I have usually considered the passage in Romans 1 dealing with the slide further into sin being one of personal sin. Recently I listened to a message that opened my eyes to a larger application, that of the progression of a whole nation (or even all of Western society) into rejecting God and embracing sin. The pastor roughly laid out a timeline, showing this slide down to the lowest common denominator of morality. I found this timeline concept instructive.
| Romans 1 | ||
| 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. | ||
| 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. | Man abandons God and the rise of secularism. This has been happening for a long time, but accelerated in the early 1900’s up to the ’50’s and ’60’s with the rise of secularism, and the growing idea of man’s ability to solve everything with science.We ceased giving thanks, became futile in our thinking, and our hearts are dark and foolish. |
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| 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. | ||
| 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. | 1960’s sexual revolution. When God abandons a society it become pornographic, it becomes obsessed with sex.”We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.” — Aldous Huxley, “Confessions of a Professed Atheist” discussing why he rejected God and any system of morality. |
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| 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. | “A man who ceases to believe in God does not believe in nothing; he believes in anything.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy The worship of earth – environmentalism as a religion and the growth of paganism. |
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| 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. | 1970’s – todayWhen a society rejects God, and God then abandons a society, there is a sexual revolution, then a homosexual revolution. | |
| 28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. | Rejection of God’s word leads to this apt description of our modern world.”Murder” – how many millions and millions of babies slaughtered in state approved abortion clinics in the last 50 years? | |
| 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. | The rise of “tolerance” and “political correctness” where you must not only tolerate (in the truest sense meaning to accept it’s existence) but approve and even promote every area of sin . | |
And that pretty much sums up this world we are in.
How long, Lord, must I call for help
and You do not listen
or cry out to You about violence
and You do not save?Why do You force me to look at injustice?
Why do You tolerate wrongdoing?Oppression and violence are right in front of me.
Strife is ongoing, and conflict escalates.This is why the law is ineffective
and justice never emerges.
For the wicked restrict the righteous;
therefore, justice comes out perverted.Habakkuk 1:2-4
