When God Gives Up On Human Sinfulness Series

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“Therefore God also gave them up …”

Therefore. The wrath is coming. We deserve the wrath that is coming. Why? Well, men knew the truth of God and suppressed it. They could see His attributes, but they ignored Him. They did not glorify Him. They were not thankful to Him. They thought they were so wise, but were really fools. They began worshiping, but not God. They worshiped likenesses of God’s creation. They worshiped themselves and the works of their hands. That’s why the wrath is coming.

Therefore, because of all they did to displace God, tear Him from His Throne, therefore, God gave them up.

“Them”. Who? All the way back to v. 18 for the answer: “… men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. All men.”

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Three times, vs 24, 26, 28 Paul mentions this fact of history. God gave them up.

Gave them up. Abandoned them. Paradidomi. To surrender. To yield up. That is, to entrust, to commit. To transmit. You see the idea?

Paul uses the word elsewhere when he talks about giving up your body to be burned. Of Christ giving Himself up to death. Luke talks about how Paul committed men to prison. Same word. Jesus said, make nice with your enemy or he will deliver you to the judge. Same word. Peter talks about angels who were delivered to chains of darkness. Jesus, says Peter, committed Himself to the Father instead of answering His tormentors in kind. Jesus, says Paul, was delivered up because of our offenses.

Put it all together: Transferring of someone or something from one state to another state. In this passage we learn that God looked at all of mankind, early in His dealings with them, and said, I now transfer you from My tender loving protecting care, to your own devices. You want to be free from Me? You are free. Go for it. I give you up to yourself.

We humans all imagine we would love to be truly free to do anything we want any time we want. That is disastrous thinking, and gives us… the present world, that has freely given itself over to the rule of Satan, the prince and power of the air.

See what happened? God creates, blesses, reveals Himself. Man says no thanks, takes the reins himself and hands them over to the Prince of Darkness.

“…to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts.”

God is holy, pure, clean. If you are released from Him, you become unholy, impure, dirty.

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When God gives you over, you may think you’re getting away with things, but you are not. Your sin finds you out. You thought it was safe sex, but you acquire any number of diseases in the experiencing of it outside of man-woman marriage. The children come and you raise them like the children of hell that you are, and they become a curse instead of the blessing God intended.

Alcohol and drugs turn out to be just what God said of them. Substances that come back to bite you. You gain more sickness, early death.

You want to be unclean and watch the filth of Hollywood, feeding your mind on the cesspool rather than the Scriptures. You will become what you eat mentally.

And speaking of eating, let’s not forget gluttony is still a sin. Eating too much. Eating foods that are known to hurt the human body, all of this brings its own reward.

But humans want to be free. Then be free. Be dirty. Do whatever your little lustful heart desires. Enjoy your life away from Father’s care. Liberty.

But know, said Solomon, that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. God is angry with the sinner every day. Not all of God’s wrath is future. Judgment is built into disobedience. And this abandonment will only get worse after death. Just as the Christian has only a foretaste of Heaven here, so the unbeliever has only a foretaste of hell here.

How often have you been to an unbeliever’s funeral, and heard, “Well his troubles are over now. He had it hard here, with his AIDS, with his Diabetes, his liver trouble, but now He will be happy and healthy, and Daddy-God will just love on Him forever.”

No. Adam’s race has been abandoned to itself. Its judgment begins here and multiplies there.

Mankind took the blessings of God and turned them into something evil,

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“to dishonor their bodies among themselves…”

Look at the progression downward. You can tell where a nation or a person is in his descent into evil by just reading this passage. First man suppresses the truth about God. He does not glorify or even thank God, the true God, for anything. He fills his head with vain empty thoughts. He boasts of his wisdom and becomes a fool. He enters into full-blown idolatry. God responds by allowing him to respond to himself, not to God. Then he starts the slow self-destruction of his own body.