Around the year 58 A.D. Paul wrote the letter to the Romans from the city of Corinth. It was not addressed to the church because it was divided or led by false teachers. He was about to conclude his missionary ministry and stood on his spiritual mountain surveying what he saw as a condition of mankind. He wrote this letter as his record of the event. Paul’s argument is a universal need for Jesus by discussing the corrupt Gentiles. We will pay attention to 1:18-25. This is an example of how mankind developed to not be the people God wanted us to be. These verses begin as a study of the symptoms of a sick world.
Those of this world are in real danger. Notice verse 18 in which God is genuinely angry about and at sin. His wrath is contemporary. His wrath is against all sin. His wrath is absolutely inescapable because it’s a just cause. Paul reminds us that in verse 21 sin perpetuates itself while expanding generation by generation. Then in verse 24 he reminds us that sin causes people to turn against their own selves by doing things that are dishonoring their bodies.
Those of this world are far from the truth. Verse 19 reminds us that even though truth is easily detectable, it is still ignored and shunned. In verse 22 Paul outlines how the people use themselves as a means to measure their own selves and not God’s gauge. It is so despicable and near insane that in verse 23 Paul declares how mankind is so ridiculous that sinners are expecting God to make changes according to human thinking and not man making the change.
Those of this world are without excuse before God as Paul warns. Sadly, in verse 20 we are reminded that God cannot help us until we see our need for help. This is true for salvation, spiritual growth, and repentance. The warning is clear in verse 24 that God has permitted men to have what they persisted for. In this case it’s uncleanness, lust, and dishonor. Mankind has taken himself so far away from God that he prefers wallowing in the muck of his own desperate condition than to turn in serving God.
Verse 25 is the clincher that is so appropriate for today as well as then. God has allowed us to think we can replace the unreplaceable by having a “religion” that tells him how he wants to live and not how he should live. Such a lifestyle cannot give anyone a satisfactory earthly life or spiritual life in eternity. Modern man has developed a false representation of God to suit his own fancies.
Using Paul’s outline of sinful man’s condition, we can relate to it today. The things he wrote about are even more true than then. It behooves the biblical Christian to take this warning seriously about the condition of the world without letting it to influence his lifestyle. These verses also encourage us to recognize the need for biblical Christians to have a burden for the lost. They are in a cesspool of sin. The world so desperately needs Jesus, and it is our responsibility to share the word of the gospel to them. Hell is waiting to gobble up their souls. We cannot let it happen!
Christian Writer 