these, or even of the abuse of these,—adultery or harlotry—in this verse. He is describing that state of unnatural appetites in which all normal instincts are left behind. And it is significant, that, as originally woman took the lead in sin, so here!
Verse 27: Here men are seen visited with a like condign, judicial “giving up” by God, in which they forget not only the holy relations of marriage, but even the burnings of ordinary lust, and plunge into nameless horrors of unnatural lust-bondage, all, males and females, receiving in themselves the due recompense of their error. Compare “among themselves” of verse 24, with “in themselves” of verse 27: “These words bring out,” as Godet remarks, “the depth of the blight. It is visible to the eyes of all.” And Meyer also: “The law of history, in virtue of which the forsaking of God is followed among men by a parallel growth of immorality, is not a purely natural order of things; the power of God is active in the execution of this law.”
What a fearful account is here! A lost race plunging ever deeper, by their own desire! Left in shameful, horrid bondage, unashamed,—not only immoral, but unmoral, hideous. Missionaries abroad can tell you of what they find; as can the Christian workers in our great cities. But you would be unprepared to believe what exists, in the private lives of many, even in country districts through Christendom. And if God has “made you to differ,” thank Him only! It will not do to hold up your hands in self-righteous dismay, and say, These verses do not in any particular describe me. For God will show you and me that this is exactly the race as we were born into it, and out of which the only rescue is being born again. All these things pertain to lost, fallen man. Man is a tenant of the earth only by Divine grace, since the Deluge.
28 And just as they did not approve to have God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a mind disapproved [of Him],—to practise things not befitting [His creatures]; 29 having become filled with all injustice, destructiveness, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, guile, malignant subtlety; secret slanderers, 30 open slanderers, hateful to God, insolent, arrogant, boasters, inventors of bad things; without obedience to parents, 31 without [moral] understanding, without good faith, without affection for kindred, without [consent to] truce, without mercy: 32 who, conscious of the righteous decree of God that those practising such things are worthy of [the sentence of] death, not only keep on practising the same, but also are pleased with those that are practising them.
Verse 28: Here we have for the third time the judicial utterance, God gave them over. This time it is to a settled state, a reprobate mind. There is such a solemn irony in the manner of speech in the Greek, that it should be brought out as well as the English will allow. Alford translates it: “Because they reprobated the knowledge of God, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.” Conybeare renders it: “As they thought fit to cast out the knowledge of God, God gave them over to an outcast mind.” We might render it: To a mind disapproved of God, since they did not approve knowing God. And given over to do what? To live lives, think thoughts, be such creatures, as are not befitting the universe of the blessed God; and most particularly not befitting man, who was created in God’s image."
William R. Newell
Romans Verse by Verse
Chapter 1
William R. Newell
Romans Verse by Verse
Chapter 1
