February 15th, 2012
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

The Nightmare

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Opening Prayer

Mighty God, destroy the evil that is within me, and incline my heart anew towards You, so I may please You in all things.

Read Romans 1:18-32

[18] The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, [19] since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. [20] For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. [21] For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. [22] Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. [24] Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. [25] They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen. [26] Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. [27] In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. [28] Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. [29] They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, [30] slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; [31] they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. [32] Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.

Meditate

“Paul constructs his letter to illustrate that the righteous anger of God is entirely enclosed in his love and mercy. His wrath is his steady, unwavering, purposeful opposition to sin” (Fleming Rutledge).

Think Further

There is a noticeable change of style as Paul begins his magisterial exposition of the gospel. In today’s reading we have a polemic, an attack against evil practices. We should notice at the outset that in this letter he is addressing the Jew first, then the Gentile (16), but his attack here seems addressed primarily to the Gentiles.

The first thing to note is that most of this is not original. Paul draws heavily on the apocryphal book, the Wisdom of Solomon, which was written shortly before the birth of Christ. There we read (chs. 12-15) how God can be known through his creation, leaving humankind with no excuse, and how readily people turn to worshiping the creation rather than the Creator, thus falling into idolatry. Idolatry is the root cause of all sorts of evil, with sexual immorality explicitly mentioned. All this is in the Wisdom of Solomon and would probably have been familiar to his Jewish audience, who would read it as an indictment of the Gentiles.

But, second, not all Gentiles lived with such abandon. In Rome, there were educated and thoughtful Gentiles who were serious about living a good life. Paul’s words would resonate with them, especially the Stoics, who aimed to live in harmony with the created world. Among them was Seneca, brother to the proconsul Gallio and an adviser at the imperial court. He had dealt wisely with Paul in Corinth (Acts 18:12-15). One would love to know whether Paul ever met Seneca. Speaking at the Areopagus, he had quoted a Stoic philosopher (Acts 17:28). I suspect that this was carefully written to appeal to the Gentiles as well.

Apply

Why do you think idolatry is at the root of all these other sins? Ask God to show you if you have unintentionally fallen into any idolatry.

Closing prayer

Gracious Lord, persevere with me until my sins, which are many, lose their appeal to me before the power of Your holiness.

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