Romans 1:18-32
“Bad Trades”
March 20, 2011 - Second Sunday in Lent

         Zelma Randles believed Eugene financial advisor Dennis Thaut in 2004 when she gave him $75,000 for a real estate investment that would earn 9¼ percent interest. Randles was one of seventeen people who gave Thaut nearly 3 million dollars and lost most of it. Victims of a classic Ponzi scheme, they all suppressed their own good judgment and doubts about a lucrative investment and put their trust in a con artist.

         As our book of the month, I Told Me So, suggests, we all have a capacity for self-deception, for making ourselves believe things that are not true. As the author Gregg Ten Elshof argues, this is not always a bad thing because we are not always emotionally ready to face the truth. But Paul’s message to us today from Romans 1 is that it is always wrong to suppress and deceive ourselves regarding God and God’s will for us.

         Verse 17, the verse we ended on last week, said that in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “…the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith” In counterpoint, verse 18 begins this week’s text saying, “For the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.” Where faith and belief in the truth is found, God reveals His righteousness. Where there is wickedness and suppression of the truth, God reveals His wrath.

         In general, the signs of a con job are pretty obvious, beginning with the old phrase, “It’s too good to be true.” Most of us with basic mental faculties realize that nobody from Nigeria really wants to split 50 million dollars with us. We understand that no honest investment is going to return 15% when banks are paying less than 1%. We know the designer purse being offered by a street vendor for a twentieth of the regular price is either stolen or a fake. When our minds work properly, there is no excuse for getting conned.

         Likewise, says Paul, when human minds are working well, what we ought to know about God is plain, “because God has shown it to them.” In verse 20, he talks about God’s nature and power being revealed in creation, in the things God has made. This is what theologians call “natural revelation.” Whether or not there are “proofs” for God’s existence, the created world, both in nature and in our own selves, is a clear sign of a Creator and Hs power and goodness. So Paul says there is no excuse for failing to believe in God and follow His laws.

         But when our minds are clouded by wickedness they fail to apprehend the truth, both about con schemes and about God. In order to work their tricks, con men count on basic human dishonesty. That supposed Nigerian government official wants you to help move his millions illegally. That street vendor hopes your greed for a really good deal will quiet your concerns about stolen property. When our moral sense is dull, so is our mental sense.

         That’s why verse 21 goes on to describe how we as human beings dull our natural knowledge of God and His ways, and turn from what we know to be true and right in favor of self-deception and wrong. “…for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.” Mental dullness arises out of moral wickedness. Verse 22 puts it simply, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”

         Now here’s the thing. Human beings were made to know and love God. As the praise song goes, “You and I were made to worship.” But if we deceive ourselves and get dull and turn away from the true and good God we should have known, then we’re going to worship something else, some “God” we choose and make for ourselves.

         So in verse 23 Paul uses a word for the first of three times in this text. He says, “…and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images…” He’s talking about pagan idolatry, which put painted or sculpted replicas of human beings or animals in place of the real, immortal and invisible God. That exchange was a worse trade than any exchange you might make in a con game. Handing several thousand dollars or your credit card number to a phony financial advisor is incredibly foolish, but not so much as handing over your faith and trust to a phony god.

         It’s easy for us to read about idolatry as mere history, because almost no one in twenty-first century America is inclined to bow before an idol in the classic form of a wooden or metal figure of a human being or a beast. Yet any honest and self-truthful examination of our lives reveals we have our own sorts of idols.

         The kind of idol that tempts even good Christians is more of a mental than a physical figure. It’s the temptation to exchange a true, mental representation of God as a holy and righteous Creator who expects us to do what is right and honest, for a more friendly, designer god, who lets us do whatever we want.

         I can’t tell you how many times as a pastor I’ve seen self-deception take the form of a person engaged in some sin who convinces himself or herself that God is quite O.K. with what he or she is doing. In the most extreme cases, such people even deceive themselves into believing that God wants them to leave their spouse for someone else, or to launch a vicious attack on a co-worker, or to stir up trouble and dissent in their church. Such people have exchanged the inconvenient truth of the real God for a god made to order to fit whatever wickedness they would like to do.

         I also have to tell you that my most pressing need is to be aware of when I am tempted to make that same kind of trade. I must realize when I want to give up the real God and go for some poor substitute who will validate my feelings instead of judging them. This text can’t be just about other people who are taken in by spiritual con jobs. It’s about all of us. It’s about me.

         The incredible thing is God’s response to our bad trade of giving Him up for some lame substitute. Verse 24 tells us that when we give God up, He gives us up. But not to some dire punishment or torture, at least not immediately. No, we read, “Therefore God gave them up in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves.” In other words, God’s gracious judgment on our idolatry is to give us what we want, to give us all our evil desires.

         It’s incredibly hard for us in contemporary America to see the significance of God judging us by giving us what we want. That’s because we’ve taught ourselves, and I would say deceived ourselves, to believe that freedom is the highest value in our lives. Beth and I watched Ben Stein’s documentary “Expelled” the other night. It was a fascinating study of a systematic exclusion and even punishment of references to God in the teaching of science. That is its own kind of self-deception and idolatry.

         Yet Stein’s conclusion was a rhapsody about freedom as the answer. As long as we can be free to think and say whatever we like, then all will be well in our country. That spirit of the importance of freedom has been bred into most of us. Which makes it that much more difficult to understand that absolute and complete freedom to follow our own desires is how God punishes the human race. God gives us up to do whatever we want, and then to face the consequences of such freedom. We’ll see how that unfolds in a minute.

         In the meantime, we see that verse 25 tells of the second of those exchanges, “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie…” That evil trade is at the heart of all our wickedness, that trading off of the real God for a more convenient idol. It’s what Paul says here, that we “worship the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

         What Paul describes is a great spiral of human sin. Our desires to do what’s wrong lead us to believe what’s wrong. Moral wickedness leads to spiritual wickedness. Then God judges that spiritual wickedness, that idolatry in our thoughts, by letting us sink deeper into our evil desires. We give up God for idols. He gives us up to freely do wrong. And we give Him up even more, leading to giving up even more of what is right.

         That’s why the next step in the spiral in verses 26 and 27 turns to sexual sin. When we give up God for idols, God gives us up to all our worst desires, even the unnatural ones. You can say whatever you like about the Bible’s view of homosexual behavior, you can try to find room for same-sex relationships in a Christian view of sexuality and marriage, but there is just no way these two verses are saying anything but that homosexual acts are against nature and against God’s will for human beings.

         It’s the third of the exchanges: “Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men…” It’s one more bad trade stemming from that fundamental foolish exchange of God for idols.

         I have to be blunt about this. Part of modern-day idolatry is the attempt to fashion a god who approves of and even planned and desires same-sex sexual behavior. Paul understood that kind of idolatry two millennia ago and identified it for what it is. Our society is currently experiencing what he said is the result, that those who do this “receive in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” For many, many people, homosexual behavior carries its own punishment both physically and emotionally. And that, I believe, ought to arouse more of our compassion than our contempt.

         You might think I’m being bold to talk about this, but it’s not that risky because I’ve been talking about sins and folks that most of you and I can place out there. “That’s not us,” we think. First of all, please realize that to some extent it is us. It’s almost sure that there are people who experience same-sex attraction, if not the behavior, among us as a congregation. We almost all have friends and family members who are gay. These people that Paul is talking about so harshly are people that we love and care about. And God loves and cares about them too.

         Second, Paul isn’t going to leave us any room to sit here and pat ourselves on the back just because we’re not gay. Verses 28 to 31 go beyond merely sexual sin to tell how God gives up those who give up God to “a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice…,” etc., etc., etc., in a long list that fingers everyone of us for self-deception and idolatry.

         Don’t congratulate yourself for not being gay if at the same time you gossip about and slander those who are. Don’t think all is well with you just because you keep your pants zipped when you’re supposed to when you can’t keep your mouth zipped on lies, on boasting, on foolish insolence and heartless insults. Don’t deceive yourself into believing in a god who approves of you just because your sexual morals are in order when your spirit is actually a mess of coveting and hatred, envy and strife, crafty deceit and pride.

         No, none of us is off the hook. When we make that bad trade of God for gods of our own devising, then the real God hands us over to evil desires of every sort, not just sexual sins. This list would be a great subject for some Lenten meditation, finding where you and I show up in this particular catalog of “things that should not be done.”

         Friends of ours just learned their son was expelled from his small Christian college for smoking pot. His brother and sisters are disgusted with his stupid trade-off of a few moments of high for his opportunity to have a quality education. It’s tempting to think the problem is drugs, but it started when he quit believing in God. That exchange of God for something else leads to all the other lousy deals we make in life.

         The final verse takes the spiral of evil and idolatry one more step. Once again, there is the fact that we ought to know better, “They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die…,” which goes back to last week’s reading from Genesis. God has shown human beings what is right and wrong and that the penalty for sin is death.

         Yet in the face of that terrible penalty, Paul says, “they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.” What’s worse, verse 32 tells us, what’s worse than doing evil is applauding evil. The worst thing is not doing wrong, it’s pretending that what’s wrong is actually right. It’s cheering for the dark side in the spiritual arena. Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness…” That’s Paul’s teaching. The worst trade of all is to finally become so self-deceived that you no longer know the difference, can no longer even identify the evil into which you’ve fallen.

         There are lots of ways to slip into this last, awful bad trade of evil for good. To get a taste for the worst forms you might want to read M. Scot Peck’s People of the Lie. But for a possibility that lies closer to home, consider some of our entertainment. How often do we find ourselves being led to applaud the wrong actions of a modern anti-hero? Whether it’s a beautiful and artistic murderer like Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill” or a lonely, frustrated adulteress like Meryl Streep in “Bridges of Madison County,” or even Paul Newman’s and Robert Redford’s loveable con men in “The Sting,” we’ve taught ourselves in subtle and entertaining ways to applaud those who do evil. Another terrible trade.

         This Lent let’s consider our own bad trades, both of God for idols, and of good work and behavior for the kinds of evil in Paul’s long list. Consider our trade of knowing what’s right for the foolish pleasure of being entertained by those who do wrong. But as we engage in that reflection, we are blessed today to hear of another trade God made.

         We read over and over in this text from Romans that God gave up those who traded away their knowledge of Him and of truth and right. He gave them up to their own desires for sin and evil. But even though God gave them up, He did not give up on them. That’s why Paul wrote this letter to Rome. That’s his ultimate message. God does not give up on us even when we give up on Him.

         In fact, because God refuses to give up on us, He made His own trade. It might seem like an incredibly bad deal, but as we read from John 3:16 today, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” That’s God’s trade. His Son for you and me, innocent Jesus on the Cross accepting that penalty of death Paul mentioned. It’s the good trade of grace that answers all our bad trades. Jesus gave up His life so that God might save our lives. “He gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

         There’s the good trade for us. There’s the best trade. Trade off the self-deceit, the idols, all the sins that drag us deeper into evil’s spiral, trade it all for the truth of the Gospel, for belief in Jesus the Savior, for eternal life. There’s a trade worth making.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj