Romans: 1:24 – 2:16
This is the second part in my series on Romans, and it was a difficult sermon to preach. Several people have told me how much they enjoyed it – I just hope it comes across as well on blog as it did out loud!
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Casting the First Stone
Romans 1:24 – 2:16
Catching Up…
Two weeks ago, we started looking at Paul’s letter to the Romans. Here are some of the things we learned about the book:
- Paul is writing to the church in Rome, which he did not start and which he had not visited.
- He is writing mostly to non-Jews, so he is forced to explain his arguments in ways that non-Jews (like us) can understand.
- Paul is also taking this chance to outline his understanding of the Gospel – our need for salvation and how God provided for that need.
Paul is using an argument that he has carefully thought out. Paul is a highly educated man, and he is skilled at putting together arguments that are persuasive. Here is the beginning of the outline of Paul’s argument.
- God’s anger is stirred up against ALL human beings:
- No human being has an excuse – whether we have heard directly or only perceived in nature and in others, EVERYONE has some sense that there is a God.
- So it is not IGNORANCE that stirs God’s wrath, but our deliberate rejection of him – especially when we know the Truth and ignore it.
We found encouragement in Paul’s outline of the Good News that God has done something about this already. But we also found a challenge – especially for those of us who have HEARD the Truth and KNOW what it means to obey… but we CHOOSE to disobey anyway.
Moving Ahead – The Wickedness of “Them”
Now we’ll read 1:24-32. It’s not an easy passage for us to hear:
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 of 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 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 indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to 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 are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 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.
There are all kinds of things that we could latch onto here, and all kinds of things that might make us uncomfortable. But let’s take things in proper order.
First, let’s notice the nature of sin and the judgment we receive. Three times (v. 24, 26, 28) Paul says that God “gives us over” to the consequences of our sin. God allows us free choice in whether or not we will obey him. So when we do or do not obey, our choices make a difference. And when we choose to disobey, our choice makes a difference. When you get pulled over for a DUI, God’s not going to intervene and get you out of jail time and fees. God does not remove the earthly consequences for sin. This is part of the judgment we face.
So we see that judgment for our sin does not always come from God – it also comes from US.
The Controversial Question of Homosexuality
Now I debated whether or not to use these verses as I went through Romans. The writers of the Lectionary left them out, and many preachers in our kinds of churches choose not to dwell on such topics. There are some controversial things here, and some would tend to be sensational and try to stir up anger or righteous indignation.
But when we come to God’s Word, and we find something that is difficult, we can NOT run away from it. We have to wrestle with it, try to understand it. We have to pray that God would give us understanding, and that he would give us wisdom to know what to do with the things we DON’T understand.
And so I did a little wrestling, and I began to understand. I still don’t understand the whole issue of homosexuality, and I don’t pretend to. I have some ideas, just like all of us probably do. But I also know we cannot turn off our brains when it comes to God’s Word. Neither can we ignore all the other things that God teaches us in our lives and conversations.
I have known, and still know, many homosexuals – both men and women – who are Christians. When I talk to them, I have no doubt that they are Christians. Some of them HATE what they have become; some are merely comfortable with it; others are happy and seem to enjoy it. I have sat and cried with a couple of my best friends who are gay, who grew up in the church and who denied for so long that they had these feelings. They didn’t want to be this way, didn’t want to act this way. And some are STILL tortured because of this thing they don’t understand.
They are human beings, just like you and me. They have things they do that they don’t want to do – things they don’t understand – just like you and me. I’m not making any kind of statement about the sinfulness of homosexuality – it’s not my place, and I’m not 100% convinced of anything. But about one thing I am certain: They are human beings, just like the woman Jesus rescued from being stoned.
There are churches so determined to be God’s judges in this matter that they have gone to great lengths. You’ve heard about them in the news – particularly a church in Kansas that uses its church money to send members around the country to protest at funerals. They go to these events, making sure the media are present, and carry signs that have all kinds of explicit language and pictures saying that God hates homosexuals. They bring children to the picket lines, and give them the most explicit signs for shock value. They have been at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, children killed in bus crashes, people who have died of AIDS – any event they can link as God’s punishment against this particular sin. And they raise an outcry and wonder why families are beginning to keep the location of a funeral secret!
These kinds of actions, these motivations, I simply can’t understand. Have these people ever actually talked to someone who’s gay, gotten to know them? I can’t help but think they’ve focused on one portion of scripture to the exclusion of all others… and it’s the parts they’re excluding that we REALLY need!
Grace and Judgment
I understand that there is a constant paradox (at least for us) between God’s wrath and God’s grace. But when we focus on one at the expense of the other, we miss the Gospel message completely. Look at the Gospel story we read earlier in the service – when the people brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. It was clearly wrong – no question about that. The scriptures were clear.
But did Jesus respond with judgment, or with grace? Both. He made sure the playing field was even. For the woman, who had already experienced “judgment” from the mob, he offered grace. And for the mob he offered a kind of mild judgment.
But I’m not up here this morning to talk about the evils of homosexuality. I’m not here to talk about how any sin is worse than another. Come to me anytime, and I’ll be glad to talk with you about my understandings and studies on homosexuality. But these two verses did not provide me with a revelation about the practice and state of homosexuality in God’s kingdom – Paul didn’t mean for them to.
In fact, I think Paul’s up to something
Paul’s Agenda
We can see what Paul’s up to by looking at the details in the passage. First, note how Paul lines up the list of sins. He starts with some of the “hard-hitters,” the ones everyone thinks about. In Paul’s day, homosexuality was widely practiced and accepted in the Roman Empire. And for Jews and Christians, there was an obvious conflict. The homosexual question was just as “hot” in Paul’s day as it is today. So he starts there.
But he doesn’t STOP there. Look at some of the other sins he mentions… ones that come closer to home, perhaps:
Wickedness, Evil, Greed, Depravity, Envy, Murder, Strife, Deceit, Malice, Gossiping, Slandering, God-hating, Insolence, Arrogance, Boasting, Inventing new ways of sinning, Disobedience against parents, Senselessness, Faithlessness, Ruthlessness, Blatant disobedience of God’s decrees
And second, look at Paul’s use of a simple pronoun to make a point. Throughout these verses he uses “they,” allowing us and his hearers to think that Paul was talking about someone else. That’s one of the ways the Devil works most – is allowing us to compare ourselves to someone else and think, “at least I’m not THAT bad…” You can almost feel the anger mounting as Paul mentions some of the sins, then the confusion begin as he gets down to things like “gossiping” and “disobeying your parents.”
That’s where he turns around and delivers the punch at the beginning of chapter 2:
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, 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 man, 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, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?
5But 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. 6God “will give to each person according to what he has 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.
Nit-picking
We could dwell on these individual sins. But if we did, we’d be missing the point. Paul is not making theological statements about certain sins here. In fact, just the opposite – Paul is saying that we have ALL sinned, and we are ALL under judgment.
My girls aren’t at this stage yet, but I know it well. Two children get in a fight, and no one sees who really started it. They’re rolling and scratching and yelling and punching, and you pull them off each other. When you do, what’s the first thing they say? “He started it. No, SHE started it.”
And what’s the first thing YOU say? Do you try to arbitrate between them? Do you all sit down and try to get to the root of the problem? No. That’s useless, because the truth of the matter is that they BOTH had a hand in starting it.
Paul is reminding us of an important fact, one that today’s church around the world (but especially in the U.S.) needs to hear and pay attention to. It’s useless to point fingers at one another, saying “look what he did” or “look what she did.” GOD is the judge, not us. We may see the outward action, but we can never determine the state and motive of someone’s heart when they do something. Only God can do that. And only God can say he’s never done anything wrong before. So only God can pass judgment.
So what’s our job? Grace. God gives judgment and grace, and we are only capable of giving grace. Because when we look at the ledger book of our lives, and see our sins written in red ink, the AMOUNT of red ink is not going to matter. If we only sinned once we’d still be under judgment. Fighting over individual sins is ridiculous – like arguing over how many bullets killed a man, or how many matches an arsonist threw on the gasoline. The number doesn’t matter – it was the first one that tipped the balance.
All we can do is offer grace and love.
Closing
Paul’s headed somewhere with this, and we’ll see where that is in the weeks ahead. If the first part of Romans offered us a challenge, this one offers even more. Paul is not trying to differentiate between sins – he’s showing that ALL of us are equally under judgment. Paul’s not trying to set himself or anyone else up in a place to judge the actions of others – he’s saying that NONE of us can judge another’s actions, no matter how bad they may seem. Paul’s not handing out grace and forgiveness – he’s saying only GOD can do that.
But there’s more ahead – including some good news!
