Romans 1:18-32: God's Bad News - Part 1

Summary - What every one knows about God (v18-20)

  1. God is invisible, so how do we know He exists?  What does every person intuitively understand about God?
  2. What does it mean to suppress knowledge of God?  Why would we want to do that? (cf. John 3:20, Colossians 2:21)
  3. God's anger is revealed against what two things?
    (Note the contrasting parallel with v17, where righteousness is revealed).

Religious sin, a.k.a. ungodliness (v21-25)

  1. What is our proper response towards God? Why would we want to respond to God this way? (Heb 11:6).
  2. Look at the prototypical process, Genesis 3:1-13, with respect to beliefs about God, response to God, and outcome.
  3. We were created for personal intimacy with God. When we refuse this relationship, we wind up filling the void with something else more tangible.  Is that a reasonable thing to do? Objectively, why is it a bad idea?
    (Cf. Ephesians 4:17-19.)
  4. v26 says "God gave them over . . . to sexual immorality".  What does sexual immorality offer to someone who rejects intimacy with God (and others - cf. Genesis 3:7)?

Moral sin a.k.a. wickedness (v26-32)

Religious sin leads to moral sin.  v26-27 describes sin against self (cf. I Corinthians 6:15-16 on using prostitutes) in the form of homosexuality. v28-32 describes sins against others.  Both of these sets of sins are unnatural (v26,28).
  1. v27. From personal experience or from people you know, what are some of the penalties for sexual sin?
  2. Although not everyone behaves as badly as described in v28-32, there is a dynamic that is kicked off when we are in right relationship with God.  From James 4:1-3, what is this dynamic?  How is our relationship with God involved?
  3. This dynamic produces a terrible "cognitive dissonance" between what we know, our sense of what is right, and the way we live.  We have only two choices for resolving this tension: to come back to right relationship with God, or to twist our knowledge of God and ourselves in order to rationalize our moral failures.  The latter is what Paul calls a "depraved mind".

    What are some of the results of a "depraved mind"?
    Are we still responsible for our acts when our mind has been compromised in this way?

Application

  1. God acted to save the Gentiles - us - from the process described in this passage.  Therefore, His "giving us over" to the consequences of our sins is to wake us up, so we will call on him and be saved from this disaster and God's righteous judgment.
    Read verses 16-17.  God knows how lost we are, and he has provided the way to get us out of this hole. The gospel of Jesus is the power of God that both restores our relationship with God and is the process that reverses the downward slide of our miserable rebellion.  The moment we accept Jesus, our sins are completely and permanently forgiven, and God accepts us just as we are for Jesus sake; he gives us a new heart and starts to reform our minds, attitudes and behaviors.
    Stop walking the path which leads to death.  Choose life!
  2. What we believe about God is important to all aspects of our life.  An objective knowledge of God comes from what He has revealed in nature, in the Bible, and preeminently in the person of Jesus Christ (John 14:8-10, Colossians 2:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-3).  Make learning about God part of your daily life.
  3. A personal knowledge that God's ways are "good, pleasing and perfect" requires us to trust Him and obey in faith (Romans 12:1-2). The alternative is trusting in other things, as described in 1:21-22.  Ask God if there is some area in your life in which you need to learn to trust and obey, and ask Him to help you do so.

Wexner Center's fractured architecture: tower and arch windowsPlayful defiance of nature
Wexner Center for the Visual Arts
Photograph courtesy of Peter Eisenman.

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