Professing to Be Wise, They Became Fools

Welcome to our study concerning homosexuality and the biblical position on this subject. I want to begin by directing your attention to verse 20 of Romans chapter 1, where Paul says: “For the invisible things of God, His eternal power and deity, are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood through the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse.”

As we saw in the previous segment, nature itself speaks of the will of God. The psalmist says: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands.” In other words, anyone with eyes to study nature sees a God of love, a generous God, a holy God, a benevolent God of justice, consistent, with principles and purpose, whose conduct is very carefully planned and internally consistent.

We can see many such things, in general terms, about God’s character through nature. If someone studies the work of a great artist, they quickly get a sense of the artist’s personality, beliefs, and even the time in which the artist lives by looking at that artist’s creative works. In the same way, by observing divine creation, we too can see much of God’s character.

God has created the world to protect life; God has created the world with well-organized, well-balanced laws. The world is governed by these laws and is made to preserve life. And so we can clearly understand that God’s character demands equally holy conduct from His creatures.

Certainly lust, homosexuality, violence, violently and cruelly attacking another human being, and disregarding human dignity are not things that reflect God’s conduct as His creation reveals it. And therefore we can, in a sense, at a basic level.

If we did not have the revelation of Scripture, we could see many things simply by looking at nature. Paul says that there are men—or rather, all humanity, and he is referring above all to those times of idolatry in Rome, in Greece, among the nations and in pagan cultures—where gods are depicted as full of lust, cruel and arbitrary gods; gods that take the forms of serpents, dragons, birds, and four-footed animals. And Paul says: it is impossible for God to be like that, because the God nature shows us is a beautiful God, a holy God, a God with purpose and a thinking mind, benevolent and merciful, very different from the cruel gods portrayed by idolatry.

We also know, according to biblical doctrine, that those supposed gods presented to us by idolatry are actually demons, and it is plain that the idolatrous character of those idolatrous gods reflects demonic and diabolical behavior instead.

Paul says that this idolatry, this portrayal of God using animal forms and such arbitrary and cruel forms, deeply offends God’s heart. And that is why God has shown His judgment upon humanity: instead of seeing God as He truly is—loving, gentle, and consistent—they have distorted His character and portrayed Him as just the opposite, haven’t they? Impure, cruel, inconsistent, unpredictable. And that is a violation of divine dignity.

So Paul says: “Although men knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give Him thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and for that reason their foolish hearts were darkened.” First came rebellion against God; after that came the attempt to make God into a corruptible, animal, limited image; and after that comes the Lord’s wrath against a humanity that represents Him in a very unjust and mistaken way.

Paul says something else that is interesting: “Men became vain in their own reasoning.” Instead of looking to God, giving thanks to God, and humbling themselves before that holy and perfect God, what they did was retreat into the boxes of their own reasoning. We see this today: humanity is using science, sociology, psychology, and biology as starting points for drawing its own moral conclusions, rejecting what the Word of the Lord says and preferring its own moral and ethical conclusions. And that is why God is so offended with humanity.

And so Paul says that the consequence of this, of that attitude of ungodliness and unrighteousness we saw earlier, is now that the minds of men, the reasoning of men, are darkened—that is, obscured. So instead of having a bright and clear perception, men come to have something like a dark perception. The amount of light human reasoning can shed is now reduced to a minimum because God has set them aside and abandoned them, and the light they have for analyzing the world is very, very deficient.

And that means these people, these scientists, these sociologists, these philosophers, although they profess to be wise, as verse 22 says, actually become fools and see God through a very imperfect and deficient lens. That is the terrible diagnosis the apostle Paul makes of a blind, hardened humanity resisting the glory of God, whose mind now functions in a tremendously deficient way.

In our next study we will continue with the apostle Paul’s analysis of homosexuality. May the Lord bless you, and may His grace be with us all.