Romans 1:18-2:11

Recap of Last Week (Romans 1:1-20)

Paul’s letter to the Romans, written during his third missionary journey, emphasizes the gospel’s divine origins and the righteousness of God revealed through faith. Paul introduces himself as a servant of Christ and expresses his desire to visit the Roman church for mutual encouragement. He highlights that salvation is available to all—Jew and Gentile alike—through faith in Jesus. Finally, Paul begins addressing humanity’s unrighteousness and our need for God’s grace. We also discussed that righteousness is not a scale, and rather learned through Luke 18 that if you are not God, then you are not good = that as soon as we are born we are sinners by nature, which leads us to therefore sin, making us unrighteous and ungodly.

Today we will go through Paul’s arguments against Paganism, and Moralism.

Paganism and Moralism

In order to do so we need to understand what these concepts are

Paganism = the worship of creation rather than the Creator

remember it is the original lie Satan told Adam and Eve in the garden

Genesis 3:1–5 NIV

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Moralism = making wrong comparisons (specifically about righteousness/goodness) to feed our ego

It’s that scale we talked about last week: “As long as I make it past this line on the scale, then I’m good”

*Wrong buzzer Noise* Wrong, we talked about this last week, but Paul is going to expand on this beginning in Chapter 2

Moralism is the second biggest religious lie right behind paganism

Romans 1:18–2:11 NIV

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 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. 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. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 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. 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. 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, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 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. You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.

Paganism (Romans 1:18-32)

Romans 1:18–20 NIV

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 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.

As we spoke about last week: the world was made in a way to fit man’s needs, and therefore show the love the Father has for His creation

but Creation is also a testament to God’s glory and sing His praise (Ps. 19:1-4 from last week)(Luke 19:37-40)

Luke 19:37–40 NIV

When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Creation in of its self is enough for God’s power to be known — “… For since the creation of the worlds God’s invisible qualities… has been clearly seen… so that people are without excuse.”

Nature/matter is one of order, not one of chaos (even though science attempts to tell us otherwise)

Everyone has the ability to know of God, but not the ability to accept the Gospel

Mankind (our flesh) as a whole fight tooth and nail to suppress this truth — and in doing so brings about other ways/lies as how to obtain righteousness (i.e., Paganism and Moralism)

In doing so, deceives ourselves to believe we are indeed “Good enough” to enter heaven — but in reality, if we look at it for what it is, the only thing mankind is worth of is God’s judgement

Romans 1:21–25 NIV

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. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

“For although they knew God...” this speaks of early man specifically —> those before Genesis 21 when paganism came to be and sin

Early man knew of God but did not have faith in Him due to our sin nature

if we really look at it: there was only 1 family during those days that had faith in God, and it wasn’t until Abraham that God extended that to families (plural), then later to an entire nation

Here we see how Paganism became the 1st false religion because mankind became futile in our thinking and their hearts were darkened — they gave themselves over to what the world offered

But, this was also during the time where “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”, before the Israelites were lead out of Egypt and the Ten Commandments came into existence

“Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images...”

it’s easy to say we don't see this now of days, because we don’t see golden calves, bulls, etc in our society, right?

Can any of you think of things that have replaced the physical idols in our culture?

Ex: Phones, sports teams, celebrities/athletes, money

Paganism hasn’t left our world, it is still very alive and well — but we need to remember that Satan is a deceiver, yes, but also an innovator

He has kept up to date with the times, and has turned things that may have been made to be harmless (i.e., our phones) originally, and have turned them into these idols that we worship

How many of us have been grounded from our phones, and our initial response is to get angry — and we justify this reaction because of how much we “need” our phones

These idols are out there, and we need to be aware of them because even though we may not lose our salvation because of them, they can definitely hurt/stall our walk with Christ

Notice the progression of the idols in v.23 :

Human being —> Birds —> Animals —> Reptiles

And now fast forwarding to today mankind has moved so far from worshiping the Creator to worshiping the creation that we now see people worshiping rocks and trees (things that don’t even move!)

this progression to show just how dumb humans can be

We have emphasized material things instead of spiritual things

everything that may seem important to us, may not be inherently bad, but Satan can definitely use as a distraction from what is truly important and eternal

Romans 1:24–25 NIV

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

As Paul picks up in v.24 and explains that God therefore gave the to their sinful desires, means that since they were already sinning He didn’t do anything to stop us (we have the free will to do so), but seems like a jump from talking about worshiping idols to living in sexual impurity and degrading their bodies, right?

Not really, because that’s the natural progression of following paganism —