God's Wrath Against Ungodliness Part 3 | Romans 1:24-32

The Text Romans 1:24-32 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 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.

Some Thoughts There comes a time in peoples lives when they have thoroughly convinced themselves of the lies they've been told and continue to tell themselves, where even the blatant truth in front of them is not enough to change their minds. Of course, from God's sovereign point of view, that is where each of us were at or on our way towards and without the prompting of the Holy Spirit we would have remained.

God's wrath at this point of time is not by sending lightning down to strike dead every unbeliever, but rather he lets them destroy themselves by letting their own sinful desires take over every aspect of their life.

I find it interesting that the first way God gives people up is in their unbridled sexual impurity. While Homosexuality and Lesbianism are the two sexual sins mentioned here, this can be extended to all Immorality such as Adultery, Transgenderism, Pedofilia and Bestiality. For any who claim to be a Christian and approve of these sins, you have deceived yourself, you are not a follower of Jesus, and are still and enemy of God. While we should still love the people who practice these sins, we must continue to present to them the Gospel as by their continual lifestyle they show that they are not yet children of God.

The second thought in this section is that unbelievers have been given a debased mind to continue to sin and justify their sins. There is a long list here of sins we would find grievous to sins that we don't think much about at all.

Finally, the statement is that these people know that they deserve death and "they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" as well. The approval of those around you should never be justification for something that is clearly a sin, even if those giving you approval happen to be in the same church building as you are. Satan loves to have you justify sin, whether it's through an anti-biblical preacher, unsaved church goers, your psychologist, your lawyer, your co-workers, or even just your own imagination. When people say that God has given them peace to <insert favorite sine here>, I say that they have never heard God's voice by reading the Bible and have never experience God's peace, only the heat of a seared conscience that assuages guilt, but leaves them just as condemned as the day they were born.