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.