Willfully Ignoring God – Romans 1:19–23

PRAY

Context: The Universal Reign of Sin (God’s Righteous Wrath Against Sinners) - Romans 1:18-3:20

We’re in a section of our study in Romans that runs from 1:18-3:20, that could be titled The Universal Reign of Sin (NIV-BTSB), or it could be titled God’s Righteousness in His Wrath Against Sinners (ESV-SB).

Paul essentially answers the questions that might be asked: Why does anyone need God’s righteousness offered in the gospel of Jesus Christ? And to whom does this need apply? (Paul will show that this applies to both the godless pagan and the religiously self-righteous, to the Gentile nations and the Jews… in other words, to everyone… And we need God’s righteousness and are under his wrath because we are without excuse for rejecting God and are guilty of sin and stand justly condemned.) [After that, Paul will continue: How is it possible for anyone to be right with God, then? How does one access God’s righteousness? That is the good news of faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ!]

But let’s return to where we left off last week and move forward with Paul’s demonstration of the just condemnation of all who ignore the existence and worth of God.

Romans 1:18–23 ESV

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

INTRO: Humans are inclined to ask: But seriously, are we really unrighteous? Is God actually justified in his wrath against our wickedness? Let me help you interpret, Paul says, what you are seeing when you look around at creation and when you observe human behavior and society. First consider the world which we inhabit: When we look at the creation around us, including ourselves, what do we know?

Have you ever seen a jellyfish? Perhaps you thought, what a crazy creature!… and yet one so strangely suited to its environment. Why are fish so perfectly suited to the water, and birds to the sky, and why are there so many varieties, and yet all of them so functional and beautiful. And on the land, there’s an elephant… and a lion; and there are monkeys… and rats; and there are ants (of so many kinds)… and butterflies of amazing variety (that used to be caterpillars!). Can you picture these creatures? Why and how are there so many, and why and how are they each so intricately detailed in their distinctiveness and yet so functional? 

Have you ever enjoyed the beauty of a sunset, or the radiant colors of a rainbow? Have you smelled the flowers of spring and welcomed the sun’s warmth after the winter months? Have you tasted a delicious fruit… and not just one, but several distinct and amazing fruits, bursting with flavor? Have you felt the tiny grains of seashore sand between your toes and gazed in awe at the unrelenting expanse of the ocean before you? Have you wondered at the mind-boggling volume of water the oceans must contain? Have you gazed up at the night sky and taken in the chorus of stars… and pondered just how expansive the universe must be, and how small earth is by comparison, and how small you are?

Have you thought about the intricacies of human cells and of DNA (which is also true of all living things)? Why does it work, and why does it work over and over again? Have you considered the intricacies of the human eye, and what it must take for each part to work properly?

Have you ever felt terror at the sheer power that nature can unleash… in waves, in fires, in sandstorms and blizzards and tornadoes and hurricanes? Have you pondered the uniqueness of your own internal mental experience, and have you been troubled at your isolation from the other individuals around you by the reality of this internal world?

Yet have you felt the kindness and tenderness of another human being wrapping you in their arms, expressing deep affection for you? Have you experienced the joy of getting to know another person and being known by them? Have you ever realized that you are a part of something… a community, a project, a useful endeavor? Have you considered your own capacity for creativity? … Have you loved someone? … Have you felt honor, or felt shame?

Have you ever thought, why is all of this here? Why do I exist instead of not existing? What does it all mean? Why am I even able to ponder meaning and existence when so many other living creatures cannot do so?

Have you ever been angry at injustice? Have you ever been disgusted at a specific wrong perpetrated by one human being against another, even if it wasn’t you? Have you been appalled at man’s capacity for certain forms of evil? Is there not more to that sense of conscience, of what is morally right and wrong, than only what your social order has ‘trained’ into you?

The Apostle Paul tells us, in answer to all of these things, “That’s how you know there’s a God. And that’s why you are accountable for ignoring him.”

In what God has made, he has revealed, and we perceive, his eternal power and divinity. (verses 19-20a)

Flowing from the end of v. 18, How are people suppressing the truth in unrighteousness? The answer is vv. 19 & 20. For what can be known about God, Paul says “is visible,” because God has revealed it. What Paul doesn’t say is that God has revealed everything about himself, but he has revealed essential knowledge of his divine existence and eternal power in having made the world and us in it.

And Paul deliberately uses an oxymoron, a paradox: that what God has made visible are attributes about himself that are of course “invisible,” because God is spirit. Specifically, through creation God reveals his eternal power and deity.

God’s eternal power is seen in not just that he plainly made all these things (as we’ve already discussed), but also that he sustains it. Why doesn’t it all come apart? (If you say gravity… why is there gravity, and who sustains it? Why are we at just the right distance from the sun, and why are we rotating? And what would happen if any of thousands, of millions, of countless variables on earth and in individual creatures should stop working? (We have some idea because we see the effects of it with disasters and cancers.) God’s eternal power has made and is sustaining our very lives.

And what manner of being, with what kind of power, has made all that exists and sustains it! God’s being and power must be eternal, outside of space and time as we experience them, for those exist because of him.

And speaking of his being, Paul also refers to God’s divine nature: his deity, his divinity, the quality of being God. Paul is saying there is something in our own createdness that makes us realize that a supreme deity created this, and us, who is uncreated and wholly “other” from us—he is holy, he is unique, he is God.

And even our own personhood makes us realize that he is not an impersonal force, but a personal being. A deity is not a force, but a person. And in this case, the only true, triune God.

Paul is saying that in spite of the consequences of the fall permeating aspects of all these things, there is still clear evidence of a personal, supreme God, who has manifest and is manifesting his eternal power and divine nature.

Paul continues, what has godless humanity done in response to the plain evidence of the eternal power and divinity of the one who created us and all that we see?

Experiencing the reality of God in his world means we are without excuse for not glorifying God and giving thanks to him. (verses 20b-21a)

Paul ends v. 20 with, “So they are without excuse.” We are without excuse for suppressing and distorting the truth that is evident. “But I didn’t know!” is flatly false.

Human beings are unique among God’s earthly creation as beings who are conscious and have conscience. Humans are the only earthly creatures with the true capacity of self-awareness and reasoning/rationality. And we are the only ones, of earthly creatures, who make value judgments, and who understand some things to be right and other things wrong. The very fact that we can ponder the meaning and purpose of our existence, that we have the ability to recognize and evaluate, means that we have the responsibility to glorify God and thank him.

v. 21 For although they knew God - This is not a saving knowledge of God, because general revelation (what is known about God through the natural world) alone does not save. But the way Paul says this makes us understand that it is more than just a superficial or cursory knowledge. By the examples we gave in opening today, this is an experiential knowledge from living and breathing in this world, that everywhere evidences the eternal power and divinity of God, whom we should be honoring as God and giving thanks to him.

When you see a functioning computer, and you even experience its usefulness, do you think to yourself, “nobody made this; it just happened”? No, you inherently realize that an intelligent being thought of it and carefully crafted it and that they have an amazing mind and skill (in this case multiple humans across a couple of generations). And you’re thankful. What you don’t think is that it just happened by random course of events and chance. And you also don’t say that the computer isn’t really even real, even though you can see it and touch and use it… which is another nonsense philosophical and religious idea that humans have contrived—that the material world isn’t real.

With God’s creation, we know he made it, so we know he deserves the credit (glory/honor), and we even know who to thank.

Furthermore, from what Paul says here in this progression, it is a reasonable conclusion that…

All individual sins stem from the fundamental sin of failure to prize and praise God as the giver of every good thing, a foolish arrogance and fatal autonomy.

This is the foundation of sin, a failure to fear and glorify God, whereby we are thankless, ungrateful creatures. God is worthy of honor and glory, and he deserves our thanks. I will come back to this fundamental truth when we close the lesson for this morning.

But, here we are, God’s creatures living in God’s world, not glorifying him or giving him thanks. Even we sometimes can hardly fathom how foolish we get in our godlessness… and that’s where Paul goes next. What has happened as result of willfully ignoring God?

Willfully ignoring God leads to futile reasoning & foolish hearts, evidenced by irrational idolatry. (verses 21b-23)

Not honoring God as God leads to broken, perverted reasoning. - “futile in their thinking” means that their capacity for reasoning, for thinking rightly, becomes useless and purposeless. Paul doesn’t pull any punches here. Ignoring reality doesn’t actually change reality. Instead, we are trying to reason our way around fundamental truth, around reality, and creating some ridiculous, useless alternative.

And this further yields a darkening of our hearts, which, to a Jew like Paul, is a way of referring to the center of a person’s mind, volition, emotions, and conscience. Paul perceives it as a darkening, of having deficient light or brightness to see, becoming unwilling and unable to perceive rightly with our minds, wills, emotions, and conscience. 

(So verse 22, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools…”) One can be a brilliant intellectual, and yet be a fool, by rejecting God’s lordship over his or her life. In fact, just as the rich man is tempted to trust in his riches, so the intellectually brilliant person is tempted to trust in his own intellect. But we cannot be arrogant and wise at the same time.

The more one boasts of his own wisdom in willful disregard for God, the more progressively vain (foolish) our thinking becomes. (By contrast, Ps 111:10 states, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow His precepts gain rich understanding. His praise endures forever!” And Prov 9:10 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”)

Pray for an accurate view of God so that you will grow in the humility that leads to wisdom! Intellectual acuity is not a measure of wisdom. Rightly exalting God and trusting him, and living accordingly, is the measure of wisdom. 

v. 23 In our arrogant autonomy, we become idolatrous, not out of true, pure ignorance, but because of rejecting the knowledge of God that is available by general revelation.

They exchanged the glory of the immortal God… for images resembling mortal beings that are his creatures. From the side of one who has learned to fear God, this is supposed to sound as patently ludicrous as it is.

The prophet Isaiah also describes a blacksmith and a woodworker fashioning idols, and he traces this line of thought in particular with regard to the woodworker. On the one hand, Isaiah says, a man cuts down a tree, and…

Isaiah 44:15–17 ESV

¹⁵ Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. ¹⁶ Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” ¹⁷ And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”

As one whose heart has been given light from God, whose reason is not broken because it has first accepted God’s truth, idolatry is truly irrational. It is a patent absurdity. 

And we must also be clear about this from God’s perspective:

Idolatry is not a harmless mistake. Idolatry reveals that we reject worshiping God and erect false worship in its place. 

Please, don’t let the absurdity of bowing to idols, or all the “they’s” in this Romans passage leading up to this point, lull you into a sense of complacency and false security, thinking this is about somebody else and not us. We are all willfully ignoring God, and in so doing we worship other things in God’s place. We are idolaters.

We worship entertainment… and we worship our own comfort. We idolize famous people for simply being famous (elevating them to a place of importance, influence, and an object or our own desires that they should not occupy). We are idolatrous in our elevation of our own thinking, our skill, our own morality, and much, much more. In fact, everything that is wrong with us stems back to a suppression of truth about the exalted place of God, and instead exalting ourselves and other things that we’ve desired to esteem.

But when in his mercy God grants us humility (through greater knowledge of himself), we experience joy and safety of trusting God and worshipping him, and of knowing our place, even responding with rationality and kindness and compassion for everyone in their place, and utilizing everything else in its proper place.

By contrast: “Human unrighteousness most fundamentally consists in a refusal to worship God and a desire to worship that which is in the created order. Unrighteousness involves the refusal to give God his proper sovereignty in one’s life.” (Schreiner, BECNT Romans)

CONCLUSION: Just so, the bottom line from Paul for today is that…

Bottom Line: God is justified in his wrath against all who do not fear him, since his self-revelation through creation leaves us without excuse. Such willful ignorance leads to the futility and foolishness of irrational idolatry, a reflection of our rejection of the One who is worthy of worship.

[Next (in vv. 24-32): God’s wrath against our idolatry is manifest in giving us over to the sin we want, leading to further debasement of our humanity and decline of our societies in sin.]

But first Paul says, nobody gets a pass. You were created by God and you know it. Ignoring him is a choice you make in a sinful desire for autonomy, thinking this frees you from accountability. But them ain’t the facts. You do not free yourself from accountability, but rather prove that you deserve God’s righteous wrath. To Him you are accountable, because he made you. Willfully ignoring God doesn’t make reality go away; rather, it incurs just judgment.

Knowing you are a willful rejecter of God, have you responded to God’s rescue through Jesus?

Do you admit that you are without excuse before a holy God, and that all your other sin is a consequence of not worshiping him, and that your own sin is the cause of God’s just judgment? Where does that leave you?

And do you understand that God has offered a remedy? Through the perfect work of Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all, God has provided the righteousness we need. Have you responded in faith to God’s salvation in Jesus Christ?

If you are a believer, a follower of Jesus…

Christian, give glory to God and thank him in all things.  

When you look at creation, as you live in God’s world, give glory to God and thank him. When you think of salvation, give glory to God and thank him. Submit to the Lord Jesus and gratefully sing his praises. When you realize the havoc indulging in sin continues to have on your life, repent and give glory to God. Thank him for his forgiving grace, and his empowering grace to grow you in faithfulness as his beloved child.

When you suffer injustice, give glory to God that no injustice will get past him, and thank God for letting you understand better some of what Christ suffered for you. When you feel paralyzed by fear or are plagued by uncertainty in decisions that must be made, give glory to God that he is sovereign and good, and thank him for all that he has so clearly revealed in his word that is certain about his will for you life.

Followers of Jesus, let us continually be growing away from our former lives of willful ignorance, and instead, through Jesus, give glory to God and “give him thanks in every circumstance”… “for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5:18).

PRAY

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