Thursday, October 4, 2012

Thursday, October 4 ~ Miriam

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Matthew 3; Mark 1; Luke 3.
Today's scripture focus is Romans 1:24-25.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

I don't really have anything to expound upon here.  It's simple.  Man decided they didn't want to accept God's sovereignty and turned away to a philosophy that suited them better, so God said "Fine.  Have it your way then.  I offered you everything I have to give you.  I withheld nothing from you; not even My own Son.  You reject it, so I leave you to your own devices."  And nothing has changed.  We've come up with a thousand variations of the same old sins that have existed since the Fall.  John MacArthur says this:

Now, there is a sense, and this is a theological point that I want you to get in your mind, we're going to go two ways on it, there is a sense in which the phrase means "God let go." God just took His hands off, pulled the restraints back and just let them go in their sin and sin brings its own consequence. One of the problems, by the way, in our society is that we're working furiously to remove the consequence of sin.  I always think about that when I think about all the medicines they've invented to stop venereal disease when venereal disease is God's way of stopping immorality. And as soon as you can deal with venereal disease you can free up everybody to do whatever they want. There's a sense in which God just lets men go, takes away His restraints, gives them their freedom and they go on in their sins and reap the results. So in a very real sense without revealing fire from heaven, without some cataclysmic event, God pours out His wrath on a day-to-day basis as He abandons men to the destructiveness of their own compounded sin. It's an amazing and awesome reality. God makes men's passions the very instrument of His wrath.

There's a sense also in which in pulling back or letting the restraints go, God is acting in a positive overt move of judgment. It isn't that God just says, "Ah, that's enough of you," and turns around takes a walk. It is that God in taking off the restraints which is sort of a negative sin, He just takes them back, also is positively inflicting men with His wrath because He knows the consequence. He abandons us totally to our sinfulness. He removes the restraints but in a real sense that is a positive punitive act on His part.

I want to give you one footnote. It's important to say at this point that this is not a final forever act that damns all men without recourse. God lets men go to the consequence of their sin and all the while endeavors to reach them with the message of His salvation. You understand that? You see, the gospel begins with the fact that God let men go but it is these very men, the world of people like you and I, that He has abandoned to their sinfulness that He calls back later in Romans in the redemptive invitation of the gospel.
(emphasis mine)


Tomorrow's scripture focus:  Romans 1:26-32.
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage:  Matthew 4; Luke 4-5; John 1:15-51.

1 comment:

Tammy said...

Some really great points in there - we do work furiously to remove the consequence of sin, the very consequence that is supposed to drive us to repentance!

It is so amazing that despite our foolishness, despite our wickedness, despite His Holiness - His grace is still offered to all of us and He longs to redeem us.