ROMANS ROAD
to RIGHTEOUSNESS |
Romans
1:18-3:20
|
Romans
3:21-5:21 |
Romans
6:1-8:39 |
Romans
9:1-11:36 |
Romans
12:1-16:27 |
|
SIN
|
SALVATION
|
SANCTIFICATION |
SOVEREIGNTY |
SERVICE |
NEED
FOR
SALVATION |
WAY
OF
SALVATION |
LIFE
OF
SALVATION |
SCOPE
OF
SALVATION |
SERVICE
OF
SALVATION |
God's Holiness
In
Condemning
Sin |
God's Grace
In
Justifying
Sinners |
God's Power
In
Sanctifying
Believers |
God's Sovereignty
In
Saving
Jew and Gentile |
Gods Glory
The
Object of
Service |
Deadliness
of Sin |
Design
of Grace |
Demonstration of
Salvation |
|
Power Given
|
Promises Fulfilled |
Paths Pursued |
Righteousness
Needed |
Righteousness
Credited |
Righteousness
Demonstrated |
Righteousness
Restored to Israel |
Righteousness
Applied |
God's Righteousness
IN LAW |
God's Righteousness
IMPUTED |
God's Righteousness
OBEYED |
God's Righteousness
IN ELECTION |
God's Righteousness
DISPLAYED |
|
Slaves to Sin |
Slaves to God |
Slaves Serving God |
|
Doctrine |
Duty |
|
Life by Faith |
Service by Faith |
|
Modified from Irving
L. Jensen's excellent work "Jensen's
Survey of the NT" |
THEREFORE GOD
GAVE THEM OVER: Dio paredoken (3SAAI) autous o theos: (Judges 10:13;
2Chr 15:2;
24:20;
Ps 81:11,12;
Hos 4:17,18;
Mt 15:14;
Acts 7:42;
14:16;
17:29,30;
Eph 4:18;
2Th 2:10-12)
(See also Torrey's Topic Forsaking
God) (Barclay God abandoned them)
"Therefore" (1352)
(dio) means for which, wherefore, therefore and is a
term of conclusion, which in the
present context explains that because they gave God up and exchanged His
glory for a dumb idol, God gave them up. Note the close connection
between idolatry (verse 23) and immorality (verse 24).
Listen to a similar refrain from
Psalm 81
10 I, the LORD, am your God, Who
brought you up from the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide and I will
fill it.
11 But My people did not listen to My voice; And Israel did not obey Me.
12 "So I gave them (Israel) over to the stubbornness of their
heart, to walk in their own devices.
13 "Oh that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My
ways!
14 "I would quickly subdue their enemies, And turn My hand against their
adversaries.
Psalm 115
records the folly of idolatry. Observe the dramatic contrasts between the living
God and those things that are no gods at all...
1 Not to
us, O LORD, not to us,
But to Your name give glory
Because of Your lovingkindness,
because of Your truth.
2 Why should the nations say,
"Where, now, is their God?"
3 But our God is in the heavens;
He does whatever He pleases.
4 Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of man's hands.
5 They have mouths, but they cannot speak;
They have eyes, but they cannot see;
6 They have ears, but they cannot hear;
They have noses, but they cannot smell;
7 They have hands, but they cannot feel;
They have feet, but they cannot walk;
They cannot make a sound with their throat.
8 Those who make them will become like them,
Everyone who trusts in them.
Luke records a similar
pattern...
"God turned away and delivered
(paradidomi)
them (Israel) up to serve the host of heaven" (Acts
7:42)
"And in the generations gone by He
permitted all the nations to go their own ways" (Acts
14:16)
As Godet writes mankind...
"sinned by degrading God, wherefore
also God degraded them." (Godet, F: The Epistle of St Paul to the
Romans)
"Gave...over" (3860)
(paradidomi
from para = beside + didomi = to give so
literally to give beside) a very strong Greek verb meaning to hand
someone over to the power and authority of another. It is that act of
God whereby He hands over the entire human race for judgment because of
their sins.
God delivered us over to the power of our own lusts to
impurity so that we might became "prisoners" that had to obey our own
lusts. God "abandoning" of men on one hand reflects His righteous wrath
in allowing them to follow their own desires but on the other hand so
that they will see what life is like without God! In that sense, there
is a redemptive purpose that stands behind the wrath of God. By letting
mankind go its own way, God is not only punishing them. He is also
allowing them to see the emptiness of life without Him. And what an
awful picture this presents.
Moule writes that...
It is a dire thought; but the inmost
conscience, once awake, affirms the righteousness of the thing. From one
point of view it is just the working out of a natural process, in which
sin is at once exposed and punished by its proper results, without the
slightest injection, so to speak, of any force beyond its own terrible
gravitation towards the sinner’s misery. But from another point it is
the personally allotted, and personally inflicted, retribution of Him
who hates iniquity with the antagonism of infinite Personality. He has
so constituted natural process that wrong gravitates to wretchedness;
and He is in that process, and above it, always and forever.
(Moule, C. G. Handley: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans)
Explaining the idea of "God
gave them over" Godet writes that...
The word...does not signify that God
impelled them to evil, to punish the evil which they had already
committed. The holiness of God is opposed to such a sense, and to give
over is not to impel. On the other hand, it is impossible to stop short
at the idea of a simple permission: “God let them give themselves over
to evil.” God was not purely passive in the terrible development of
Gentile corruption. Wherein did His action consist? He positively
withdrew His hand; He ceased to hold the boat as it was dragged by the
current of the river. This is the meaning of the term used by the
apostle, Acts 14:16: “He suffered the Gentiles to walk in their own
ways,” by not doing for them what He never ceased to do for His own
people. It is not a case of simple abstention, it is the positive
withdrawal of a force. Such also is the meaning of the saying, Gen. 6:3:
“My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” As Meyer says: “The law of
history, in virtue of which the forsaking of God is followed among men
by a parallel growth of immorality, is not a purely natural order of
things; the power of God is active in the execution of this law.” If it
is asked how such a mode of action harmonizes with the moral perfection
of God, the answer undoubtedly is, that when man has reached a certain
degree of corruption, he can only be cured by the very excess of his own
corruption; it is the only means left of producing what all preceding
appeals and punishments failed to effect, the salutary action of
repentance. So it is that at a given moment the father of the prodigal
son lets him go, giving him even his share of goods. The monstrous and
unnatural character of the excesses about to be described confirms this
view. (Godet, F: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans)
Pritchard adds
"It is only when a
man comes to the end of himself that he is ready to think about Jesus
Christ. But when that moment of emptiness comes, when he finally faces
the "God-shaped vacuum" inside, when he discovers that disobedience only
leads to pain, when he reaps the bitter harvest of his own sin, then and
only then has he become a candidate for the grace of God! Unfortunately,
some people never figure it out in time. They die without realizing the
folly of their own behavior. But others come to the end and finally,
after many mistakes, they begin to look up. When they do, they find that
God is there waiting for them."
Interestingly
paradidomi
was a judicial term used for handing over a prisoner to his sentence!
When men forsake the one true God, He will abandon them (Jud 10:13;
2Ch 15:2;
24:20;
Ps 81:11-12).
He accomplishes this by removing His restraint and allowing their innate
totally depraved sin nature to run its inevitable course of degradation
& destruction. The result is that man so abandoned the truth that he became like a beast in his thinking and in his
living.
"When men lose God, they always lose themselves."
It’s as if God has said,
"All right. If you want to turn away from
me, I’ll let you go. I won’t try to stop you. But you’ll have to face
the consequences of your own actions."
Hosea 4:17
expresses the judgmental aspects of God "giving us up," leaving us to
our own sin:
"Ephraim
is
joined to
idols;
Let him
alone"
We err when we think that it is God’s mercy or kindness that allows man
to continue in sin; it is actually His wrath which allows us to go on
destroying ourselves with sin.
ILLUSTRATION: Dress
up a pig, clean him up for the county fair, but the moment you "give him
up" and let him go, he will go right back to the mud hole. As to its
nature the pig loves uncleanness. Men love their sin as Jesus explained
in John 3 declaring that...
"This
is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved
the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil (their deeds speak of what they love).
For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the
Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed
(shown to be wrong, rebuked,
corrected - they don't want to be corrected)." (John
3:19-20)
When men choose an evil manner of life, they also choose the
consequences such a manner of life brings.
As
A T Robertson says
"These
people had already willfully deserted God Who merely left them to
their own self-determination & self-destruction, part of the price of
man’s moral freedom. Paul refers to this stage and state of man in
Acts17:30 by “overlooked”
(huperidon).
The withdrawal of God’s restraint sent men deeper down. Three times Paul
uses paredoken (the parsed form of
paradidomi)
here (v24, 26, 28), not three stages in the giving over, but a
repetition of the same withdrawal. The words sound to us like clods on
the coffin as God leaves men to work their own wicked will."
Notice the progression: First men reject the truth about God, then they
turn away from God, then they turn to immorality. And the shocking truth
is that this goes on all the time. Every baby born into this world comes
in with a disposition that turns him away from the truth. Each man, each
woman, the educated and the illiterate alike, all by nature suppress the
truth about God. Left to our own devices, we will always turn to
wickedness. That’s how you can have mass murderers who used to attend
Sunday School and prostitutes who once sang in the church choir.
Vine
makes a sad but true observation regarding so called "civilized men" (in
contrast to the "heathen") --
"Civilization provides no remedy for, or safeguard against,
the evil. The more civilized men became, the more vicious became their
idolatry. (Parenthetically, the civilized
Greeks & Romans had a veritable plethora of "gods") The
knowledge of God is the ONLY means of leading man to
purity of heart.
The
sanctity of the body is implied in the teaching of this verse."
Wuest:
"Since
men chose to give up God and worship the creature, God could do nothing
but give men into the control of the sinful things they preferred to
God. In other words, God would not violate man’s will and force him to
do something he did not want to do. When men persisted in following
their totally depraved natures, God allowed them free rein. The natural
result was immorality of the vilest kind. Alford, says of God’s act of
delivering mankind over into the control of utter human depravity, “not
merely permissive, but judicial, God delivered them over. As sin
begets sin, and darkness of mind, deeper darkness, grace gives place to
judgment, and the divine wrath hardens men, and hurries them on to more
fearful degrees of depravity.” God delivered man to uncleanness."
Vine notes that
"The same word (paradidomi) is used in reference to the death of Christ at
Ro4:25 and at
Romans 8:32 (see also
Romans 6:17). In this passage the
reference is to the divine retribution following upon the sin of
exchanging God for an idol. To abandon God is to open a way for complete
moral degradation. This retributive dealing is not the outcome of mere
despotism on the part of God; for the acknowledgment and worship of the
Creator are the means of human happiness. Atheism and
polytheism tend inevitably to moral disease. Our moral nature is
governed by laws which God has Himself put therein as part of our very
constitution. God works in and by these laws in human experience. In
acting against them man sins against God as his Creator and sins against
himself as the creature. He therefore lays himself open to the divine
retribution expressed in this verse. The process described is not
that of mere natural law, it is designed by God and the issue is
reached under His control. It must be remembered that in the solemn
description given in this passage, of the consequences of idolatry, the
apostle is not presenting what is necessarily an irretrievable
condition, for the gospel proves to be the power of God unto salvation
even from such degradation. Indeed the whole description is a dark
background to the revelation of the grace of God in and through the
gospel."
Ray Pritchard
"There are some
messages that pastors would rather not preach. This sermon definitely
falls into that category....Some years ago Pastor Walter Luthi of Berne,
Switzerland, was preaching to his congregation on Romans 1:24-32. He
began his message this way: "In the words that we have just read we are
told the whole truth about our condition. There may well be people among
us who cannot bear to hear the truth, and would like to creep quietly
away out of the church. Let them do so if they wish." There is much
justification for Pastor Luthi's words, for these verses by the Apostle
Paul are exceedingly difficult to contemplate. There is not a ray of
light among them. All is dark, somber, black as midnight, filled with
the roll of thunder and the sharp, jagged flash of lightning. This
passage has for its theme the judgment of God upon a world gone mad with
sin. When we read it, we come face to face with "our true condition."
Many of us would rather not think about that. I cannot blame those who
would prefer to be somewhere else this morning. Dr. Donald Grey
Barnhouse called this the most terrible passage in all the Bible."
IN THE LUSTS
OF THEIR HEARTS TO IMPURITY:
en
tais epithumiais ton kardion auton
eis
akatharsian:
Note
"in"
gives the picture of their being literally entrapped IN their
lusts, virtually immersed IN them. Godet comparing the
preposition "in" (en) and the subsequent preposition (eis) writes
that...
The two prepositions,
en and
eis differ from one another as the current which bears the
bark along, once it has been detached from the shore, differs
from the abyss into which it is about to be precipitated. Lusts
exist in the heart; God abandons (the heart) to their power, and then
begins that fall which must end in the most degrading impurities.
(Godet, F: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans)
Lusts (1939)
(epithumia from the verb epithumeo = to set one's heart
upon in turn from epi = upon, toward or used to intensify meaning
of following word + thumos = passion) (Click
in depth word study) describes an internal drive
or passion directed at an object (epi = toward). It describes that inner
passion which greatly desires or longs to do or have something. Although
epithumia can occasionally describe a good drive, most N.T. uses
describe depraved cravings and inner vile unrestrained desires emanating
from our fallen Sin nature inherited from Adam. This word describes to a
degree an out-of-control craving. The result of these inner
cravings is to drive men to open excesses. Compare epithumia to the even
more intense craving described in the word orexis (lust) in (Romans
1:27).
Hearts (2588)
(kardia) (Click
for in depth word study) does
not refer to the physical organ but is always used figuratively in
Scripture to refer to the seat and center of human life. The heart is
the center of the personality, and it controls the intellect, emotions,
and will. No outward obedience is of the slightest value unless the
heart turns to God. While kardia does represent the inner person,
the seat of motives and attitudes, the center of personality, in
Scripture it represents much more than emotion, feelings. It also
includes the thinking process and particularly the will.
Jeremiah said "The heart is more deceitful than all else
and is desperately sick" (Jeremiah
17:9) And thus the heart of man's problem is
our unregenerate
heart. The "lusts of their hearts" are those wicked desires that
originate from their evil hearts or which their hearts produced.
MacArthur
commenting on kardia writes that...
"While we often relate heart
to the emotions (e.g., “He has a broken heart”), the Bible relates it
primarily to the intellect (e.g., “Out of the heart come evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness,
slanders,”
Matt 15:19). That’s why you must “watch
over your heart with all diligence” (Proverbs
4:23). In a secondary way, however, heart relates to
the will and emotions because they are influenced by the intellect. If
you are committed to something, it will affect your will, which in turn
will affect your emotions." (Drawing Near. Crossway Books) MacArthur
adds that "In most modern cultures, the heart is thought of as
the seat of emotions and feelings. But most ancients—Hebrews, Greeks,
and many others—considered the heart to be the center of
knowledge, understanding, thinking, and wisdom. The New Testament also
uses it in that way. The heart was considered to be the seat of
the mind and will, and it could be taught what the brain could never
know. Emotions and feelings were associated with the intestines, or
bowels." (Ephesians. Page 44. Chicago: Moody Press)
Impurity (167)
(akatharsia from a = without +
kathaíro = cleanse <> from katharos = pure, clean,
without stain or spot) (Click
for in depth word study) is
a broad term referring to moral uncleanness in thought, word, and deed.
It means a state of moral impurity, especially
sexual sin, immorality, filthiness, state of moral impurity.
The term akatharsia refers to
filth or refuse and thus describes a filthiness of heart and mind that makes
the person defiled. The unclean person sees dirt in everything.
The word akatharsia
suggests especially that it defiles its participants, making them
unusable for sacred purposes. While akatharsia includes sexual
sin, it comes from a wider
Septuagint (LXX) usage where “unclean” could refer to anything that made a person
unfit to go to the temple and appear before God.
In a medical sense Hippocrates
used akatharsia to describe an infected, oozing wound with pus
and crusty impurities that gather around the sore or wound. What is
“impure” is filthy and repulsive, especially to God. Akatharsia
was a general term often used of decaying matter, like the contents of a
grave (see
Mt23:27
cf
Nu19:13)
In short akatharsia describes any excessive behavior or lack of
restraint and speaks more of an internal disposition. An immoral
filthiness on the inside whereas the lawless acts of ''immorality'' are
on the outside.
Paul uses akatharsia in his
description of the Gentiles in his letter to the Ephesians writing that
the saints were to...
"...walk (speaks of one's lifestyle
or conduct) no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility
(emptiness, vanity) of their mind, being darkened in their understanding
(cf "futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was
darkened." in Ro 1:21), excluded (entirely alienated or estranged) from
the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of
the hardness (porosis comes from poros = stone harder than marble and
came to mean loss of all power of sensation; having become so hardened
that there was no longer power to feel at all which always the terror of
sin) of their heart; and they, having become callous (past feeling,
unable to feel pain or grief), have given themselves over (paradidomi -
same verb Paul uses of God's giving over) to sensuality (uninhibited
sexual indulgence without shame and w/o concern for what others think),
for the practice of every kind of impurity (akatharsia )
with greediness." (see exposition of
Ephesians 4:17-19)
Akatharsia in the present context speaks of sexual
immorality, which begins in the mind that rejects the Truth, then taking root in the
heart and finally working itself out in the various effects that bring shame
to the body (bodies dishonored). And we must not be deceived -
Impurity or uncleanness always generates more uncleanness.
What is the "danger" of being given over in the the
lusts of one's
heart? Jesus explained
that
"out
of the
heart
come (present
tense = continually)
evil
thoughts,
murders,
adulteries,
fornications,
thefts,
false
witness,
slanders.
These are the things
which
defile the
man..."
(see also
Ge6:5;
8:21;
Pr4:23;
6:14;
22:15;Jer17:9;
Mk7:21-23;
Ro3:10-19;
7:18;
8:7,8;
Gal5:19-21;
Ep2:1-3;
Titu3:2-6)
Moule writes that...
There is a dark sequence in the logic
of facts, between unw