Romans 1:32

Once again Paul repeats that the people he is referring to know that what they are doing is wrong and know the appropriate punishment for it. We are not held responsible for something we don't know; God has put the understanding in our heart and so we have no excuse if we choose not to obey Him.

Interestingly, he then takes it a step further: it's bad enough to commit the sin yourself but how much worse to encourage others to commit it also. Like Matthew 18:6, causing or encouraging someone else in their sin is a sin itself, just as bad or worse than committing the sin yourself. Jesus raised the standard higher and Paul is communicating Jesus' teaching. In Matthew 5:21-32 Jesus put the sin as not just committing the actual sin but even considering it or imagining it. Encouraging sin in someone else would be pretty similar: technically not committing the sin but only because of circumstances. We can see this resonates with our nature when we consider a specific sin, such as murder, and the guilt of a person who pays someone else to commit the actual murder. They are guilty of the sin even if they weren't the one acting it out because they are the will desiring the sin to happen and the encouragement for someone else to make it happen.

Romans 1:31

The characteristics described in this verse almost don't match the rest of the list. They seem to me to be natural consequences of the sins already mentioned. Just as we could see:
 A                          causes B                                              resulting in C
for example
(A) Too much rain causes (B) A river to overflow              resulting in (C) A flood
it seems:
(A) Rejecting God causes (B) These sins (verses 29 & 30) resulting in (C) Foolishness and an inability to make and keep commitments.

Who would choose to be foolish? If you could look down the road a bit and see that your actions and choices will cause you to become foolish, wouldn't you choose different actions so you can avoid becoming a fool?

Have you ever known someone incapable of making or keeping a commitment? Even worse is someone unable to love or to show mercy. How can you maintain a society if the individuals in that society aren't attached even to their mothers or mothers to their children? You can't expect them to turn around and keep even small commitments let alone commit themselves to obeying the nation's laws.

Turning it back around, to avoid becoming foolish and incapable of keeping a commitment, avoid the causes of being filled to capacity with sin, by not rejecting God in your heart, soul, and mind.

Romans 1:30

As much as I'd like to deny it, I have committed sins from this list. I'm sure everyone has. The distinction between a Christian and a non-Christian is whether you're trying to avoid these sins and what you do about it afterward. Some things I do to try avoiding these and other sins:

• Set aside time daily to pray with minimal distractions
• Continue saying short prayers throughout the day whenever anything comes up
• Read the Bible daily
• Memorize Scripture verses
• Avoid media that tends to glorify sin

It has been pointed out that the difference between Judas and Peter was not in how they betrayed Jesus, since they both did, but in Peter's repentance and Judas' suicide. Whenever I commit a sin, no matter how small or large, I need to repent and ask the Lord's forgiveness. Amazingly, He ALWAYS does forgive me. I am grateful for His mercy.

Romans 1:29

I don't know Greek but I do have access to a dictionary telling me which Greek word corresponds to which English word and some of the other meanings or implications of the original word that may not be communicated in the translation. Here, although all the translations I have say "being filled" or "were filled" or "have become filled", the dictionary shows a sense of being filled to capacity, replete, even crammed full. There's no room left for anything else. What a list of things to be filled with! With no room left over for, say, love, happiness, peace, or forgiveness. I would much rather appear to be a fool in the eyes of this world than to be filled to capacity with this list of evil and have no room left for God's blessings.

Romans 1:28

Christianity is the good life. The world we live in has tried to convince us otherwise, but really there is no better life than what the Lord offers us. But He's not going to force us to accept it. This is the third time in Romans that Paul says that "God gave them up", this time concerning the mind. At first glance it looks like they now have an open playing field for thinking and doing whatever they want. It looks like freedom. But the phrase "gave them up to" suggests a prisoner handed over to a guard, don't you think? So those who choose to reject God are the prisoners of the reprobate mind. What are they missing out on? From my personal experience, they are missing out on the very best this life has to offer, not to mention the life to come. With Christ is peace, joy, love, mercy, guidance, protection, support, security, adventure, community, family, and so much more. Which are you choosing for, the life of a prisoner or the life of a Christian?

Romans 1:27

Our actions have consequences, either good or bad depending on the action. It's worth remembering the goal of the consequence: to encourage us to do what are supposed to. As a parent it can be easier to see the correlation between action and consequence in my children's lives than in my own, but I know God allows natural consequences in my life too. Just as I try to use those consequences to encourage my children to choose the best actions I know that God would like the results of my actions to encourage me to choose correctly. He doesn't punish us for the sake of seeing us suffer but rather to help motivate us to reject our sin and turn toward God. What consequences, good or bad, are you experiencing because of choices you've made in the past? Are they motivating you to make better choices today?

Romans 1:26

Honestly, in your heart, what rules you? Who or what is your master? It should be Christ, but if you reject God then He will "give you up" to the god you choose. If the god you choose is your passions, you may find yourself involved in sexual (because that involves the most vulnerable part of who we are) relations completely opposed to the design God created in us. He designed a very specific way for us to relate sexually: 1 man + 1 woman united in marriage. Every sexual interaction different from that design is not of God and shows that God is not the lord of your passions. He will ONLY lead us to follow the pattern He has designed for us, NEVER 1 man + 1 man or 1 woman + 1 woman or 1 adult + 1 child or 1 married + 1 single or 1 single + 1 single. Each of these deviations from the Creator's design and all other deviations are clear indications that the Lord God, who created each of us, is not the one leading your life.

Romans 1:25

Have you ever read the poem "Smart" by Shel Silverstein? It's in his wonderful book, Where the Sidewalk Ends. This is the poem that comes to mind when I read Romans 1:25. Only someone very foolish or with practically no understanding of the value of something would exchange it for something so much LESS valuable. Exchanging truth for a lie is like trading gold for mud. Don't Do It!!

Romans 1:24

Three times in the next few verses it says "God gave them up" to their sin in their hearts, passions, and mind. This relates directly with Deuteronomy 6:5 where we are commanded to love God with all our heart, soul and strength. Although Deuteronomy was written in Hebrew and Romans in Greek, it certainly seems to me that Paul was remembering this commandment as well as the free will God has gifted to us. We are the only creatures on Earth with the ability to choose to disobey our Creator. We don't live by animal instinct but by human will. God has made His command for us clear, both in Scripture and within ourselves. The choice is in us: will we obey or will we be "given up" to willful disobedience?

Romans 1:23

Is there anything more foolish than worshiping something that has no real bearing on our lives? When I read to my daughters about  someone making or worshiping an idol, I make it a little more understandable to them by relating it to our rocking chair. They think it's really funny that anyone would be so foolish as to worship a rocking chair.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that for those who do choose to worship an idol.

Yet it is just as foolish.

And the things we're more likely to worship in our "modern" society are just as corruptible as man, birds, four footed creatures, and reptiles. Money, power, science, prestige, leisure time, and their cousins are still tools. They can be used by God to help us (just as men and animals can be used by Him to help us), but they can't do anything by themselves any more than the others can. While you may not be bowing before a physical altar, if you are depending on it to help you or making sacrifices you shouldn't in order to acquire more of it, then that is worship of an idol.

What are you tempted to turn into an idol?

Romans 1:22

Carrying over a bit from verse 21, it's hard in our modern world to grasp the significance of darkness. I live in the city, so there are always street lights shining no matter how dark the night would be without them. Campgrounds in the country also have lights shining to show the way to the bathrooms. Quite a few people choose to have lights on all night around their campsite or house. But even if you were deep in the countryside without any lights on, there is nowadays often a city close enough nearby to shine its collective lights into the night and reduce the darkness even on a moonless night. And if the light isn't bright enough wherever we happen to be, it's very easy to flip a switch to turn another light on. But in Paul's time it was a little harder to lighten the darkness.

It's pretty obvious to notice if the world around you is dark. What may be the most astounding about those who reject God is their insistence that they are wise: their denial of the darkness of their hearts. If everyone around you is also stumbling through darkness they may assume that the one person insisting that they can see better than everyone else has a light to see by while everyone else is blind and couldn't see even if the road was flooded with light. But no one who CAN see will be deceived. If you have the true light of God, it is much easier to identify who is blind and who also has light to walk by.

Romans 1:21

So if, then, we know God in our hearts because He has placed that knowledge there, we are responsible for how we respond. This verse points out the two responses we should give to God: glory and thanksgiving. Are you responding correctly to God? Are you giving Him the glory, honor, and praise He is worthy of? Are you acknowledging that everything you have and everything you are comes from God? Are you thanking Him appropriately? After all, if the people Paul is talking about failed in their responsibilities and received the natural consequences for it, we can expect the same to happen to us if we also fail in our responsibilities. Take time every day to glorify and thank the Lord: you don't want to suffer the consequences of choosing not to.

Romans 1:20

At a talk I attended recently, Monsignor Lunsford pointed out that certain things cannot be measured. He gave the example of trying to measure love: we know when it's present and we know when it's not, but there is no way whatsoever to measure it. Some of the most important areas of our life are in fact the ones we cannot physically measure. Many of them, including faith, hope, and love, involve God and our relationship with Him.

Obviously Paul doesn't mean that we see God's invisible attributes with our physical eyes. But we know them in our hearts just as clearly as anything we do see with our physical eyes. And knowing them, we become responsible for how we respond to them. Knowing that God is Who He Is, we had better submit ourselves to Him wholly and completely. Knowing what He requires of us in our relationships with one another, we had better obey Him as fully as possible. Any argument that we can't measure our knowledge of God ignores the reality that He has placed within us an understanding of Himself and of His requirements for us. And since they are within our hearts, it is perfectly just for Him to hold us accountable for obeying Him.

Romans 1:19

No one is being held accountable for anything they didn't know. If someone is punished for murder, it's because that person knew that murder is wrong. If someone is punished for stealing, it's because that person knew that stealing is wrong. God gives us the opportunity to know right from wrong, at least to a certain extent, in our hearts, in our very nature.

Romans 1:18

While God's mercy is certainly amazingly abundant, it seems to be overemphasized in today's world in comparison to His righteousness and justice. I've heard people argue against the Old Testament especially, because they don't like to read of the complete destruction of one gentile city or another. I think it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture: as Paul points out, the righteousness of God is revealed as we read Scripture, including accounts of God's punishment. If the wicked are left unpunished, why should we choose to obey? If the punishment is infrequent or inconsistent, why should our obedience also be infrequent or inconsistent? God is holy; He is righteous. By punishing the unrighteous people He encourages us to become righteous.

Romans 1:17

What a blessing it is that God has made Himself known to us! We can come to know Who and What He is through reading the Bible, prayer to Him, observing Creation, recognizing Natural Law, and talking with other people who also know Him. He has not chosen to give us only one side of Himself, like a co-worker who seems always professional because we only see each other in the work environment. And what we see is consistent: not someone who changes based on the circumstances or their mood. His righteousness IS revealed in the gospel as we read it with faith to know God.

Romans 1:16

Are you ever ashamed of the gospel? Are you intimidated by the prospect of sharing with others that you are a Christian and of what that means for your life? The speaker at a talk I attended recently pointed out that being a Christian should transform us so completely that the change is visible to everyone we come across. Maybe it's not quite so obvious to the gas station attendant that you are a Christian as a nun's habit would be, but it certainly shouldn't be a surprise to your family, friends, close co-workers, neighbors. If we are ashamed to let people know what we believe, then I wonder whether we truly believe it. Do you believe that eternity without God is worse than a building on fire? Do you love enough to help rescue others from that fate worse than a burning building? Do you believe in Christ as our hope of rescue? If you do, then don't be ashamed of that. Make it obvious to everyone you encounter.

Romans 1:15

When I host an event, I want people to come. I don't expect that everyone I invite will be able to make it, and I invite more than I plan to host because of that. But it can be nice to hear from people who want to come but won't be able to. There is something very affirming for us as humans to know that a friend wants to spend time with us whether or not they're able to do so. Here in verse 15 this is the fourth time in just six verses that Paul expresses that type of desire to visit Rome. Even if he had never arrived I suspect the Roman Christians knew that he wanted to be with them and would have felt very affirmed in his love for them. The words he uses are not idle: they're strong sentiments of desire. "Beseeching", "blessed", "long", "purposed", "eager"; I think the Romans knew after receiving this letter that Paul would be coming to visit them if possible and if he never arrived that it wasn't for a lack of desire on his part.

Romans 1:14

Have you ever truly found more benefit by giving or doing good toward other people? It can sound cliche to hear that the giver receives more than the recipient, yet I've been in situations where that is absolutely true. It would be very interesting to see the results of a double-blind study comparing the money we spend on tithe and almsgiving, giving away to other people, with the money and value of the time and gifts we receive from others. My husband is especially good at tithing immediately and being generous with anyone who asks and quite a few who don't ask for help. I am unfortunately more stingy, but I have very clearly seen God's abundance toward us in response to my husband's abundance toward others. A study comparing the money we spend on God's work vs. the money we save or receive from the generosity of other people probably wouldn't produce very clear results. God's abundance toward us isn't always immediate or easy to tag as being from God and not a result of our own efforts or "coincidence". Yet I do believe we have benefited a great deal from giving our time, money, and talents away to other people.

I think Paul must have seen that in his life as well. And of course all this touches only on the rewards of this life; Christ promised far greater blessings in the life to come. I suspect Paul received abundant blessings in his life, but I think the debt he is referring to is for the eternal blessings he knew he would be receiving. Who wouldn't be grateful for the opportunity to invest $100 if they knew they would receive another $100 now as a stipend with $100 or more paid again at some time down the road (see Luke 6:38)? If Paul, who gave so much, was indebted to those he gave to, I'd better follow his example as well as I can. He understood God's economy better than I ever will; I'd be smart to put myself into as much "debt" as possible by serving and giving to others.

Romans 1:13

How do you spend your vacation time? Does it benefit anyone besides yourself? Does it benefit you for more than a few days? Paul had a purpose for visiting the Christians in Rome and that purpose was to provide lasting, eternal benefit for both himself and them. In our family we are trying to become more intentional in the way we spend our "free time", including our vacations, so the benefits are increased and endure longer. I don't think our efforts are anything close to Paul's though. We would like to see greater benefits for our family by reducing activities that distract us and our children and increasing opportunities to grow in our relationships with God, one another, and our brothers and sisters in Christ. Yet I still see a lot of selfishness in our efforts when I compare them to Paul's desire to bear eternal fruit for himself and those he loves in Rome, both those he has met and those he has not.