MORAL KNOWLEDGE (2)

“And even as they did not like to retain GOD in their KNOWLEDGE, God gave them over to a debased mind...” – Romans 1:29a                             

To reject MORAL KNOWLEDGE from God is to embrace Satan’s deceptive, debased, and destructive alternatives: “And even as they did not like to retain GOD in their KNOWLEDGE, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting”” (Rom.1:29). The world’s rejection of Moral Knowledge and all of the accompanying moral problems, validate Paul’s message to the Roman Believers. This describes the slippery slope that humanity falls into in attempting to live on their own morality rather than by God’s Standard. We’re witnessing in contemporary times, humanity’s effort to suppress the truth and try to create to its own warped version of the truth.

This is a passage about the judgement of God upon a world that has gone mad with sin. Someone calls it the Perils of Disapproving God! This text warns that God has made His Knowledge known to all, and those who reject and suppress the truth will be turned away from Him and given up “to uncleanness, in the lusts of their heart, to dishonor their bodies among themselves” (v.24). They’ll be given up “to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use what I against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natura use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due” (vv.26-27). God gives such “over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting” (v.28).

God is the God of Amazing Love and yet at the same time, He is the God of Wrath. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God (Heb. 10:31). God’s Wrath manifest in cataclysmic or catastrophic ways, such as the worldwide flood during the days of Noah and the Rain of fire and brimstone that burnt up Sodom and Gomorrah. His wrath shall also manifest in future Times of Great Tribulation. One major way in which God currently reveals His wrath is by withholding His restraining Grace (v.18). When that happens, people are left alone to indulge in sin with reckless abandon, plunge into a dark and downward spiral, and eventually reap the sad and pitiful repercussions of sin.

To “give up” or “give over” is a judicial term which implies someone yielding another person over to punishment or judgement. In this case, rebellious humanity is given over to the spiral of self-destruction through the avenues of idolatry, immorality, homosexuality, and depravity. Scriptures examples include: Aaron and the golden calf (Exo.32); and Israel’s whoredom with daughters of Moab (Num.25:1). Rejecting Moral Knowledge is inviting darkness, perversions, pain, and self-destruction! No amount of intellectual knowledge can compensate for lack of Moral Knowledge. But there is Hope in Christ for one to be washed, sanctified, and justified (1Cor.6: 9-11).