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§4 Truth and Tragedy (Rom. 1:18–32)

Paul now launches into the body of the epistle with an indictment against humanity. He will maintain the charge until 3:21, at which point he will return to righteousness by faith which he introduced in 1:16–17. Romans 1:18–3:20 is a sobering exposé of the dark side of human nature. Throughout the attack Paul labors to demonstrate that there is no distinction between Gentile and Jew in the matter of sin and guilt, a point reasserted in 3:10–12, 3:23, and 11:32. Gentile and Jew are equally guilty before God, but they are not guilty in the same way. In 1:18–32 Paul focuses primarily on the Gentile sins of idolatry and immorality. His accusations, which are generally typical of Jewish allegations of Gentiles, are remarkably similar to those found in Wisdom of Solomon 12–15. In 2:1–3:20 Paul then turns to Jews and their problems of pride, judgment, and disobedience. But despite the particular sins of Gentiles and Jews, both represent the larger fundamental problem of humanity. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:22–23).

Paul’s negative assessment of the human condition will no doubt offend many Westerners who have been raised to believe in the basic goodness of human nature. It may appear that Paul has left the “good news” in verse 17 and embarked on a depressing, and for many, degrading, rehearsal of everything bad in life. But Paul has not left the gospel. This section too begins with the revelation of God, the same idea with which he concluded in 1:17. There it was the revelation of the righteousness of God, here the revelation of the wrath of God against the wickedness of humanity. Romans 1:18ff. is not a tirade by a religionist bent on dredging up human faults. The wrath of God against human corruption is also the revelation of God, and therefore an element of the gospel. Love and wrath are not opposites. They are, in the words of Ernst Gaugler, “the same living energy of the divine holiness which expresses itself in the gospel, on the one hand in God’s opposition to sin, and on the other in his love which draws us homeward. Where one knows nothing of God’s wrath, there one knows nothing of his love” (Der Römerbrief, vol. 1, p. 46 [my translation]). Elsewhere Paul recalls “the kindness and sternness of God” (11:22). If the message of wrath is less welcome, it is no less necessary for salvation. Necessary as wrath may be, it is not God’s first word or his last. The first word is grace, that the gospel is powerful to save (1:16–17). Only the one who first knows the love and acceptance of God can hear the grim truth about oneself. It is the physician who holds some hope of a cure who can reveal to a patient the severity of the diagnosis.

There are many ways to think of the ignoble side of human nature. Drama and literature speak of a “tragic flaw” which frustrates a hero’s fulfilling his or her potential. Psychology speaks of “the human predicament” which arises from imperfect choices. Sociology conceives of persons as victims of social, environmental, or hereditary circumstances. Paul, however, attributes to humanity a more active role in its misfortune. Verses 18–32 stress the deliberate nature of human rebellion against God and its ineluctable guilt. Paul speaks of a knowing suppression of the truth (vv. 18, 25). Three times he says that God has made known that which otherwise could not be known (vv. 19, 20). Thrice again he asserts that humanity can know God and does in fact experience God (vv. 19, 21, 32), but tragically—and this he repeats four times—humanity “exchanged” such knowledge for a counterfeit (vv. 23, 25, 26, 27). In fifteen verses Paul makes twelve references to the manifestation or knowableness of God’s power and divine nature. In spite of this, humanity has chosen neither to glorify nor to give thanks to God (v. 21), and as a consequence, it has, in the words of Luther, fallen into ingratitude, hollowness, blindness, and total departure from God. “The sin of omitting that which is good leads to the sin of committing that which is positively evil” (Epistle to the Romans, pp. 28–30).

Thus, the human predicament results neither from ignorance nor from a malevolent fate. The problem is not lack of knowledge, but failure to acknowledge God and render proper worship and obedience. There is nothing essentially new in Paul’s exposé of human nature; indeed we should be wary if there were, for the human problem has been diagnosed much the same by others. As we noted, a reading of Wisdom of Solomon 12–15 will reveal how closely Paul echoes contemporary Jewish accusations of Gentiles—though with one important difference. Whereas the author of the Wisdom of Solomon commends the faithfulness of Israel (15:1–19) in contrast to the faithlessness of the Gentiles (chs. 12–14), Paul charges both with unrighteousness. Paul’s argument is more radical and universal. Instead of accepting itself as made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27), humanity feverishly tries to reverse the order of creation and remake God in its own image. Humanity has not been denied the fair winds of fate; rather, its willful denial of God has shipwrecked it on the reefs of a world centered in self.

Although God made humanity free to refuse him, he did not make it free from the consequences of its refusal. “For Paul no [one] is ever really without a master or on his own,” says Ernst Käsemann. “He who evades the Creator runs into his Judge” (Romans, p. 43). Rebellion against God disrupts not only humanity’s relationship with God, but all relationships, including those with self, nature, and others. The perversion of the relationship between humanity and God results in idolatry (vv. 19–23). Humanity’s gaze falls from the glory of God to itself, and even below itself to the animals (v. 23). The second disruption results in immorality (vv. 24–27). Exchanging rightful sexual relationships for abnormal ones results in homosexuality, in which the natural desire for one’s sexual opposite is inverted upon the self. The third and final disruption is that human relationships become characterized by strife and greed (vv. 28–32). One’s neighbor becomes one’s adversary, and harmony among persons sours into the cacophony of vices listed in verses 29–31. In the primary relationships of self, nature, others, and God, human failure to acknowledge God leads not to an evolution of something better, but to a devolution of something worse. In each case God’s response to human refusal is the same: three times Paul says, “God gave them over to” the wretchedness they desired (vv. 24, 26, 28). This refrain falls like so many blows of the ax, severing the ropes by which humanity could pull itself back to God.

1:18 / The wickedness of men is now contrasted with the “righteousness of God” in 1:17. The Greek word translated wickedness, adikia, is the negative of the “righteousness” (dikaiosynē) of God in verse 17. Thus, the Greek draws an unmistakable parallelism between the revelation of God’s righteousness (v. 17) and the revelation of God’s wrath against human unrighteousness (v. 18). The object of God’s wrath is the suppression of the truth. The truth Paul has in mind is probably not truth in general (although suppressing truth in any form is bad enough), but the truth of God. “Sin is always an assault upon the truth,” says Cranfield (Romans, vol. 1, p. 112). God’s wrath burns against perverting the truth, for once people stop believing in the truth, as G. K. Chesterton once said, they do not believe in nothing, they believe in anything! Sacrificing the truth of God leads to the denial of reality (v. 20), a lie (v. 25), a depraved mind (v. 28), and the approval of unrighteousness (v. 32).

Wickedness, appearing twice in verse 18 and again in 1:29, 2:8, and 3:5, dominates Paul’s treatment of the guilt of humanity. In the Greek text verse 18 is introduced with the conjunction “for” (gar, omitted in NIV), which links verses 18ff. with verses 16–17. “For” adds a necessary corollary to what Paul has already said about salvation, namely, that one cannot be made right with God other than “by faith from first to last” (v. 17). Paul is thus not getting sidetracked on the sorry state of the world, but is demonstrating that apart from faith there can be no receiving of grace.

The wrath of God (v. 18) is revealed along with the righteousness of God (v. 17) and is inseparable from it. Although they may seem like opposites, both righteousness and wrath comprise the gospel. God’s anger appears to contradict what we know of his love and forgiveness. Wrath, at least in human experience, connotes vengeance and retaliation fueled with self-interest, which erupts in irrational and injurious excess. But God’s wrath is different. It is not an arbitrary nightmare of raw power. It is guided by God’s covenant relationship with his people. God’s wrath is divine indignation against the corruption of his good creation. When understood in this way, God’s anger does not jeopardize his goodness; rather, it is a corollary of it, for if God were not angered by unrighteousness he would not be thoroughly righteous (see Eph. 2:3–5). God’s wrath is thus not an aberration of his divine nature, but the result of holy love encountering evil and unrighteousness.

God’s wrath is not always apparent in the course of history. Bad consequences do not necessarily follow bad actions; good things sometimes befall them, and conversely, bad things sometimes befall good actions. We cannot say that the wrath of God is simply a nemesis, the inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe, as does C. H. Dodd (Romans, pp. 21–24). Nor must we try, as did ancient Jewish rabbis, to divorce wrath from God by ascribing it to angelic intermediaries. God’s wrath is rather a judgment from heaven. It is grounded in God’s righteous perspective on evil and his power over it. God’s wrath is not synonymous with historical catastrophes, as Hegel, for example, regarded it, but it is divine judgment in history. God’s wrath is witnessed supremely in Gethsemane and Golgotha, where, in the forsakenness of his Son, God took the extreme penalty for sin on himself!

Wrath and righteousness, therefore, are equally expressions of God’s grace. If in what follows we hear the gavel of condemnation, it is only to hush all human protestations and self-justifications so that the acquittal of grace may be heard. The Judge condemns in order to save. Only those who know that they are lost will look for help. The good news of free salvation can be heard only by those who have first been briefed on the hopelessness of their case.

As an expression of holy love in the face of human evil, God’s wrath is directed not against persons, but against their godlessness and wickedness. Its object is that which specifically opposes the divine goodness and will. The adjective all may suggest that Paul understands godlessness and wickedness rather synonymously, but the words carry different nuances. The Greek asebeia entails the denial of the holy or unrighteousness, here rendered godlessness. Paul may be thinking of those offenses against the majesty of God which are found in the first four commandments (Exod. 20:1–8). Adikia (NIV, wickedness), on the other hand, means immorality or self-righteousness and is an offense against the just ordering of human relationships as required in the final six commandments (Exod. 20:12–17). God’s wrath is directed against whatever fractures divine and human relationships, whether in motive or in deed.

1:19–21 / Verses 19–21 are critical for the argument because they assert that the problem of human guilt is not God’s hiddenness and therefore humanity’s ignorance, but rather God’s self-disclosure and humanity’s rejection of it. The Greek conjunction dioti (NIV, since) at the beginning of verse 19 carries a causal force. Thus, men are without excuse. Twice (vv. 19, 21) Paul says that God can be known. Several commentators translate the Greek word gnōston (NIV, known) as “knowable,” thus suggesting that even if humanity did not know God, it could have known God. “Knowable,” of course, also lessens humanity’s guilt. Paul, however, indicates that humanity did know at least something of God (see v. 21: they knew God), and his argument depends on its having known him. Moreover, in the Greek NT, gnōston normally means “known” as opposed to “knowable”; its root, in fact, means not knowledge about something, but knowledge of it by experience. Paul is therefore saying that all persons have experienced God … and could have experienced more. Creation bears God’s fingerprints, and through it humanity has experienced something of God’s wisdom, power, and generosity. The idea here echoes Paul’s Areopagus speech (Acts 17:27–28) that God is not far from his creatures.

A word may be in order at this point about natural theology. Is Paul saying that it was possible for humanity to know God apart from revelation in Jesus Christ? Again in 2:14 he seems to hint of a natural morality among the Gentiles who had never been taught the Mosaic law. These passages have been the subject of confusion, due in part to lack of definition of terms. As it was developed during the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, “natural religion” meant the ability of unaided human reason to perceive and know God. But Paul is not exactly speaking of unaided human reason. His starting point is not humanity (as epitomized by natural theology), but God who makes himself known through creation. His topic is thus revelation, although revelation through nature and morality rather than through Jesus Christ, or revelation via creation as opposed to revelation via salvation history. Ultimately Paul is less interested in how the world knows God than that it has experienced God and is hence without excuse.

The guilt of humanity, then, is due not to want of truth, but to the suppression of the truth (v. 18). If guilt were due to ignorance it would be an intellectual problem, but in reality it is a problem of the will, which is sin. The fundamental problem of humanity was not, as the Greeks thought, a problem of reason, but a problem of the will (v. 27). The proper response would have been to glorify God and give thanks to him. But when humanity rejected what God had declared of himself in creation it became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened (see also Eph. 4:17–18). Having denied God they denied themselves and nature. This became the first step in substituting a counterfeit for God, which is idolatry.

Loss of touch with reality leads to confusion, from which terrible ironies arise. The mystery of revelation consisted in a paradox: God’s invisible qualities … have been clearly seen. This sounds like an oxymoron, for how can something invisible be seen? Nevertheless, God has continued to make known his invisible attributes, both his power and deity, through the created order, and no one can claim ignorance of them. A conception of humanity groping to a higher understanding of God seems foreign to Paul. Knowledge of God begins with God: God has made it plain to them.

Again in verse 21 Paul employs the causal dioti (NIV, for although) to summarize verses 19–20. Humanity’s knowledge and experience of God did not lead people, as it should have, to glorify God or give thanks to him, but to “futility,” “foolishness,” and “darkness” (v. 21). Paul broaches the idea that he will develop below, namely, that humanity substitutes a false god for the true God. According to the prophets this was the reason for the fall of both the Northern (2 Kings 17:15) and Southern (Jer. 2:5) Kingdoms. In an earlier epistle Paul spoke of the Gentiles as “slaves to those who by nature are not gods” (Gal. 4:8). Luther rightly spoke of the problem of imaginary gods. “How many there are even today who worship him not as if he were God but as if he were as they themselves imagine him for themselves!” (Lectures on Romans, p. 25). In a withering criticism of religious aspirations Feuerbach asserted that “god” is simply a projection of the human imagination. This is supremely illustrated by Milton’s Satan, who, seeing the Son of God at the Father’s right hand, suffered a “sense of injur’d merit,” and “thought himself impaired” (PL 1.98; 5.662). Plotting to usurp the Son’s position, Satan commits the folly of a creature revolting against its creator and becomes, in the words of C.S. Lewis, himself more a “Lie than a Liar, a personified self-contradiction” (Preface, ch. 13).

1:22–23 / The demotion of God and the exaltation of self give birth to bitter irony: although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. How often this script has been replayed in history! Wisdom is one of the few self-evident virtues, and yet its pathway is littered with irony and tragedy: irony because those who consider themselves wise deny their wisdom by their behavior; tragedy because they do not even recognize their failure. Eve took the fruit which would make her wise and seeing, but she saw only her nakedness (Gen. 3:6–8). The ancients desired to erect a tower to heaven and make a name for themselves throughout the earth, but they were dispersed like so many bricks (Gen. 11:4–8). The most obvious allusion of Paul’s thought, however, is to the golden calf in Sinai, where Israel rejected the glory and might of Yahweh for a dumb calf (cf. Exod. 32; Deut. 4:15–19; and Ps. 106:20).

Throughout 1:18–32 Paul employs a number of clever word plays, one of which occurs here. The futility (mataioun) of giving up God led to foolishness (morainein). In all this there is a paradox, for the ways of the Creator differ radically from the ways of his creatures. Jesus said the kingdom of God belongs to the poor in spirit (Matt. 5:3), and Paul said the wisdom of God could be seen only in the foolishness of the gospel (1 Cor. 1:21). But when people exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man—and for lesser images—they fell into idolatry. Idolatry is devotion to the made rather than the Maker. Seeking to rid themselves of the mystery of God and creation, they became utterly “sophomoric” (literally, “wise fools,” v. 22) and a riddle to themselves.

The Greek word for glory (doxa, v. 23) often renders the Hebrew kāḇôḏ in the LXX and means “splendor,” “majesty,” or “glory.” The root meaning carries the idea of “honor,” “riches,” or even “heaviness.” God’s glory, especially in the OT, is his “weight,” his solidness or substantiality, symbolized by clouds, lightning, storm, and fire, before which the mountains melt like wax (Ps. 97:1–5). His glory is a consuming fire (Exod. 24:15ff.), his presence earth-shattering (Judg. 5:4; Ezek. 1:1ff.). But in substituting images for glory, humanity opts for shadow over substance, likeness over reality. The root sin in verses 18–23, and the reason for God’s wrath, is the sin of idolatry.

1:24–25 / There is a theological Gresham’s law at work here: as bad money drives good money out of circulation, so false gods render the true God unbelievable. When this happens God gives people over in the sinful desires of their hearts (v. 24). Four times Paul says humanity exchanged the authentic for the counterfeit (vv. 23, 25, 26, 27) and that as a consequence God gave them over to what they desired (vv. 24, 26, 28). We note a shift from human guilt to human fate, from the reasons for God’s wrath to the consequences of it. The Greek word translated gave them over, paradidōmi, means “to give over” or to hand something down intentionally. It is more than an anthropomorphism for the passive judgment of God, i.e., that the withdrawal of God’s gracious aid leads to the inevitable consequences of human corruption. Paul ascribes a more active role to God’s judgment, as does the OT at those terrible places where human actors are bent on resisting the divine will. Pharaoh hardens his heart against God (Exod. 7:22), but God hardens Pharaoh’s heart also (Exod. 4:21ff.); Ahab insists on going to war against God’s will, and God drives him to disaster (1 Kings 22:22–23; see also 2 Sam. 16:10). If people persist in believing lies about God, God will obscure the truth from them. At first a lie is simply more important than the truth, but it ends up becoming the truth.

Here too there is a surprising paradox in God’s wrath against idolatry. We would expect a list of terrible punishments of humanity’s rebellion and immorality, but no list appears. Rather, “had Paul not told us they were signs of wrath, we could easily have mistaken them for signs of grace! When God visits his wrath in the way described in this passage there is no divine cataclysm, no fire from on high sent to consume sinful society. Rather, the wrath which God visits on sinful humanity consists in simply letting humanity have its own way. The punishment of sin is there simply—sin!” (Achtemeier, Romans, p. 40). Their wish becomes their punishment.

It is awesome to consider that God hands people over to the evils they desire. How can a good God deliver people to evil purposes contrary to his will? This passage suggests that God hands sinners over to their wretchedness so that they will recognize its horrid face and turn to God’s merciful countenance. A similar idea governs the teaching of Alcoholics Anonymous that an alcoholic will recover from addictive drinking only by being allowed to experience the unmitigated consequences of it. There is in verses 24ff. no mention of finality. A parallel passage in Ephesians 2:1–4 says that it was precisely on those who “were by nature objects of wrath” that God’s rich mercy was shown. Isaiah said that God struck Egypt in order to heal it! (19:22). “God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (11:32).

Verse 25 repeats the thought of verse 23, that exchanging the truth for a lie is the root of idolatry. Idolatry paves the way for persons to destroy themselves and society. It turns creation into chaos. The idea that they worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator (another word play), i.e., giving spiritual reverence as well as physical obedience to something other than God, evidently so horrified Paul that, according to the custom of Jewish rabbis, he sanctified God’s name with a doxology (so Käsemann, Romans, p. 48).

1:26–27 / Paul illustrates the consequences of idolatry by turning to the errors of lesbianism and homosexuality. The problem of “sexual impurity” was mentioned in verse 24; now he turns to one of its ramifications. It must be recognized that Paul does not condemn homosexuality primarily as a moral aberration (although he regarded it as such); had that been his concern he would have included it among the list of immoralities in verses 29–31. Rather, homosexuality illustrates the theological error he has been expounding since verse 18, namely, the exchanging of something authentic for something counterfeit. Paul cites homosexuality (“homo” comes from the Greek word meaning “same,” not the Latin homo, “man”) not because it is a worse sin but because it exemplifies better than other sins the very nature of sin, which is the perversion of an original good, and hence idolatry. His choice of terminology, natural … unnatural relations, is instructive. Homosexuality is a forsaking of a natural relationship instituted according to the purpose of the Creator, i.e., heterosexuality, for an unnatural relationship which reverses the Creator’s purpose. Homosexuality changes something originally oriented to the opposite sex as a complement and inverts it to itself, thus perverting the created order. Like all sin, it is a disorientation which leads to confusion. Thus, the dishonoring of God results in the disordering of human life.

Paul’s attitude towards homosexuality was unambiguous; these verses cannot be construed to argue that Paul regarded homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle acceptable to God. It is common today to hear that Paul’s pronouncements on this subject were historically and culturally conditioned and are therefore no longer morally valid. We have observed, however, that Paul condemns homosexuality not primarily on moral but on theological grounds. Moreover, although Paul stood within Judaism, which strictly condemned homosexuality, he was writing to a primarily Gentile audience which held a vastly different attitude towards it. Studies of primitive and ancient societies reveal that fully two-thirds of them affirmed homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle (see Additional Notes on 1:26–27). The Greco-Roman world belonged to this number, sometimes viewing homosexuality and pederasty as a higher form of sexuality (see Plato’s Symposium).

In his teaching on homosexuality Paul was swimming against the moral current of much of his audience. This undercuts the claim that his teaching on this subject simply reflected the beliefs of his time. Paul regarded homosexuality as a mirror of sin. It was for him a “wandering from the truth” (the literal meaning of planē, translated perversion, v. 27) of God’s intended purpose for human sexuality, a wandering which eventually would be assessed its due penalty.

1:28 / In verse 28 the apostle shifts from the consequences of idolatry for self (vv. 24–27) to its consequences for society. Again there is a word play, which might be paraphrased, “Since humanity did not think it fit (edokimasan) to acknowledge God, God handed them over to an unfit (adokimon) mind.” The word for “unfit” (NIV, depraved) means “failing the test,” or “disqualified.” For most people sin probably conjures up images of immoral behavior as something one does. But John Calvin (among others) drew attention to its noetic or intellectual effects. Before sin affects behavior it affects thinking. This idea is presented here. When humanity gave up honoring the one whom it ought to have honored, God gave it over to do what ought not be done. This expression, like several others in the latter half of this chapter, appears to be indebted more to Stoicism than to Hebrew thought. It implies a self-evident duty in accordance with nature, or natural law.

1:29–31 / These verses contain a list of twenty-one terms (in Greek) of things which “ought not be done” (v. 28). They are consequences, not causes, of exchanging the truth of God for a lie. As the consequences of God’s wrath they are thus their own punishment. The list is arranged in three distinct groups. The first group consists of four abstract nouns qualified by filled: wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. Wickedness is in Greek adikia, which is twice mentioned in verse 18 as the reason for God’s wrath. As the root of other sins, these four terms poison the well of human behavior. They are followed by a second group of five nouns all qualified by full: envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. The final group is a series of twelve terms which (all in the accusative case) describe various acts of wickedness. Again in Greek there are several word plays, especially envy (phthonou) and murder (phonou), and senseless (asynetous) and faithless (asynthetous).

Most of the terms in the list are self-explanatory. Each term, of course, has its particular meaning, but Paul’s intent seems to be in the composite effect of all of them. It is a salvo of terms describing how people in general act when they have a “depraved mind” (v. 28). We need not suppose the list to be tailored specifically for Rome; such catalogs of vices were well known in the ancient world, particularly among Jews and Stoics. By appealing to a conventional morality Paul condemns a series of vices which nearly all the ancients would have condemned. Acknowledgment of God would have cultivated behavior agreeable and edifying both to God and others, but when humanity cast its verdict against God, it banished all constraints, thus prodding a nest of pinfeather sins to wing their way as grotesque birds of prey.

1:32 / This verse repeats the thought of verse 20 and concludes Paul’s indictment of Gentile humanity. But there is a new and startling thought here which prepares the way for what will follow in chapters 2–3. Paul says that approval of the behavior described above is as bad as—or worse than—the actual behavior. In modern law an accomplice to a crime is less guilty than the perpetrator of a crime. But Paul might not agree. The consenting bystander is normally more premeditative than the impassioned aggressor, and worse yet, consent (or silence!) in the face of wrongdoing lends subtle support to make something fashionable which deserves to be condemned. Modern media and advertising barons have made this truth painfully clear. Bengel’s word is perhaps more appropriate today than it was when he wrote it two centuries ago: “He is a worse man, who destroys both himself and others, than he who destroys himself alone” (Gnomon, vol. 3, p. 25). Paul himself was once a consenting bystander to a man’s murder (Acts 7:58–8:1; 22:20). One wonders if his reflection on that event might have influenced the wording of this verse.

With good reason modern readers may come to the end of this section feeling rather assaulted, particularly those who think themselves good persons. No one is guilty of all the sins Paul accuses humanity of in these verses. Even Stalin was kind to his daughter and Goebbels to his dogs, we are told. Is not Paul’s assessment of human nature excessively bleak and unfair?

Every age has its forbidden subjects. For the Victorians it was sex, for the modern West it is sin. One of the ironies of the twentieth century is that it has experienced greater evil than perhaps any previous century, and yet it has no category for sin. The nineteenth century taught that nature has evolved and progressed from primitive life-forms to more advanced ones. This idea has so permeated the modern bloodstream that it is axiomatic to speak of development, progress, and fulfillment in all disciplines, including history and religion. “Earlier” means primitive, “later” means more advanced and sophisticated.

Such thinking would have left Paul blinking in incredulity. The apostle was too penetrating a thinker not to reflect on the tragic flaw or “frustration” in creation (8:20). Nor does he think that humanity is evolving to something higher and better. To the contrary. When people leave the true knowledge and worship of God there is a “devolution” to that which is low and bestial. When God is replaced with a lie the general conditions described in this section prevail.

Paul’s intent in 1:18–32 is not to describe anyone’s life in particular. He is, rather, like a physician showing a transparency of various maladies on a screen before a group of patients. No one patient has all the disorders, but somewhere there is a malady (or more than one) that describes everyone’s condition and that, if left to its own course, will prove fatal.

Romans 1:18–32 asks if we do not recognize our own predisposition to immorality and idolatry. Our individual sins (whatever they are) are like spokes connected to a single hub, all stemming from and leading to the same thing—the demotion of God and the promotion of self. Jesus hinted at such complicity when he said, “Let the one without sin throw the first stone” (John 8:7). No one is guilty of all these sins, nor is anyone innocent of them all. Romans 1:18ff. may not be a personal letter to any of us (but then again, it may), but it is an open letter to the human race of which we all are part.