Unless the Lord restrains his justice with extraordinary mercy, God gives to nations governing officials they deserve. When an evil person becomes inaugurated as our president, we should not then begin to think that God will judge our nation because we have wicked individuals in high government offices. Rather, God’s Word obligates us to acknowledge that wicked officials in the high offices of our land are God’s judgment already.
Yes, if we know God’s Holy Word, we affirm that God will render judgment to everyone, including to officials who have the authority of government at their beck and call. God will judge all, the mighty and the powerless, in keeping with our deeds. However, if we are thinking biblically, we will think God’s thoughts after him as the apostle Paul does in Romans 1:18-32. In this passage, what is the original or primal sin of humanity? It is not same-sex sexual relations as many Evangelicals incorrectly suppose, though female to female and male to male sexual sin does have a prominent role in what Paul has to say. Rather, humanity’s primal sin is idolatry, exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being or birds or animals or reptiles. The primal sin is idolatry, exchanging the truthfulness of God for a lie, by denying the reality of our creatureliness, and worshiping and serving created things rather than the Creator (Romans 1:21-25). The creature spurns the Creator, refusing to glorify God or to give thanks to him, worshiping creation instead of the Creator who is God.
Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 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.
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 (Romans 1:24-28).
Three times Paul emphasizes that God gave them over to their own depravity. We need to observe at least two things concerning these statements. First, God’s handing sinners over to the depravity of their own lusts emphasizes the gravity of the original sin of exchanging God’s glory for the glory of idols, of things created. Second, there is a divine ironic measure for measure punishment. The rebellious and sinful act of humans to spurn the Creator for the creation is an ironic act entailing a reversal by which their craving is for the exact opposite of what it should be. Their exchange consists of getting “an image of a likeness” in place of “glory.” In place of the Immortal One, they choose mortal objects of worship. In place of God, they serve humans, birds, animals, and snakes.
Consequently, God repays them in keeping with their deeds. He hands them over to their own depravity, and for their abandonment of God’s glory, God gives them over to the dishonoring of their own bodies. Because they rebuff the Creator, who is the Divine Other, in favor of creation, which is Creaturely Sameness, God who is Divine Other gives them over to worshiping Creaturely Sameness, perversely featured in God’s turning humans over to their lustful passions, engaging in vile sexual acts with males in males and females on females.
What is the point that I am making? It is simply this. Paul’s focus in Romans 1:24-28 is not upon God’s condemnation for the perversity of same-sex temptations and acts. Rather, Paul’s principal concern is to make it clear that same-sex allure and same-sex sexual acts are the Creator’s bringing forward from the Day of Judgment his visitation of condemnation and of judgment upon his creatures for their idolatry. Female on female and male in male sex acts are the Creator’s wrathful punishment for idolatry. Indeed, in the Last Day, all who engage in same-sex sexual temptation and same-sex sexual acts will assuredly be judged under God’s wrath for their wicked deeds, for what they do is deserving of eternal death (Romans 1:32). However, the message of Romans 1 is not to feature same-sex sexual sins as the most perverse or vile sin that is worthy of God’s impending wrath and of eternal punishment. Nor is the apostle pointing to the divine judgment of the Last Day that awaits evildoers. Rather, the message of Romans 1 is that these despicable sexual acts are God’s imposing of an ironic, parodic, and poignantly fitting measure for measure punishment of the Creator for his creatures’ idolatry. This is a proleptic visitation of God’s wrath of the Day of Judgment ahead of time not only upon those individuals who engage in such vile misconduct but upon the nations of which they are citizens.
What I have just stated warrants some elaboration. By giving humans over to such perverse acts, it is as if the Creator says, “You chose to worship Creaturely Sameness instead of Divine Otherness. Therefore, pursue Creaturely Sameness with lustful abandonment. Indulge your perverse cravings and passions upon one another, male in male and female on female. This perversion of the sex act is my wrath upon you. This is my act of judgment upon you for your idolatry in the present time as a warning that foreshadows my wrathful judgment yet to come in the Last Day. You reject me, your Creator, who is Divine Other as you worship my creation, which is of Creaturely Sameness as you, creatures made in my likeness and after my image. Therefore, I give you over to indulge your pleasures upon Creaturely Sameness as an act of divine wrath.”
This wrath is not simply an act of judgment upon practitioners of same-sex allurement and vileness alone. No, it is the display of God’s wrath upon the whole of human society. We all dwell in a realm where the heavy hand of God’s wrath is manifestly being revealed from heaven (Romans 1:18-32). It is not a throwaway phrase when the Apostle Paul affirms that God is revealing his wrath “from heaven.” Paul purposefully coordinates two affirmations to accent both God’s grace and mercy:
• Grace: God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel.
• Mercy: God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven.
That God’s righteousness and God’s wrath are being revealed concurrently indicates a period of divine mercy. This integrated revealing of God’s righteousness and of God’s wrath assures us that our appalling human plight due to our inborn unrighteousness is both not yet final and a plight from which there is an eternal rescue. The gospel message entails two realities. God who is righteous is displeased with unrighteous humans who suppress the truth in unrighteousness and God is pleased to imbue the gospel with his power for the salvation of everyone who believes. Observe how carefully Paul presents the revelation of God’s righteousness and of God’s wrath to draw attention to God’s abundant mercy. Now is God’s wrath is being revealed in a measured and veiled manner “from heaven,” from a distance as it were. Not yet is the full measure of God’s wrath being poured out upon all the inhabitants of the earth as it will be in the coming Day of Judgment.
What is my concern? If we truly believe the Apostle Paul’s proposition of Romans 1:16-18 that the gospel is God’s power for salvation for everyone who believes, then we rightly believe that the gospel is God’s culture forming and transforming power, a message to be proclaimed within a culture where vast numbers of individuals have abandoned the truthfulness concerning God in exchange for a falsehood. Their denial of reality is manifest in God’s giving them over to the dishonoring of their own bodies in various ways including their rejection of the Creator’s established natural order of sexual relations between a male and a female in pursuit of what is manifestly contrary to nature, females indulging in sexual relations with one another and males abandoning proper relations with females but instead, inflamed with a lustful passion for other males, males in males committing shameless deeds. Because they regard it unworthy to retain God in their knowledge, God has abandoned them to a reprobate mind to do things that are vile.
The Apostle Paul understood how such contemptible behavior becomes virally acceptable throughout a culture. Even though all humans inherently know God’s righteous requirement that all who practice evil are worthy of eternal death, they not only practice what incurs death, but they also approve of others who practice the same despicable things (Romans 1:32). Approval of wicked behavior follows its acceptance. Protection of vile conduct follows its approval. Protection of God-despising conduct leads to persecution and punishment of anyone who courageously speaks the truthfulness of God’s created reality against practitioners of their God-abandoned behavior. The gospel of Jesus Christ requires us to be prepared to endure the spiteful consequences for the truth which the gospel obligates us to speak much like Hans Christian Andersen’s little boy who pointed out the reality that adults were too timid to acknowledge: “The emperor has no clothes.”
Are you willing and ready to be faithful to Christ Jesus by persevering through the cancellations, the hostilities, the persecutions, the embittered raging that will be heaped upon you when you refuse to live by lies but instead speak the truth to people who prefer falsehoods in exchange for the truthfulness with which God, our Creator, imbued his creation?
In times such as this, how shall we pray for our evil governing authorities? This is the question that I plan to address in the next few blog entries which may be posted with less time between them than thus far. Stay tuned!