“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.” Romans 1:28-29
Let’s remember that man’s primary sin is refusing to “acknowledge God”. He refuses to do the obvious because he wants to be his own god. It really is all this simple. The natural course, the right one, is for mankind is to acknowledge his Creator, in whose image he is made, and this acknowledgement, properly experienced, is both worshipful and thankful. In refusing to do so, man tries to become what he can’t be and is at war with his own nature and the world around him. Always. This is the root cause of all of mankind’s problems. Imagine if a tree tried to be an ocean. Imagine a bird trying to be a cat. The chaos of man’s life, personally, socially, and politically, all stems from our collective and conscious rejection of God and crazed insistence upon our own (false) autonomy.
God’s response to this exchanging of the truth for a lie is to “give us over” to the consequences of our actions. A marvelous and stunning mercy is misunderstood here. Even right this moment God is holding back the enormity of the consequences of this great exchange. It is an evil, evil thing to call God a liar and set ourselves up as little gods, pretending that this is our world, for us and by us and yet that’s the reality of our sin. Yet, everyday that blessings rain down upon us, any and all, is another that we partake in the amazing fact of God’s goodness and patience. Nevertheless, the signs of the judgment upon sin are all around too.
When we refuse to come to Him our rebellion has a noticeable downward trajectory. First, we become thankless (Romans 1:21). We don’t normally associate thanklessness with sin but it’s the first and logical consequence of rejecting God. Rationally, we are made to worship Him and give Him thanks for the life we have. Outside of God we become fundamentally dissatisfied to our core. This dissatisfaction has, according to the law of reaping and sowing (Galatians 6:7), severe consequences downstream in our lives.
For instance, unthankful people are ultimately weak minded. Why, because at root their default setting will be self-pity under trial and that always destroys resolve. This pattern grows worse throughout life. They grow incapable of handling frustration and hardship, much like the grumblers and complainers in the wilderness after the Exodus. Watch a person when they don’t get their way and you see their soul. Those that are “gnashing their teeth” at judgment are doing so because of their intense, white-hot hatred of God’s audacity to deny them their will. How dare He! Yes, such people will “fight” – but only against God’s truth and His people. They will not fight against evil because that’s the controlling principle of their heart, not God’s righteousness.
This is why sin always leads to tyranny and oppression. Weak-minded sinners will, in the end, always end up championing the evil in the culture around them. Which evil will it be? It’s like a person with a weakened immune system. Something will get them. Some evil cause or another will take them captive. This is why Christians are always accused of “disturbing the peace” (see Acts, for example). The so-called peace we disturb is the celebration of what ought not to be done.
Understanding this process is key for the Christian because it’s the “flesh” in us! Our battle with sin runs through this field and we must engage it. Christians who keep struggling with the same sin do well to recognize the pattern of emotional/spiritual malaise at the root of their trouble – it’s unthankfulness.
Second, after exchanging the truth about God for a lie we turn to idolatry and begin to worship things rather than the Creator of those things. Why this happens necessarily should be easy to see. Without God, we must have meaning from somewhere and that meaning must be transcendent (outside and higher than us). The idea here is that of self-identity. From what do we derive our identity? Notice how Paul called himself a bond-servant of Christ at the beginning of the letter. A bond-servant in Jewish law was someone who’d been a slave, perhaps due to debt, and then, upon being released on the Jubilee, decided that the master was so good to him that he wanted to stay on.
This required a trip to the tabernacle where a priest would bore a hole in his ear with an awl. Henceforward, he was a slave to his master. As Barnhouse remarked, “Wherever he walked, his ear proclaimed the character of his master….This is the song of Paul in the opening lines of his epistle. ‘I love, I love my Master, I will not go out free.’”
How many today chase this and that thing as if it’s the sole determination of their life? A degree? A job? A championship? A relationship? All of these are fine things only insofar as they’re in the Lord.
As a response to this great exchange, God gives us over to our lusts. Rather than growing higher, more noble, more honorable, we graze down and down, like animals. Sexual sin promises the heavens but ravages the land. Sex is a gift from God…like a fire in the fireplace, warming a Christian home. But like fire, sex must stay in its place because its power is so great. Once outside the hearth, it will consume the home and the inhabitants. The betrayals, broken hearts, shattered homes, diseases, fatherless children…we receive in ourselves the due penalty for our error (Romans 1:27).
And this brings us to “all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness and malice.”
Thus begins the most comprehensive list of human sin found in the Bible. Let’s look at each word briefly.
Unrighteousness is used in Scriptures in a multitude of ways. It can denote injustice by judges, unrighteousness in our hearts and life. Often we note that it manifests itself in a chilling capacity and that is in our desire to inflict our will upon others by any means necessary. It’s for this reason that politics are shot through with deceit and the media suppresses dissent these days since the sinful human desire is to force wrong upon others.
Here’s a quick question: how many people do you think could answer, off the top of their head, what the Bill of Rights says? Not a word-for-word breakdown but a quick encapsulation. How many in the media? What about politicians? When was the last time you heard anyone reference the Bill of Rights in conversation? My point? The Bill of Rights form the express “self-defense arm” of the Constitution so why wouldn’t citizens be fully acquainted with them? Did you know that in every court case where churches challenged shutdown orders from the government over COVID last year, they won? That’s the First Amendment at work.
Well, the reason to keep citizens in the dark over the nature of self-defense is because tyranny and unrighteousness are rising.
The word evil as used here should alert us to its source, which is the Devil (Ephesians 6:12). As always, those that are against God will invariably support the works of Satan. We cannot serve two masters.
Why covetousness? We tend to think it’s no big deal and this only shows how far we’ve fallen. Greed leads us to defraud others. Liddell and Scott say, “To take advantage of another’s simpleness, to overreach, defraud.” In Colossians 3:5 we learn that covetousness is idolatry. Why? Because it goes back to the issue of self-worship. The entire American system is now based upon greed. The desire for more and more – both money and power – is ubiquitous throughout the land. Godliness with contentment is seen as oddball and laws are constantly manipulated, just like our battered currency, so that we can have something for nothing.
Quick check. Are you guilty of covetousness and false worship in America today? Ask yourself this basic question: who is ultimate provider of your wealth and future security? When you think of financial security, medical care, education and all that, what do you think of? If it’s government and not the Lord, there’s a high danger that the false doctrines of humanism (Marxism) have strangled true faith in your soul. You can’t truly worship a God you don’t trust. Repent.
Finally, we have maliciousness. Basically, this means ill will and a desire to cause injury to others. This is, again, a staple of modern American life. Here’s another way to check our hearts.
If people disagree with you, can they be left alone or do you stir in your heart against them? Do you get no rest until others “do the right thing” as you define it? Malicious people are not evil all the time. Please note that. They are quite “polite” insofar as they need to be. What they desire more than anything is to gain control over others “by hook or by crook” – including the circumvention of the law. This is why, incidentally, the Bill of Rights is anathema to malicious people. They simply abhor freedom because deep down they hate God and the liberty He gives all. The Bill of Rights came only from a Christian people who knew this list!
In all, as we see in this comprehensive list of personal evil, when we turn against God and act contrary to nature, we will deeply resent any and all limits. When we can’t get what we want, because of the laws of nature, because of the refusal of others, or any other obstacle, we’ll respond with anger, malice and evil. Our vertical war against God will absolutely break out horizontally with our neighbor because “little” gods must and will clash.
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