AND JUST AS THEY DID NOT SEE FIT TO ACKNOWLEDGE GOD ANY LONGER: Kai kathos ouk edokimasan (3PAAI) ton theon echein (PAN) en epignosei:(18,21; Job 21:14,15; Pr 1:7,22,29; 5:12,13; 17:16; Jer 4:22; 9:6; Ho 4:6; Acts 17:23,32; Ro 8:7,8; 1Cor 15:34; 2Cor 4:4-6; 10:5; 2Th 1:8; 2:10-12; 2Pe 3:5) (Jeremiah 6:30; 2 Corinthians 13:5-7; 2 Timothy 3:8; Titus 1:16)

"And so, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or approve of Him or consider Him worth the knowing" (Amplified)

"And, according as they did not approve of having God in knowledge" (Literal)

"And even as after putting God to the test for the purpose of approving Him should He meet their specifications, and finding that He did not" (Wuest)

Just as (2531) (kathos) means in accordance with a degree as specified by the context or in proportion as. Godet explains that this "indicates anew the exact correlation between this unrighteousness and the punishment about to be described."

Here for the third and last time our attention is focused on the correlation between man’s rejection of God and God’s rejection of man.

Not (3756) (ou, ouk)  indicates absolute negation of whatever it modifies, in this case the verb dokimazo. They absolutely did not approve of God after testing Him to see if He was genuine! How absurd!

See fit (1381) (dokimazo from dokimos = tested, proved or approved, tried as metals by fire and thus purified from dechomai = to accept, receive)) (Click for in depth study of dokimazo) means to assay, to test, to prove, to put to the test, to make a trial of, to verify, to discern to approve. Dokimazo involves not only testing but determining the genuineness or value of an event or object. That which has been tested is demonstrated to be genuine and trustworthy.

Hodge writes that...

 The heathen did not think it worth the trouble to retain the knowledge of God. They considered religion to be useless and supposed they could live without God. (Hodge, C. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 1835)

And so fallen mankind rejected God after testing just as one would reject worthless coins after testing. They rejected the only One Who is Worthy as ''worthless''! When you are deceived and depraved you will call 'white, black', good, evil and evil good. Woe to those whose minds are so depraved.

As Isaiah said

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"  (Isaiah 5:20).

Cranfield says that such a mind is

“so debilitated and corrupted as to be a quite untrustworthy guide in moral decision.”

"Knowledge" (1922) (epignosis) (Click in depth study of epignosis) refers to a strengthened form of "gnosis" and conveys the thought of a more full, larger and thorough knowledge. It also conveys the idea of a more intimate and personal relationship than the simple term gnosis. Epignosis then is clear and exact knowledge and is the type of knowledge which powerfully influences the form of one's religious life. This is the character of knowledge they refused to "hold" or grasp after testing God and finding He did not pass their test or meet with their approval.

Hodge comments that

"...the phrase to retain the knowledge is stronger than simply “to know.” The text means “to retain in accurate or practical knowledge.” It was the practical recognition of the only true God, whose eternal power and Godhead are revealed in his works, that men were constantly unwilling to make." (Hodge, C. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 1835)

Haldane renders it that...

"The heathens are thus said to have known God, but, knowing Him, they did not wish to retain that knowledge. This is a crime in the sight of God which subjects men to the most awful judgments of His justice; for it is on this account that the Apostle adds, that God also gave them up to a reprobate mind.  This pointedly refers to the word applied to them, as not approving the retaining of the knowledge of God. It denotes a mind judicially blinded, so as not to discern the difference between things distinguished even by the light of nature. Thus the dark eclipse of their understanding concerning Divine things, which they had despised and rejected, had been followed by another general eclipse respecting things human, to which they had applied themselves, and in this consisted the proportion which God observed in their punishment. They did not act according to right reason and judgment towards God,—this is their crime; they did not act according to it among themselves in society,—this was the effect of the abandonment of God, and became their punishment. This passage clearly shows that all that remains of moral uprightness among men is from God, who restrains and sets bounds to the force of their perversity." (Haldane, R An Exposition of Romans)

The man who turns from the truth will be allowed to have his way, will fall deeper and deeper into error, and will reap all the evil consequences of loving darkness rather than light. Those who hate the truth are "given over" to a reprobate mind. Their reprobate minds were tested and found wanting and thus rejected by God.

The basic reason for all evolutionary religion, from atheism and humanism to ancient Babylonian paganism to modern New Age pantheism is that men and women did not like to believe in the God of creation. They are forced then to find some evolutionary explanation for the world with which they could be more comfortable to explain so wondrous a Creation.

Vine writes that...

The subject of the effects of rejecting the divine revelation is further developed. The refusal (adokimazo, literally, signifies “not to approve of a thing”) was not through indifference, but was a self-willed choice after a definite consideration of the circumstances. Men preferred sin to the knowledge of God held out to them by means of both the physical universe and their own natural constitution.

GOD GAVE THEM OVER: paredoken (3SAAI) autous o theos: (Ge6:3, Jdg2:14, 13:1)

"Gave...over" (3860) (paradidomi from para = beside + didomi = to give so literally to give beside) is 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 gave them over" is the third of three occurrences of paradidomi in Romans 1. The restraint of God that might have kept people living in pure relationships with each other was removed. This phrase "God gave them over" should put the fear of the Lord into the heart and mind of every thinking person. We may even be so deceived that we think we are in control but sin deceives and when we think we are not in the grips or power of sin we are completely deceived.

Frederick Godet explains it this way...

"To retain God as an object of distinct knowledge (the literal sense of Paul's words), is to keep alive within the mind the view of that holy Being, so that His will shall give law to our whole conduct. This is what the Gentiles refused to do. Ceasing to contemplate God and His will, they were given over to all unrighteousness." (Godet, F: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans)

William Newell observes that...

Here we have for the third time the judicial utterance, God gave them over. This time it is to a settled state, a reprobate mind. There is such a solemn irony in the manner of speech in the Greek, that it should be brought out as well as the English will allow.

Alford translates it:

"Because they reprobated the knowledge of God, God gave them over to a reprobate mind."

Conybeare renders it:

"As they thought fit to cast out the knowledge of God, God gave them over to an outcast mind."

We might render it:

To a mind disapproved of God, since they did not approve knowing God.

And given over to do what? To live lives, think thoughts, be such creatures, as are not befitting the universe of the blessed God; and most particularly not befitting man, who was created in God's image. (Newell. Romans Verse by Verse).

God's response to this worldwide "disloyalty and treason" is not, first, to send us to hell, but to see that we sink into the swamp of our own making.

Here we have the third divine "delivery" -- "God gave them over" or "God gave them up". In the Greek there is actually a word play (pun) which in English might be brought out as follows: "They reprobated the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a reprobate mind" or "They cast out the knowledge of God, so God gave them up to a cast-out mind!" They abandoned the knowledge of God and so God abandoned them. This is a terrible judgment: to give men up so that they follow the impulses of their own corrupt minds, and so that they follow the desires of their own depraved hearts! "So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels" (Psalm 81:12). (Middletown Bible Church)

John Piper notes that...

Paul's teaching about why a society degenerates into unrestrained, debauched, destructive evil is unlike any analysis you would read today.

One of the reasons for this is that when a society is sinking into moral decay, one of the traits of that decay is the inability to see what is happening. The social mind becomes so defective in the moral decadence that it doesn't have the categories or the framework to recognize evil for what it really is. We do live in such a day. The inability to render sound moral judgments is evident almost wherever you look. Which makes this passage of Scripture one of the most relevant and needed texts in all the Bible for our day - precisely because it seems so foreign. Today, if something doesn't seem spiritually or morally foreign, it is probably part of the blind and decadent atmosphere we breathe, and therefore of no real use to us, no matter how good it makes us feel. What we need is a word from outside our defective world and our depraved thinking. We need a word from God. And we may certainly expect such a word to be very strange, because we have become strangers to the reality of God in a very self-absorbed age.

Paul is saying that the root problem is that we don't like having God in our knowledge...That is the fundamental problem in the world. That is the essence of the human condition. We don't want God. We want self determination and self-exaltation. That was the first sin in the Garden. And that is the root of all evil today. We do not want to know God or to have Him in our lives.

The second step of God's analysis is that God, in an act of judgment (recall the revealing of "wrath" in v18) withdraws His common restraints on our rebellion and gives us over to sink in the swamp we have chosen. This is what you will not hear in any social analysis today.

So what's the point of listing all these sins? The point, I think, is to give us enough examples to show that virtually every form of evil has to do with God and comes from failing to know Him and approve Him and love Him above all things. In other words, he gives us a sweeping array of evils to waken us to the fact that the ruin of any area of life is owing to the abandonment of God.

(In Romans 1:28) they did not want God in their knowledge, therefore...and then he gives his list of evils. In other words: the point of the list is to connect God with every sin in the world. And we've seen that the connection is twofold: every sin is rooted in our preferring something else to God; and every sin gets worse as God takes away his restraints and gives us up to sink in the swamp we have chosen. If America has the highest murder rate in the western world, it has to do with God. If our executives are greedy, it has to do with God. If our politicians are deceitful, it has to do with God. If we gossip about each other behind the back, it has to do with God. If our talk show hosts are insolent and boastful, it has to do with God. If our children are disobedient to parents, it has to do with God. If we are untrustworthy and don't keep our marriage vows, it has to do with God. If we are blind to obvious wrongs and are unloving and unmerciful, it has to do with God. That's the point of this list.

Wherever we are sinking in sin, it is because we have jumped off the rock of the glory of God. The key verse for the reversal of God's wrath against us is Ro1:17. The key verse for the reversal of God's handing us over to a depraved mind is Ro6:17.

"Thanks be to God that, though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were handed over [same word as Ro1:28]."

This is the exact reversal of the hand-over in Ro1:28. Here it is to a form of teaching that is true and holy, not false and dirty. And notice that it is God who does it. "Thanks be to God," Paul says, that you became obedient to this teaching. God gives us over to truth and righteousness as much as he once gave us over to sin. the key verse for reversing the defectiveness of our minds is Ro12:2.

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."

When God has given us his righteousness by faith in Jesus, and when he has handed us over to a new teaching of truth and begun to make us obedient to it, then little by little we are transformed in the renewing of our minds and the long list of sins in Ro1:29-31 becomes shorter and weaker to the glory of God.

In an illustration from Our Daily Bread of someone who did not not acknowledge God any longer, we read the story of...

Aaron Burr, the third Vice President of the United States, was reared in a godly home and admonished to accept Christ by his grandfather Jonathan Edwards. But he refused to listen. Instead, he declared that he wanted nothing to do with God and said he wished the Lord would leave him alone. He did achieve a measure of political success in spite of repeated disappointments. But he was also involved in continuous strife, and when he was 48 years old, he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He lived for 32 more years, but through all this time he was unhappy and unproductive. It was during this sad chapter in his life that he declared to a group of friends;

“Sixty years ago I told God that if He would let me alone, I would let Him alone, and God has not bothered about me since.”

Aaron Burr got what he wanted. Woe! People who want nothing to do with God make themselves candidates for His ultimate judgment. They spend their days alienated from Him, and will spend eternity banished from God's presence unless they repent while they still have breathe to do so.

TO A DEPRAVED (an unqualified, worthless, rejected, failing the test) MIND: eis adokimon noun, (Je6:30; 2Co13:5-7; 2Ti3:8; Titus 1:16)

"God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a mind void of discernment' (Godet)

"Mind" (3563) (nous) is the mind as the organ of mental perception and apprehension. It is the seat of understanding and represents the thinking faculty. Believers have a new mind "the mind (nous) of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16) which can be renewed as we believers chose not to be conformed to this world's way of thinking but to be radically transformed (see exposition of Romans 12:2). The mind (nous) Paul is describing in this verse is what he refers to elsewhere as the "fleshly mind" or as Marvin Vincent phrases it "the intellectual faculty in its moral aspects as determined by the fleshly, sinful nature" (Click exposition of Colossians 2:18)

"Depraved" (96) (adokimos) is used 8 times (Romans; 1 Corinthians; 2 Corinthians 3x ; 2 Timothy; Titus; Hebrews)

Adokimos refers to that which is rejected after examination. The basic meaning of adokimos is that not standing the test or failing to meet the test and hence worthless, base or unqualified. Adokimos was the term commonly used of metals that were rejected by refiners because of impurities. The impure metals were discarded, and adokimos therefore came to include the ideas of worthlessness and uselessness. Adokimos marks the thing tested as not being proved to be such as it ought.

Here in Romans 1:28 Paul is saying that the mind that finds God worthless becomes worthless itself. The rejecting mind becomes a rejected mind and thereby becomes spiritually depraved, worthless and useless!

Here are the 8 NT uses of adokimos:

Romans 1:28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,

1 Corinthians 9:27 but I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified. (Click for discussion of this verse)

2 Corinthians 13:5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you-- unless indeed you fail the test? 6 But I trust that you will realize that we ourselves do not fail the test. 7 Now we pray to God that you do no wrong; not that we ourselves may appear approved, but that you may do what is right, even though we should appear unapproved.

2 Timothy 3:8 And just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose (literally set themselves against) the truth, men of depraved (destroyed, ruined, corrupted = kataphtheiro) mind, rejected (adokimos) as regards the faith.

Titus 1:16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient, and worthless (adokimos - unfit, of proven inability to do good) for any good deed. (Click for discussion of Titus 1:16)

Hebrews 6:8 but if it (a field that is rained on and yet only) yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.

These men and women were given over to a mind that God tests but finds wanting and is thus rejected by Him as worthless because it does not stand the test. These men had ''tested'' God and did not want to believe in Him. The ultimate test of life is usefulness, and the man whose influence is ever towards that which is unclean is of no use to God or to his fellow-men. Instead of helping God's work in the world, he hinders it and uselessness always invites disaster. It speaks of a mind that is so clouded by sin that it is no longer able to make reliable moral judgments. Here we have gone beyond deliberate iniquity to something much more frightening. At this stage man has lost the desire and the ability to think clearly. He has "lost his mind" (morally or spiritually speaking) and doesn't even know it.

The NKJV translates adokimos as "Debased" a word that was used by a blacksmith who, when he’d finished forming a horseshoe, would place it on his anvil and hit it with his hammer to test whether it was tempered correctly. If it failed the test it was said to be debased, i.e. not quite right. The word debase also conveys the meaning of reduction of the intrinsic value of (a coin) by increasing the base-metal content and implies a loss of position, worth, value, or dignity.

So the idea in Romans 1:28 is of a mind that isn’t quite right, that has some flaw in it that affects its ability to make right judgments. It speaks of a mind that is so clouded by sin that it is no longer able to make reliable moral judgments. Here we have gone beyond deliberate iniquity to something much more frightening. At this stage man has lost the desire and the ability to think clearly. He has lost his mind and doesn't even know it. The result is a world that has left God far behind. It is a society with all restraints removed, a culture devoid of all sense of right and wrong, where every man is doing what is "right in his own eyes." (click for 5 verses).

In a parallel passage in the OT, Jehovah appointed His prophet Jeremiah to assay His people Israel declaring:

"I have made you an assayer and a tester among My people, that you may know and assay their way. All of them are stubbornly rebellious, going about as a talebearer. They are bronze and iron. They, all of them, are corrupt. The bellows blow fiercely. The lead is consumed by the fire. In vain the refining goes on, but the wicked are not separated." (