The Exchange
In the book of Romans, Paul describes the worst exchange ever. As Paul outlines in Romans 1:23, people who forsake their knowledge of God and the evidence pointing to His “eternal power and divine nature” clearly seen in the earth, the same “exchange the glory of the immortal God'' for images or idols made to mimic that which is created. These souls exchange knowing God and instead worship what He made. Paul points out that because of this ill advised transaction, God gives the exchangers “over to shameful lusts.” The Apostle describes these lusts as unnatural sexual relations.
Paul writes of this exchange event at a societal level so that his reader understands the entire community is degraded, even though it is individual citizens that engage in the lustful acts. In verse 28 of the chapter Paul explains that the people “did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind.” Then the Apostle outlines a list of actions and attitudes that he labels as - “every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.” The list is as follows:
Talk about a list of things you don’t want connected to your life. Unfortunately, it is not very difficult to connect these items to the conditions within our society today. A review of social media threads will give access to videos where people display them, our trusted news outlets make money off them, our civic leaders and media idols portray them in their own lives, even the churches in our country do not avoid the dread list. It is important to note that these repositories of such wicked, evil, greedy and depraved manners are the way they are because of the actions of the people. The exchange described earlier leads our institutions into such conditions.
As stated in Paul’s chapter conclusion, we “know God’s righteous decree”, yet we continue to forsake knowing God and continue to act according to our depraved minds, even approving “of those who practice” the same evil deeds. God forgive us. God save us.
When humans exchange God love for their own sinful desires, God hands them over to their depravity.
Really quick I would like to go back to how our society got here. Let’s look at verse 28 again. “Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.” That word “retain” is interesting. Paul contends that we, no matter our religious bent, do have knowledge of God. We cannot escape the truth blaring in front of our eyes. The earth proclaims the grandeur of the Creator all around us. So we know God and have a knowledge, albeit very elementary, of how He works. Societal depravity is conditioned by how we value our Godly knowledge. If we view it as unworthy to be retained, we lose it and gain a depraved mind.
Where God is absent, the human mind will turn to depravity. Point of fact, God actually gives those who don’t value knowing God over to a depravited mind. It is a form of wrath. Like a parent who has tried over and over and over again to help a child strung out by drug addiction, eventually the helpless parent must leave the offender to their own devices. God leaves those who don’t give a darn about knowing Him to a mind that does not know Him. The result is sexual perversion, that list of sinful maladies and eventual individual and societal collapse.
The presence of such depravity is evidence of the wrath of God. It is not a cultural revolution. It is not young people having different moral constitutions. It is the loss of God in a society, and it will lead to absolute decay and total destruction of the society in which it is present. This is a parasite that kills its host.
All that is bad. Indeed! And frankly, without a change of attitude, a prioritization of knowing God and following His precepts, there is no hope for our country. We are doomed unless we are willing to put God first.
This is the second exchange. When a people find themselves in such a place of depravity, when a nation falls under the wrath of God, only an exchange will prevent its ultimate disastrous conclusion. The people of such a nation must exchange their evil ways for repentance, their selfish pride for humility and selflessness, their stiffnecked and self indulgent living for prayer and acknowledgment of God's sovereignty. Only this will lead the nation back to a place of right standing with its Provider and eternal Sustainer, Almighty God.