Thinking to Living
Thinking to Living
Romans 1:28-32
In the fourth century, a Christian monk named Evagrius Ponticus wrote down ‘eight evil thoughts’ that could hinder spiritual practice. He listed gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, slothfulness, sadness, vainglory and pride. He was writing to his fellow monks about how to improve their spiritual development. John Cassian, one of Ponticus’s students, would eventually take the ‘eight evil thoughts’ and bring them to the West, where they eventually found their way into the hands of Pope Gregory I, who listed them in a commentary on the book of Job. Pope Gregory, or Gregory the Great, took away slothfulness and added envy.
The list became known as the “Seven Deadly Sins.” Later, Thomas Aquinas would take the same list but remove sadness and put slothfulness back on the list, making the final list: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and slothfulness. One scholar notes, “They’re called ‘mortal’ or ‘deadly’ because they lead to the death of the soul.” Throughout the century, many pastors and theologians would warn congregations of these deadly sins and how these ‘evil thoughts’ could destroy one’s life. They have been depicted in various works of literature and art and were always regarded as dangerous and evil until they became accepted and even celebrated.
In the classic early 1960’s sitcom, Gilligan’s Island, Sherwood Schwartz created each of its characters to represent one of these deadly sins. Gilligan, the likable incompetent, was slothfulness, the cause of most island mishaps. The Skipper represented wrath, taking his anger out on Gilligan, throwing his hat down, and stomping his feet in disgust. The Professor personified pride; his real name was never revealed nor was his plan to get the castaways off the island. Ginger was lust; she preyed on the lust of others to get what she wanted, while Mary Ann was envy, always resenting Ginger’s ability to manipulate men to get what she wanted. Mr. Howell was greed because he defined himself by money, and Mrs. Howell, who lived in indulgence, was gluttony.
Gilligan’s Island and the three-hour tour, the three-hour tour, became a fixture in American culture. Most people viewed it as a silly, fun show filled with stereotypes and bad jokes but, in actuality, its aim, according to one writer, was:
to be a deeply symbolic story of the limitations we take upon ourselves when we fall victim to human frailties and sin…The great lesson in the series is that one who is controlled by these sins remains stranded, abandoned, and incapable of achieving release until the sin (character personality) is overcome.
The show ended with everyone still stranded on the island, trapped and overcome by their sin, separated from society and, in essence, separated from God. But Schwartz’s depiction of the seven deadly sins did not have their full effect as American culture chose to laugh at their exploits rather than to learn from their foolish sins.
It’s interesting to note that ten years after the original show was canceled, a movie called Rescue from Gilligan’s Island was made because Americans could not handle the show without a happy ending. They couldn’t have remained on the island!! It seems like a trivial thing, but I believe the remake was probably more symbolic and foreshadowing of what was coming for our culture. Instead of heeding the warning of the seven deadly sins that will keep one trapped and stranded from true happiness and the Lord, American culture changed the entire meaning of the story because it did not fit our desire for the future: we should be able to live the way we want and still have life work out in our favor.
The seven deadly sins are no longer talked about in our culture. They are rarely spoken against and have, in fact, become celebrated. We have moved on from the warnings of Gilligan’s Island to celebrate greed in SharkTank and lust in The Bachelor and Sex in the City. We name products like phones and computers envy. The motto “Just do you” often celebrates indulgence and gluttony, and marketers promote slothfulness by advertising a lifestyle of binging shows and watching TikTok videos over more productive pursuits. The ‘eight evil thoughts’, once written to protect people from spiritual apathy and danger, have now become ‘seven delightful’ marketing tools to feed on people’s desires and strand them on an island of their own sinfulness.
How did we get here? The Apostle Paul tells us in the opening chapter of the Book of Romans. Any time an individual does not honor God or give thanks to Him, he is individually given over to sins and the lust of his heart. When a society does not honor God or give thanks to Him, it is given over corporately to lusts of the heart and all types of wickedness and unrighteousness. It all begins in the mind.
Wrong thinking leads to wrong living
Paul is eager to go to Rome to preach the Gospel to those in Christ. Rome was the center of the ancient world, the capital of the empire. As Paul begins his letter, he has already shown how creation reveals the truth about God. He writes, for God’s, “invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Everyone can observe certain irrefutable facts about our world, but even though they are irrefutable, they are still denied. Then, because they are suppressed and denied, God reveals His righteousness against the world by handing it over to judgment.
Earlier in this section, Paul showed that those who follow unnatural sexual desires receive the ‘due penalty’ for their error. They bring judgment on themselves because they follow unnatural desires. Paul does not limit God’s judgment to those who follow unnatural sexual desires but to those who have been given over to a debased mind.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Romans 1:28–31
This list of vices has a rhetorical impact. We will look at a few of these, but I believe Paul’s aim is not to highlight the individual sins but to show that a debased mind or worthless, empty thinking leads to all sorts of sin. Paul writes in Romans 1:21, that humanity “became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” When we turn from God and the truth, our minds become warped and we do things that will harm us.
The text says that when people do not acknowledge God, meaning they do not recognize Him as the Creator of the world and Lord of all, He gives them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. When man first rejected God in the garden, the world fell into sin. Sin affected everything, from how people relate to one another, to nature that became dangerous and unpredictable, to how the mind interprets and understands reality. The effects of the mind are called the noetic effects of sin. To have a debased mind is to have a disqualified, worthless, failed, or unfit mind. Because of sin, the mind was broken; it could no longer think rightly.
If I go into the kitchen and see a hot pan sitting on the stove and reach out to touch that plate, I will immediately recoil because of the pain in my hand. When the mind is broken, we no longer recoil when we do things that cause pain to the soul. Rarely will someone continue to do something that causes them physical pain. If I have a bad back that hurts every time I bend over at the waist, I am going to stop and, instead, squat down with my legs. Sadly, people often continue to do things that cause them spiritual pain. We do not recoil when we sin against God or when we see sin against God in others. We suppress the truth and ignore those twinges and convictions of our conscience.
A society that no longer sees fit to acknowledge God as Creator and Ruler of the universe, starts to think that wrong is right and right is wrong. The idea of ‘sees fit’ is the idea of testing. People do not believe God is King, so they do what is right in their own eyes. Psalm 14:1reads, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ they are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.’ Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1:28 are linked. If you think wrongly about God, you will live wrongly in the world. Again, Paul’s aim is not to list every way that human beings sin but to show that when people reject God, a multitude of sins follow.
Paul begins generally and gradually gets more specific. The passage is broken down into three, logical groups. The first is in verse 29,
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. Romans 1:29a
Paul is highlighting the total depravity of a society, filled with all manner of righteousness, all manner of evil, all manner of covetousness, and all manner of malice.
Have you noticed that human beings continue to try to invent new ways to do what ought not to be done? The growth in technology has merely opened up new ways for people to manifest their unrighteousness. The corrupt and greedy, manipulate the kindness of the older generation by scamming them out of their money to pay bail for their grandchildren who are allegedly in trouble. Stores are constantly robbed of their goods or looted by mobs of people. White collar sharks use Ponzi schemes to deplete pension funds. It does not take long to see a world bent on evil.
Some scholars believe the next grouping of sins are all loosely connected to the sin of envy.
They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
Romans 1:29b
Envy and murder sound similar in the Greek, which would have created a rhetorical punch. It is hard to tell how they are all directly related, but all of them are grammatically connected to being “full”. They are full of envy, full of murder, full of strife, full of deceit, full of maliciousness. Again, Paul is not as concerned with each individual sin as he is with the overall effect of sin when one rejects God.
Beloved, it would be unwise for us to think of these sins as only out there in the world and not in our own hearts. We are tempted to live in envy and murder. We can be consumed with strife and deceit. Are you ever jealous of someone else’s beauty or intellect? Are you ever so angry at someone else you raise your voice to condemn them? Are you tempted to lie to cover up your sins? When we are not walking in the Spirit of God, any one of these sins can find their way into our lives. These sins are the logical outcome of those who deny God.
If God is not the Creator of life, then one can take a life as he sees fit. This is why abortion is so rampant in our culture. People kill their children in the womb because they are unwanted. It may be because of the pressure of a boyfriend or someone not wanting the ‘burden’ of raising a child when they are trying to grow their career, or it may just not be the ‘right time’ for people. Regardless, taking the life of a child in the womb is murder. Even as I write that sentence, it occurs to me that the fact that someone could object to those words is extremely troubling. If you are a Christian and something in that sentence seems wrong to you, then you have been more influenced by the world than you may realize.
Abortion is murder. It is devaluing human life and rejecting God’s authority. God is the author of life and, therefore, we have no right to take it. When we do take it, we are acting as if God does not exist, and we are the sovereign ruler of the universe. It is amazing how blind a nation can become. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, removing the federal protection for abortion, the outrage in big cities and on the coasts was ungodly. Protesters arrogantly asked “How dare you take away our right to kill our young. Who do you think you are?” The irony was thick. Who do you think you are to take life? You are not God and yet, because they do not see fit to acknowledge God, He has given them up to a debased mind to be full of murder and evil. Beloved, do not miss the forest for the trees. When we do not think rightly about God, we will live wrongly.
We may have a hard time seeing ourselves in the first two groupings, but the last grouping may hit closer to home.
They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Romans 1:29b–31
Those who gossip are linked with those who hate God. Those who are boastful are connected to those who are inventors of evil. Those who are disobedient to their parents are wed with the foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless.
We have to be honest about sin and how all sin, at its foundational level, is a rejection and denial of the person of God. Sadly, just as our culture has made certain sins “acceptable”, the church has done the same. Gossip may be one that is far too common in the church. One pastor defines gossip as, “bearing bad news behind someone’s back out of a bad heart.” Some gossip may be merely careless, while other gossip is vengeful and meant to destroy others' reputation. Remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 12,
For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Matthew 12:34b–37
God takes sin far more seriously than we do.
Children, do you see how God views disobedience to your parents? He hates it. When you reject your parent’s words, you are rejecting God’s authority over your life. Several other Bible passages contain a list of sins.
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 2 Timothy 3:1–5
When you disobey your parents, you are loving yourself over your parents and over the Lord. It is no small matter. When you roll your eyes at your parents instruction or talk back to them, it is a sign of pride and a rejection of the authority that God has placed in your life. It is no small matter.
Parents, you must work to cultivate obedience in your child’s heart. Your child’s desires or happiness cannot be your most important goals in life. You must labor for their holiness. You must pray and teach to help form them into the image of Christ. Parenting is more of an art than science. You have to pick and choose when you confront, when you admonish, when you encourage, but if you do not correct your child, you are breeding an entitled, selfish heart that is bent on loving self more than God. If you train a child in God’s ways, when he gets older he will not depart from God’s ways. If you train a child in a child’s ways, when he gets older, he will not depart from a child’s ways.
When a society rejects God’s rule over their lives, chaos ensues. We invert the creation order and no longer live as creatures, but act as rulers. As Christians, our eyes have been opened to the destructive nature of our sin. Martyred theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote
The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is.
Idolatry is the root of sin. When we do not acknowledge God as God, we become idol worshippers. We exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creation over the Creator. Wrong thinking leads to wrong living because wrong thinking leads to wrong loves.
Wrong thinking leads to wrong loves
Paul ends this section with a summary statement that is an indictment on all those who reject God as Creator and Ruler.
Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. Romans 1:32
People know in their own hearts that sin deserves to be punished. Paul writes that people not only do things that they know should be punished, but they also give approval to those who do things that deserve to be punished. As one scholar notes,
The text hints that the fundamental sin that informs all others is a refusal to delight in or submit to God’s lordship. God’s wrath is rightly inflicted on those who not only practice evil but find their greatest delight
in it.
When we approve of the sins of others, it is doubly dangerous for our souls. It is one thing to think our private sins won’t impact others, but it is quite another to publicly celebrate and applaud sins that will bring death and judgment to others.
Our sins are never private. God sees all, and one day our sins will be disclosed. But do not think that because your sins are secret now, they are not affecting you and others. When we think wrongly about God, we start to love wrongly. We start to delight in the wrong things. We begin to worship and serve that which God hates. The world does not love God or the things of God, and if we are too close to the world, we will start to love what the world loves and start to give approval to what God hates.
Think about Paul’s logic here: they know God has decreed that if you practice sin you deserve to die; they know what is coming. They know that the wages of sin is death. They know it, but they don’t care. Now that may be fine for them, but what about others? In the same way, if you give approval to the sin of others, you really don’t care what happens to them.
When I was twenty years old, I bought an old Volkswagen van to drive across the country. I was just 54 miles from home when the van started smoking. I pulled into a service station to have it checked, and they said I had a small oil leak, but it was nothing to worry about and I could keep going. I was about one mile down the road when the whole van started filling up with smoke. At the same time, a car full of older ladies pulled up next to me, mouthing, “Your car is on fire!” I gave them a smile and a thumbs up, indicating “We’re good.” But, we were definitely not good. I quickly pulled over, lifted the hood, and found the engine engulfed in flames.
As I reflect on that story, I am thankful for that group of older ladies who pointed out the obvious. At the same time, I am still a little upset at those men at the service station who said I was fine and could keep going. Listen, we have to be like those ladies and tell people if their cars are on fire. We have to warn people that they are in danger. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus in Luke 17,
And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” Luke 17:1-4
Pay attention, Beloved. How you think matters because it affects how you live and how you love.
Paul is going to spend the first 11 chapters in this book unpacking the glories of the Gospel but, first, he has to expose our sin. Romans 1:18-32 is a strong indictment on how we have all rejected the truth of God for a lie. We have all sinned against Him, but He still came to rescue us and sent Jesus Christ to die for us so we could be forgiven.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23
Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and died in the place of everyone who would turn to Him in faith. But more than that, after He was dead and buried, God raised Him from the dead. He is alive, and His resurrection is hope for our resurrection.
Friend, if you are here and you see your own life demonstrated in Romans 1:28-32, Christ offers hope for you today. Jesus did not come for the healthy but for the sick. He did not come for the righteous but to call sinners to repentance. Friend, repent of your sins today. Turn to Jesus Christ and live.
Beloved, we have to be careful on how we think. Our thinking will impact our living. After eleven chapters of outlining the Gospel, Paul writes in
Romans 12,
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1–2
This is the calling of every Christian for every day of our lives. We see fit to test and acknowledge who God is in every area of our lives. We test and approve what God’s will is, His good, perfect, and pleasing will. We do so on the basis of the mercies of God. We never forget that because we are sinners and have been saved by God’s mercy alone, we no longer live for ourselves but for God. We exchange our false worship for true worship. We exchange our lies for the truth in two ways: we do not conform to the world, and we renew our minds.
We’ll close with two applications. First, do not conform to the world. We see what a society will become once it denies God. They will be given over to a debased mind. We could say many things, but you must be careful not to start thinking like the world. It is wise for you to know what the world thinks and how that differs from God’s commands. Make this a regular conversation in your home. When you watch movies or commercials, ask what message is being communicated. Learn the messages of the world, and do not give them approval.
Secondly, renew your mind. You will be under constant attack from the world. The world will try to chisel away at your faith as if your brain was a block of ice. You have to protect yourself by renewing your mind. Meditate on God’s Word. Do not merely read it, but meditate on it. Saturate yourself with the Gospel and the Word of God. Memorize God’s Word. Read good books that will help cultivate godly thinking. Enjoy great conversations with friends about the goodness of God. Take walks and study God’s creative order. Rejoice in how He has made the world. Sing great songs of the faith to the Lord and meditate on His goodness. Pray and ask God to reveal Himself to you day by day by day. Learn from the foolishness of the world
Think often about the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the King and Ruler of the world. He loves you. Live like you love Him. The way to love Him is to think right of Him. The way to love Him is to confess that you are a sinner, and He is your Savior. You are a creature, and He is the Creator. Remind your heart of His great love with these words from the great hymn of the faith:
My Jesus I love Thee, I know Thou art mine
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign
My gracious Redeemer, my Saviour art Thou
If ever I loved Thee my Jesus 'tis now
I love Thee because Thou has first loved me
And purchased my pardon on Calvary's tree
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow
If ever I loved Thee my Jesus 'tis now
I'll love Thee in life and I will love Thee in death
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow
If ever I loved Thee my Jesus 'tis now
I pray that is our heart today. If ever we loved thee, our Jesus ‘tis now.