Paul takes much of the first chapter of Romans to articulate the trouble: it’s a big trouble and deeply troubling.  It has caused all of us all kinds of trouble.  Big trouble needs a big solution, and Paul will indeed be getting to that, also.  First, he wants to lay the groundwork for the big solution.  That groundwork has two parts: (1) the real and deep seriousness of the trouble and (2) the innate inability of any of us to do a thing about it.  The big answer to the big trouble is God, not science, not rituals of religion, not philosophy, not art, not even courage or just simple, everyday kindness.  The answer to the big trouble certainly is not a posture of rebellion or defiance.  Rebellion and defiance, in the Bible, are not positive concepts: regularly, rebellion and defiance are the response of man to God.

Through creation, God makes it possible for anyone to begin to know Him.  Creation points to its Creator.  How does life come from what is not alive?  Don’t speak to me, please, about theories.  Show me.  Demonstrate to me how what is not alive produces life.  From rocks to butterflies!  How do complex organisms come from single-cell organisms (bacteria, that is)?  What are the odds of life emerging, cosmically speaking?  These are good questions, and each leads to knowledge of God, for we have a God who desires that we know Him.  But as Paul puts it, people, given this opportunity all around us, “did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God” (1:28)—it just wasn’t worth it!—with the result that “God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done” (1:28).  There’s that word again, depraved.  Calvin is getting it from Paul, right here.  Why do people do what ought not to be done?  And that covers a lot of territory—Paul is not pointing only or even especially at homosexuality.  That was only an especially vivid example that something is just off, generally.  People do what they ought not to do because their minds have become depraved, corrupted, because they didn’t value the knowledge of God.  They elected not to retain what they knew; they opted to forget to remember.  When we forget to remember God, we can do all sorts of things.  And we have.

The knowledge of God that Paul means is not mere intellectual assent.  Knowledge of God shows in a life lived according to God, lived in vital relationship with God.  Their minds—their thinking, choosing—became corrupted.  And why?  God chose not to make that slide impossible.  That is, God sovereignly chose to permit people to exercise free will.  Given the power to choose, unredeemed (corrupted) people invariably and consistently will not choose God.  And what of us here?  Beloved, God has called and claimed us in Christ—that makes all the difference.

But why did God give them over to this corrupted mind, unable and certainly unwilling to choose God?  Because people chose not to remember, consider, or consult God.  That is godlessness.  Godlessness goes hand in hand with wickedness.  But why did people make that terrible choice?  Why do people, still?  Because God wants something from us.  Because God has expectations; God tells us to live His way.  Because God requires us to be holy, as He is holy.  To be holy is to be set apart for God.  However, our natural, inborn inclination, since and because of the Fall, is to be for ourselves.   And we will fashion idols that support that inclination.  We don’t want anyone bossing us around, telling us what to do.  We want freedom more than we want God who gave us our first freedom, God who has the power and the grace to give us true freedom.

And the result of wanting self more than God?  Exercising this free though fallen will, everyone, without exception, became “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 have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy” (1:29-31).  Sounds like Genesis 6.  At what point were you saying, Stop, enough already?  Two weeks ago?

We don’t deny that there is corruption out there, even today.  It’s the corruption inside that we’re reluctant to look at or talk about.  Paul gives us a panoramic view, showing each facet of the hard, dark rock of the unredeemed human heart.  At the center is self, not God, lust, not love.  Self-lust has commandeered God-given freedom.  There are people who seem to relish doing damage to things and harm to others—sometimes it’s an exercise of power, sometimes it’s just “blowing off steam”; other times, a wild notion comes along and takes the reins—but the will is always in the saddle: in the moment, they want to do just what they are doing.  That’s the ugly truth we have a hard time admitting, confessing.  They wanted to (even if they “knew” better), so they did.  And so have we.

There is a badness that hates goodness.  Goodness clearly, powerfully reveals the badness of what is bad.  When you know good food, you also know bad food.  When you know good drink, you know bad, too.  When you do what is good, others notice: not always to praise you and express gratitude.  The one who tells the truth, who does not lie or cheat, is not always the most popular person.  “You’re making the rest of us look bad!”  The idea is, let’s all maintain a low standard, together, and shrug our shoulders.  In this world, if you want to be popular, give people what they demand.

Paul condemns greed; we concur.  Paul has in mind a rapacious greed.  We don’t use that word, much.  Rapacious means predatory greedy, not just sitting on some hoard but going, taking, seizing, shoving people and principles aside in order to get: another of the ways in which we abuse one another.  We joke about taxes.  I’m not yet at the Libertarian point of saying taxation is theft, but we feel that rapaciousness personally when the federal government (and the county) comes along each year, telling us how much more of our earnings belongs to them—because everything, actually, finally, belongs to the government, after all.  And we know, of course, that it’s for the greater good, because they tell us so.  But could we at least get an accurate, full, and truthful accounting of where it all went?

Paul mentions depravity.  We twist our mouths about that.  I’m not depraved.  I don’t even know anyone who is depraved, and I wouldn’t want to.  The word, in Paul’s Greek, refers to an inner, innate lack of what would be needed to be good: truly to know what is good, and do it.  No ability, no aptitude for good—corrupted.  It’s the bad soil in which all other badness germinates, sprouts, and grows.  Paul is not referring to environment or upbringing.  He means something broken right at the heart of our lives, in the core of the self, something that’s gone bad, been poisoned.

The fruit of that compromised soil?  Paul names envy.  I suppose each of us has resented someone at some point—someone who has more, whom others regarded as more attractive, popular, talented, stronger, or more courageous, more of a leader, more of a magnet and force.  That one is in and I’m out, and it’s that one’s fault, because, obviously, if it weren’t for that person, I’d be at the top.  Maybe we didn’t actively wish that person harm, but we certainly didn’t wish that person any additional blessing.  When do I get what’s coming to me?!  Indeed.  You know, it doesn’t take much to notice and to thank, but some seem to want more attention, praise, and gratitude than the case warrants.

Paul lists murder as another of the characteristic failings of the fallen heart.  I daresay no one here is a murderer or has ever even contemplated murder.  Paul is also thinking of the way Jesus used the word.  As Jesus used the words (murder, murderer), he made the idea wide: not the act only, but all that could prepare the site and lay the groundwork for the deed—a fundamentally uncharitable disposition towards people or some particular someone; jealousy, resentment, wounded pride, anger.  Let’s not forget that Jesus grouped anger in the cluster that tilted toward murder.  There are people out there who seem to be simmering with anger; the school shootings—some 230 in the US in 2025—more than four hundred acts of hostility against churches and synagogues in 2024, assassination attempts, bombings—all the bitter, deformed fruit of anger.  People hold onto anger, nurture it, polish it, treasure it—precious—worship it—they say they want to be rid of it, and they do not permit themselves to forget, let alone forgive.  God help us!  Bitterness is a bad foundation for life.

Strife, deceit, and malice come from a sort of existential bitterness, a bitter heart.  Bitter people seek power.  My sense is that many politicians these days have bitter hearts and get into politics to empower their bitterness, to exercise their bitterness upon others.  The deceit serves the malice, malice promotes deceit: a basic dishonesty and ill-will towards others, a delight in contention and argument—provided the right person wins.  When a disagreement becomes an argument as the word usually gets used, the goal is to win.  If you win, you are right.  Of course, for bitter people, to lose also means they are right.  Strife, deceit, and malice are expressions of bitter self-centeredness.  We all take a natural, robust interest in the first person singular.  God, though, is always pointing to others.

“[G]ossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful” (1:29-30).  How we use language matters, as James also memorably reminded us.  Each evidence in this group of humanity’s innate inability for holiness points to how we use language against others, which is also in violation of the commandment not to bear false witness, not to lie but rather to tell, honor, and promote the truth.  Lies do not build relationships.  Lies build lies.  Lies are flimsy but thick, and they root quickly.  We may not know many whom we would call insolent or boastful, but we all know those who use words to damage people rather than to nurture others in the truth.  And remember that Jesus puts truth and love together: one does not go without the other.  Truth is like the precondition for love.  The substance of love is truthfulness.  Love tells God’s truth.  God who is love tells us the truth.  We don’t lie to those we love.  We do not seek to deceive them; we are not insolent towards them, or arrogant; we do not gossip about or slander those whom we love.  And, as those claimed and now alive in, through, and for Christ, whom are we to love?

Even today we live in a world where people “invent ways of doing evil” (1:30).  Just when you thought you’d seen it all in the carnival of corruption.  The old ways just aren’t exciting, aren’t stimulating, anymore: find something new.  I suppose we know the term “gateway drug”: one thing leads on to another.  Why?  Because the gateway drug that gets us through the door of the bordello of depravities wears off, doesn’t deliver like it did at first: “I used to do a little, but a little didn’t do it, so a little got more and more; I just kept trying to get a little better, a little better than before.”  The supposed goal, as we’re told, is freedom, which sounds good; we feel like we want to support that or ought to, but the freedom meant is freedom from traditional, historic, orthodox Christian norms.  Well, why should those be in charge?!  In our times, the notion of a norm is in disfavor, been given a bad odor, but where there are no norms, what remains?  There will always be a norm, beloved.  The real question, as always, is whose norm.  Approval is power.  Disapproval is disempowerment.  To what and to whom shall you and I give power, glory, honor, and blessing?  We know well enough by now what people do with power.  What does God do?

“[T]hey have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy” (1:31).  For fallen humanity floundering apart from God, it’s all about the fictitious world they’re convinced they can fashion for themselves . . . in God’s world, under God’s sight, governed by God’s law, and love.  They reject all this God talk because what matters at the end of the day is their will and their way, their gratification, their unshakeable conviction that, yes, but this time it will be different.  The darkened mind lacks understanding; the fool never can and never will figure it out, and doesn’t want to.  The fallen heart has no fidelity—well, last Sunday I shared with you a few examples of infidelity; you can add those you know about.  We all know infidelity, even if, God be thanked, we ourselves have not had to suffer it.  Infidelity cracks and cripples relationships, deprives them of what they need to flourish: that’s as true of our relationship with God as of our relationships with one another.

Paul looks around at the state of the human soul, life in his times, and says that love has fled.  Greek used several terms for our one word, love.  The Greek word Paul uses here signals that he especially means the love that members of a family have for one another—this would be especially sensitive for those in the church, the family of God.  The sexual standard of the age was not high.  And as for family life?  Historians tell us that, at the time, abandoning unwanted infants was a common practice, exposing them, typically in the forum, the market square, like just leave them in the HEB parking lot.  Another mouth to feed, got enough as it is; don’t want another.  Yes, the best of all worlds is the world in which we do not treat children as a curse and where they are kept, loved, and nurtured from conception on.  The unloved.  Do you know who began to take in these abandoned babies?  The church.  Orphanages exist because of the church.  Do you know who, today, is actively seeking out those young, single pregnant women who feel afraid, unready, and unable to support their children?  The church, through faith-based services.  But what about after?  Who will be there to support these women, after?  Who is asking?

Love and mercy go together.  Christ shows us, shows us God.  Scripture, the Word of God, reminds us, as a beautiful refrain.  Love and mercy go together.  When Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, the big entertainment—game day!—was gladiatorial combat.  Blood sport.  No mercy.  But life was cheap in all sorts of ways in the empire, especially so in Rome itself.  Are our own times much better in this respect?  Drug trafficking, human trafficking—it’s amazing how rich crime can make a person!  Eighty thousand overdose deaths in 2024.  Some 24,000 trafficked that same year.  Drive by shootings, so often with collateral damage.  Murders (for last year, nearly six thousand through October), and all the routine theft, dishonesty, lack of compassion.  What a world.  It’s Genesis 6 all over again!  And we know that isn’t the whole story, but we do know, too well, that human callousness is a sorrowfully persistent part of the story.

Well, the apostle isn’t done yet.  He’s laying out the case.  It should be the case for condemnation, but it isn’t.  It’s the case for grace, salvation, and abundant life.  What clinches it for Paul is this: “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” (1:32).  Wickedness wants a plausible excuse for more wickedness.  Wickedness, like misery, loves company.  Corruption loves defenders and advocates of what, in God’s sight, is sinful, deeply sinful.  And there are such defenders and advocates, the benighted enlightened.  The church does not defend wickedness.  The church does not exalt or condone corruption.  No church will say it defends or condones brokenness, yet there are churches that do so, fully convinced, sincerely believing, that they are being faithful—a cautionary tale.  The church is called to be a blessed and holy preserve for God’s righteousness, an oasis from which to call all into God’s cleansing, joyful waters of righteousness: life in the Word.  We know God’s righteousness only by the book.

Today, we install our newest class of elders.  There have been elders as long as there has been a church, beloved.  The elders aren’t elected and put in office to attend meetings, provide reports, and approve budgets; neither are they elected and put in office to govern the pastor.  Elders have office from God to labor to maintain and promote the God-given righteousness of the church, and to call, encourage, and support every follower in this walk with our holy God to the new Jerusalem.  Do, please, pray for them, even as our elders pray for us.