Musing 175

One of the things that has long stuck with me in Romans was Paul’s concluding remarks -

“Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” (Romans 1:32)

If nothing else, our day is one that believes love means unconditional affirmation, regardless of what destructiveness that affirmation entails. Even today, there is what feels like an increase of people who encourage cheating on their spouses in order “to get what you deserve”.

Such sentiments betray how far we in society have fallen. Paul is so right that creation loudly proclaims God’s glory and power and that the so called atheism is but man’s suppression of that truth in unrighteousness.

At the root of that is man setting himself in God’s place. Man thinks he has the right to decide right and wrong, and part of that foolishness is the abandonment of the Creator in favor of the creation.

Looking at our world, we see the consequences - broken families, constant violence, shattered trusts, misanthropy even from professing Christians.

Yet knowing all this - knowing that the very sins we know deserve death (even just for adultery, how often do we see even modern man evoke deep hatred for adulterers that echoes the biblical hatred), instead of calling for repentance, we . . . approve of the people who are malicious. We approve of slanderers. We approve of mercilessness. By our actions we approve of every sin that sent Jesus to the cross.

And yet, this bridge isn’t used to continue calling out the gentiles or humanity at large, but the Jews. The people who, up until the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and march of the church into the wider world, had been entrusted with the oracles of God. Because the Jews not only had natural revelation to tell them the obvious things, they had special revelation.

For us Christians today - we now occupy the position of the Jews in many ways. When we go out into an America that is often post-Christian, it is a world that is often so biblically illiterate it might as well be considered pre-Christian. And so when we go out, do we practice the very evils of the world that we condemn?

What excuses to we use to justify maliciousness or slander? What do we hide behind to make ourselves feel good about being ruthless?

At least personally, I can call out several such excuses - perhaps we participate in gossip and slander in the name of “just knowing what’s going on”, or we disguise our maliciousness and ruthlessness with a “well, it’s justly earned”, forgetting that we ourselves would, in and of ourselves, be owed nothing but eternal damnation for our sin.

As we meditate on Romans 1:32 and the list of sins that Paul called out, let us not be content with pat answers or justifications that we give ourselves and instead move from giving approval to those who engage in whatever pet sins we keep close to recognizing that they are justly condemened outside of Christ and instead seek to bring death to those sins through bringing those people to Christ.