UNMASKING THE HUMAN CONSPIRACY
To conspire is to meet secretly for an unlawful purpose such as plotting an assassination or devising a plan to overthrow the government. A conspiracy is the agreement to carry out the plan.
One of the favorite conspiracies of the last generation involved the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Theories abounded suggesting that the mafia took him out, that the CIA wanted him dead, or that Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to be president. Then of course there is the mysterious second shooter on the knoll in Dallas. Fun stuff.
Whenever something does not add up or the logical and obvious answers seem too simple people begin to speculate about hidden agendas. Major events like 9/11 and the downing of the two towers bring out conspiracy theorists in droves. Was the U.S. just looking for a way to start a war? Did they plant explosives in the towers? Was flight 93 actually shot down by American jets?
When it comes to the human conspiracy the obvious answer is the right one. There is no mystery here, just a widespread agreement amongst humankind to rebel against God. Jesus said that light has come into the world but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed (John 3:19-20). The conspiracy against God is born in darkness but we forget that God can see in the dark. And his light shines in the darkness exposing the rebellion of humankind.
We have been introduced to the main theme of Romans - the gospel of God which is the salvation to everyone who believes. Now we are told why we need the gospel in the next two and a half chapters. The first of these reasons is the wrath of God which has been revealed in the gospel. What is the wrath of God? What in humankind has caused God’s wrath to be revealed? And to whom is this wrath revealed?
1. Why God reveals his Wrath
From a cursory reading of verse 18 we might quickly assume that the wrath of God is manifested in the global tragedies and cataclysms we have seen in the past decade. Some religious radicals point to the tsunami as God’s judgment on the pagan Asian rim. This is unfair to both the Christians and the others living in the region. These same radicals point to the hurricane that hit New Orleans or the earthquake/tsunami that hit Japan as God’s judgment on unbelieving or overtly pagan people.
But the sentence structure and parallelism of verses 17 and 18 make it clear that this is not what Paul had in mind. Paul said, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (1:18). Parallel this with what Paul said earlier, “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed…” (1:17). So God’s wrath is also being revealed in the gospel as the gospel is proclaimed and preached. (This is why we preach a series on one book).
When we put these two verses together like this we see that the source of revelation of God’s righteousness and the source of revelation of God’s wrath are from the same origin, the gospel. In the gospel we God’s righteousness and wrath revealed. How do we recognize this dual revelation?
If it is revealed in the gospel then we understand that the gospel being the crucifixion of Jesus Christ for our sins is both the wrath of God and the righteousness of God. His righteousness was given to us through the resultant power of Christ following the resurrection. God gave us Christ’s goodness so that we would not have to die for our sins. But we see God’s wrath poured out on Jesus on the Cross for the sins of the world.
Do you ever notice how the cross is an offense to people and society in general? It is not just because the cross is a humiliating way to die; it is because it is God’s judgment on humankind, that they deserved this death themselves.
Jesus said that God did not send him into the world to condemn the world but to save it. “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18). When confronted with the cross people are confronted with a choice: to believe or not believe. In refusing to believe they condemn themselves. Next, they invent reasons why they don’t need Christ or his church. They believe the pretense that they are good people; they cover their woundedness with advancing their career; they blind themselves to the wrath of God as seen in the cross with alcohol abuse and other addictions.
As Paul said, they “suppress the truth by their wickedness.” Sin is always an assault on the truth, the truth that God is our Creator, Redeemer and Judge. When faced with the truth people must come to terms with the cross of Christ if our lives are going to count for something. Either that or we sink deeper into the pit of sin.
So no, the assaults of weather patterns on our globe are not the wrath of God on unbelieving souls. The wrath of God is revealed in the broken, bleeding body of his one and only Son on the cross. Now how are we going to deal with that?
2. Humanity’s Conspiracy of Ignorance
Though humanity may plead ignorance of God and God’s wrath, there is no excuse, Paul said. No one can say they don’t know God.
The argument for this is found in natural revelation. God has revealed himself in various ways. Two of the prominent revelations we know of are natural and supernatural revelation. Natural revelation is the evidence of Creation, the natural world around us. Supernatural revelation is found in the incarnation, that God became the man, Jesus Christ.
So natural revelation is fundamentally obvious to everyone who lives upon the earth. We read in verses 19-20 that God has shown himself and his qualities in creation. God, in an elementary sense can be known from Creation. Therefore, people have no excuse.
Humanity’s conspiracy of ignorance makes gargantuan efforts to deny the existence of God. Their godlessness knows no bounds in trying to eliminate God from the human equation. Evolution and the Big Bang theory are ways of excluding God and thereby explain humanity’s existence. Even if as theistic evolutionists declare, God could have used evolution to introduce humans to the earth, you still have to say “God did this.” Or with the Big Bang, that a great explosion millions of years ago resulted in our universe, someone had to light the fuse. I choose God. But all in all these theories are the tool of the godless to ignore God. (Not saying if you believe in evolution that you are godless).
I like how Ray Stedman put it: He and his daughter were walking at night in the mountains and enjoying the stars. He pointed out the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, the North Star and Pleiades. Then jokingly he said to her, “But remember, dear, all this happened just by chance.” And she began to laugh! How ridiculous, he said, that in all this vast, impressive, imposing display of beauty and light and order anybody should ever say it all happened by chance. How can we say that only by intelligence and wisdom and skill can a watch be built, but hearts beat and babies grow and roses smell simply by chance. Isn’t that ridiculous?[i]
This is what Paul is saying: no one can look at Creation and say there is no God. By virtue of this statement we must also say there is no such thing as an atheist. It is only by godlessness and wickedness that a person comes to the conclusion that there is no God. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes wrote of these people saying God has set eternity in their hearts – yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end (3:11).
Because they deny God his rightful place in their lives, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened (1:21). We give thanks this weekend since it is a national holiday. It is ironic in some sense that the whole country pauses to eat turkey and offer thanks but have no idea who to thank. As believers we thank God daily for our food, our homes, our families and our nation as gifts from God. But who do you thank when you do not acknowledge God as Creator and Redeemer?
To withhold glory and thanksgiving to God makes the human heart descend into greater darkness and greater wickedness.
3. Humanity’s descent into Darkness
Those who ignore God exchange God for lesser objects of worship. Humankind was created to worship. It is engrained in our psyche to worship someone or something. I read of a so-called atheist who denied this inclination saying he does not worship anything. What he failed to understand is what worship is and that by rejecting God he worships himself.
In the next ten verses (22-31) we read a threefold repetition that “God gave them over” to their wickedness. I used to think that this meant that God gave them over to hell, since that was their choice. I have used these verses to suggest that God does not send anyone to hell, people choose to go to hell. That is a mistake to read this into the passage.
What we read here is a progression of humankind’s descent into depravity and further alienation from God. There are three steps repeated three times. In Step 1 human beings exchange God for what God has made; in Step 2 God hands us over to what we prefer; and in Step 3 we act out externally and bodily in our sexual relations a dramatization of the internal, spiritual condition of the fallen human soul.[ii]
In the first exchange (23-24), humans have traded the glory of God for images, idols and so forth. God gives them over to the sinful desires of their heart and the result is the degrading of their bodies through sexual immoral deeds. Without God all boundaries of morality are gone. The lines become fuzzy and committing adultery with another person’s spouse is easily excused (“we fell in love,” “we couldn’t help ourselves”).
With the second exchange (25-27), humans traded the truth of God for a lie, such as human philosophies and theories. God gives them over to their shameful lusts permitting them to carry out their godless fantasies. The resulting action is unnatural sex. Homosexual advocacy groups will claim that what they do is natural and that unnatural sex refers to heterosexuals having homosexual relations. However, the grammar Paul uses is quite clear that homosexuality is the sin referred to here. Women with women and men with men is a perversion of God’s design for humanity.
With the third exchange (28), humans traded the knowledge of God for a knowledge without God. Again God gives them over to a depraved mind and the result is that they get to do what ought not to be done (see 29-31).
Now, why does God give them over? Does he not care about these people? Is he just chucking them into hell? No, God deliberately allowed them to go their own way in order that they might learn to hate the futility of life turned away from the truth of God. Throughout the time of their Godforsakeness, God is still concerned with them and dealing with them.[iii] In his mercy he keeps the door open for repentance.
This reminds me of the father who tries to convince his son to stop smoking by shoving a big wad of cigarettes in his son’s mouth and says “now smoke.” Smoke until you are sick of it. Or to cure a child of sugar make them eat as much candy as they can until they puke. No, God is not doing that (neither should we). But God has given us free will and if we choose this or that lifestyle God allows us to go that way, even to our hurt, so that we will realize that his way is best.
One more detail may puzzle us. Why does the exchange of God for the worship of things always seem to result in sexual immorality, even homosexuality? Sexual immorality shows us what is going on in our spiritual lives. God allows these sins to become obvious because it shows where we’re at in our worship focus. Sex is linked with worship. Sex is the human’s longing after worship. Sex is a desire to possess another body and to be possessed by another. It is a deep-seated craving inherent in every human being.
The Bible tells us that only God can give true and lasting fulfillment. Only God can satisfy the deep longing in all of us for a complete identity and unity with another person. This is worship. When we worship, we are longing to be possessed of God, and to possess him fully. To allow a person to go off the deep end and look for this in homosexuality or promiscuity, God hopes they will see the emptiness of it and return to him.[iv]
4. The Continuing Conspiracy of Silence
The final word on the current situation of humankind is that keeping silent is not an option. Those who do not speak against evil participate in it by association.
Paul wrote, “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (1:32).
One commentator indicated that those who applaud or affirm those who practice shameful deeds, even if they do not practice it themselves, are not only as depraved as those who practice it, but are actually more depraved than the actors.[v]
At the same time, while homosexuality stands out as the premier sin in this passage, we only need to look back at the list of sins in 29-31 to realize that “we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” To remain silent about any sin is tantamount to participating in it.
C. S. Lewis wrote this in Mere Christianity, “If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual. The pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and backbiting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me competing with the human self which I must try to become: they are the animal self, and the diabolical self; and the diabolical self is the worst of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig, who goes regularly to church, may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But of course, it's better to be neither.”
It does no good to point out the more heinous sins of others. Sin is sin and it is all detestable to God. To hide our eyes from sin is a sin. To keep silent about sin is a sin. All our sins have prompted God to reveal his wrath in the gospel of his Son Jesus Christ. And as he reveals his wrath he also reveals his mercy. If only we would acknowledge him as God…
What are we to do?
Give thanks to God for his gospel, for it is power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
Acknowledge God as the Holy One, your Creator, Redeemer and Judge.
Focus and believe on his Son, Jesus Christ, the content of his gospel.
To God be the glory, great things he hath done, so loved he the world that he gave us his Son; who yielded his life an atonement for sin, and opened the life-gate that all may go in. Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, let the earth hear his voice! Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice! O come to the Father through Jesus the Son, and give him the glory, great things he hath done! (Fanny Crosby).
Let the earth hear his voice. Call sin what it is: sin. Not to condemn the world but to save the world. Speak the truth in love, live the gospel out in your families and marriages, and do not hide your faith.
Give God the glory by boldly standing for him.
AMEN
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