02.05. I. The Guilt of the Gentiles (i: 18-32).
I. The Guilt of the Gentiles (Rom 1:18-32).
1. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven (Rom 1:18). There are, then, two revelations from heaven (compare Rom 1:17-18). And, until the matter is explained, these revelations bring only terror to guilty man. The very last things he wants to be reminded of are God’s righteousness and God’s wrath. He has yet to learn the marvel of the gospel, by which God’s righteousness actually becomes God’s gift to sinful man, and God’s wrath gives place to God’s loving-kindness. Meanwhile the divine wrath is directed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Ungodliness is the absence of conformity to the will of God. It leads to unrighteousness as to men’s relation with each other. Being not right with God, they cannot be right in their dealings with one another. Then, too, they will not heed the facts. They hold the truth in unrighteousness. Literally, it reads, as in the Revision, that they hold down the truth in unrighteousness. The natural heart is desperately wicked (Jer 17:9), and it will not fairly face the truth. This is the universal rule, whether the truth be revealed through the light of nature, or the moral sense, or the preaching of the gospel. Men hate the truth: the carnal mind is enmity against God; man holds down the truth in unrighteousness (compare Heb 10:26-31; 2Pe 2:21-22). In the passage we are just now considering it is shown that the Gentiles are thus guilty of turning from the truth, even before the gospel is preached to them. They are guilty, and the wrath of God is resting upon them. The reasons for this are strong ones.
2. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them (Rom 1:19). Men may speak of the dim light of nature, but God does not so describe it.
3. For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen (Rom 1:20). Not dimly, but clearly. And they are not only seen, but understood.
4. Being understood by the things that are made (Rom 1:20). This is the argument of Psa 19:1-14 : The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork. Two things about God are thus clearly seen and understood by the heathen, whether they be evangelized or unevangelized—two things, revealed by the things that are made (1) “even His eternal power and (2) His Godhead. That is to say, it is revealed through nature itself that there is a Creator, and that that Creator is God. He ought, then, to be worshipped.
5. So that they are without excuse (Rom 1:20). There you have, in a word, God’s own pronouncement concerning the guilt of the heathen world: They are without excuse. This he proceeds to prove by setting forth in detail the awful facts of the world’s history in connection with its relation to God from the beginning. There is here no Ascent of Man. According to this truthful record, man did not rise from protoplasm toward the likeness of God. Far from it! God Himself tells us here that man has been going downward instead of upward. In the beginning he was in fellowship with God. From this high estate he fell, and his fall was complete. The apostasy of the Gentile world is here set forth in seven stages. And these are given as seven sufficient reasons for the declaration that men are without excuse. They were without excuse—
(1) Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful (Rom 1:21). This in itself is a scathing arraignment. Man in the beginning knew God: what a wonderful privilege!’ It is life to know Him (John 17:3), and this was surely great cause for rejoicing and thanksgiving; but man utterly failed to maintain himself in this position of grace. He glorified not God as God, and he was ungrateful. Real thanksgiving toward God is altogether absent from the heart of the natural man to this day; and even among the children of God it is all too rare (see Col 3:15).
(2) But became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened (Rom 1:21). The Revisers here read, became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Man is always prone to turn to reason, rather than to God. Preferring the tree of knowledge to the tree of life, the inevitable result is that he became vain and puffed up (1Co 8:1). The end of this process is darkness. The way into light is not by knowledge, but by faith. Men must believe God, or walk in darkness.
(3) Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools (Rom 1:22). They were manifestly out of God’s way, for it is never His way to reveal spiritual truth by means of worldly wisdom (1Co 1:18-25).
(4) And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man (Rom 1:23). This is the first step in idolatry—to represent God as being like man. It grows out of the lie of the serpent: Ye shall be as God.
(5) And to birds (Rom 1:23). For idolatry does not stop with its first step. It progresses, and its progress is always progress in degradation.
(6) And four footed beasts (Rom 1:23). Yet another downward step.
(7) And creeping things (Rom 1:23). The odiousness of idolatry, says Dr. Stifler, is not alone in the immorality to which it leads, but that it is a caricature of God and a slander. It belongs to His glory that He is imperishable. He was likened to that which is corruptible. The very material of the image was a dishonour, as if one should erect a statute to a distinguished man to-day not in marble or bronze, but in chalk or putty. To liken God to man is idolatry. Men were to make no image of Him. Had they preserved their original conception of Him they would not have attempted it. In due time He gave an image of Himself in a sinless Being Who was animated with eternal life, ‘the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person’ (Heb 1:3). If Jesus was not more than mortal, He was an idol. These professed sages did not stop with likening God to man; they figured Him as a bird, then as a quadruped, and finally as a reptile. There was the Apollo of the Greeks, the eagle of the Romans, the bull of the Egyptians, and the serpent of the Assyrians. Paul may be giving in this verse (Rom 1:23) the historical development of idolatry, from its highest phase to its worst; or he may be setting it forth in climactic form; but certain it is that all these phases of the sin existed. In this review of the world’s religion from the beginning, Paul teaches that man at the first was not an idolater. The origin of this sin is not contemporaneous with the appearance of man on the globe. Man did not work his way from fetishism through polytheism up to monotheism and the worship of the true God. His course was the reverse. From the beginning he did not grow better religiously, but worse. The Bible gives no evidence of idolatry among the antediluvians. Men in that age called on the name of the Lord (Gen 4:26). The earliest mention of idolatry belongs to the days of Abraham (Jos 24:2). Paul here gives the history and origin of idolatry. Men knew God and refused to worship Him. Idolatry followed as a psychological necessity. If there is a force of development inherent in man, a force trending upward, the gospel of the grace of God is an impertinence, and Paul might well be ashamed of it. And why has not this force manifested itself somewhat in the last two thousand years in Africa, in India, and in China? The idolatry of to-day is no better than that which grieved Paul (The Epistle to the Romans by J. M. Stiller).
6. Wherefore God also gave them, up to uncleanness (Rom 1:24-25). God’s call is not to uncleanness but to holiness (1Th 4:7). And when there is response to His call, He directs our steps in the way of holiness. But when the truth of God is exchanged for a lie, and when worship is accorded to the creature instead of the Creator, it must follow that men become slaves to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity (Rom 6:19). And could anything be sadder than to read, Wherefore God gave them up?
7. For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions (Rom 1:26-27). Let Dr. Stifler again speak here. This, he says (Ibid.), is the next long step downward. Originally man was chaste, but when he cast God off, his animal passions were unchained Twice in these verses we are told that ‘God gave them up,’ not passively, but actively. The reason is again given: ‘Who changed the truth of God into the lie’ of idolatry. They did not change a lie into truth. Man’s course was not in that direction. They took ‘the truth of God’ which He gave them and perverted it to the falsehood of idol-worship. This was the cause of that vileness whose hideous description we have here. ‘For even their women!’ There is point in that word ‘even.’ Woman is the purer, the more modest, of the sexes, has propensities less ardent; but even she became worse than beastly and equaled vile man in his depravity. The corruption that got into the blood of the race by the fall did not show itself at once. The earlier families and tribes of the world were pure; God kept them so. Whatever morality there is in the world is due not to human nature, but to the restraining power of God. ‘When God ‘gave them up,’ the original corruption in the blood showed itself in foul moral ulcers, and human virtue proved to be less than that of the beasts of the field, among which the barriers of sex are not crossed.
8. And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave’them up unto a reprobate mind (Rom 1:28-32). And behold where that reprobate mind has taken them. The climax is reached in the final verse of the chapter, which is also a summing up of the whole case against the Gentile world. Men know the judgment of God against sin, that its sure wages is death; and yet they not only go on in sin, but actually take pleasure in the depravity of others. This is the state of things as they are. To meet this condition calls for a remedy of tremendous power, even the power of God.