Romans 1:23 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Romans 1:23

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Having become foolish and darkened in their understanding, further evil followed. They did not stop at refusing to glorify God, but they went on to substitute other things in God’s place. This is the evidence of their foolishness, as it led them into greater and greater darkness. ‘And change the glory of the incorruptible God.’ Perhaps it is a little easier if you read, ‘exchanged’. ‘[Exchanged] the glory of the uncorruptible God into [for] an image’ of man or animal. No creature can of course change God, for he is the unchangeable one, but men change the object of worship. In other words they exchanged the true God for their own man-made false gods, and God gave them the freedom even to do this, although there could hardly be any greater insult to him. This exchange was a message from man to God: ‘We prefer these objects which we have made with our hands to all your perfections.’ How could men so impoverish themselves? The gods that they made could do nothing for them. On the one hand there is the holy, true, living, omnipotent gracious God; on the other hand there is a corrupt false lifeless helpless god, which they have made. How could men stir up such an invincible enemy against them as Almighty God? Would he not notice what they had done? Would he not act to punish them? It is one act of wickedness for a wife to leave her husband; it is another for her to take another man. It is one insult to God to withhold the worship that is his due; it is another to give that worship to another so immeasurably inferior. God will not allow his glory to be so dishonoured. Idolatry is a sin which fearfully stirs up the anger of the one who says, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: ⁵ Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God’ (Exodus 20:4-5).What did man put in God’s place? First of all he put an image of himself. What vanity! What effrontery! Would he compare himself, a corruptible man, to incorruptible God? At every step he strikes out at God to his own hurt. Can he afford to deprive himself of the help of the one true God? Can a corrupt god, made in the image of man, come to man’s assistance in his state of corruption and deliver him? But men so hate God that they would prefer to perish than to worship him.In worshipping an image, they demonstrate the foolishness that Paul speaks of. Does not the one who fashions a false god know what he is doing? Does he not remember that it was he who fashioned it? Anything we make is by definition less than us. Does it then have power to deliver him who made it? Some claimed that the image was only a symbol, and not God himself, but as Hodge says, ‘the Scripture takes no account of these distinctions… Idolatry is made to include not merely the worship of false gods but the worship of the true God by images.’Paul goes on to show how men were ready to mock God more and more, however much they disparage themselves in the process. He moves from the bad to the worse, from the highest of created beings to the lowest. Surely man can understand that he is more noble than the animals, yet he went further, and started to worship creatures which were subject to him, and the most lowly and primitive creatures. Why? Because his foolishness drove him to it and his desire to substitute anything in place of the true God drove him to it. The true God, he declared, was worth less to him than the most ignoble of earthly creatures.As men plunge themselves further and further into darkness, they make it impossible to extract themselves from that darkness. The knowledge which was once theirs is taken from them, so that they are unable to return to it again. Historically the starting point was that man had knowledge of God. Is this also true in the case of each individual? To some extent, yes, for although Paul is tracing these things through the history of the world, each individual also begins with some understanding of his Creator, and by his idolatry he abuses that understanding. Each individual has enough evidence in creation to be without excuse in rejecting the true God. Man is a worshipping creature when he refuses to worship the true God, he must substitute other gods in his place.

Application

If I am away from God, have changed the glorious God, exchanged him for money, exchanged him for things, exchanged him for entirely earthly matters, what an exchange! My foolish heart is darkened, and I become small, and petty, and pathetic. How foolish has mankind become? What starts as an infant with the concept of a God who is godlike, and eternal, and powerful, and wonderful, ends up with an image of something which in life is corruptible and dangerous and subject to death. How foolish can you get?

Of course the modern version of idolatry is evolution. That is the modern sophisticated version of primitive idolatry, the alternative to God. The great evidence, the apostle will say, that God is there, is creation. This incredible ordered creation, which just teems with evidence of a designer, of a vast intelligence. We now have the microscope and the telescope, and things can be looked in the most minute detail, and the more we see, the more order and design we discover: the evidence of a great personal hand, a designer God. Idolatry was never big enough to obscure the evidence of the Creator, and so the devil and the spirit of unbelief must think of something that could better satisfy the human mind to explain away the evidence of God, the overpowering evidence of a designer behind all things. You have got to find ways of explaining the existence of the world, and the patterns, and the cycles, and the systems, and the design. You have got to find a way of explaining that it could all have happened by purely impersonal chance. That is evolution, that is the great quest to get rid of God. The rise of atheism is the rise of these things.

Questions

Is it a reasonable theory? No, it is not. Even many evolutionists say that the great task of evolution is to try to explain away all the evidence that there is a designer. ‘No, there is no designer. We can explain it in another way. We call upon you to believe that a big bang could have eventually led to order, symmetry, perfection in detail. We call upon you to believe that over millions of years everything could have produced the order and beauty and purpose in nature that we see.’ So we say, ‘I will accept this, I will believe this. It gives me some sort of explanation. Oh there are loose ends in the puzzle, but it offers some possibility that there is no personal God, no designer, no Creator behind it. I will take that.’ That has always been the tendency of man, who hold down the truth in their unrighteousness.

Why does mankind want idolatry or the modern sophisticated form, why? Because there is no morality in it. The idol gods were immoral creatures. All the mythology of old and the stories of the idols and the gods behind the idols, they fought each other, stole from each other, were unfaithful to each other. All the ancient mythology – it is as immoral as it could be. Society says, ‘I do not want a God with standards. I do not want a God who has Ten Commandments. I do not want a God who will hold me to account.’ The gods, the idols of old did not interfere in your life. They did not tell you what to do. They could be paid off. If I had some misfortune in life, it is the gods who were doing that to me. I just make some sort of an offering, and pay them off, and convince myself that they would change my fortune. But they did not interfere with my day to day life Then too, they gave a good opportunity to show off, because I had to pay somebody to make a representation of my god, and so human art, human design could be elevated. But the same is true of evolution. It answers in every respect to ancient idolatry. It is just as flexible; it carries no baggage of morality with it. All it does for you is explain to you what you want to hear, which is untrue, that there is no God. But it answers to all the same qualities of ancient idolatry. What an exchange! The language of the apostle Paul is remarkable.

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Romans 1:23 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Romans 1:23 explained