Title: The Characteristics of Unbelief

Text Rom 1:18-32

Date: 8/26/07

Introduction:

Paul said He was not ashamed of the gospel because it was the power of God for salvation to everyone who believed. If the gospel is the power of God for salvation, why do men and women continually reject it? That’s a somewhat a rhetorical question. You could list a lot of reasons people give for rejecting the gospel, but I think any list could be summed up in one word, unbelief. Not unknowing, but unbelieving what is known.

Bertrand Russell a prominent 20^th century British atheist and philosopher in his book, Why I am not a Christian, wrote:

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching. . . .You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him, and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation.[Why I am not a Christian, 1964, p. 17)

Russell’s thought echoes the thoughts of the modern and post modern mind set that God’s wrath and judgement are offensive and therefore to be rejected. This suppression of truth is the first characteristic of unbelief Paul addresses in this passage.

I. The suppression of Truth v. 18-20

Suppression of truth is active rather than passive. Men can not and will not believe the truth so they actively attempt to subdue it, contain it put an end to it – to suppress it. There is a continual and aggressive striving against truth.

Paul identified one point of truth men continue to struggle with and seek to suppress in unbelief – the wrath of God. The wrath of God in v 18 directly relates to the righteousness of God in v. 17. When we talk about God’s righteousness it’s hard to sum up all that it means and it’s difficult to which particular aspect Paul makes reference to in verse 17.

The righteousness of God is a divine attribute - something God is. It is also a divine activity – His saving intervention on behalf of unrighteous humanity and it is a divine achievement – something completed on the cross. I think all of that is summed up in Paul’s statement of what the gospel reveals and that this righteousness is appropriated by faith and lived out by faith.

In contrast to the revelation of His righteousness Paul makes it clear God’s wrath is being revealed as well. God’s wrath is God’s righteous response to all that is unrighteous. It differs from human wrath in that human wrath is more like anger. Human wrath is impulsive. It is self-centered, vindictive and it’s intent is doing harm to someone else. It is an emotional response to something or someone.

God’s wrath is not an emotional response. It is God’s total righteousness expressed and revealed towards sin primarily through His judgement.

One reason the truth of wrath and judgement is suppressed is that men refuse to believe that a God of love could send men and women to hell. They reject the idea of eternal punishment. Charles Taz Russell (no kin to Bertrand) could not accept the idea of God’s wrath as revealed in God’s word so he rejected it and founded the Jehovah’s Witness movement to support his own ideas.

God is not and cannot be neutral or passive when it comes to sin. God is completely holy and totally righteous, His holiness is beyond any description. His wrath is the expression of His divine displeasure with sin, and His refusal to condone or accept it.

And it’s not like God hasn’t warned us. We see the reality of His divine wrath throughout Scripture; in the flood of Gen; in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; through the plagues in Egypt and in an eschatological future sense in the book of Revelation. It is also revealed in God’s judgement and condemnation toward sin in Rom 6. The modern mind simply refuses to acknowledge the truth of wrath and judgement and seeks to suppress that truth. Modern man refuses not only to accept the truth God judges sin, but that sin even exists by suppressing the basic knowledge that God Himself exists.

In verses 19 and 20 there is another of those important theological statements in the Bible. Those verses reveal God has made Himself known to all mankind through natural revelation. We talked about natural revelation before. Natural revelation described here is the revealing of the eternal power and divine nature of God through His creation. The Bible makes it clear that this eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen and understood from what has been made, it is not hidden and men are without excuse. In other words the vastness and divine order of the cosmos lead to the explicit conclusion of God’s existence. It also reveals the finiteness of man in relation to the creator.

Ps 19:1-4 - 1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. 2 Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. 3 They speak without a sound or word;

their voice is never heard. 4 Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. NLT

The creation reveals enough knowledge about the creator that if a person is not at least searching after God, they are in fact suppressing the truth. Paul concludes verse 20 with the indictment “they are without excuse.” But not only do they suppress the truth, the also pervert the truth.

II. The perversion of Truth w. 21-23

A second distinctive of unbelief is the perversion of the truth. To pervert means to change from it’s original intent. Paul wrote that although men knew God they did not glorify him as God. Humanity is able to have a knowledge of God’s existence, through the creation. Although this is not a complete knowledge human’s are able to see God and to see Him as majestic, transcendent, all-powerful, and infinitely greater than ourselves. But instead of seeing God in and through His creation and worshiping Him, humanity through the ages has chosen instead to worship themselves, or images like themselves, or images of created things. So not only does mankind suppress the truth they pervert it.

In perverting the truth in this way their thinking became futile or empty. Their hearts were darkened. The term heart is used as a comprehensive term for all of man’s capacities. Not only was man’s morel judgement clouded as a result of this idolatry, but all of his thinking processes his intellect and reasoning suffered as well.

Mankind proclaimed itself to be wise, but instead became fools. This is a different word than Paul used in verse 14. In verses 21 and 22 it is an ugly and harsh term which refers to the moral condition of man. Humanity was morally depraved, morally bankrupt. A depravity which degenerated into exchanging of the glory of God for images of God’s creation. The Bible says they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. A clear condemnation of the idolatry of pagan religion, but as John Stott points out we are no less guilty, “. . . the cultural idolatry of the West is no better. To exchange the worship of the living God for the modern obsession with wealth, fame and power is equally foolish and equally blameworthy.” [Stott, Romans p. 76)

Modern society exhibits this same thing by its refusal to recognize moral wrongs in the name of economics. A couple of cases in point. Gambling used to be the domain of organized crime, particularly lotteries which were called numbers. Laws were enacted in all most every state and city to protect its citizens from illegal numbers rackets. Then someone thought this is big money at low risk so all of a sudden it is no longer the domain of organized crime, but of governments and maybe there isn’t a difference there. The moral aspect didn’t change, but that was tossed aside for the sake of economic gain.

Another example is homosexuality. For years homosexuality was recognized as perversion, however, things have changed. Time magazine in an article almost twelve years ago pointed out that he tourist industry took noticed homosexuals spend lots of money so they decided to cater to that business. The article was specifically focused on the Miami Beach area where it became a favorable place to practice that lifestyle. A decade later other places picked up on the economic interests of catering to that kind of lifestyle, again selling out moral values for profit. And there are a number of other areas you could list such as abortion and pornography as well.

There is a progressive downward spiral in these perversions. Men deny the truth, they pervert they truth and then they pervert life. In a quest to elevate humanity, we have done just the opposite. We have dehumanized each other. Mankind has lowed itself to a position below Gods designed purpose.

III. The perversion of Life w. 24 - 32

These verses reflect the total depravity of humanity. Mankind’s falleness is seen in three separate aspects. Paul discusses the sensual, the mental and the ultimate depravity of man.

1. The Sensual Aspect:

Paul clearly here is referring to sexual perversion. Verse 24 alludes to all sexual perversion while w. 26-27 clearly emphasize homosexuality. Why does Paul single out homosexuality? Because as Paul says it is clearly unnatural and makes a point of how low sin causes man to sink. It is also important in that the Bible clearly teaches that it is sin. The question is not whether it is an alternative lifestyle, or whether its cause is nurture or nature, the question is it sin and the Bible answers that it is.

However, in man’s perversion of life he refuses to acknowledge its sinfulness and instead grants to it the privileges of normalcy.

We are a nation and a people obsessed by sexual sin not just homosexuality, and we are allowing it to run rampant even within the church.

The Bible reveals the result of this lifestyle in verse 27 when it says that they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Preachers have been ridiculed and ostracized for saying that AIDS was God’s punishment on homosexuality. I’m not saying it is or isn’t. Verses 24 and 25 include a larger group of people involved in wide range of sensual and sexual perversion and what is unmistakable from this passage is that God gave them all over, or gave them up to their sin. In other words because of the stubbornness of their unbelief God has permitted them to be further carried into sin and they bear the penalty for that sin. Which is not only AIDS, and countless other Sexually Transmitted Diseases but also emotional and psychological and spiritual problems as well.

But this is not the only way man has perverted life. He has also done so in his thinking.

2. The mental Aspect: vv28-31

Man has been carried away in his ability to think morally so that the natural tendency is to grow worse and worse without God. There is no doubt that we could probably spend weeks examining each of the things Paul mentions here. The fact is that our society grows more and more violent each year.

We are shocked by violence in the workplace. We are shocked by violence in our schools such as Columbine High School and Virginia Tech University and countless others between those. We have mothers and fathers killing their children and themselves. We have road rage and workplace rage and school rage. Not long ago a shooting at a church in Ft Worth Tx and just recently another shooting in a church. And worse we can’t decide what to do with those who commit crimes, we can’t decide whether to punish, rehabilitate, or excuse.

We have grown smarter but not necessarily wiser.

3. The Ultimate Aspect v 32

The ultimate aspect of the depravity of man is revealed in verse 32. Not only participating in these perversions, but now also giving approval or legitimacy to those who do them. We have as a culture as a race become unable to tell right from wrong.

It is for this reason that God’s wrath has been poured out. Paul paints this same picture in Eph 2 but he continues that we have been made alive with Christ. Richard Halverson was teaching a Bible study on this passage when a man attending responded that he didn’t remember ever reading the Bible, but he said. “tonight I have seen myself in Romans 1, what do I do about it?”

Have you seen yourself in Romans 1? What will you do? Elisha Hoffman wrote the answer many years ago, He wrote Lay aside your garments that are stained with sin and be washed in the blood of the lamb, there is a fountain flowing for the soul unclean 0 be washed in the blood of the Lamb. The invitation God gives us this morning to be washed in the blood of the Lamb. Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?