Romans 1

     The evidence is strong that Paul wrote Romans from Corinth during his three months delay there (Acts 20:3) before his final trip to Jerusalem, probably in AD 55.

     1:1-7.  The common form for letters at the time is followed here.  Much like our business letters, it begins with the writer’s name and business, followed by the inside address and greeting.  He writes as Christ’s slave, given authority as his apostle to proclaim the gospel, which is from God (1), promised in the OT (2), and which is Christ centered (3).

     Just as the OT is the key to recognizing Christ, so Christ is the key to understanding the OT (see Luke 24:44-49).  Born of a seed of David (Mary), Christ is the Son of Man, who was declared to be the Son of God with all the power of God, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead (3-4).  (Thus the Lord Jesus Christ is both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever, see WCF 8:2.)

     1:14.  “…both to the wise and to the foolish.”  In the context, this seems to be a comment relating to cultures rather than individuals.  All cultures are not of equal value.  But Paul is obligated by the gospel to preach Christ to all men (i.e., men of every kind).

     1:16-17.  Men naturally prefer to deny and hide their shameful condition.  But man’s need is an axiom of the gospel, for by it men must be saved by faith in the power of God, rather than their own work.  The gospel reveals the mystery of how God in Christ can remain righteous and yet save sinners.

      1:18.  Nowhere is the truth suppressed more unrighteously than by those who deny that man is under the wrath of God, for they deny God’s holiness by saying in effect that a good God would wink at sin.  Then, when God allows consequences for sin and bad things happen, since in their eyes a good God would not have allowed it, they also are denying God’s power to do anything to prevent it.  Their God is as much a hand wringing victim of chance as man.  He is full of soft feelings, but he cannot help.

     1:19.  But man can’t plead ignorance.  He was made in God’s image.  Suppressing the truth is not the same as not knowing.

     1:20.  The creation can’t tell us everything, but it does clearly tell us that it did not appear out of nothing with no cause.  God, the first Cause, had to have eternal power and wisdom.  Though invisible, his attributes are clearly seen in what he made.

     1:21.  Our first parents knew God, and yet they and all their children have exalted themselves rather than God.

     1:22-23.  Note the descending, decaying order of man’s worship.  From worshiping man himself (Gen.3:5-6), they descend through the lower order of nature, and end, it seems, worshiping colliding atomic particles.  Man sees himself as a product of natural accident, the impersonal forces of time and chance, with no explanation of how order arose out of disorder, or even how the original disorder self-generated.

     1:24-32.  “God gave them over….” — in their hearts to impurity and dishonor in the flesh, because they chose to exchange the truth of God for the lie (margin) of Satan.  God gave them over to degrading passions, and perverted unnatural sexual acts, which carry their own punishment.  And God gave them over to a depraved mind, which leads to all manner of deadly sinful acts and the hearty approval of such acts done by others.

     So this is how the gospel begins, with a forced look at human depravity, and man given over by a holy God to suffer the consequences of his own willfully disobedient choices.

     1:26-27.  Those professing to be wise say that Paul’s attitude is homophobic, unloving, judgmental, and ignorant gay bashing.  But Paul is not saying homosexuality is the worst of sins.  Rather, he starts with this sin to demonstrate the fallen condition of all.  Heterosexual fornicators are surely equally bad, but they might claim that their behavior was only what they were made to do, the natural thing.  “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food,” as the aphorism cited in 1 Cor.6:13 says.  But in homosexual fornication, this defense cannot be made.  Sin is exposed as the unnatural perversion of the Creator’s intention for his creature that all sin is.  The sorry perversions of vv.29-31 are no less sinful.

     Nevertheless, those who profess to be wise make the illogical argument that if an obviously unnatural behavior is “biologically determined,” then it could not be immoral or even properly called unnatural.  Biology determines all.  But this destroys all moral responsibility for our behavior.  The truth is, the more determined one is to do evil, the more blameworthy he shows himself to be.  Isn’t it strange reasoning that those who would excuse all as determined by biology and thus out of our moral control, are the same people who argue that as free agents, we must be allowed choice for abortions of convenience?  And this is another obviously unnatural act that cannot be the Creator’s will for us.

     Call a sin genetic, but don’t imagine you’ve justified sinners.  We are responsible for what we choose to do.  A predetermination to do either good or evil does not prove that we have no free will.  The stronger the urge, the freer the choice.  But it is a moral necessity only.   God’s nature determines that he always does what is right, yet God does what he pleases.