Righteousness Exalts a
Nation
For 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. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 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 are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Romans 1:21-32
"Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." The timeless truth of that proverb (14:34) is the verdict of the record of every civilization, empire and nation in history. Its relevance for our times is indisputable. In a day when spiritual and moral structures are disintegrating, when the social order is threatened by a narcissism bordering on anarchy, when pervasive skepticism and mistrust are eroding human relationships, no word of truth deserves our attention more than this.
This text is not a threat; it is not even a
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warning. It is simply a statement of fact. It is like saying, "The shortest distance between two points is a straight line." It is like saying, "Fire burns, cold freezes." This test is a simple statement of principle, a law of life which is inherent in the universe, in the world, in human nature, in history.
"Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people." These remarkable words assert the simple fact that spiritual and moral health is constructive and beneficial, that spiritual and moral sickness is destructive. This is without controversy. The decline and fall of every great social, political, economic order and/or system in history is profound confirmation of the truth of this text. This basic principle is working every day in the life of every person in the world. It is operative every day in home and family life, in all the structures of our nation, in all of the departments of life. Its process is inexorable despite every effort of sophisticated man to rationalize and disregard it. The fruit of righteous living blesses any nation. The degeneration, disintegration and demise of any and all people are inevitable if righteousness is abandoned.
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There is simply no argument against this. This is a simple fact of life, whether we accept it or not; whether we like it or not. This is the way things are.
Paul, an observer of the rapid decline of Rome from its greatness to its corruption in Nero's day, provided a classic commentary on the negative aspect of Proverbs 14:34 — "sin is a reproach to any people" — in his Epistle to the Romans. One commentator says of Paul's day:
When Paul and the other apostles were called to enter upon their important duties, the world was in a deplorable and yet most interesting state. Both Heathenism and Judaism were in the last stages of decay. The polytheism of the Greeks and Romans had been carried to such an extent as to shock the common sense of mankind, and to lead the more intelligent among them openly to reject and ridicule it. This skepticism had already extended itself to the mass of the people, and become almost universal. As the transition from infidelity to superstition is certain, and generally immediate,
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all classes of the people were disposed to confide in dreams, enchantments, and other miserable substitutes for religion.
The two reigning systems of philosophy, the Stoic and Platonic, were alike insufficient to satisfy the agitated minds of men. The former sternly repressed the best natural feelings of the soul, inculcating nothing but a blind resignation to the unalterable course of things, and promising nothing beyond an unconscious existence hereafter. The latter regarded all religions as but different forms of expressing the same general truths, and represented the whole mythological system as an allegory, as incomprehensive to the common people as the pages of a book to those who cannot read. This system promised more than it could accomplish. It excited feelings which it would not satisfy, and thus contributed to produce that general ferment which existed at this period.
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Among the Jews, generally, the state of things was hardly much better. They had, indeed, the form of true religion, but were in a great measure destitute of its spirit. The Pharisees were contented with the form; the Sadducees were skeptics; the Essenes were enthusiasts and mystics.
Such being the state of the world, men were led to feel the need of some surer guide than either reason or tradition, and some better foundation of confidence than either heathen philosophies or Jewish sects could afford. Hence, when the glorious gospel was revealed, thousands of hearts, in all parts of the world, were prepared by the Grace of God to exclaim, "This is all our desire and all our salvation!"1
The inevitable destructiveness of sin was never analyzed more accurately than Paul's description in Romans. He records the vicious, downward spiral, the awful abyss into which humanity inescapably
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sinks through sin. A description of the descent begins in chapter 1, at the twenty-first verse: "Because when they knew God they did not glorify Him as God nor were they thankful . . ." This is the root of sin—failure or refusal to worship God. This is secularism, the spirit opposed to faith in God. Paul could have written, "Godliness exalts a nation, secularism is a reproach to any people."
The diagnosis continues, "When they knew God they did not glorify Him as God" nor were they "thankful" to Him as God. With what result? They "became vain in their imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools." Intellectual and emotional degeneration are inevitable when men refuse God, when they are thankless.
Next comes spiritual degeneration (v.23). These wise fools whose intellect was darkened because they would not acknowledge God, "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, to birds, four-footed beasts and creeping things." At which point God lets go and social degeneration follows (v. 24): "Wherefore God also gave them up."
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Here is a significant fact. Every parent sooner or later must come to this decision with a child who is insubordinate. He may scold and punish and deprive, but if the child insists on rejecting discipline, the time comes when the parent must give him up to his own destructive way. He just has to let him go. "God gave them up." A whole humanity God gave up "to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves."
The ineluctable process continues (v. 25): They "changed the truth of God into a lie." (Here is a 180-degree spiritual and moral inversion: black is white, error is truth, chaos is order.) They "changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator."
Now comes the terrible consequences, the perversion of personality (vv. 26,27): "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves
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[that is, receiving in their own personalities] that recompense of their error which was meet."
Finally, beginning at verse 28, complete degeneration: "Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. . ." (note the recurring cause is intellectual abandonment of God), "Even as they did not like to retain in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind." There is no power on earth to stop the human mind from becoming reprobate if we reject God. The mind that will not worship God becomes corrupted. This is as inescapable as fire's burning. "God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which ought not to be done."
Now you see total breakdown: "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers [contract breakers] without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." Then in verse 32, the very ultimate in human degradation: "Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit
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such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." They want to see it on the screen, on the stage; they want to read it in books; they want it in advertising. It is not enough to do it; they want to see it done; they take pleasure in it; they are entertained by it. There is nowhere else to go! This is the dead end. This buildup of degeneration in human personality, collectively and individually, winds up (or down) to the ultimate in depravity — vicarious enjoyment of lust, depravity, sin. Sin is entertainment!
But this is ancient literature, written nineteen hundred years ago! What of our contemporary world? Time magazine, March 5, 1965, reported that progressive church thinkers now state that "the twentieth century sexual revolution directly challenges Christianity's teachings, biblical teaching against fornication and adultery. As an alternative they propose an ethic based on love rather than law, in which the ultimate criterion for right and wrong is not Divine command but the individual's subjective perception of what is good for himself and his neighbor in each given situation." In other words, I am my own law! I decide what is right for me.
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You decide what is right for you. Time continues: "Church leaders are quoted as saying that no sexual relationship should be absolutely condemned by the church."
Then Joseph Fletcher of the Episcopal Theological School is quoted as saying: "One enters into every decision-making moment armed with the wisdom of the culture" (the wisdom of a Godless, therefore reprobate, mind), "but prepared in one's freedom to suspend and violate any rule, except one must as responsibly as possible seek the good of one's neighbor."
The truth about atheistic existentialism is manifest. The evil in this popular philosophy is being exposed now that the fruit of its teaching is beginning to mature. What is difficult to comprehend is the fact that some intellectuals accept its teachings and conclusions as modern! They are as ancient as Nero's Rome, indeed more ancient. Isaiah wrote seven hundred years before Christ, twenty-six hundred years ago, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way" (53:6). Isaiah did not call it "situational ethics," he called it sin (iniquity). Consider Proverbs 12:15, "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes," or Proverbs 21:2, "Every way of a man is right in
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his own eyes." The labels may be new, but the idea is an ancient one! Call it what you will, it is spiritual and moral anarchy. The twentieth century is no more immune to its decay than the first or the eighth B.C.
Without abrogating the principle of human rights or the efficacy of the present movements, nevertheless it is significant that even these important "rights" movements have been infected by anarchy and narcissism. One leader defined civil rights as a "blank check payable on demand." Why is not more said about civic responsibility? Rights without responsibility do not beget freedom but lead ultimately to chaos and bondage. However evil has been the exploitation of the past; irresponsibility is not a solution. Two wrongs do not add up to a right.
Twelve years ago it was reported by Christianity Today that a group of protestant clergymen had formed a Council on Religion and Homosexuals, purportedly to establish dialogue between homosexuals and the religious community. A spokesman declared that one of their purposes was to get a law passed which does not discriminate against homosexuals! The article went on to say that the group's first big showdown came at a fund-raising ball
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for the benefit of homosexuals which the ministers helped to sponsor. Police broke up the ball and arrested five men and a woman; two of the men were charged with lewd conduct on the dance floor after being officially warned against public intimacies. And then the quote adds that the ministers protested the police intrusion!
Another news item in the magazine reported that the Judson Memorial Baptist Church in New York's Greenwich Village had a dance program which included a number in which a man and woman, both naked, moved across the stage in face to face embrace! "Knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." There is no mystery about the popularity of modern pornography and obscenity. Pleasure in such things is consistent with a Godless existentialism.
An autobiography written some years ago, My Life and Loves by Frank Harris, contains the author's account of the four hundred times he seduced women, giving in clear, candid, careful detail his technique from the beginning of the seduction to its consummation. That book and many more like it written by former wives
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and lovers is available on bookstands competing with popular magazines and movies explicit in their portrayal of the intimacies of sex. This is the ultimate in depravity—pandering pornography to a culture which eats it up.
The point Paul makes in Romans 1 is plain and indisputable: sin leads to individual and collective ruin. Sin guarantees the breakdown of all human social systems; and there is only one solution to this breakdown, "Righteousness exalts a nation" (Proverbs 14:34).
The word righteousness in both Hebrew and Greek is a simple word. In this day when much dialogue is nothing more than semantic duel, people are rationalizing the meaning of words. This is part of the perversion that is inherent in a Godless culture. But the word is clear in Hebrew and in Greek. It means rightness, justice, virtue. It means to be chaste. It is implied in some of these good old-fashioned words that even Madison Avenue must use today when it wants to appeal to something more than emotion—words like quality, integrity, honesty, responsibility. It means to be right with God and right with your neighbor. It means purity in motive as well as propriety in method.
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It means reverence for God and concern for others. It means square-play, truthfulness, unselfishness, humility, kindness, charity. It means Christ-likeness.
Unquestionably, we have been looking at a rather dismal scene, but, thank God, there can be another chapter. And that chapter can be written by you and me—that is, if we are willing to pay the price for authentic relevance. But if we go about our daily affairs absolving ourselves of responsibility we actually become a part of the problem that is ravaging our nation and our world. The solution begins with us as persons. Each of us in his own way can become an instrument in the hands of God for reconciliation. If we have the determination to be Christ-managed, we will become an influence for righteousness right where we are. If we have the courage to speak when we might otherwise be intimidated to silence, and if we are willing to be silent when we ought not to speak, God will lead us by His grace, through His Spirit.
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1. Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1950).
