Note: the following is the manuscript for the message and will not match exactly the recorded message above.
In Romans 1:18-32, Paul is pointing out two of the most despicable sins in the view of the Jews as well as the Christians who have adopted the Jewish laws as their own.
Jewish people regarded idolatry (1:23) and immoral sexual behaviour (1:24–25), especially homosexual behaviour (1:26–27), as sins that only the Gentiles practice.
In today’s world, we see all around us the same thing. We see idolatry in the form of consumerism and the pursuit of personal fulfilment, and the hyper-sexualization in music, movies, and social media.
We know that we live in a world that, as Paul says, suppresses the truth. But, what he is saying in this pass is, yes, the world is condemned because of their behaviour, but are we who believe in God any different?
If you keep reading through the letter, especially as you get to chapter 3, you will see that all people need to repent of our sins and are in need of God’s forgiveness.
What I want to do with this passage is to gain an understanding of the idolatry and sexual sin that Paul is referring to, and then touch on the list of every kind of wickedness that he mentions.
We will end with what we need to do with this message, which will require each person to reflect on their own life and consider what changes need to be made.
I want to emphasize at the start: Paul’s intention is to turn people away from judging other’s sins and, turning inward, reflect on our own sin and our need to repent and depend on God’s promise to forgive and save us from the consequences of our sin.
Idolatry
Timothy Keller has an excellent book called Counterfeit Gods, which has the subtitle “The empty promises of money, sex, and power, and the only hope that matters.”
In this book, he says that “idolatry is the only reason we ever do anything wrong.”
When most people think of idols, they think of statues, or their favourite pop star or athlete. We idolize people who do great things. These can be included in what Paul is saying in Romans, but primarily the issue of idols is related to whatever we place at the centre of our lives. Idols are what give us meaning and purpose in life. They become our identity, what gets us up in the morning. They take priority over our money, health, family, dreams, and our time.
Idols can be good things, but when they become the centre of our lives, and they become more important to us than God, they are by definition, an idol.
In this passage, Paul is saying that, in this world that God has made, he has revealed something of himself to all people. This revelation comes in the form of created things, the natural world, and all that is in it. The earth, the sky, the sea. All the living creatures. The mountains and forests. The smells and sounds that we love. They all testify to the glory and majesty of God.
But this revelation is universally rejected as coming from a Creator. People turn from knowledge of God to gods of their own making. We turn creation into our gods.
John Calvin said that the heart is an idol factory. Throughout history, people have created gods for themselves in a variety of ways.
The first two commandments given to the Israelites were to have no other gods before Yahweh and to not make for themselves an image to which they bow down and worship.
As God was giving these instructions to Moses, the Israelites were making a golden statue in the form of a calf as their god.
As they entered the Promised Land, Moses gave them these instructions: watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.
What is the nature and problem of idolatry? It starts at the beginning of creation. Genesis 1:26-27 says let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over every created thing.
The word for image here is the same word used in Numbers 33:50, where the Israelites are instructed to destroy all the carved images and idols in the land of Canaan. In fact, the main use of this word outside of the creation story is referring to graven images or idols.
In Genesis 9:6, we read God speaking to Noah after the flood, Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.
Humans are actually icons or idols of God. What that means is that we were created to be a representation of God. We were created to carry the character, authority, majesty, and glory of God.
So, making a different image to represent God or a god to be worshipped is an insult to God’s intention for how his image is to be seen in creation.
But, because we have made idols out of created things, we have become corrupted. Instead of being image-bearers of our Creator, we are becoming image-bearers of created things, imperfect things.
We walk in our own way, according to our own desires and passions. Our loves and worship are directed away from the creator and toward creation.
We search the world for something that we can turn to, some meaning and purpose, even though it is plain by looking at one another and the world, that there is a creator.
Paul says, humanity “knew” God, but because they refused to “glorify” him (1:21), they ended up exchanging his “glory” and image for that of mortal, earthly creations (1:23).
We are God’s image, but by corrupting God’s image in worshiping things other than God we gave up and lost his glory (cf. Rom 3:23). The punishment for humanity’s failure to act according to the truth is to deliver us to our moral insanity (1:21–22).
When we are left to our own ways, this is what happens. We do not bear the image of a holy God. We start to bear the image of whatever we are worshipping. We become what we love.
James Smith, in his book, You Are What You Love, says that worship is the “imagination station” that incubates our loves and longings. He goes on to say that since our hearts are made to find their end in God, we will experience a besetting anxiety and restlessness when we try to love substitutes.
What then is the solution to idolatry? The solution is to fill our minds and hearts with God’s truth and to obey those truths.
We repent from idolatry out of response to God’s grace. Left to our own devices, we will become like the Gentiles that Paul writes about.
Sexual Sin
This section of Romans is not a desirable passage to preach on. But, I am humbly approaching it and presenting it to you in hopes that it will provide insight into the nature of sexual sin and why it is such a big deal to God and for Christians.
First, let’s look at what Paul is actually referring to in Romans 1:24 and 26-27. He says that God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another… to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.
This passage is pointing directly at a specific kind of sexual impurity, which we might refer to as homosexuality. But it was much worse than what we would consider homosexual behaviour today.
In how we think about homosexuality, it is most often seen as a consensual relationship between two adults.
While this did exist in those days, the predominant form of homosexual interest was that of men toward boys in younger adolescence. This was a socially acceptable practice and celebrated as a show of male dominance.
The blatant public idolatry and immoral sexual behaviour of Rome would make even today’s over-sexualized, consumeristic society blush.
The main issue with these practices is the same as the issue with idolatry. It is the corruption of the image of God in humanity.
Going back to Genesis, God’s image in humanity included the complementarity of male and female (Gen 1:27), and the distortion of his image led to same-sex intercourse against “nature,” which for Paul meant against the way God had created humans to function.
If we take this principle into our own context, we can draw the line between Paul’s condemnation of Gentile sexual practices and our own.
The consequence of distorting God’s good creation is that God allows us to go down that path, which is only more destruction and corruption.
This happens because when we worship creation, we can never get enough. It never satisfies. When we elevate creation to the status of a god, it can’t bear that weight. It crumbles beneath us and so we try to find something stronger.
This is built into not only our souls but also our bodies. We are hardwired to want more of what has previously given us a rush.
So, when a young person sees pornography for the first time, it is not likely they will be able to resist looking again. The human body becomes an idol for the person who lusts after seeing or having more. It is an idol that cannot possible satisfy our desires.
The only way out is to re-orient our desires. This requires repentance, which means to make a wholistic change from a sinful course of action to God’s ways.
At the end of the message I will have a very practical way of doing this, but I want to first emphasize the importance of identifying our own idols, which brings us to this next section where Paul addresses every kind of wickedness.
Every Kind of Wickedness
The Jews who lived in Rome would have been distinct from the Gentiles mainly in these practices of idolatry and sexual behaviour.
But, just as the listeners of this letter would have been applauding at Paul’s condemnation of these practices, he quickly turns to more universal sins (1:29–31), accusing his own people who are knowledgeable of the law (2:17–29; 3:9, 19–20).
I’ll read this section again:
They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
If we look at the Old Testament book of Amos, we see a similar tactic:
God gives the word to Amos: Judgment on [all the nations around you]… and just as everybody’s applauding, he says this about his own people: “For three sins of Judah, even for four, I will not relent. Because they have rejected the law of the Lord and have not kept his decrees, because they have been led astray by false gods, the gods their ancestors followed, I will send fire on Judah that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.” This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name… “I also raised up prophets from among your children and Nazirites from among your youths. Is this not true, people of Israel?” declares the Lord. “But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy. “Now then, I will crush you as a cart crushes when loaded with grain.
Paul does condemn the Gentiles because they have rejected God’s design, but he does not leave out those who claim God’s written law.
The readers or listeners of this letter would have recognized this because while the sins of idolatry and sexual misconduct were identified as only Gentile or Roman issues, the list of sins in this passage mimic the sins listed by Amos and other prophets.
Paul is condemning them by repeating the accusations of these prophets. God’s people are worse off than other nations because we claim to know God’s laws, yet we continue to live in sin.
We claim to represent God, yet our behaviour is still corrupted by idolatry. It is not the worship of statues or the blatant public sexual misconduct.
It takes the form of things like secret or internal sins of lust, envy, anger, bitterness, deceit, and wrongful intentions. Or subtle sins like gossiping, slandering, arrogance and boasting.
We may look around at the world and grieve the way it is going, but God is calling us to look at ourselves and never forget our own need for his forgiveness.
So, what do we do? What is our response to this message? If you feel guilty or called out by these words, allow me to give you some hope and encouragement.
The Practice of Repentance
The way the church has gone wrong is in assuming that being a good Christian requires living perfectly according to God’s laws. What it really requires is a repentant heart.
In Romans 2:4-5, Paul writes, do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.
The reason we do not repent is because we think we are doing just fine. But we are not doing just fine. None of us are.
We all need to repent. Most of us know this, but we are afraid, ashamed, or are not quite ready to give up our idols.
Our danger is, like the recipients of Paul’s letter, we compare ourselves to the world and we think we are pretty good. Or, we see others who seem to have it all together and we don’t dare admit what we have done wrong.
What we really need is to have our loves and our worship re-ordered continuously. This requires not only knowledge of God’s ways, but the practice of them.
There is a word that many evangelicals are afraid of. It is the word liturgy. I have grown to love liturgical practices. They can take many forms. We actually all have liturgies in our lives. They are what give order to our days. You can also think of them as habits.
When liturgies are directed toward God, they re-calibrate our loves, our thoughts, and our affections toward him.
There is more than I can possibly say here about this. So, if you want to learn how to re-orient yourself away from your idols, please do one or all of these three things:
Purchase and read the book You Are What You Love by James Smith, or Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller.
Ask me for some advice on how to incorporate liturgies into your life that will direct your heart and mind toward God.
Come to the Good Friday service on March 29 at 11:00. We will be practicing what I am talking about.
Scripture References
Romans 1:16-32; 2:4-5
Deuteronomy 4:15-19
Genesis 1:26-27; 9:6
Amos 1-2
Other Resources
Craig Keener, Romans (New Covenant Commentary Series)
Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods
James Smith, You Are What You Love