The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 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, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 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. Romans 1:18-32
Verse 18 talks about Godlessness and Wickedness which seems to be two sides of the depravity coin. As you flip it and it comes up Godlessness, that points to the vertical relationship of mankind. Mankind deep down knows there is a God who created this vast ordered world which couldn't have possibly gotten here by chance, but if we acknowledge that fact we know we are under the authority of that God - He is greater than me - I am in debt to Him - and we don't want that. Therefore we suppress that fact and live like we are God and live without a God or in other words "Godless". I guess you could flip the word and say we serve a "lesser God" - ourselves. As worshipping creatures, Paul says that just because you aren't worshipping God, you are still worshipping something and that something is a lesser god and totally incapable of running your life. No wonder there is so much anxiety and fear of the future. God has let people be their own Gods. If He didn't want people to have free will to choose Him He wouldn't have put the tree in the garden. He is in effect saying, "You be your own God. See how that works for you. Hopefully it won't be too late for you to see that you can't do it and you will worship me the only One worthy of worship when you reap the consequences of self worship." It reminds me of that passage in 1Corinthians 5 where the adulterer is excommunicated (turned over to Satan) in hopes that once they have experienced the full destruction of sin, like the prodigal son, they will come back broken and be restored. That's what the passage means by God has" turned them over."
If you flip the depravity coin again, this time it lands on "wickedness". If you pretend like there is no God and live like you are God, it will effect your horizontal relationships. Like two cars playing "chicken", when two "gods" are on a collision path, which one is going to defer? Neither. That's why there is so much hate, fighting, division, racism, back stabbing, gossipping, greed, poverty, etc., it is because we want what is best for ourselves. Even things like sex are affected by being our own God. Sex is treated casually to meet our biological needs not as it was meant as a total vulnerability and oneness with another person in love. If love is considering others as more important than ourselves, in a world where I am my own God, how can there even be such a thing as love? Could homosexuality even be a manifestation of this that we are so in love with ourselves that we want to have sex with our mirror image? If there is no God and evolution is true, it is survival of the fittest, yet humanity argues for sacrifice, helping the oppressed, etc. but if there is no God that doesn't make sense. It's like the scientist arguing at a debate that there is no such thing as Oxygen while using Oxygen as he breathes and talks to argue that it doesn't exist.
Paul in Romans has discussed the gospel or the good news and unfortunately the good news can't be appreciated without the bad news and Romans 1B is the bad news. The good news is that as God, like the prodigal's Father, lets his child run off into the two sided coin of depravity, He is longing for mankind to come to their senses and in humility come to the Father who is waiting with open arms to receive them back after they have realized that worshipping anything other than the true God doesn't work.
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