Oh, but this atheist you are talking about is a senior professor in one of our best universities – what has happened to his mind? It is profoundly debased. He might be capable of processing technical matters, theoretical matters, but when it comes to moral thinking, he has a failed mind. God has given him over to his lusts. Morals to him are a fiction: the world is god, the flesh is good, sin is justified. If they personally do not practise immorality – they may be faithful to their wives; they may be outwardly kind and courteous to people; they may never dream of committing a homosexual or a lesbian act – yet the corruption and the depravity of their mind is seen in this: they approve of those things in others (verse 32). They support them, and if they are politicians, they legislate in favour of complete freedom and protection in that kind of lifestyle, and penalise anyone who disagrees.
Why do they do that? Because they have gone through the three stages of being given over. They have substituted the true God for atheism, unbelief, evolution, and God has given them over to what will be their particular darling sins. They have gone through the next phase: they have rejected God altogether. They do not take account of him. If somebody were to come to them and to say, ‘That act you are passing, that legislation you are working on, it is against God’, that does not impress them at all. ‘Against God! What is this lunatic talking about?’ They have utterly rejected any concept or reality of God. So, thirdly, they have been given a disabled, deeply corrupted mind in the moral sphere.
People like to be optimistic about the human race, but the Bible teaches that this is a doomed race, and it is full of corruption. Oh yes, there is the capability of doing good. There are such things as good works and good attitudes, but they are overwhelmed, when we take a step back and look at the human race, by the evil. And every life is filled with corruption. Even the good is tainted like an apple which is rotten in patches all the way through. If you were to take a bite or to cut it, you would find there are good parts, but you might say that overall it is so bad, so spoiled, so rotten, that you would throw it away. You can't tease out what is good. That is the human race, according to the Scripture. Only Christ can help us, only God, and in particular the eternal Son of God, who has made provision for members of a fallen human race.
Paul describes man as originally having knowledge, and then rejecting that knowledge. Is this true of every individual, or is Paul telling us the history of mankind, and reminding us what happened in the case of Adam? Did this happen just once when man fell? In what state do individuals come into the world? Is this also true of one who is born into an idolatrous family and taught to worship idols from the start of life? Yes, it is true of every one. That is clear from the conclusion of the chapter: ‘Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them’ (Romans 1:32). This applies to all. Though we come into the world as fallen human beings, there is enough of the knowledge of God in each one of us for us to be entirely responsible for our rejection of him and our idolatry. Even the child born into a pagan family has the law of God written on their heart, and knows enough to be aware that they are worshipping gods of human invention, otherwise the more deeply we were immersed in sin, the less guilty we would be. God does of course judge men according to what they know, and takes into account all manner of factors in judging their guilt.