Romans Chapter One Lesson 20
Review:
The Evidence of God's Wrath 1:24-32
How
do we know that man has turned his back on God; these verses tell us!
***
But know that man cannot reject God and go on without consequences!
- Rem: the category of people in view: the heathen; the pagan;
- they are heathen not because they
have never had light! But because they
have had light and rejected it;
** No
person or society can ever reject truth without returning to paganism;
-
God's response is seen in triplicate in the context; v.24, 26, 28;
"God
gave them over"
paradi,dwmi to hand over; to deliver over; to abandon;
- So when men reject the light given, God allows them to
pursue their desires to their logical conclusion, more sin; eventually becoming
enslaved to sin;
- The active voice, links the wrath of God to the choices
man makes; man
is making choices outside the parameters that God established as what is in
man's best interests; and when man does
this, God has established consequences, i.e. wrath.
-
This "giving of them over" is not something new, Ps. 81:12
- What Paul is relating here in the giving over is from the
Divine perspective
- In Eph
1:24-25
Therefore God gave them over, "in the lusts
of their hearts"
Instead
of seeing the glory of the one who created us in His image being reflected in
their lives, what
Paul says here is that what we see is the result of the sin nature ruling!
- "the lusts" evpiqumi,a is a very strong word; often translated
sinful lusts; it speaks of the lusts/desires of the sin nature; but not just
abstractly;
Note: evpiqumi,a
is something that can be controlled;
later in
and these sinful desires from the sin nature lead to;
- "to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored
among them."
Note: Gal 5:19-20 sequence; sexual to idolatry to
occult;
* The result of self-deification is self-indulgence; and
often in Paul's day even as now, the self-indulgence took a sexual
direction.
"dishonors the body"
- In vs.24-25 the dishonoring of the body is not
homosexuality; that
comes in the next verses that is v.26-27;
not just sexual perversion but sexual inversion.
- idea is that sexual immorality
has a direct impact on the body; and it
is clearly outside God's purpose and intent.
- The context, the thought flow of v.23-25 is that of
idolatry;
Man's suppression
of the truth, led to his futile empty thinking; his mind being darkened, which led to
the ultimate suppression of truth in idolatry;
- In this first section, the sexual immorality, the sexual
perversion in view is the practice, so common in that day, of the practice of
ritual prostitution.
- See the result of the darkening of the mind, the empty
futile speculations;
- that somehow participation with
the temple prostitutes would encourage and promote the gods and goddesses that
they were worshiping to provide or to bless them with increased fertility of
their crops or their herds or whatever,
they were seeking.
*** What they
really were doing was attempting to control their destiny independently of
God.
What
was really happening was that they were plunging themselves deeper into the
consequences of their sin. Being enveloped by their sin nature and its domination of them.
Paul makes the connection between sexual immorality and the
body in 1 Cor 6:13-18
Verse
18 especially deals with the impact on the Body of sexual immorality!
- For the believer
Paul says here, since
your body is a member of Christ, when you engage in sex outside of your
marriage relationship, outside of the divine design, you are creating a
monstrosity, you are joining Christ to that sexually immoral relationship. v.15
- He follows this teaching of vs:15-17
with an emphatic imperative, a cmd in
the present tense; then follows it with an explanation of the uniqueness of the
sin of immorality.
This
cmd says that sexual immorality is clearly not one of those you would find in
the area of freedom; open to personal liberty;
- Point is that there never will be a time or place or the
circumstances when immorality is the right thing to do! EVER!
- 1st
should note that he is not saying that sexual immorality is the worst sin!
What
Paul is saying here in the context is that sexual immorality has a unique
relationship to the body.
Why
it is unlike any other sin?