Because, knowing God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but fell into folly in their thoughts, and their heart without understanding was darkened
Paul has just argued that creation leaves people without excuse. He now goes further: men once knew God and let that knowledge slip, so how did a race that knew God end up worshipping images?
The charge is not that people failed to work out God from evidence. A real knowledge of God, passed down from the past, is in view here. Idolatry only shows up later in the story.
The ground here is not what could be known but what was actually known… A knowledge of God handed down from the past is in question. This knowledge of God belonged to man even after the flood; in fact, not until after that great event do we hear of idolatry. But man was not equal to the task of guarding what God had entrusted to him, and this was because of his moral state. When they did know God, they did not glorify Him as God, and they were not thankful. That left room for empty reasonings, which darkened the heart instead of leading it into light. It was the self-sufficiency, and so the folly, of the creature. Light is only seen in God's light, and man must sink into darkness when he is not lifted up morally by looking to One above him.
This knowledge leaves a person guilty; it does not save. One writer draws the line: it is "not the conscious, living knowledge that comes only from new birth, but the clear evidential knowledge that makes their guilt inexcusable" (L. M. Grant).
Popular accounts of religion move upward — from crude superstition toward one God. The verse reverses that direction.
Those peoples who are pagan today once knew God. Man's course has not been from many gods to one God, as some dreamers would have us imagine, but the other way round. They have sunk out of light into the darkness. Once "they knew God" (v. 21), but the fact is, "they did not see fit to acknowledge God" (v. 28).
Not giving thanks sounds like a small charge beside idolatry. One writer treats it as the point where men lost the light.
It is a great favour to the creature to be given a little light about the blessed God. That is what lifts man above the level of the beast. And how thankful the creature should be for that light! Where a man values the light, he thanks God for it. Where he gives God no thanks, it is a sure sign that he despises the light, and he will soon lose it.
The darkening is not a mood or a misfortune. In Scripture it names one specific loss, and it grows alongside a rising opinion of one's own cleverness.
They did not glorify God in His works, and they did not thank Him for His mercies in this life. So they lost the knowledge of God they had. They refused the witness of Creation and fell back, as men are doing today, on their own imaginations. In this way their foolish heart was darkened — that is, they lost the knowledge of God. In Scripture, moral darkness is always ignorance of God, just as light is the knowledge of God. The more foolish they became, the more they claimed to be wise; and the more they claimed to be wise, the bigger fools they became.
That rules out the excuse that people never had a chance. Men made this darkness; they did not inherit it.
For instance, people often speak of pagan peoples as groping after the light and unable to find it. They treat it as their misfortune, not their sin, because circumstances too hard for them hold them down. Now that is not so… That was the beginning of paganism. This is man, not seeking God, but trying to escape from God — and he has escaped, so to speak, into the darkness. The darkness is the darkness of resisted light, not the absence of light.
This pattern is not locked in ancient history. One writer traces the same line in a soul that stops giving thanks.
The apostle gives it as a special mark of the corruption of the nations that "although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him." Then comes the practical result of this unthankful spirit… The heart that stops keeping a thankful sense of God's goodness will soon become "dark."… This is the line a soul out of fellowship with God will travel. It first loses the sense of being in God's hands for good, and in the end begins to think itself in His hands for evil.
- Known. Their guilt rests on a knowledge of God that men once had and failed to keep. It was evidence they could see, not the knowledge that comes by new birth.
- Unthanked. A man who values the light thanks God for it. A man who gives no thanks despises it, and will soon lose it.
- Darkened. A darkened heart has lost the knowledge of God. This darkness is resisted light: man running from God, not groping for Him.
- Downward. The history of religion runs the opposite way to the popular story. Man did not climb from many gods to one God; he sank out of light into darkness.
- Today. The same slope runs under any heart that stops giving thanks. It first loses the sense of being in God's hands for good, then imagines itself in His hands for evil.
professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
Romans 1 does not say that people never knew God. It says they turned away from Him while praising their own cleverness — and this short verse is where their claim meets the verdict.
One writer traces the spiral. What they lost was a knowledge of God they once had.
They did not glorify God in His works. They did not thank God for the good things He gave them in this life. So they lost the knowledge of God they once had. They refused the witness of creation and fell back on their own imaginations, as men are doing today. So their foolish heart grew dark — that is, they lost the knowledge of God. In Scripture, moral darkness is always ignorance of God, just as light is the knowledge of God. The more foolish they became, the more they claimed to be wise. And the more they claimed to be wise, the bigger fools they became.
The very reasoning that darkened them was the thing they held up as insight. That is what makes the profession itself part of the evidence against them.
The inward reasonings of their minds, because bent on following their own wills, dragged them into folly; and their hearts, wilfully without understanding, were coloured by the darkness they chose. What is more, the very reasonings that led them into that darkness they claimed as wisdom! — a claim which all the more thoroughly declared them fools. This was their development — or evolution, if you will — "they became fools."
One writer names the motive behind it all.
The root cause of their fall was that they did not want to give God the glory that was His due, because they wanted to pose as wise themselves — as we see in verses 21 and 22. In short, pride was the root, and God has allowed them to make fools of themselves.
These people did not lack evidence. They had a knowledge of God handed down to them, and they failed to keep it:
A traditional knowledge of God is in question… the outward knowledge of God spoken of here still belonged to man after the flood. In fact we do not hear of idolatry until after that great event. But man was not equal to the task of keeping this holy trust, and the reason lay in his moral state. When they did know God, they neither glorified Him as such, nor were they thankful. That left room for empty reasonings, which then darkened the heart instead of leading it into light. It was the self-sufficiency, and so the folly, of the creature. Light is only seen in God's light. Unless a man looks up to One above him and is lifted, he must sink into darkness.
Read as history, the verse points the opposite way from the usual story of human progress.
They knew God and did not glorify Him. They turned away from the light. Here is the true law of evolution. It is not an evolution upward, as so many teach today, but an evolution downward. The ascent of man is a delusion; the descent of man is the truth. Man has fallen so low, yes, below the beast. The only thing that can lift him is the gospel of Jesus Christ… The next step down is that they claimed to be wise and became fools. They rejected the light and turned away from God. So they became philosophers and tried to find things out by searching.
The fall came step by step, under God's own government:
Their descent has been gradual. First came empty thinking. Then came darkened understanding and gross idolatry. Then came outrageous sins, in which they fell below the level of the beasts. Each generation went beyond the follies of those before them, and so approved for themselves the turning away that had gone before. All this happened under the government of God… If men object to thinking of God and give Him up, they have no ground of complaint when He gives them up. There is an ironic justice about God's government.
One writer applies the verse to his own day, and to any age that sets human intellect against God.
The intellect of our own day leads many astray who claim to be wise. It is only one of the many forms of human perverseness that set themselves up against God. It may be more refined, but its opposition is no less determined than in those who attack God's declared will because He has not written it across the sky… So philosophical explanations of Christianity have arisen. They are all only attempts of man to reach the mysterious doctrine of the cross by human reasoning. That doctrine is either never reached, or, if it is seen, it stays what it has always been — "foolishness."
- Cause — pride. Men wanted the credit of wisdom and refused God the glory He was owed. That refusal, not a lack of evidence, is the root of the fall.
- Effect — darkness. Cut off from God's light, their reasoning gave them no light. Left to itself, the creature can only sink.
- Claim — self-flattery. The claim to wisdom is not the cure for folly. It is part of it. The emptier they grew, the wiser they claimed to be.
- Direction — downward. The verse charts a descent, not a rise. Each generation outdid the follies of the last, and God gave up the men who first gave Him up.
- Remedy — the gospel. Man has fallen too far to reason his way back up. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ lifts him.
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into [the] likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and quadrupeds and reptiles.
Idolatry begins with a trade, not with ignorance. The people here knew God and swapped His glory for images of their own making — so how does anyone fall that far?
The exchange needed something to trade away. These men had real knowledge of God and let it go.
They did not glorify God in His works. They did not thank Him for the mercies of this life. So they lost the knowledge of God that they had. Refusing the witness of creation, they fell back, as men are doing today, on their own imaginations. So their foolish heart grew dark — that is, they lost the knowledge of God. In Scripture, moral darkness is always ignorance of God, just as light is the knowledge of God. The more foolish they became, the more they claimed to be wise. And the more they claimed to be wise, the bigger fools they became.
Religion did not climb from crude beginnings toward better ideas of God. This verse records a fall from light.
They knew God and did not glorify Him. They turned away from the light. Here is the true law of evolution — not an evolution upward, as is taught so much today, but an evolution downward. The ascent of man is a delusion; the descent of man is the truth. The only possible way of lifting man, who has fallen so low, yes, beneath the beast, is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
An idol is not an accident of ignorance. It answers a craving — and it answers it on man's own terms.
Deep down, man knows he is not enough on his own. That awareness leaves him unable to stand independent of some power mightier than himself. A god of some kind is a natural necessity for man. His natural desire, in his first turning away from truth, is a god after his own heart. The image of himself is the outward expression of this.
The list in the verse is not random. Each step is lower than the last.
Notice the order here. Idolatry makes progress, but it is progress in degradation. First they make a god out of man, who was himself made in the image of God. Then come birds of the air, and four-footed beasts, and down to the grovelling, creeping insects. Each step shows the progress of degradation. Look at the magnificent temples of Egypt, where architecture reached its peak. Grand avenues lead up to great temples with their outer court and inner sanctuary. But enthroned in the innermost room of all this magnificence sits a hideous beetle, a creeping thing — as though Satan delighted to insult God by such a likeness.
The creatures are ranked by how far each one gets off the ground.
Birds fly through the air, so they were thought to be nearer heaven, and they are put above the four-footed beasts, which walk on the earth. The creeping things, which cannot rise out of the dust and mud of the earth, are the lowest form of all.
What a man bows to, he becomes. Not even learning stops the slide.
Their ideas of deity, under the deceptive influence of Satan, sank lower and lower... It was not naked savages who plunged deeper and deeper into this pit of folly. The ancient kingdoms of Babylon, Assyria and Egypt, among others, had much learning. Men cannot rise morally above the level of the gods they worship. So beast-worshippers soon became beastly themselves in practice.
Set against all this is what the idolater threw away. Where ESV says "immortal God" and "mortal man," older translations read "incorruptible" and "corruptible." Nothing about God fades, spoils or changes.
How blessed it is when the Holy Spirit reminds us that the One whom we worship is "the incorruptible God" (Rom. 1:23)... His word, His promise, His glory — yes, He Himself — remain incorruptible.
That word "corruptible" is the verdict on the whole race. One Man alone stands outside it.
The theme of the gospel is "the Man Christ Jesus," the One whom Psalm 16 describes as not seeing corruption... His conception was holy. His life was sinless through and through. He was not only without blemish; He picked up no stain along His path.
- Exchange — Idolatry is not a first step toward God. It is a trade away from Him: men who knew God stopped glorifying and thanking Him, and lost what they had.
- Descent — The order in the verse is a staircase going down: man, birds, beasts, creeping things. Religion here evolves, but always downward.
- Self — A god of some sort is a necessity to man, so he makes one after his own heart, and the image of himself is the first result.
- Reflex — No one rises above the god he worships. Degrade God to a beast, and the worshipper turns beastly. Learning gives no protection: Egypt and Babylon had deep learning of their own.
- Remedy — The God they traded away cannot decay. The only lift for corruptible man is the gospel of the one Man who saw no corruption.
Wherefore God gave them up [also] in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, to dishonour their bodies between themselves
Paul has just described a race that knew God, refused to honour Him, and swapped His glory for images. Verse 24 is the turning point. It is the first of three moments when God steps back and lets people have what they insisted on wanting.
The verse opens by pointing back. Every horror that follows is an answer to something people did first.
Their plight has been reached under the government of God. Three times over we get the phrase, with slight variations: "God gave them up to…". If men object to thinking of God and give Him up, they have no ground of complaint when He gives them up. And if they give up God, and so give up good, they find themselves given up to everything evil and degrading. There is an ironic justice about God's government.
The phrase does not mean God pushed anyone into sin.
So God gave them up to reap as they had sown. It is not that He made them sin (God forbid the thought!). He simply dropped the reins on man's neck, so that what was in sinful man's heart might come out — in my heart, reader, and yours. So we find that sin ruined men's bodies (v. 24), their affections (v. 26), and their minds (v. 28).
Was this coldness on God's part? What came before it gives the answer.
"Therefore God gave them up" — not that He was indifferent. His appeals through their intelligence and conscience had no effect on their determined course of evil… Man will reap the bitter fruits of refusing the place of dependence on God. His evil shows itself more and more in ways he once would have found horrible and detestable. Then he will say, "I can't help myself." In this he speaks the truth. But why does he not also confess the truth about how this shameful state began?… For only God can protect a soul against evil. If a man ignores Him, there is no predicting the depths of man's wickedness.
The punishment fits the crime. Men designed gods to their own taste.
Their lusts had turned them away from the true God; now the false gods they had set up to suit their own tastes approved and encouraged their lusts. God gave them up to their lusts, and they at once went on to dishonour their own bodies, just as they had already dishonoured God.
Behind the physical ruin lies a lie about who the creature is.
If the soul abandons the truth of God, everything is wrong, whatever appearances may say for the moment. This was the great falsehood. Not to be in dependence and obedience is to be false to the relationship of a creature. Yet there is a step still further down in evil — giving to the creature the honour that belongs to God alone.
The wreckage here is not only a warning of a reckoning to come. It is a sentence God is carrying out now.
Verses 24 and 25 display the punishment, even now, of God the Holy One on His debased image. Filth and dishonour are the unchecked and ripened fruit of the lusts of nature. Man had chosen those lusts as his guide, in preference to the will of God… The creature is utterly debased, and that through the working out of its own will. This is the sentence of divine wisdom on the self-dishonoured work of His hands.
Some read this verse as a defence: if God abandoned them, how are they to blame?
It is true that God has given men over to the vices they love. In His governmental dealings He does this because they have turned away from Him and have chosen to indulge their lusts. But despite this, they still have by nature a sense of the justice of God in sentencing them to death… So no one can excuse himself or his sins in the court of God by pleading that God has given him over to judicial blindness.
Nothing in this decline fixes itself. Only one way out is left.
Savagery was the result of man's departure from God. God did not create man in that condition… So man's condition is degraded, whether as a savage or as an idolater. Nothing can bring him out of it but the converting power of the grace of God.
- Given up, given up. Men gave God up first; God then gave them up. The whole verse is one word answering another.
- Reins dropped. God did not make anyone sin. He let go of the restraint, and what came out was already in the heart.
- Gods to taste. They built gods that approved their desires — so their religion approved their ruin.
- Sentence now. The filth is not just leading to judgment; it is judgment falling now, in this life.
- One exit. Being given up excuses nobody. Nothing lifts a man out of it except the converting power of God's grace.
who changed the truth of God into falsehood, and honoured and served the creature more than him who had created [it], who is blessed for ever. Amen.
This verse names the swap at the heart of idolatry: God's truth traded for a lie, His honour handed to the things He made. Paul cannot describe it without stopping to bless the God who was robbed.
The fall happens in two steps. One writer traces both, and names who took them first:
If the soul abandons the truth of God, all is wrong, whatever appearances may say for the present. This was the great falsehood. Not to be in dependence and obedience is to be false to the relationship of a creature. Yet there is a step still further down in evil — giving to the creature the honour that belongs to God only. This is exactly what Satan did, and in this same order. He was a liar from the beginning. He did not stand in the truth, for there was no truth in him. Fallen man does his own will and so is the slave of Satan. It may be in lusts, or in a religion of his own imagining. The one plainly degrades him; the other promises to lift him up.
Most people would say they worship nothing at all. This verse leaves no middle ground.
Man may dare to think he is neutral, with no interest in God either way. But that very attitude accuses God of lying. If God's testimony is true, neutrality is impossible. It is a deliberate rejection of the truth of God, even when it is silent — treating that truth as a lie. A man may speak of his neutrality with great pride and self-satisfaction. But if he does not worship the Creator, he worships the creature in some way — even if that creature is himself.
Why does dropping the true God not end worship? The need to lean on something stays, and man fills it to his own taste.
However, man is not enough for himself. He must have someone to lean on, someone to look to in his misery and weakness. So having rejected the true God, and become a fool, he goes on to fashion false gods according to his own tastes. First they thought of God as like corruptible men. Then their thoughts of God sank lower, and they imagined Him to be like birds or four-footed beasts. At last they reached the lowest depth of degradation, when they thought of God as like the creeping things — the serpents. So the worship of the serpent proved how thoroughly man had fallen from God to the devil.
Verse 24 says God gave these men up. Writers read that as justice, not cruelty.
Three times we get the phrase, with slight variations: "God gave them up to…" If men refuse to think about God and give Him up, they have no ground of complaint when He gives them up. And if they give up God, and so give up good, they find themselves given up to everything that is evil and degrading. There is an ironic justice about God's government.
Man does not rise to the level of what he bows to. He drops beneath it:
They changed the truth of God into a lie. In place of the Creator they set up the creature as an object of worship. So God lets them fall beneath the creatures they worshipped. Men sank below the beasts. A beast is not a moral creature. But a man degraded to the level of a beast becomes immoral. His affections become corrupted and turned from their natural course into what is contrary to nature.
Paul's closing words — "who is blessed forever! Amen" — answer the whole charge. What men refuse Him on earth He receives anyway:
It is very blessed to know that heaven will acknowledge and worship God as the Creator of the universe, however much men blaspheme and deny Him on earth. The day is not far away when men will do more than worship and serve the creature above the Creator. They will openly deny the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
The same principle works where no carved image is in sight. (The writer quotes an older translation: "changed the truth of God into a lie.")
The world we are passing through is marked more and more by uncleanness and materialism. The hideous features named in Romans 1 are showing themselves everywhere. Men are busy turning "the truth of God into a lie." The principle of worshipping and serving "the creature more than the Creator" shows itself in the materialistic cult that is gaining such headway.
- Exchange. Truth swapped for a lie. First man refuses to depend on God. Then he hands God's honour to something made.
- Imitation. The order of that fall copies Satan, who did not stand in the truth and was a liar from the beginning.
- Substitute. Man cannot live without a god. Reject the true One and he makes gods to fit his own tastes — down to the serpent.
- Recompense. Because men gave God up, God gave them up — and they fell below the creatures they had worshipped.
- Unshaken. Denied on earth, the Creator is still "blessed forever," and heaven will worship Him as such.
For this reason God gave them up to vile lusts; for both their females changed the natural use into that contrary to nature;
Verse 26 does not start a new subject. It draws a line from what people worshipped to what they became, and the connection is treated as a fixed rule rather than an accident of history.
Under the moral judgment of God, idolatry always ends in complete uncleanness among its followers. It shows itself in every variety. Perhaps it is clearest, as a divine retribution, among those who set up the human form — "corruptible man." But it was certainly not absent where they worshipped what is beneath man: birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles, alone or in combination.
The phrase raises the sharpest question in the verse: did God push people into sin? One writer answers it head on.
So God gave them up to reap what they had sown. He did not make them sin (God forbid the thought!). He threw the reins on man's neck, so that what was in sinful man's heart might come out — in my heart, reader, and in yours. So we find that sin ruined men's bodies (v. 24), their affections (v. 26), and their minds (v. 28). Three times it says that God gave them up, and three times the solemn result is stated.
The order matters, and one writer finds a rough justice in it.
Their condition has been reached under the government of God. Three times over we get the phrase, with slight variations: "God gave them up to…" Do men object to thinking about God and give Him up? Then they have no ground for complaint when He gives them up. And if they give up God, they give up good along with Him. Naturally they find themselves given up to everything evil and degrading. There is an ironic justice about God's government.
One writer traces the change against nature back to what these people had chosen to worship.
They changed the truth of God into a lie. In place of the Creator they set up the creature as an object of worship. So they are allowed to fall beneath the very creatures they worshipped. Men sank below the beasts. It has been truly said that a beast is not a moral creature. But a man degraded to the level of a beast becomes immoral. His affections grow corrupt and turn from their natural course into what is contrary to nature.
Paul's choice of words is deliberate, and one commentator draws attention to it in his own rendering of verses 26 and 27.
This is a vivid but very grave sketch of a humiliating picture. The classical writers fill in that picture in a very different tone, for "the unjust knows no shame." The women come first, since the shamelessness was most apparent there, and human depravity proved most complete and hopeless. The apostle does not even dignify them with the names men and women. He calls them "females" and "males" — though they were the greatest and highest: the sages of the earth, monarchs, conquerors, poets, philosophers and the rest. Their ways were below the animals. God gave them up, and even now they bear the fitting reward of their deeds.
The three surrenders touch the whole person, and they reach far beyond the ancient world.
Man is made up of body, soul and spirit. The first giving up concerns the body; this is found in verses 24-25. Then He gave them up to vile passions. This concerns the soul, and the horrible things in verses 26-27 are the results. People practised them openly in the Greek and Roman world in the days of the Apostle Paul. Ancient literature bears plenty of witness to that. These vile things are still going on in heathen India, China, Africa and elsewhere. They appear within Christendom too. Whenever and wherever people abandon the truth of God, degradation of every kind follows. Only the truth of God can restrain evil.
- Cause. The verse points backwards. Idolatry is the root, and uncleanness is its certain fruit under God's moral judgment.
- Exchange. People swapped the Creator for the creature, so they sank beneath the creatures they worshipped. A beast is not a moral creature; a man dragged down to that level becomes immoral.
- Surrender. "God gave them up" is not God causing sin; it is God dropping the reins, letting what is already in the human heart come out.
- Justice. Men gave God up first. His giving them up answers theirs, and their shame is already the fitting reward of their deeds.
- Reach. Body, affections, mind — the three surrenders cover the whole person. Wherever people abandon the truth of God, even inside Christendom, the same degradation returns.
and in like manner the males also, leaving the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their lust towards one another; males with males working shame, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was fit.
The chapter traces a world sliding away from the God it once knew, and this verse sits near the bottom of that slide. Why does God step back, and is there a way back for people already receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error?
This verse names the end of a road, not a single wrong turn.
Their descent has been gradual. First came empty thinking. Then darkened understanding. Then gross idolatry. Then outrageous sins, in which they fell below the level of the beasts. Each generation went beyond the follies of the one before it, and so confirmed for themselves the earlier departure.
Three times in this passage God hands men over to what they chose.
Man had given up God; now we have the statement, repeated three times, "God gave them up". In the government of God He lets men reap what they sow. Their lusts had turned them away from the true God. Now the false gods they had set up to suit their own tastes approved and encouraged those lusts. God gave them up to their lusts. At once they went on to dishonour their own bodies, just as they had already dishonoured God.
This handing over is not God making men sin. One writer says what it is instead, and then turns it on his reader.
God gave them up to reap as they had sown. He did not make them sin — God forbid the thought! He dropped the reins on man's neck, just so that what was in sinful man's heart might come out — in my heart, reader, and in yours.
Idolatry had already turned the order of things upside down. This verse shows where that ends.
They had exchanged the truth of God for a lie. They had set up the creature in place of the Creator as an object of worship. So God let them fall beneath the creatures they worshipped. Men sank below the beasts. People have rightly said that a beast is not a moral creature. But a man dragged down to the level of a beast becomes immoral. His affections are corrupted and turned aside from their natural course into what is contrary to nature.
Notice who Paul is describing here, and what he refuses to call them.
The apostle will not call them men and women — though they were the greatest and highest, the wise men of the earth, monarchs, conquerors, poets and philosophers. He calls them "females" and "males", marked by ways below the brute, given up by God, and even now bearing the fitting reward of their deeds.
The penalty is not all in the future. Part of it arrives inside the sinner now.
The things spoken of here are plainly the "recompense", even now, of the creature's error in departing from the Creator. So the world lies under a judicial bondage of sin and dishonour. Men eat the fruit of their own ways. That fruit sometimes pleases the depraved taste of a corrupted nature, but divine and eternal judgment waits at the end. The very lusts that govern and torment the slaves of sin are the first instalment and token of the wrath of God. That wrath is revealed from heaven now, and after death it will deal with the ungodliness and unrighteousness of unrepentant sinners.
The three times God gives men up touch the whole person. And the sins named here did not stay in the ancient world.
Man is made up of body, soul and spirit. The first giving up concerns the body, in verses 24-25. Then He gave them up to vile passions. This concerns the soul, and the horrible things stated in verses 26-27 are the results. People practised these things in the open in the Greek and Roman world in the days of the apostle Paul... These vile things are still going on. They are found in the middle of the Christian world too. Whenever and wherever men abandon the truth of God, degradation of every kind follows, for the truth of God alone can restrain evil.
Romans 1 is not a dead end. Paul wrote to people who had come out of exactly this.
Having given this terrible list of the corruptions of the flesh, he says, "Such were some of you". Wonderful grace, that can take us up from the lowest place of degradation in the far country and join us with Christ in the highest place of glory in the Father's house!
- Cause — Men gave God up first. These sins came at the end of a slow descent, and each generation went further than the last.
- Consequence — "God gave them up" is God's government, not God making men sin. He dropped the reins, and what was already in the heart came out.
- Collapse — Men put the creature above the Creator, and then fell below it. Their affections left their natural course.
- Cost — The penalty arrives now, inside the sinner. The lust that torments him is the first instalment of a wrath still to come.
- Cure — Only the truth of God holds this evil back, and only grace lifts a person out. Grace takes people from the lowest degradation to the highest glory in the Father's house.
And according as they did not think good to have God in [their] knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind to practise unseemly things;
The rest of Romans 1 lists one dark sin after another. Verse 28 gives the cause: men would not keep God in their thinking, so God handed them over to the very mind they had chosen.
The first clause is about the mind as much as the heart. Men weighed the matter and refused to approve of God.
Another translation renders verse 28: "And according as they did not think good to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up." They would give no approval to having God in their knowledge. That is as much a matter of the mind as of the heart, and both of these were corrupted. So "God gave them up to a reprobate mind," a mind that rejects the good and is therefore rejected by the good It is left to its own worthlessness and its wilful failure to see straight.
The word translated "debased" echoes the first clause, and it can carry more than one sense.
The word adokimos is translated "reprobate" here, as it is elsewhere. That word suits the phrase well. It sets their refusal to approve of keeping God in their knowledge against His giving them over to a "disapproved" mind. But the word may also bear an active sense. It would then mean an "undiscerning" mind — the sentence passed on their presumption in rejecting God after pretending to test and try the matter.
The sins listed in verses 29 to 31 are not a random collection. They all grow from one soil, and that soil is the heart.
When summing up the sins of the Gentiles the apostle says, "God gave them up to a debased mind." Why? Because "they did not see fit to acknowledge God." (Rom. 1:28.) This was the root, and all the other sins were but the fruits. God does not ask for your goodness. He wants the heart, and this is what man does not like to give.
What men do to God's character, they end up doing to their own.
If men lose the knowledge of God, if they depart from Him, if they corrupt God, they will corrupt themselves. God gave them up to a debased mind because they had corrupted Him and did not want to keep Him in their knowledge. That is why all the unspeakable vices of the pagan world flourish.
This is the third and last time in the chapter that God gives men up. Each time reaches a different part of the person.
Men chose to give up the light that God had given of Himself. The result is that man is given up to a debased mind, abandoned to his depraved thoughts. The terrible effect of sin is to leave men with defiled bodies (v. 24), degraded affections (v. 26), and deformed minds (v. 28). Man is fallen body, soul, and spirit.
Man moved first in this exchange.
Three times over we get the phrase, with slight variations: "God gave them up to ...". If men object to thinking of God and give Him up, they have no ground of complaint when He gives them up. And if they give up God, and so give up good as well, they find themselves given up to everything that is evil and degrading. There is an ironic justice about God's government.
God's handing men over is a real act. Even so, He is not the author of the sin that follows.
So God gave them up to reap what they had sown. He did not make them sin — God forbid the thought! He dropped the reins on man's neck, so that what was in sinful man's heart would come out — in my heart, reader, and yours.
The verse also settles a question about human history.
But there is more: they did not want to keep God in their knowledge. So God gave them up to a debased mind, to do what ought not to be done. That is where the lawlessness, selfishness, and injustice so common on earth come from. A state of savagery, then, is the fruit of man's will. It is not the original condition of the human race.
Commentators apply the verse beyond the ancient world to anyone who edits God out of his account of things.
It is only Scripture that throws real light on the subject, and to refuse or neglect what the word of God teaches, is only to go far astray... There is a solemn warning in Scripture, which tells us of men not liking to retain God in their knowledge, being given over by God to "a debased mind" (Rom. 1:28).
- Root. Every sin listed after this verse grows from one root: men did not see fit to keep God in their knowledge. God wants the heart, not a show of goodness.
- Verdict. Man's word to God is "not approved"; God's word back is a "disapproved" — or undiscerning — mind. The punishment matches the crime.
- Reach. Three times God gives men up in this chapter, touching body, affections, and mind — man is fallen in every part.
- Restraint. God does not make anyone sin; He drops the reins and lets the heart show what was always in it.
- Result. Savagery is where human will ended up. It is not where the human race started.