Abandoned By God: Introduction

Romans 1:24-32

²⁴ Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. ²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. ²⁷ Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. ²⁸ And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; ²⁹ being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, ³⁰ backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, ³¹ undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; ³² who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

(Verse 24) – “Wherefore” is a word that speaks of a causal relationship between what went before and what comes after.  It could be translated “For this reason”.  All that God said in the passage thus far brought God to the place where He takes the action that Paul will speak of in the next few verses.  We are talking about results here.  The experience of the depraved people Paul describes is the result of their own persistence in sin and their own indulgence and pursuit of rebellion against God.  Further, the action of giving them over, and the judgment of God are the result of their disobedience as well.

We need to consider the idea a bit.  When we speak of a “causal” relationship regarding the action of god, we need not to take that causal relation too far.  God uses human agent to accomplish His plan and purpose.  He not only decrees what will happen, but He also decrees how those things will occur.  It is important that we understand this.  The human agents that are used to bring the will of God to pass are responsible to God for their actions.  This does not, however, mean that God is any less in control of their actions as they serve His plan. 

This is best illustrated by the death of Christ.  Pilate and Judas are both held completely responsible for the actions they undertook and for their part in the drama of condemning and crucifying of the Lord.  There can be no question about that whatsoever; the Scripture is crystal clear on that issue.  Yet, it is also clear that Christ was crucified by means of the foreordained plan of God from eternity past.  That included every action that was a part of that crucifixion – including the actions of Judas and Pilate.  Some might suggest that those two thing are mutually exclusive – I would disagree.  I would simply say that we do not understand the how of their working together.

As Paul illustrates in these verses, and develops theologically from here through the end of chapter 4, man is not basically good but evil. His nature is innately bent toward sin. “There is none righteous, not even one;… there is none who does good, there is not even one.… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10, 12, 23). Those who ignore God’s provision for dealing with sin and seek to improve themselves by their own power invariably commit the most heinous sin of all, which is self-righteousness and pride. Only God can graciously remove sin or produce righteousness, and the person who tries to eliminate his own guilt or achieve his own righteousness merely drives himself deeper into sin and further from God.

Like an untended garden, when man is left to himself the bad always chokes out the good, because that is the inclination of his fallen nature. Man has no capacity in himself to restrain the weeds of his sinfulness or to cultivate the good produce of righteousness. Man’s natural development is not upward but downward; he does not evolve but devolve. He is not ascending to God but descending from God. He has continued a downward spiral of depravity throughout history; getting worse and worse, and when the restraints of the Holy Spirit are removed during the final Tribulation period, all hell will break loose on earth as evil reaches its ultimate stage (see 2 Thess. 2:3-9; Rev. 9:1-11).

Man cannot stop this slide because he is innately a slave to sin (Rom. 6:16-20), and the more he pursues his deceiving efforts at self-reformation apart from God the more he becomes enslaved to sin, whose ultimate end is eternal death (Rom. 6:16-23). As C. S. Lewis perceptively observes in his book The Problem of Pain, “[The lost] enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved”.

The major point of Romans 1:24-32 is that when men persistently abandon God, God will abandon them (see vv. 24, 26, 28). Even when God’s own people ignore and disobey Him, He may temporarily abandon them, though that abandonment is neither in the same fashion, nor to the same degree. “But My people did not listen to My voice,” the psalmist wrote in behalf of the Lord, “and Israel did not obey Me. So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart, to walk in their own devices” (Ps. 81:11-12). Hosea reports the same tragic reality concerning the unfaithfulness of the northern kingdom, represented by Ephraim, to whom God said: “Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone” (Hos. 4:17).

In his message to the high priest and other religious leaders in Jerusalem, Stephen reminded them that when the ancient Israelites rejected the Lord and erected and worshiped the golden calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai, “God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven,” that is, the demon-inspired deities they had made (Acts 7:38-42). Paul declared to a pagan crowd in Lystra, “In the generations gone by [God] permitted all the nations to go their own ways” (Acts 14:16).

The problem here is that we don’t like to think of this in these terms.  We like to think that God will always strive with man.  He never gives up and He always is there and waiting for men to come to Him.  This passage underscores for us that this is not so.  There does come a time when God ceases to strive with man.  We need to understand that this means that there comes a time when God stops striving with individual men as well!  God is not the open-armed thing that some perceive Him to be.  Now, it is true that God’s patience and His long-suffering nature is marvelous and is far greater than ours.  He does persist in offering mercy and grace for astounding amounts of time in the lives of people.  The point that Paul wants to make and that we need to understand is that there comes a time when that patience is at an end and that is not necessarily the point of the individual’s death.  It can and does occur at times before that – during the life and there are many, many people who live long portions of their lives having been “given over” to uncleanness.  We ought to note that this is not necessarily a permanent “giving over” and that the possibility exists of someone involved in such behaviors coming to faith.  that is not ours to decide – it is our job to preach the Gospel and call them to repentance.

When God abandons men to their own devices, His divine protection is partially withdrawn. When that occurs, men not only become more vulnerable to the destructive wiles of Satan but also suffer the destruction that their own sin works in and through them. “You have forsaken Me and served other gods,” the Lord said to Israel. “Therefore I will deliver you no more” (Judg. 10:13). When God’s Spirit came upon Azariah, He told Judah, “The Lord is with you when you are with Him. And if you seek Him He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you” (2 Chron. 15:2). Through “Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest,” God again said to Judah, “Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord and do not prosper? Because you have forsaken the Lord, He has also forsaken you” (2 Chron. 24:20).

Romans 1:24-32 vividly portrays the consequences of God’s abandonment of rebellious mankind, showing the essence (vv. 24-25), the expression (vv. 26-27), and the extent (vv. 28-32) of man’s sinfulness. Each of those progressively more sobering sections is introduced with the declaration “God gave them over.”

I need to be preaching this and to be building this into my consideration and teaching as I deal with those around me.