THE study in Romans in last week's paper presented a part of the description of the iniquities into which the wicked plunge when they refuse to retain God in their knowledge. The remaining portion of the description is in the following verses:
“And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practise them.” Rom. 1:28-32.
“They refused to have God in their knowledge.” And having thus “refused” God, He “gave them up unto a reprobate mind.” The fact that the Lord gave them up shows that He made an effort to save them. He did everything He could to keep them from plunging into such a vortex of iniquity. But having refused God and broken away from the restraining influences that He was exerting to draw them into the ways of righteousness, they impart to themselves an intense momentum in the downward course of sin.
They have had to know about God in order to refuse to have Him in their knowledge. But knowing about God, and actually having a personal knowledge of Him are two very different and opposite things. The one who merely knows about God may be very intelligent concerning all the history of religion, and may consider himself a very wise and well-educated person, but to actually know God thru the workings of His Spirit in the mind and heart is the only thing that will keep men from falling into the iniquities that are described in this first chapter of Romans.
The man who goes into the out-and-out idolatry of heathenism thru refusing God does not separate himself any more surely from the Fountain of righteousness than the one who refuses to know God and still clings to the embellishments and outward adornments of civilization. Refusing to know God does not necessarily deprive men of the knowledge that this world affords. It does not necessarily separate them from outward gentility; it separates them from the one Source of life and power that will enable them to lead clean, strong, righteous lives.
Refusing to have God in the knowledge does not necessarily drive away from man the shame of being found out in any of the sins enumerated by the apostle. The man may to outward appearances be genteel, and “a good, moral man.” But he does not have the power that enables him to stand for righteousness and purity in all things when he is alone and he knows that no human eye sees him or knows what he is doing.
All these things being true, it is clear, then, that we need not look alone in barbarous and idolatrous lands for the examples of what the apostle describes as taking place among those who shut God away from their knowledge. The man who lives in a heathen land and shuts God away from him will plunge into all the vices and superstitions of idolatry. And the man who lives under more enlightened conditions takes to himself the veneer of the outward refinements of civilization, while at the same time he indulges its debasing vices. And whichever may be the environment, they will become morally degenerate, not because of that environment, but because they have “refused to have God in their knowledge.”
In another one of his letters, the apostle Paul gives a catalog of sins that are to cause peril in the time when they exist. The list is the following:
“But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away.” 2 Tim. 3:1-5.
One of the first things that Paul tells us will make the last days “grievous” is self-love and the love of money. In the verses from Romans at the head of this article he tells of those, who, refusing the knowledge of God, become covetous. Covetousness and self-love and the love of money are the same thing expressed differently. Other things that he mentions that will make the last days “grievous,” are the facts that men will be “boastful, haughty,” “disobedient to parents,” “without natural affection,” and all these things are given in his Roman letter in practically identical words as the sins that men commit when they refuse to have God in their knowledge. And while the rest of the list that he gives in his letter to Timothy is not given in identical words in his letter to the Romans, yet the sins described are much the same.
Now since these sins come to those who “refuse” to have God in their knowledge, and since they are to make “grievous,” or, as in the Authorized Version, “perilous” times of the last days, it follows that the mass of mankind will reject God. They will refuse to have Him as their guide and teacher.
The text in Timothy shows that they will not refuse to make a profession of Christianity, for the apostle says they are “holding a form of godliness.” They cling to the form of godliness while they are practising all the things that he enumerates in his long list of sins. But while they hold the form of godliness, the apostle explicitly declares that they have “denied the power thereof.”
Then we have before us in these scriptures, quoted from two different letters of the apostle Paul, a list of the sins that men will commit who depart from God. In his list quoted from Romans he described the depths of degradation into which the heathen world threw itself—the heathen world that made no pretense of acknowledging Jehovah, but on the contrary had openly spurned Him. In his list quoted from Timothy, the apostle tells of the same depths into which those will go who hold to the form of godliness, but who do not have its life and power. Thus it will be seen that holding the forms of Christianity without having its life, produces the same results exactly in men that are produced by out-and-out idolatry and heathenism.
These two scriptures from Romans and Timothy make a striking presentation of a great truth. Formalism in religion, even tho that religion be called Christian, lowers a man into the same depths of moral degradation as does the worship of idols. With the formalist there may appear a little more outside gentility, but the inner character is the same. And it is the degradation produced among those making a profession of godliness that the apostle shows us is to make the last days perilous and grievous.
The foregoing scriptures do not present the theories of men; they give the estimate that God Himself places upon things. It is well for us to give them careful study and consideration.