For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. Sermons
I. THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES ORIGINATES IN A NATURAL CRAVING FOR A SENSIBLE EMBODIMENT OF DEITY. Abstract ideas have little charm or power for men, and the worship of force or humanity can never attract the multitudes. The yearning for a visible God was answered in the Shechinah, and in the many appearances of the angel of Jehovah, and has received fullest recognition in the manifestation of God in Christ. The spirituality of Divine worship was to be preserved in Israel by the commandment not to rear graven images, and the ascension of Christ to heaven, withdrawing the Saviour from mortal eyes, is likewise intended to protect Christianity from the dangers liable to a system whose votaries should "walk by sight" rather than by faith. The Scriptures and universal history demonstrate the rapidity with which, as in the Roman Catholic Church to-day, men's homage and devotion are transferred from the Being represented, to the statue or figure which at first stood innocently enough as his symbol. There is a danger of modern literature seeking too much "to know Christ after the flesh," instead of relying upon the assistance furnished by the teaching of the Spirit, the invisible Christ dwelling in the heart. II. THE TENDENCY OF IMAGE-WORSHIP IS TO DEGRADE RELIGION. The argument of Xenophanes, ridiculing the Homeric theology that if sheep and oxen were to picture a god, they would imagine him like one of themselves, only showed that natural religion, in framing a notion of Deity, rightly attributes to him the highest attributes of personality and intelligence conceivable. And the Apostle Paul accused the Athenians of unreasonableness in fancying that the great Father could be supposed to be less powerful and intelligent than his children. But without supernatural aid man sinks lower and lower in his conceptions; the direction of evolution in religion is downward, not upward, except where there is a manifest interposition of the Supreme Being. Note how strenuously the prophets had to combat the desire of Israel to ally themselves in worship with the abominable idolatries of the nations around. Man, selected as God's representative, becomes man in his lowest moods and merely animal existence; the transition is easy to the wise-looking owl and soaring eagle, then to the cow and the dog, and finally to the serpent and the fish. The unity of God is lost in the multiplicity of idols, and his power and righteousness swamped in bestial stupidity and depravity. Religious rites became scenes of licentiousness. "The light that was in men has turned to darkness, and how great is that darkness!" III. THE WORSHIPPER GRADUALLY ASSIMILATES HIMSELF TO THE OBJECT WORSHIPPED. Man does not rise higher in thought and life than the Deity before whom he bows and to whom he submits himself; but he may, and too generally does, adopt the worst features of the character and conduct of his gods. What we constantly meditate upon transforms us into its own lineaments. Where the lower animals are deified, there the passions of the brutes are rampant, and a merely animal existence is lived. The lie substituted for the truth shunts man's behaviour on to another line, and a descending plane lands him in moral ruin. "They that make the gods are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them." The revelation God gives of himself in his Word operates reversely on a similar principle, so that "we beholding as in a glass the true glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image;" and, the image of God in man being restored, the likeness to God to which we are made to attain grows unto perfection, till "we shall be like him, when we shall see him as he is." - S.R.A.
For this cause God gave them up to vile affections. I. THE CAUSE of all this gross ignorance and corruption is assigned in ver. 28. "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge."1. The expression plainly assumes God's having been known, and that the cause of corruption and loss of the original knowledge was entirely of a moral nature. This will appear —(1) From the word itself — "they did not like. Inability: whether arising from the want of evidence, or opportunity to observe, or capacity to understand it, is not alleged. The word clearly expresses the voluntariness of the defection, the indisposition to keep the knowledge as the true cause of the loss of it.(2) From the consequence which followed in the Divine procedure: God gave them over to a reprobate mind," etc., is clearly judicial. Nothing of this description could ever be inflicted on account of mere deficiency of intellect, but must be connected with the disposition or state of the heart. 2. The true character of God it is impossible that corrupt creatures should relish. As a creature in love with sin, he wishes to believe that God is "such an one as himself." In this way idolatry becomes an evidence of the deep and universal depravity of the human heart. This view of the case accords well with the character of the "gods many and lords many of the heathen world." Men love sin; and they make their gods sinners, that they may practise evil under their sanction and patronage. The worship of their gods is such as might be anticipated from their characters. They consist, not merely of the most senseless fooleries and extravagances, but of the most disgusting impurities, and the most iron-hearted cruelties. II. THE CONSEQUENCES are clearly represented in vers. 26 and 28, as bringing upon them the just displeasure of a forgotten and insulted God. 1. "God gave them over to vile affections," "to a reprobate mind." God is not represented as infusing any evil principles; but simply as leaving them to the unrestrained operation of the principles of evil already in them. What an awful curse this was, will sufficiently appear from the portrait in the passage before us. The various evils are represented as "not convenient" — not becoming — against all propriety and all law; and as abounding — personal and social life being "filled" with them. The description shows the fearful length to which the corrupt affections of "a reprobate mind" will carry those who are given up to their unchecked dominion. We are not, it is true, to suppose all the evils enumerated to exist in individual characters. Many of them are of such different kinds that they could not exist together. It is with nations as with individuals. Some of the features of the picture may appear with more or less of characteristic aggravation or diminution, according to particular circumstances. But of the general state of the Gentile world, at that time and still the outline here drawn, hideous as it is, is not overcharged, but faithful to nature and to fact. 2. The displays of "eternal power and Godhead" in the works of God rendered men's forgetfulness and ignorance of Him "without excuse." In like manner, the wickedness here described was also rendered inexcusable by what is stated in ver. 32. The judgment originally pronounced by Jehovah against sin was death. Of this tradition could not fail to carry down some remembrance, and tradition had the assistance of natural conscience. And while the sentence of death was thus engraven on the memories and consciences of sinful men, the early and singular institution of animal sacrifices spoke the very same language. And so did the regular fulfilment of the original sentence against sin — "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"; together with all the judgments by which the Supreme Ruler manifested His displeasure against sin. Men, then, knew, and ought to have kept in mind, "the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death." Yet, instead of this, they cast off all restraint. Instead of "striving against sin" they strove to rid their minds of every check to the commission of it. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.) I.II. III. IV. (J. Lyth, D. D.) 1. Senseless; 2. Filthy; 3. Inhuman; 4. Self-deceptive; 5. God dishonouring. II. IN THEIR EFFECTS, such as — 1. Health impaired and bodily frame debilitated. 2. Mental faculties enfeebled. 3. Conscience seared, and moral sense weakened and degraded. 4. Finer feelings and delicate sensibilities blunted and extinguished. 5. Incapacity to appreciate the natural affections. 6. Insensibility to the noble and good, the beautiful, and true. (T. Robinson, D. D.) 1025 God, anger of 6024 sin, effects of 5219 authority, human institutions 5707 male and female February 19. "As Much as in Me is I am Ready" (Rom. I. 15). Third Sunday after Easter Nineteenth Day. Holiness and Resurrection. First Day. God's Call to Holiness. The Gospel the Power of God The Witness of the Resurrection Privilege and Obligation Paul's Longing Sin in the Heart the Source of Error in the Head All Mankind Guilty; Or, Every Man Knows More than He Practises. Knowledge. Worship. Gratitude. Inexcusable Irreverence and Ingratitude The Beloved Pastor's Plea for Unity Sources of Our Knowledge of Jesus The Holy Spirit in the Glorified Christ. Proposition Though the Necessity and Indispensableness of all the Great and Moral Obligations of Natural Religion, Rome and Ephesus With the Opening of this ChapterWe Come to Quite a Different Theme. ... Here Some Man Shall Say; "If the Concupiscence of the Bad... On the Symbols of the Essence' and Coessential. ' Fundamental Ideas of Man and his Redemption. Letter Xlv (Circa A. D. 1120) to a Youth Named Fulk, who Afterwards was Archdeacon of Langres Letter vi (Circa A. D. 1127) to the Same |
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