Given over, but not given up

Given over, but not given up Rom 1:24-28

Response of God to man’s Rejection God’s response of “giving mankind over” is a revelation of his wrath (18) and a response to their threefold exchange ((1:23, 25, 26). God's response to this worldwide disloyalty and treason against our Creator is not, first, to send us to hell, but to see that we sink into the swamp we have chosen. God, in an act of judgment . . . withdraws his common restraints on our rebellion and gives us over to sink in the swamp we have chosen. The depth of our sin does not just deserve divine judgment, it is divine judgment. (Piper). They abandoned God. God abandoned them. (Jones) That's the basic problem. Men do not want to know God. They do not want to trust God, to obey God and so God has given them up. (Mac Arthur).

Reason: God’s plan for man is always redemptive. He doesn’t relent in his pursuit of the sinner (Gen 6:3, Neh 9:22-31). God gives them over to their own total depravity to destroy all hope of salvation within their own ability and point them to a total deliverance through Christ alone (Acts 4:12, Luke 15:11-24). The abandonment is from that pristine knowledge where men knew God and ran from God, and now God runs and calls them back. God often lets them go deeper and deeper into the pit of their own sin, they eventually hit bottom and scream for mercy. God smites in order that He might heal. Man won't respond, God pours out His wrath. Impenitent sinners are swept away into their own sins, and vile passions lead them toward hell. In the midst of it all God calls them to Himself.(Rom 5:8) (Mac Arthur) God gave them up - He abandoned them, or he ceased to restrain them, and suffered them to act out their sentiments, and to manifest them in their life. This does not imply, that he exerted any positive influence in inducing them to sin, any more than it would if we should seek, by argument and entreaty, to restrain a headstrong youth, and when neither would prevail, should leave him to act out his propensities and to go as he chose to ruin (Barnes) This is more than permission to fall into uncleanness, and it is less than causing this fall. God's action is judicial. At first, God always restrains by moral persuasion and other hindrances; but when God is completely cast off, when the measure of ungodliness overflows, his punitive justice hands the sinners over completely to their sins in order to let the sins run to excess and destroy the sinners (Lenski) They had already willfully deserted God who merely left them to their own self-determination and self-destruction, The natural sinful character of man is allowed to play itself out. The result is depravity. (Rom 1:26-27) (Gil Rugh) The Gk paradidōmi –means to hand over. It often refers to turning someone over to a punishment, turning someone over to an imprisonment, turning someone over to a severe judgment. God gave them up. He gave them over to a punishment. He gave them over to an imprisonment. He gave them over to those who would inflict pain or to that which would inflict pain upon them. (Matt 10:17,19, 21, 18:34, 26:15, 27:2) The withdrawal of God‘s restraint sent men deeper down. Here is not a succession or stages of three withdrawals (Rom 1:24, 26, 28), but a repetition of the same withdrawal. The words sound to us like clods on the coffin as God leaves men to work their own wicked will. (Robertson) Some think his giving them up, is only’ his withdrawing his grace from them, and permitting them to sin; but there seems to be more in it than a bare subtraction or permission. He did not only leave them to themselves, but, in a judicial way, he put them, into the hands of Satan, and of their own lusts; (1 Tim 1:18-20, Ps 69:27), he added iniquity to their iniquity, making the latter iniquity a punishment of the former. (Poole) There are two aspects to this judicial act of God: 1) a negative restraint, a withdrawal. God pulls back letting the restraints go 2) a positive overt move of judgment. It isn't that God just says, "Ah, that's enough of you," and turns around and takes a walk. God in taking off the restraints 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. (Mac Arthur) Paul has proven two things. He has proven the doctrine of depravity empirically, and he has proven the doctrine of the wrath of God because you don’t have to look for an earthquake or a volcano destroying Vesuvius to see the wrath of God against sin. The wrath of God against sin is seen when He breaks lose the restraints of sin in a society and lets sinners go their own way (Duncan). This restraint 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. The gospel begins with the fact that God let men go. But those that He has abandoned to their sinfulness, those He calls back through the redemptive invitation of the gospel. (Mac Arthur))

Reaction

The text indicates that God no longer restrains sinful behavior leaving men to their own unrestrained lust, unrestricted passions and unbridled desires. He gives them over in three specific areas: the will, the emotions and the mind. The will is centered in the heart. The emotions emerge from internal passions. The mind comes from the brain. This is not a progressive plunge into sin one area at a time, but a total removal of any divine restraints upon the whole being of man. Every area of man’s life, mind, will and emotions, are affected by this removal. It is not limited to only one area of our being but encompasses every aspect of who we are. The mind is just as effected as the will or emotions and vice a versa. This is not God adding something to us, but him not restraining what he has been restrained that is already within our corrupt nature. So God gives men over to these areas by not longer restraining their defiled heart, their diseased passions, and their depraved mind. God's giving people up was not capricious, but founded upon the righteous premise that such conduct deserved the adverse judgment it received. (Coffman)

Defiled Heart (Will) 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity “Their own hearts” emphasizes that they are self-willed. Their own heart, do what you want, do your own thing, do whatever you feel like doing, let your lust tell you what to do. And because their hearts are unclean, out of it comes filth. (Gen 6:5, Matt 15:19, Pro 4:23, Jer 17:9) When God gives men up He gives them up to uncleanness, which comes out of their own insides. “Heart” means the thinking processes, the will, the internal character. Man abandoned by God has only to do what his heart tells him to do, and his heart is corrupt. He has no other norms, no other standards, no other principles than his own desires. And those desires come out of an impure heart turned over to its own devices and utterly sinful. What the heart desires the hands do. It is the attitude of the heart that affects the actions of the flesh. What is inside a man comes out. A man is defiled not by what goes in the body but by what arises from his heart (Mark 7:17-23) Man is basically unclean. That's the essence of man, the nature of man or the heart of man, the internal part. The problem with man is that inside down deep he is a rotten, vile sinner; uncleanness, impurity. (Mac Arthur). You were born into this world a sinner, you're defiled from the inside and it manifests itself on the outside. And if you've abandoned God and God has abandoned you, there is no way to restrain that evil, there is no way to cover that evil, there is no way to deal with that evil. (Mac Arthur) Gk epithumia –lust, cravings, longing, desire for what is forbidden. The root word is a combination of epi –upon or before – and thumos a passion that might rise up. This is not lust of the flesh. Lust of the flesh may or may not be yielded to. This is a deeper more intense passion, it remains even after the impulse of the desires of the flesh fade. It is a continual controlling lingering passion of the will that demands gratification. This is manifest by the fact that when divine restraints are removed this lust plunges men into deeper bodily uncleanliness and vileness (Newell) The text describes with tremendous particularity the variegated symptoms of the one problem- the corruption of man’s heart; a problem everywhere present, everywhere deadly; limited in its manifestations by circumstances and conditions, outward or within man, but in itself quite unlimited in its dreadful possibilities. (Moule).

Result: 24 to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves This is the expression of what's inside. It is verse 24 as it worked out to the dishonoring of the bodies.

Response: Guard your heart (Prov 4:23), Guide your heart (Prov 6:20-23)

Diseased passions (Emotions) 26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. . Gk pathos- an affliction of the mind, emotion, passion - passionate deed .Passion is passive, being the diseased condition out of which the lusts spring. epithumia are evil longings; pathos are ungovernable affections. Thus it appears that the divine punishment was the more severe, in that they were given over to a condition, and not merely to an evil desire. (Vincent)

Result: 26 For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error Here God pours out his wrath (18) on a daily basis, without revealing fire from heaven, without some cataclysmic event, as He abandons men to the destructiveness of their own compounded sin. God makes men's passions the very instrument of His wrath.

Response: 1 Thess 4:5; Col 3:5 We must learn to possess our vessels in honor, that is, to withhold our body from uncleanness; so they that give up themselves to uncleanness, dishonor themselves and their own bodies; Believers should know how to control their bodies. (1 Thess 4). Because the Spirit of God is there and He can control those things. Non-believers who know not God cannot effectively control their body. The believer has the ability to set their affections on things above and not on things on the earth. The non-beleiver will go out and dishonor their bodies because that's what their lusts tell them to do.

Depraved mind (Mind) 28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind

That means a mind that’s utterly unable to discern what is right and wrong (Mac Arthur) A depraved mind begins to think that what is bad is actually good and that what is good is actually bad. It is the mind of the devil (John 8, Gen 3:5) Adam was told he would become like God knowing good and evil, but in fact he became like his “father the devil” replacing good with evil, his foolish heart becoming darkened. (Boice). Our minds become more and more defective in sin. Not only do we use them to sin, but we can't even think clearly about sin. We can't recognize it (Piper). A depraved mind or worthless mind is one that seeks to justify sinful behavior by appealing to psychology, biology and society. “This is not sin it is the way I was made and something beautiful not vile or perverted.” (Jones). They said God is worthless, so God gave them over to a worthless mind. Jer 6:30 Reprobate silver was rejected silver, worthless silver, it didn't meet the standard, didn't come up to the assayers’ qualification, thrown out. And God just throws them out because they have a worthless mind. It doesn't come up to his standard. He gives them over to their debauched and depraved reason. They find God worthless to their knowledge and God gives them over to a worthless mind.

Result: 28 to do what ought not to be done.

Response: Col 3:2, Set your mind on the things above. Rom 12:1-2 renew your mind, Phil 4:8-9 Think on things worthy of praise. Col 3:16, Ps 119:8-11

The heart that is addicted to evil, that is in love with sin, that is clogged and burdened with guilt, has lost the capacity of discerning God as it has lost the wish to be near Him. His name is not welcome, the idea of Him is not pleasant; we are neither willing nor able, when we are plunged in our selfish sinfulness, to cherish the bright and purifying thought of our loving Father. As a cloud darkens the heavens, the mist of our own evil hearts rises up and fills our sky, and blots out all the starry intentions of our spirit, and drapes the face of God Himself in a blackness that can be felt. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The purpose for which the text labors is to first to expose man in himself, to awaken him to the act that he is before everything else a sinner, to reverse the Tempter’s spell, and to let him see the fact of his guilt with open eyes. The gospel can never be proven except to a bad conscience. The power of the God unto salvation will hardly be seen in its own prevailing self-evidence, . . . till the student is first and with all else penitent. The man must know for himself something of sin as a condemnable guilt, and something of the self as a thing in helpless yet responsible bondage, before he can see Christ given for us, and risen for us and seated at the right hand of God for us. To the full sight of Christ there needs a true sight of self, that is to say, of sin (H C G Moule)