Romans 1:21-32
When man refuses God, he descends into an abyss of desperate wickedness. There is neither a point of reference for ‘goodness’ nor the motivation to pursue what fails to fulfill some fleshly preference.
Without the spiritual anchor in God Himself, the natural urges of man’s flesh are the sole basis for his decisions. As the apostle James states in his letter, “Everyone is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it brings forth sin and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.” When men choose to expunge the knowledge of God from their minds, they receive the ‘fitting recompense’ of God abandoning them to their depraved thinking and dishonourable passions.
Unrestrained by God or the acknowledgement of God, unmotivated by His Spirit to righteousness, the depths of man’s potential for evil is profound.
Romans 1:21-32
“Because they, having known God, glorified Him not as God, nor were thankful; but became vain in their reasonings, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into a likeness of an image of corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore also God gave them up in the desires of their hearts to uncleanness; their bodies to be dishonoured between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, Who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this reason God gave them up unto dishonourable passions, for their women changed the natural use into that contrary to nature, and in like manner also the men, having left the natural use of the woman, were inflamed in their lust one toward another; men with men working out shame, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was fitting.
And even as they did not prefer to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do things not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness: fornication, wickedness, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil dispositions, whisperers, slanderers, hateful to God, insolent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful; who having known the righteous judgment of God, that those doing such things are worthy of death, not only practise them, but are also consenting to those who do them.”
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