The Giant Slide Down

Romans 1:18-32 describes man’s giant slide down. Elsewhere we read, “In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them” (Deut. 32:35). All arrogant, stubborn people who refuse to believe in the true God and his revelation of truth will experience a giant slide down to hell.

When man closes his eyes to the light of God’s truth and rejects the God of creation who gave us a conscience, then God rejects man. If we reject him, he will reject us, and we will slide downward into hell itself. We will be like Jonah, who refused to obey God. Instead, he went down to Joppa, down into the ship, down inside the ship, and down into the ocean where he was swallowed up by a great fish. We will be like the rich man who, having rejected God’s revelation in the Law and Prophets, went down to hell.

Adam rejected the God of truth and experienced the big slide, what we call the Fall. Since Adam’s fall, every person who exchanges God’s truth for a lie is on a giant slide down to hell. Is there any hope for those who are on this downward slide? Yes. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. We cannot lift ourselves up, but Jesus Christ came from heaven to rescue us from our hell.

It is not that man has no knowledge of God. God has revealed himself and his invisible attributes both in creation and conscience. But man deliberately closes his eyes to truth and continually suppresses the truth. He knows the true God, yet he refuses to glorify him by worshiping and obeying him. He refuses to thank him for all his gracious provisions (Rom. 1:21). So he becomes vain and worthless in his reasonings. He is incompetent to reason correctly because he reasons without God. He is like the ten spies who came back after forty days of inspecting Canaan. Not considering God in their reasoning, they spoke about defeat and destruction of God’s people. Only Joshua and Caleb reasoned and spoke correctly because they had God in their minds.

A man who rejects God is unable to understand truth because his heart is darkened. Since the Fall, man has been in spiritual darkness. Man thinks he is enlightened; in fact, we generally speak positively about the Enlightenment period. But the heart of the Enlightenment was the rejection of the God of the Scriptures; therefore, we could also call that time the Endarkenment. Man’s heart is darkened, yet he knows truth. He knows God but exchanges the glory of God for idolatry (Rom. 1:23). He exchanges the truth of God for the lie of worshiping and serving creation. He prides himself on being wise, yet bows down in worship to creeping things, such as snakes. He exchanges the natural use of sexuality for the unnatural. Though he knows full well that those who do evil will go to hell, he keeps on sinning and celebrates others who do so also.

Man’s problem, therefore, is not ignorance of God, for God has revealed truth to man and in man. Because of this revelation, man is accountable to live for the glory of God. Yet he refuses to do so and slides down to hell itself as he sins more and more.

How does God react to man’s rejection of him and his word? God judges him. Paul writes, “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity. . . . Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. . . . Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind” (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). The wrath of God is revealed daily against all the godlessness and wickedness of men (Rom. 1:18). He is justly angry at sinners every day (Ps. 7:11). In judgment, therefore, God hands men over to the power of their sinful passions, to shame and uncleanness, to dishonor and abuse their bodies. He hands them over to the control of unnatural burning passions, including lesbianism and sodomy. He hands them over to a depraved and twisted mind that can never interpret reality correctly. God hands unbelieving haters of truth to the power of a worthless mind, one that is incapable of thinking straight, one that delights in delusions. This is God’s active, judicial action against all who reject their knowledge of him. Such men become, first, fools; then filthy; and, finally, fighters against God and others.

Man Becomes a Fool

When we reject God and his light of truth, we become fools. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God'” (Ps. 14:1). He negates the greatest reality because of his reprobate mind. Therefore he is incapable of reasoning correctly and misinterprets reality. If a person reasons correctly, he will worship, serve, and thank God. Any person who does not glorify the true God of revelation is a fool, though he may think he is wise.

When we reject God, we become futile and amount to nothing. We are fruitless, purposeless, and meaningless. When an orange tree brings forth oranges, it is doing what it supposed to do. When a man worships the true God, he is also fruitful because he is doing what his Creator wants him to do. But a sinning man is worthless, useless, and empty. He is a bad tree that can only produce bad fruit. Instead of fellowshipping with God in eternal happiness, he slides into the agony and torment of hell. He becomes wormwood and gall, a restless wretch. Futility, vanity, fruitlessness, and misery characterize the life of every unbeliever who will not glorify and obey God.

Of such people the Lord declares: “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices” (Ps. 81:11-12). Those who reject God are given over by God to be controlled by their own depraved minds. Such people are too smart to worship and serve God, and too proud to be thankful for his provision. Instead, they worship and serve likenesses of created things, such as bulls or snakes. They have no problem worshiping creatures that are inferior to them.

“Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Rom. 1:22-23). Professing to be wise, these God-rejecting people made themselves morons. Man cut off from God’s truth experiences a “delirium” of irrational imaginations.¹ The Bible says the infinite personal God is the cause of all created things. Yet irrational Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis is the ruling philosophy in almost all the universities in the world. Those who subscribe to it have no problem with contradiction and irrationalism. In fact, they become angry when we say the infinite personal God is the cause of all creation. Man rejects the glory of the incorruptible God but has no problem worshiping a golden bull or a snake.

These “wise men” call those who believe in the God of creation and redemption fools, declaring that anyone who believes in the Bible is a moron. Yet God says they are the true fools, in spite of their majestic pretensions. Paul writes:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” (1 Cor. 1:18-21)

Elsewhere he says, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). The god of this world has blinded natural man so that he cannot see reality until God speaks into the depths of his being, “Let there be light!” Only then will he be able to understand, repent, believe, and glorify God.

Thus Paul writes, “Their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:21). The heart is the center of human personality. It stands for our mind, will, and feelings. A darkened heart is twisted and has gone bad. It can only think, will, and love evil. This is God’s judgment upon a man who hates God.

Paul says those who reject God are given over to a depraved mind, will, and affections. Such people glory in their depravity. How many students at the universities will sit at the edge of their seats and glory at the “wisdom” they are learning, which is really stench in God’s nostrils! Yet they take pride in it and refuse to worship the true and living God. Their theology has become anthropology, zoology, and worship of Mother Earth and extreme environmentalism. They will not worship the true and living God, but they will worship a tree.

Such people, hating the true God, devise for themselves a tame God. They downsize God and come up with dummy gods. They want a God who permits every sin. These fools say, “Take away the glorious, incorruptible, eternal, Creator God of the Bible, and give us an image of a corruptible creature to worship.” But I would say they are really choosing to worship themselves.

Yes, they worship created things-presidents, rock stars, movie stars, politicians, pets, children, and spouses. They put them on a pedestal, bow down to them, and write books about them. They worship pornography, fashions, Darwinism, liberalism, hollow philosophies, scientism, money, sex, power, beauty, and brilliance. All these things, as well as all false religions, are the fruits of rebellion against the true God.

Even Israel worshiped the golden calf instead of Yahweh: “They exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass” (Ps. 106:20). Jeremiah declares, “Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols” (Jer. 2:11). Stephen explains, “That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and held a celebration in honor of what their hands had made. But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies” (Acts 7:41-42).

Man is daily exchanging truth for a lie-the lies of idolatry, self-worship, and of worshiping created things. Although he boasts about being wise, he worships creation. The Bible says those who do not worship the true God are, in reality, worshiping demons: “They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons” (Ps. 106:35-36; see also 1 Cor. 10:18-21; Eph. 2:1-3). John writes, “The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood-idols that cannot see or hear or walk” (Rev. 9:20).

A depraved mind says good is bad and bad is good. So those who reject God will say that the worship of the true God is bad but the worship of the bull, or of Mother Earth, is good; creationism is bad but Darwinism is good; virginity is bad but promiscuity is good. Bad thinking leads to wicked worship. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7, KJV). But “the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight . . . ‘The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile'” (1 Cor. 3:19, 20).

A classic illustration is found in the life of Nebuchadnezzar, the great king of Babylon. God used Daniel to witness to him about the true and living God (Dan. 2). But later “Nebuchadnezzar made a great image of gold, ninety feet high and nine feet wide, and set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon” (Dan. 3:1). He then summoned all people to worship it, saying that if they did not, they would be killed. The three Hebrew children refused and God rescued them from the fiery furnace, to the great amazement of Nebuchadnezzar. But in Daniel 4 we see the proud, unthankful, rebellious heart of this man. God had put him in power, but listen to his words: “All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar. Twelve months later as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, ‘Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?'” (Dan. 4:28-30).

God will not put up with idolatry, which is, fundamentally, self-worship and demon worship. Look at what happened to Nebuchadnezzar: “Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like cattle. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird” (Dan. 4:33). This proud king was turned over to a depraved mind. Now, we do not see the God-rejecting people of this world with long claws and unkempt hair, but essentially they are just like Nebuchadnezzar, suffering from the delirium of their imaginations. God punished this man for seven years. But then God had mercy on him: “At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever” (Dan. 4:34).

Man Becomes Foul

The second point in this giant slide down to hell is that we become foul. Not only does God-rejecting man become a fool, but his depraved mind also causes him to do filthy things that make him unclean and full of moral filth.

Jesus said that it is from man’s wicked heart-that is, from his depraved mind, will, and feelings-that all manner of evil comes: “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evil comes from inside and make a man ‘unclean'” (Mark 7:21-23).

Paul writes, “Wherefore God delivered them over unto uncleanness [akatharsian] in the [power of the] wicked lusts of their hearts for the purpose that they may dishonor their bodies among themselves” (Rom. 1:24, author’s translation). People glory in their wickedness as though they are exercising great freedom by being unclean. (PGM) But here God is saying they are handed over to do these things by divine action. In other words, it is a judgment that a person engages in fornication, commits adultery, feeds on pornography, or molests children. God hands over those who love their sin to that sin. It is as though he puts them in the prison of their own moral filth and they cannot get out.

Not only do men become fools, but they also dishonor and abuse their bodies and minds by becoming foul. Sin causes disease and many other problems. In the Greco-Roman culture, one could go to the temple, which was also a bank, take out money, go to the restaurant and eat, and also engage in ritual prostitution. This is the kind of filth Paul is speaking about. God judges such people so that they wallow like worms that thrive in the sewer. In the same way, a sinner enjoys remaining in his sin. This is due to divine judgment.

Then Paul says, “On account of this,” meaning on account of man’s foolish rejection of God and the light of his truth, “God handed them over unto passions of dishonor [eis pathê atimias]” (Rom. 1:26, author’s translation). There are good passions. It is good to be passionate when we worship and work. So there is nothing wrong with passion. But here we read about “passions of dishonor,” or “dishonorable passions.” God handed these people over to the control of dishonorable passions. What did that handing over result in? “For their women exchanged the natural use [tên phusikên chrêsin] of sexuality unto contrary to nature.” The expression Paul uses here, “contrary to nature” (eis tên para phusin) meant homosexuality in the Greek world. God handed women over to powerful, unnatural, dishonorable, detestable passions, rejecting God’s natural order of heterosexuality in marriage. God abandoned them to engage in unnatural perversion of lesbianism.

But this text says it is a judgment that God metes out and such people cannot get out of it. It is like a prison: the door has been locked and the key thrown away. Look at verse 27: “Likewise also the men, having left the natural use of the woman, were inflamed, set ablaze in their desire for one another, men in men, performing uncleanness, shame, and receiving the due wages of their error in themselves.” Here we are told that men also deliberately abandoned God’s natural order of heterosexuality in marriage in their strong burning desire for other men. They engaged in sodomy, as we read in Genesis 19. Elsewhere Paul says that what they do in secret, it is not proper to speak about (Eph. 5:12). Here Paul gives us a little window into the moral filth of God-hating men, “and they receive in themselves the due penalty of their perversion.” William Barclay calls this a “passionate desire for forbidden pleasure.”² I would call it a burning desire for filth.

God judges these people, and they suffer from serious physical and psychological problems. They receive due penalty for their error (i.e., their wandering from the truth) in themselves. They become foul fools who wallow in moral filth and boast about it. They detest sexual purity before and after marriage. Their depraved minds joke about it. They are like stray dogs who eat dung. That is a mild way of describing the type of filth these people get into.

Such people hate God’s order. But those who do wickedness must experience God’s divine judgment. Fools practice filth and go from bad to worse. Paul says of them, “Evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:13). He tells Titus, “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures” (Titus 3:3). Paul also says, “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes³ nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11).

In the Greco-Roman world, there was a slogan: “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food.” In other words, whenever a person felt an urge, he should do whatever he wanted to satisfy that urge, whether eating or drinking or engaging in sexual activity. But Paul says, “God will destroy them both” (1 Cor. 6:13). Then he says, “The body is not for sexual immorality.” Created by God, the human body has the sacred purpose of serving the Lord. The body is meant for the service of the Lord, that we may live in accordance with God’s revelation. Then Paul adds, “And the Lord [is] for the body.” When we serve the Lord with our bodies, he takes care of them, even to the point of raising them up on the last day.

Because God has saved us, Paul says, “Honor God with your body” (1 Cor. 6:20). Elsewhere he writes, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:7-8). No one gets away with sin. What we sow in secret, we will reap. Sin always damages.

Man Becomes a Fighter

The third point in man’s giant slide to hell is that he becomes one who fights against God and his fellow man. Those who reject God’s truth and refuse to worship and serve God make themselves fools and worship and serve creation, which is really worshiping demons. They practice filth and receive in their bodies the fitting wages of their perversion. And not only are they fools and filthy, but they also become ferocious, fighting, anti-social people.

These people are fighting constantly against God in their thoughts, words, and deeds. They fight against him in their writings and teachings. We hear them fighting in the universities and high schools. They are fighting against God, the knowledge of whom they suppress in wickedness. Such people also lose all capacity to love one another. If we are Christians, we will love one another because we love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. But when we do not love God, how can we love others? When we hate God with all our heart, we will also hate our spouse, our children, and our neighbor. We become so demon-possessed and self-centered that we devour people like roaring lions.⁴

What does God do with such fighters? “[God] gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done” (Rom. 1:28). God hands those who hate him over to a reprobate mind to do things that are immoral and unfitting. Paul describes these things in what is the longest list of evil in the New Testament (Rom. 1:29-32). There are at least twenty-one vices listed here. These anti-social traits bring about conflicts, quarrels, wars, and tensions among people.

One of these vices is theostugês, meaning “God haters” (v. 30). Every unbeliever hates God and his revelation and order. Another trait is “disobedience to parents” (v. 30). We must not underestimate the seriousness of this sin. It results from God abandoning us, and is a root sin that will bring us into every other sin. Then we find the word asunthetous, “faithless” (v. 31). The actual meaning is “covenant breakers.” Such people will sign a mortgage paper but not send the money. They will marry and vow to stay together until death parts them, but then walk out, breaking their vows. They may join a church but later walk out, breaking the covenant. An unbeliever cannot be trusted; he is a covenant breaker by nature. He stands in stark contrast to God, who never breaks covenant.

Another word, astorgous, can be translated “without family affection” (v. 31). It is a terrible thing not to love people belonging to one’s own family. Such people hate their fathers, mothers, and their own children. Even now, Western woman kills her own baby in her womb. For the sake of pleasure, millions of babies are killed. Then we read they are “ruthless” (v. 31). The Greek word, aneleêmonas, means “without mercy.” Another trait is epheuretas kakôn, “inventors of evil” (v. 30). The old evil is not good enough; these people are inflamed and set ablaze to think of new ways to do filth.

These are fighting words. These vices are destructive of marriages, families, communities, and nations. Fools who do filthy things are also fighting people because they are filled to the brim with evil, and out of their wicked hearts come wars and fighting.

Hope for Filthy, Fighting Fools

If we reject God and his truth to live by, we will slide right down into hell, going through the sewer of moral filth in the process. We will become fools, morally filthy, and ferociously fight against God and other people. Paul concludes, “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” (Rom. 1:32). Man is fully aware that the wages of sin is death, which means hell. But no matter: he persists in doing evil and promotes evil by recruiting others to do the same.

But there is good news! In Romans 1:16-17, God holds out hope for his foolish, filthy, fighting enemies. We cannot lift ourselves up from hell. But God has given us the gospel, which tells us that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came from heaven to our hell to lift us up. Ephesians 2:1-10 describes how God made us alive, raised us up, and seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. That is why we glory in the gospel. We were enemies of God, helpless sinners, ungodly. But Christ died while we were yet sinners, and now we have hope. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation from God’s wrath to all who believe.

Remember Paul’s words: “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor [soft ones] nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” But now comes the great verse: “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11). We find the same idea in 1 Thessalonians 1:9: “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” This is the reversal of our descent. God comes down, lifts us up, and seats us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Therefore, repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved to serve with gladness the loving and true God forever and ever.

¹ John Murray, Commentary on Romans, p. 42

² William Barclay, The Letter to the Romans, 34.

³ “Male prostitutes” can also be translated “effeminates.” The Greek word malakoimeans “soft ones,” designating those who are passive in the homosexual relationship. The next word is arsenokoitai, “homosexual offenders.” They are the active ones.

⁴ This is not to say that unbelievers do not demonstrate any affection for others. God’s common grace restrains many people from manifesting these vices fully. But we cannot truly love as God does unless we ourselves experience God’s love and love God (1 John 4:10, 19).