Exchanging the Glory

Part II of the series “Romans: The Road Less Traveled.”

Romans 1:18-3:22

anglican baptismI saw an article pop up on Twitter this week that said that the Church of England is trying out a new baptism service that drops all mention of the devil and sin. Among the phrases abandoned are those referring to “the deceit and corruption of evil”, “the sins that separate us from God and neighbor”, and a promise to “fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ against sin, the world, and the devil.” Instead of that specific language, baptizands or parents make a broad pledge to “reject evil.”

The idea, according to the Church of England, is to provide a baptism service that uses more “culturally appropriate and accessible language” without words that “don’t resonate with the knowledge and experience of parents and godparents who aren’t regular churchgoers.” It’s a trial liturgy that will be tested until April.

When I first read this it got me thinking about two things: 1) it reminded me of a line from the movie “The Usual Suspects:” “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” 2) It’s a stark reminder that sin doesn’t resonate with the knowledge and experience of people in the 21st century world. I mean, think about it, when have you heard that word outside of the church? It’s easy to reject evil when you think you have nothing to do with it.

Indeed, if anything, sin is the most “culturally appropriate and accessible” concept in all of humanity. It’s something we all do, something we’re all subject to, but something that we rarely want to talk about—apparently now not even in church.

But that’s a massive mistake. The truth is that if we’re ever going to understand the gospel, the good news, we have to first really understand the bad news. That’s why as Paul writes Romans he quickly switches from the thesis statement in verses 16-17 to the problem beginning in 1:18. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness (or, I might add, by their fear of offending anyone) suppress the truth.”

Paul is going to lay out for his readers the basic problem endemic to all of humanity—the problem of sin. From the very beginning, humanity has been “without excuse” because they did not honor God’s sovereignty over creation and their personhood made in God’s image. It’s not an accident that people are this way, it’s a choice they have made and have been making since the beginning.

We often think of sin and idolatry as behaviors, and they are, but the behavior always begins with a distorted worldview. Chapter 1, verse 21 – for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.”

returning giftsExchanging the glory is really Paul’s central thesis of the problem of humanity. With the Christmas season just passed, many people go out the day after Christmas to exchange the gifts that they received for something that they want. That’s ok for retail, but when humans exchange the gift of God–glory of God, the image of God within them, for another image–we wind up with what we want rather than what we need.

And, Paul says, God honors that choice. Indeed, the “wrath of God” in Scripture doesn’t usually come in the form of lightning bolts from heaven. Rather, God’s wrath is usually found in giving humans exactly what they want. He “gives them over” to their self-serving idolatry, and lets them deal with a world of their own devising. it’s little wonder, then, that that world goes wrong.

Paul begins with the body as a primary example. If we look back at Genesis 1, we learn that humans are given bodies that reflect God’s glory and God’s creative and generative desire to bring life into the world. God makes them male and female and says to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Their bodies are designed for God’s purposes–to care for God’s creation, to fill, and glorify him with their bodies. Sex is part of that generative human purpose–In Genesis 2:24 we read that God’s design is that “a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh.” God designs sex to reflect his purposes in the world.

But when God’s glory is exchanged for a lie, sex becomes distorted. Indeed, in the Roman world of Paul’s day and in our 21st century world, the God-given gift of sex has been exchanged for a self-serving, idolatrous desire. Instead of love, we get lust. Instead of purity, we get degradation and objectification. Instead of seeing sex within the context of our identity in the image of God, we make sex our full identity and the key desire of our hearts. We exchange the image of God and our desire for him for the image of ourselves and our own desires.

Paul mentions the practice of homosexuality in verses 26 and 27. I know that’s a controversial topic, but it’s in the text and Paul uses it as one example of the created order gone wrong. But we must keep in mind that it isn’t just homosexuality that Paul is concerned about–it’s the whole track of human sexual distortion that he deals with in his letters. We spend a lot of time arguing about gay marriage as a threat to the institution of marriage, for example, but the reality is that things like cohabitation, pre-marital sex, pornography, and the constant focus on sexual fulfillment in human culture are perhaps even more direct threats to marriage and sex within God’s created order.  And humanity is reaping the degradation. Ironically, when I found that article about the Church of England online, right next to the picture of the Archbishop of Canterbury was a tantalizing ad featuring a girl in a skimpy bikini. You can’t get away from it! It’s interesting to me that we’re not as hyped up about those more common sexual distortions in the church as we are about homosexuality…but that’s a sermon for another time.

And lest we think that sex is the only or the most prevalent way that creation has been running backwards because of a distorted human worldview, Paul reminds us that it permeates our whole human life. God also “gave up” humanity to a debased mind and to things that should not be done.” In 28-31 he lists them, everything from covetousness to malice, from gossip to pride, from murder to rebelling against parents. Verse 31 sums up the human condition quite well: “foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

Notice that when Paul writes this section he does it in the third person–“they.” You can almost imagine Paul’s readers shaking their heads as they looked at this list. Those Roman slaves, for example, may have thought, “These are the things my pagan master does in private. Indeed, that’s the way all of his friends operate, too.” That slave would love Paul’s line in verse 32–“They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die–yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.” Yes, he would think–as we might think–“Thank God I’m not like them!

But then Paul drops a bombshell at the beginning of chapter 2, switching from the third person plural to the second person plural. “Therefore, you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.” Here Paul kicks the self-righteous in the proverbial teeth. “You say, ‘we know that God’s judgment  on those who do such things is in accordance with the truth.’ Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet you do them yourself you will escape the judgment of God?” (v. 2-3).

glasshouse1-500x375In other words, Paul says, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t be chucking stones! And, in effect, we’re all living in glass houses. As Paul says in 2:16, God will judge “the secret thoughts of all.” Our lives are transparent to God, and when we condemn others for their sin and neglect our own, we’re in danger of seeing it all crash down around us. The grace and forgiveness of God, which will become a focus of the rest of the letter, isn’t a license for us to exercise judgment–it’s meant to call us to repentance as well. Using the third person instead of the first person when it comes to talking about sin leads to a (2:5) “hard and impenitent heart” that “stores up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” Rather than judging others, we ought to concerned about God’s judgment of us.

If sin is now out of vogue in some churches, God’s judgment might even be more out of favor. There’s a pervasive belief in much of the church today that judgment is really the sort of thing that God did in the Old Testament, but the New Testament is really all about God’s love. Many believe that God is so loving that he could never judge anyone at all; that God is universally accepting of everyone and everything. Morals are changeable, and what’s new is better. Whatever you want to do is fine as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. I’m ok, you’re ok. Don’t speak about God’s judgment because that might offend someone and make them feel bad.

Theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described this particular theological worldview perfectly: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of Christ without a cross.”  

And, as Niebuhr implies, this universalist, sinless, cross-less worldview does violence to the biblical text. Yes, the New Testament does reveal the extraordinary love of God revealed in Jesus (as does the Old Testament reveal God’s forbearing love, for that matter). Paul will talk about this love in Romans. But God’s judgment is a necessary part of that love. God loves us where we are, but thank God he doesn’t leave us that way. God is setting the world right, and that means evil has to be dealt with. But if people choose to reject God’s love and live the kind of self-serving life outlined in the previous chapter, then God “gives them over” to that choice. Paul isn’t preaching universal salvation here, but universal judgment. If God does not remain emphatically opposed to evil, then God is not good. God has a passionate concern for creation, and humans in particular, that will tolerate nothing less than what is best for them. Those who continue to worship and serve themselves will find that they got what they wanted—to be separated from God. Those who worship him, seek him, and live for his glory, will get what God wants—a full, abundant, and eternal life—for us and for the whole creation.

Listen to what Paul says in 2:6-11: “For he will repay according to each one’s deeds; to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.”

circumcision of the heartPaul expands this last bit in 2:12 to 3:8, saying that the lines of demarcation between Gentiles and Jews don’t matter when it comes to God’s judgment—things like outward observance of the Jewish law, including circumcision—aren’t the things God is judging. What God is looking for, in both Jews and Gentiles, is (as Paul puts it in 2:28) a “circumcision of the heart”—an inward change from sinful orientation to a God-directed life.  It’s not that Paul is denigrating Judaism here—in 3:1 he says there is much advantage in being a Jew since they were “entrusted with the oracles of God.” God called Abraham’s family for a purpose, as we will see in chapter 4—a purpose that hasn’t been nullified by the gospel, but fulfilled by it. But what God is now calling for is for Jews and Gentiles to unite around a common core—a recalibration, a re-circumcision of their hearts together toward Christ.

After all, Paul says in 3:9-20, both Jews and Gentiles have the same problem. Verse 9: “What then? Are we [Jews] better off? No, not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin.” Paul then quotes from several Old Testament scriptures, beginning with:

‘There is no one who is righteous, not even one;

there is no one who has understanding,

there is no one who seeks God.

No one is righteous. The whole world is accountable to God. Every one of us is a sinner. Following the law won’t change that, says Paul; it only reminds us that we’re sinners. On our own, we’re in a mess. Taking “sin” out of the liturgy won’t change that fact. It only keeps us unaware, not knowing that we need saving. We’re stuck in a muddle, grasping for a solution.

But then, like the cavalry riding over the hill, Paul announces in 3:21 that while God gave humanity over, God never gave them up.  Here is the good news—“But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through  faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, they are now justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”

Despite all this human sinfulness, rebellion, and idolatry; despite human failure to keep covenant with God—God has acted. The righteousness of God—God’s justice, God’s covenant faithfulness—has been revealed in Christ. Humans exchanged the glory of God for a lie. God brought it back by coming in person in Jesus Christ. Despite human sin and faithlessness, God has remained faithful and through his faithfulness, found in the faithfulness of Christ (which is actually a better translation of verse 22), we can be redeemed. This was where the story of Scripture was headed all along, from God’s promise to Abraham onward.

Remember the way that story of Scripture works: God is putting the world right, so God puts people right, so that they might be his right-putting people. Sin must be dealt with so that people can be put right, and, in turn, creation can be put right.

The point of this section of Romans, then, is that sin isn’t a problem that we can ignore, and that God’s judgment, his setting the world right, is an imminent reality. Jesus would couch that judgment within his teaching on the kingdom of God—a kingdom that would separate the sheep from the goats, the faithful versus the faithless. It’s no coincidence that the first public sermon Jesus preaches in the New Testament is actually one sentence that begins with the word “Repent” —“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).

It’s interesting that when John Wesley set up the Methodist societies, the one condition for those who desired to attend the meetings was “a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins.” In Wesley’s view (and in Paul’s) in order to move toward the grace of God, we must endeavor to repent and move away from the life of sin. We do that through faith, which we’ll talk about next week.

We need to talk about sin—in fact, the church may be the only place you’ll hear about it. But as we do so, we know that we can exchange the life of sin for the glory of God, revealed in his grace through Christ.

We begin that with confession, and repentance. The first step in dealing with sin is acknowledging that we’re sinners, which is actually key to the baptism ritual! What is it that you’re giving your life over to these days that isn’t what God intends for you? From what do you need to repent? What lies have you bought into that the world has sold you? Or, let’s turn that around—who’s sins have you been eager to point out? What have you been accusing “them” of that you do yourself?

May we be humble, merciful people, recognizing that God needs to put us right.

Source:

Wright, N.T. Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part One. Westminster/John Knox, 2011.

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