Deprived of Discernment

Roman martyrs. What will faith cost you?

Scripture:

Rom. 1:24   Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ 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.

Rom. 1:26   For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, ²⁷ and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

Rom. 1:28   And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. ²⁹ They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, ³¹ foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³² They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

Observation:

Every human being submits to an authority and either that will be the authority of God, or of themself. God did not push humanity into impurity, but rather, with the rejection of God, came the desire to be dehumanized and dishonored. Humanity is created in the image of God, male and female, designed to reflect the whole image of God. We are never more human than when we are in a right relationship with God. The natural law of God creates the male and female, Adam and Eve as the first married couple, to represent the full image of God to the world. The marriage of the man and the woman is also to reflect the covenant of God with his people. 

It was in the fall of humanity, original sin, that we ended up out of alignment with God. Paul was referring to the children of Israel in the wilderness who were more interested in worshipping a creature made of gold, rather than the creator. Jowett expounds upon this, “Such is the incurable religiousness of the human heart that, since they would not worship the Creator, they worshiped [esebasthēsan] and served [elatreusan] “the creature” (RSV) instead. In the Roman imperial religion the Greek title Sebastos, ‘the worshiped one,’ in its Latin form is ‘Augustus.’ Although we associate this title with the first Roman emperor, Octavian, it was used in the full names of all subsequent emperors. ‘Paul’s audience could scarcely have missed this allusion to the most prominent form of venerating the creature in Rome” (Jewett 2007, 170). This is the trajectory that fallen humanity struggles with — the bent toward power, which leads to the corruption of the human nature. 

God has given us the gift of free will. Therefore, if we choose not to follow God, or to obey God’s leading in our lives, we will simply follow the desires of the flesh. John Chrysostom had much to say on this passage, and his words still speak to us today: 

“God gave them up” means simply that he left them to their own concoctions. For as an army commander if forced to retreat abandons his deserting soldiers to the enemy, he does not thereby actively push them into the enemy camp but passively withdraws his own protection over them. In the same way, God left those who were not ready to receive what comes from him but were the first to desert him, even though he had fully done his part.

After all, he set before them, as a form of teaching, the world. He gave them reason and an understanding capable of perceiving what they needed to understand. Yet the people of that time did not use any of those things in order to obtain salvation, but rather they perverted what they had received into its opposite. What could God [NT Vol. VI, p. 43] have done about this? Could he have forced them to do what was right? Yes, but that would not have made them virtuous. All he could do then was to leave them to their own devices, which is what he did, so that in that way, if in no other, having tried and discovered the things they lusted after, they might turn away from what was so shameful. (Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, 3)

Edlin and Modine put it this way, “Paul can only conceive of sexual relations with persons of the same gender as the perversion of a sacred gift (see 1 Cor 6:9–10)” (NBBC). They go on to quote from Richard B. Hayes’ exposition on Paul’s treatment of homosexuality in this passage: 

God’s wrath takes the form of letting human idolatry run its own self-destructive course. Homosexual activity, then, is not a provocation of “the wrath of God” (Rom. 1:18); rather, it is a consequence of God’s decision to “give up” rebellious creatures to their own futile thinking and desires. The unrighteous behavior catalogued in Romans 1:26–31 is a list of symptoms: the underlying sickness of humanity as a whole, Jews and Greeks alike, is that they have turned away from God and fallen under the power of sin (see 3:9).… Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention because he regards it as providing a particularly graphic image of the way in which human fallenness distorts God’s created order [Gen. 1:27; 2:24]. God the Creator made man and woman for each other, to cleave together, to be fruitful and multiply. When human beings “exchange” these created roles for homosexual intercourse, they embody the spiritual condition of those who ‘exchange the truth about God for a lie.’ … Homosexual activity will not incur God’s punishment: it is its own punishment, an “antireward.” Paul here simply echoes a traditional Jewish idea. The Wisdom of Solomon, an intertestamental writing that has surely informed Paul’s thinking in Romans 1, puts it like this: “Therefore those who lived unrighteously, in a life of folly, [God] tormented through their own abominations” (Wisdom of Solomon 12:23).… Repeated again and again in recent debate is the claim that Paul condemns only homosexual acts committed promiscuously by heterosexual persons—because they “exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural.” Paul’s negative judgment, so the argument goes, does not apply to persons who are “naturally” of homosexual orientation. This interpretation, however, is untenable. The “exchange” is not a matter of individual life decisions; rather, it is Paul’s characterization of the fallen condition of the pagan world. In any case, neither Paul nor anyone else in antiquity had a concept of “sexual orientation.” To introduce this concept into this passage (by suggesting that Paul disapproves only those who act contrary to their individual sexual orientations) is to lapse into anachronism. The fact is that Paul treats all homosexual activity as prima facie evidence of humanity’s tragic confusion and alienation from God the Creator. (1996, 388–89)

The breakdown of sexual behavior also results in enmity between men and women. God’s intent is for a partnership that, as mentioned previously, would reflect the image of God, but if men and women can be made to be enemies, then the reflection of God in this world can be destroyed. This is the pernicious nature of the corruption of the image of God. 

While we often focus on the sexual sins that Paul mentions here, I think it’s easy to miss what happens in verse 28. As humanity is out of alignment with God, they discover that they are deprived of discernment. This results in a wide array of behaviors that are out of alignment with God’s desires for humankind. “Paul’s point is rather that sinners eventually become so ‘deprived of discernment’ that they abandon all sense of decency, ‘not only doing evil, but applauding those who do it!’ (Godet 1883, 111) (NBBC).  Ultimately, Chrysostom tells us that “their evil deeds did not come from ignorance but from willful practice. This is why he did not say ‘because they did not know God,’ but rather ‘they did not see fit to acknowledge God.’ In other words, their sin was one of a perverted determination of obstinacy more than of a sudden ravishment, and it was not in the flesh (as some heretics say) but in the mind, to whose wicked lust the sins belonged and from which the fount of evils flowed. For if the mind becomes undiscerning, everything else is dragged off course and overturned” (Homilies on Romans 5). 

Pelagius puts it rather succinctly, “Not only did they not know God, they did not want to know him. . . . So they were given over to a base mind.” (Pelagius’s Commentary on Romans). 

Application:

I confess that this is a difficult passage to tackle because there is so much to unpack. Also, there are many advocates in the world today who would suggest that we simply scrap this passage from the word of God, or declare this chapter no longer relevant. In some parts of the world, this section of the chapter may even be considered illegal, or a hateful text. However, we must be careful when we pick and choose which portions of Scripture we choose to believe are relevant and which are not. Instead, I would like to suggest, that we take the time to understand what the text is trying to say to us, and how it applies to our lives today. 

Paul wants us to understand what happens to humanity when we intentionally step out of our relationship with God. The result is that we are deprived of discernment — and that impacts every sphere of our lives. This includes our sexual and moral behaviors. One of the big take-aways from this text is that it may be easy to point fingers at sexual sins, and simply ignore the description of wickedness! I don’t think that Paul is trying to say that one sin is worse than another -- and for those who may find themselves “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, … gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents,  foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” — they are also those who are deprived of discernment. 

Ultimately, God, through the incarnation of his Son, provided a pathway for humanity to turn from their corrupted ways and return to a restored relationship in which the Image of God can be fully present. The call for all of us is to discernment. The life of discipleship is one of discernment — discernment of the leadership of God in our lives. Jesus’ call to discipleship was one of self-denial. God didn’t say that we would no longer have fleshly desires — it just depends upon the authority of those desires. Just as Chrysostom mentioned the soldiers — while under the authority of their leader — they behaved in a particular way. However, once they chose to rebel, they were left to their own vices. The soldiers engaged in behaviors when left to their own vices that they would have never considered under the authority of their commander. Therefore, if we are deprived of discernment, out of alignment with God, we will also engage in practices we never would have imagined being acceptable in the presence of God. 

We can choose to live under the authority of God in our lives. When we do, then there is a return of discernment — an ability to see through the lies of the enemy and truth is revealed. Why? Because Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” He provides us with the pathway and leadership that we need in this life, to avoid sins of the flesh, and sins of the heart and mind as well. Paul is paving the way for an understanding of spiritual victory. Before we can get to the victory, he has to define the enemy and the problem which needs to be conquered. The reality is that all of humanity lacks discernment when left to their own vices. Not only that, but humanity will cheer others on to join them because, the bigger the crowd, the more affirmed they will feel. The call is for us all to turn toward God and submit every facet of our lives to God’s authority. The cry of our hearts is for divine discernment and Spirit empowerment to live under God’s authority. 

Prayer:

Lord, my desire is for my spiritual journey to lead me ever closer to you in all things. Amen.