I recently was reading the passage in Romans about God’s wrath revealed against godlessness (Romans 1.18-32). God is not pleased when people, “although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1.21). This foolish and darkened heart is described as being caught up in the basic sin of idolatry—when God’s will and authority are set aside, and something or someone is given the adoration that belongs only to God. Immediately following this statement are the verses that deal with sexual immorality—especially homosexual activity—as an example of the consequences of having an idolatrous heart. The purpose and design of God is abandoned as “God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity” (Romans 1.24).
As I read through the whole passage, and reflected on it, I caught myself focusing on how “other people” engaged in ungodly acts of sexual impurity, and then easily breezing through verses 29-31: “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.”
Notice that in the list are certain actions that we “good people” tend to downplay as trivial, and nowhere close to such grievous sins as sexual immorality, or murder, or being a God-hater. Yet we cannot and should not ignore the fact that included in this list describing “every kind of wickedness” are “common” acts or attitudes such as envy, malice, gossip, slander, lack of fidelity or love or mercy, and even being disobedient to parents! We may be quick to sweep these away as insignificant human failures or mistakes, but Scripture warns us to do otherwise. And if we call ourselves followers of Christ, we would do well to remove our self-constructed and self-serving filters, and give full attention to God’s Word.
As we step into the new year, let us learn to give Scripture full freedom to address us in whatever way God intended … and do our best not to filter out the things that are truly relevant to us personally (not just relevant to other people). Learn to avoid what displeases the Lord, and to know and pursue what is pleasing to God.
—Keith Y. Jainga