Reasons for Wrath: Man’s Rejection (Part 2)

Romans 1:21

²¹ because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

The glory of God did not return to earth until the day the Messiah came. As the veiled incarnation of God’s glory, Jesus Christ manifested divine glory through His grace and truth (John 1:14). On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus presented Himself before Peter, James, and John in a unique manifestation of His royal splendor (Matt. 17:2). Paul pointed up the power of God’s glory when he declared that “Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,” (Rom. 6:4). In less dramatic but just as certain ways, Jesus was a living testimony to God’s glory through His miracles and through His love, truth, mercy, kindness, and grace.

The rest of the created world, however, has never revolted against God or sought to hide His glory as has man. As already cited, David exulted that “the heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands” (Ps. 19:1). Psalm 148 calls on the entire universe to proclaim God’s glory. The animals do just what God has created them to do. The flowers bloom just as God designed them to, and the butterfly gently and beautifully flies from place to place, testifying to God’s beauty and order.

But recognizing God’s glorious attributes and acts and glorifying Him for them is precisely what fallen men do not do. Millions upon millions of people have lived in the midst of God’s wonderful universe and yet proudly refused to recognize Him as its Creator and to affirm His majesty and glory. And for that willful, foolish rejection they are without excuse as they stand under God’s righteous judgment. The person who can live in the midst of God’s marvelous creation and yet refuse to recognize Him as its Creator and affirm His majesty and glory is a fool indeed.

Through Jeremiah, the Lord warned His people, “Listen and give heed, do not be haughty, for the Lord has spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God, before He brings darkness and before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains, and while you are hoping for light He makes it into deep darkness, and turns it into gloom” (Jer. 13:15-16). When King Herod proudly accepted the crowd’s acclamation that he spoke “with the voice of a god and not of a man,… immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory and he was eaten by worms and died” (Acts 12:22-23).

When Christ returns to earth, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Matt. 24:29). And at that moment, when all the natural lights of the universe are extinguished, the dazzling divine light of God’s eternal glory in His Son will illumine the entire earth. “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory” (v. 30).

Second, because man in his pride fails to honor and glorify God as Creator, he also fails to give thanks to Him for His gracious provision. His unbelief is made still worse by his ingratitude. Although God is the source of every good thing that men possess - giving rain, sun, and other natural blessings to the just and unjust alike (see Matt. 5:45; Acts 14:15-17) - the natural man fails to thank Him because he fails even to acknowledge His existence. Neither were thankful - The obligation to be “thankful” to God for his mercies, for the goodness which we experience, is plain and obvious. Thus, we judge of favors received of our fellow-men. the apostle here clearly regards this unwillingness to render gratitude to God for his mercies as one of the causes of their subsequent corruption and idolatry. The reasons of this are the following.

(1) the effect of ingratitude is to render the heart hard and insensible.  We could also argue that is an effect of the first idea – that they refuse to glorify God.  If they refuse to acknowledge Him as God, then, of course they will refuse to be thankful.  The one feeds the other.

(2) people seek to forget the Being to whom they are unwilling to exercise gratitude.  If they refuse to honor Him, and are unthankful, then it follows that they will try and shut Him out of His presence and exclude Him their thinking.

(3) to do this, they fix their affections on other things; and hence, the pagan expressed their gratitude not to God, but to the sun, and moon, and stars, etc., the mediums by which God bestows his favors upon people. And we may here learn that an unwillingness to thank God for his mercies is one of the most certain causes of alienation and hardness of heart.

Third, as a consequence of their failing to honor and thank God, fallen men have become futile in their speculations or became vain - To “become vain,” with us, means to be elated, or to be self-conceited, or to seek praise from others. The meaning here seems to be, they became foolish, frivolous in their thoughts and reasonings. They acted foolishly; they employed themselves in useless and frivolous questions, the effect of which was to lead the mind further and further from the truth respecting God.  Imaginations - This word means properly “thoughts,” then “reasonings,” and also “disputations.” Perhaps our word, “speculations,” would convey its meaning here. It implies that they were unwilling to honor God, and being unwilling to honor him, they commenced those speculations which resulted in all their vain and foolish opinions about idols, and the various rites of idolatrous worship. Many of the speculations and inquiries of the ancients were among the most vain and senseless which the mind can conceive.

To reject God is to reject the greatest reality in the universe, the reality which gives the only true meaning, purpose, and understanding to everything else. Refusing to recognize God and to have His truth guide their minds, sinful men are doomed to futile quests for wisdom through various human speculations that lead only to falsehood and therefore to still greater unbelief and wickedness. The term speculation embraces all man’s godless reasonings.

To forsake God is to exchange truth for falsehood, meaning for hopelessness, and satisfaction for emptiness. But an empty mind and soul is like a vacuum. It will not long remain empty but will draw in falsehood and darkness to replace the truth and light it has rejected. The history of fallen mankind is devolutionary not evolutionary.

And their foolish heart - The word “heart” is not infrequently used to denote the mind, or the understanding. We apply it to denote the affections. But such was not its common use, among the Hebrews. We speak of the head when we refer to the understanding, but this was not the case with the Hebrews. They spoke of the heart in this manner, and in this sense it is clearly used in this place; see Eph. 1:18; Rom. 2:15; 2 Cor. 4:6; 2 Pet. 1:19. The word “foolish” means literally what is without “understanding;” Matt. 15:16.

The foolish heart that rejects and dishonors God does not become enlightened and freed, as sophisticated unbelievers like to claim, but rather becomes spiritually darkened and further enslaved to sin. The person who forsakes God forsakes truth, light, and eternal life, as well as meaning, purpose, and happiness. He also forsakes the foundation and motivation for moral righteousness.

Was darkened - Was rendered obscure, so that they did not perceive and comprehend the truth. The process which is stated in this verse is,

(1)  That people had the knowledge of God.

(2)  that they refused to honor him when they knew him, and were opposed to his character and government.

(3)  that they were ungrateful.

(4)  that they then began to doubt, to reason, to speculate, and wandered far into darkness.

This is substantially the process by which people wander away from God now. They have the knowledge of God, but they do not love him; and being dissatisfied with his character and government, they begin to speculate, fall into error, and then “find no end in wandering mazes lost,” and sink into the depths of heresy and of sin.

Spiritual darkness and moral perversity are inseparable. When man forfeits God, he forfeits virtue. The godless philosophy of the world inescapably leads to moral perversion, because unbelief and immorality are inextricably intertwined. “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception,” Paul warned the Colossians, “according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Col. 2:8).

When the incarnation of truth and light came into the world, unbelieving mankind would not have Him. Because Jesus was the light of the world, they rejected Him, because their deeds were evil and they loved darkness rather than light (John 3:19-20). For the very reason that Jesus spoke the truth, they would not believe Him (John 8:45). That is the legacy of man’s refusal to glorify God.

This must be a part of our proclamation of the Gospel.  It needs to be a part of our theology that we do not ignore but rather that we build in to our preaching and teaching.