Romans 1 - Paul Describes the Depravity of Mankind. Not much has changed!

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. 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.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.

Today begins Paul's letter to the Romans.  Rome was where Paul ended up in prison at the end of the book of Acts. Paul longed to visit the church at Rome, which was made up of both Jews and Gentiles. In some ways it was the last stop on his missionary calling.  He wanted to encourage the Roman Christians more about their faith in Christ, and how Christ had called them to follow him.  

Romans is one of Paul's finest letters and contains some of the most important doctrines for the church.  Romans systematically lays out the condition of humankind, and how Jesus has become for us the righteousness we could never obtain on our own.  Then, after establishing our need for Christ's righteousness, Paul shows us the way to that righteousness, which is by grace through faith.  This is the classic explanation of the Christian faith which Martin Luther and the other reformers in the 16th century church used to bring the church back home to the Gospel.  The church had moved from salvation by faith alone, grace alone, based on the Word alone, to salvation by works.  Martin Luther used Romans as his primary argument that the Church had left the gospel behind.

In chapter 1, Paul makes the case that all people accountable to God, both the Jews and the Gentiles.  Why? Because what can be see about God is evident in Creation.  Paul says the Creation around us shows that there is a divine Creator with a divine purpose. Paul states that instead of worshipping and praising God as Creator, the people exchanged the truth for a lie.  They started worshipping human beings and other animals. As a result they fell into a downward spiral of depravity, sexual immorality and the degrading of each other's body.  

We learn of the Fall of humankind in Genesis, when the serpent tempts Adam and Eve to become like God, rather than worship God as their Creator.  This sounded good to Adam and Eve and they gave into the temptation and sin was brought into the world. Since then every man and woman has been born with sinful nature.  The basic consequence of the sinful nature is seen in the description what humans become in the rest of the chaper.  Instead of loving and respecting each other out of worship of God, they exploit and degrade each other for their own selfish ends. They refuse to be accountable to God for what is good and evil.  And in time God gave them to due penalty for their error. Because God is a just God he could not sit back and watch his Creation destroy itself but He intervened. 

You might say things don't look to differently today!  We have exchanged the truth of the Creator for a lie.  We worship created things not the Creator.  This attitude is reflected in a culture that says , "You can't judge me for my behavior.  I am only acting on what I want to do. I am going to do what is best for me, and you have no right to tell me otherwise"  When we tell God that we don't want him in our culture or our lives, He respects our decision and you can see the calamity that results. We make a grave mistake when we take God out of our society, or make God into our image so He can serve us.

Unfortunately we are not a Christian nation anymore, but that doesn't mean that Christians should not pray for our country, and strive to honor God with our lives.  While we may not be able to change the exploitive systems we live under, we can be a light in our neighborhoods, schools, and through our churches.  Churches have a unique opportunity today to show what it means to worship a Creator and not the created!