Verse 18 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”
Paul now presents the subject of the revealed wrath of God in his gospel. The gospel begins its work by showing the spiritual state of man, which God now reveals as being evil. The gospel reveals to man that wrath has accumulated in the heart of God because of his spiritual failure in nature. Man’s ungodliness and unrighteousness has produced wrath in God and this is revealed to man in a message which judges him, so that he may thereby come to accept such divine revelation. The gospel does not bring wrath but reveals it that man might be saved from it.
The ungodliness and unrighteousness which is in man comes from the power of the spirit of evil which acts upon him in nature. This has become the power to which man responds to God, despite having been created by him originally. The righteousness of God in man, on the contrary, is the power which causes the new man to respond to God, now fully revealed, in the new creation and not in nature. ‘The just shall live by faith’. The unjust live in ungodliness and unrighteousness. In verses 19-32 Paul speaks of human nature in general, using the third person “they”. In chapter 2:1 he addresses men individually – “thou”. What is true spiritually, and revealed to be so in the gospel, of humanity in general is true of every man individually. The gospel is addressed to individuals.
The wrath of God is revealed against the manifestations of the spirit of evil acting in a nature originally created in natural perfection by God. Ungodliness describes the character of human life in its relation to God in the realm of nature. Unrighteousness describes the nature of his activity toward God and, later in the chapter, toward each other. This spirit of evil in man is now, by the gospel, shown to have come under the scrutiny and condemnation of the God of Christianity. His wrath against it has been revealed, though not yet exercised, from heaven. Humanity is condemned by revelation in the gospel for retaining, or holding down, the truth in unrighteousness. Man has been a spiritual failure in nature, not merely a moral failure. That which has produced wrath in God toward man is his failure towards truth, a failure to realise the spiritual ideal opened up by God making the world and setting man in it purposefully. This is the truth as heaven sees it and man has stifled it in his unrighteousness. He does not live and act aright, knowing that there is a Higher Being to whom he has spiritual responsibilities.
This revelation of wrath is from heaven. This is the heavenly or spiritual view of the situation on earth in which God has intervened in the form of the preaching of the gospel by the apostles. Wrath is revealed as an integral part of the glad tidings against the spirit of evil acting in man, who had received divine truth and the knowledge of good and evil. Revelation comes not to man in innocence but to man involved in spiritual good and evil in nature. Instead of responding righteously to the truth, he had responded unrighteously or anti-purposefully. By his thoughts and actions in regard to spiritual truth he effectively denies that there is truth on earth. In the world into which the divine revelation of the gospel comes, man really denies that there is anything which is eternal and uncreated.
Verse 19 “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them.”
Man’s failure is revealed by the gospel to be in the knowledge of God, knowledge which is acquirable in nature by his faculties. God is now, by the gospel, i.e. by revelation, calling man into account for his spiritual failure in nature. The gospel finds man in unrighteousness and meets him by revealing to him how God sees him. The wrath is revealed because he is found in this failure from which the gospel can raise him up spiritually. That which is known of God is manifested but man has not responded righteously to it. By the eternal wisdom acting in Paul as an apostle, he is revealing the situation as God sees it. God sees that His knowledge is manifested in them or among them. Man has failed spiritually in nature in the outworking of God’s eternal purpose, not because the divine truth and knowledge of God in creation is inadequate to enlighten him, for God reveals by Paul that He himself showed it unto them.
God acted as God toward man in the world by manifesting knowledge first of all. Now He is acting as a purposeful God by revealing eternal truth in the gospel. Revelation declares that man is judged worthy of wrath by his response to that which can be known by God manifestly. It is manifested in them and God has manifested it to them. The nature of man is of eternal significance. God has formed in him a nature which can appreciate that which is manifested by God on earth. God has acted by manifesting to man that there is in man a God-consciousness. That which is eternal has been manifested in a natural form and man’s own nature is of utmost significance in this divine manifestation. This remains true despite man’s complete spiritual failure in this realm of divine activity. That which is known of God is the eternal product which has resulted from God having acted as the Spirit of truth in nature. So man is in nature and, by nature, involved in the eternal.
Verse 20 “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”
Paul proceeds to elaborate, by revelation, what is involved. He shows how and why man has failed. Yet this failure is intentional and purposeful on God’s part. Thereby man can be introduced to higher truth and issues than are involved in nature, because of the activity of divine love in the gospel.
The invisible things of God are manifested in creation in a humanly perceptible form. In creation there is the visible and the invisible. The things that are seen are temporal and the things that are not seen are eternal. It is spiritually possible for man to perceive that which is invisible by the very nature of the work which God has performed from the beginning of creation. Creation is not itself eternal: (By faith we understand that the things that are seen were not made of things which do appear, Heb.11:2). The invisible things of God are perceived, being apprehended by the mind through the things that are made (JND). Three spiritually significant things are presented: the invisible things, the things that are made, and the perceptions of man. The mind of man ought to have made creation purposeful spiritually. God acted in His eternal power and divinity so that these attributes might be perceived. In such purposeful activity God formed in man a mind by which he ought to have perceived invisible, eternal things. By his eyes man looks upon the things that are made. By his mind he should have perceived that which is uncreated in the world. Creation awaited the coming of man with his natural endowments to perceive what is involved spiritually in its existence and order. A God-like and God-conscious being appeared in the midst of the things that are made, who could hold the truth in righteousness and know God, insofar as that which is known of God can be contained in creation.
God’s eternal design in making the world as He did, was to become known as God. This is purposefulness. For man to get to know God is blessedness. Yet in this natural system there are limitations. God cannot be fully revealed in the form or medium of creation. His eternal powers and divinity can become known but not, for example, His eternal love. It takes revelation to accomplish this, just as it takes the divine nature, i.e. eternal life in man, to comprehend it. ‘First comes the natural and afterwards that which is spiritual,’ 1 Cor.15:46. God’s eternal power not only created the world but so formed it and so formed the mind of man that he might perceive the eternal power acting in this form. Creation is, by divine intention, a means to an eternal end rather than an end in itself. It was God’s means of introducing man into an eternal state of existence and way of life.
In perceiving the invisible things, eternal power would then have operated in the mind of man on earth so as to enlarge it spiritually. Thereby man would have apprehended the divinity of God. It is not the Godhead or Deity which is to be perceived in creation ideally but His divinity. This is what is characteristic of God, resulting from His partial and preparatory work of creation. The eternal purpose of God is evolving. The world’s creation was the first step, the conscious mind of man the second, Judaism the third and the christian system the fourth, etc. So, by God’s provisions man should have come to know the God of nature. Thereby God would have become the God of the world in truth. Instead, by man’s spiritual failure, Satan has become the god of this world.
What is known of God is manifested to man by divine operations in the world, so as to render him inexcusable for his spiritual failure. It might be thought that God has failed to realise what He proposed to bring about in the world. This was intentionally the case on His part so that a greater purpose might be realised by the gospel than could have resulted merely from nature. Yet the failure is not due to any inadequacy in God’s power or provision. Man is the spiritual failure, the weak link in the chain, because of his unrighteous response. That the gospel might have its true and full effect in man, it is necessary that he come to realise his spiritual failure. The wrath of God is received from heaven in the message of the gospel to bring this to light. The power of the gospel begins to act in men who realise and accept its condemnation of them before God in nature.
Verse 21 “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”
The second reason for the revelation of divine wrath is then given. Knowing God, they glorified Him not as God. Man is judged by the gospel for sinning against knowledge in creation. The glorifying of God as a powerful and purposeful God in creation is involved in man’s life and activity. To enable him to do so God caused man to know Him. The religious heathen testify that God is known and also that He is dishonoured. In his gospel Paul now proceeds to show the spiritual folly of all naturalistic religions. He deals with man’s response to God in nature and not merely with morality. A glory of God is contained in nature and the mind of man is capable of appreciating this given the right spiritual conditions. In their religions men do not glorify God; they glorify human nature. God has glorified Himself in nature and given to man the means by which he can glorify Him as God. Man glorifies God as God by holding the truth in righteousness and thereby coming to know the God of nature fully. His religious practice, accepted by the devotees of every religion as fundamental truth, prevents him coming to know God. This keeps him content with humanity, with man’s natural endeavours and his devotions to the unknown God (as on Mars Hill). Thereby he seeks no higher, spiritually.
Neither were they thankful to God for making the knowledge of Himself available to them. Man is at best, in his religion, merely thankful for natural peace and prosperity. The knowledge of God is unnecessary to man because of the way he centres his thoughts upon himself in the world. The world thus exists for man, not as a means for coming to know God but for man’s own enjoyment and prosperity. He is thankful for harvests and natural victories, etc. etc. The god he worships and thanks is a god who will give him these natural blessings. The God of truth remains unknown and unknowable as a result.
They fell into folly in their thinking. The vanity is spiritual. Their response to knowing God was such that they involved themselves in vanity or purposelessness. Paul is showing how their involvement in the spirit of evil, by the use they made of divine truth and glory in creation, brought them more and more into its grasp. Humanity has apostatised from spiritual good in nature and become the slave of the spirit of evil, unwittingly serving its designs. The inward reasonings of their mind was a power by which men might have held the truth in righteousness. Instead, this power of reason became ensnared by their religions and served folly.
Their heart, without understanding, was darkened. The true use of their reason would have produced in them a capacity to know and glorify God. By their spiritually vain reasonings they acquired a heart which was acted upon by spiritual darkness. The god of this world blinded the minds of men who so gave themselves up to folly. The folly of man is in his thinking that he is by himself and by the help of his gods, a purposeful being in creation. He still regards himself, despite the gospel, as being at the top of the evolutionary ladder. He measures himself from beneath. Remaining without heavenly insight, and understanding (outsight), he was darkened. The power of darkness which acts in creation overtook him. Thus he has become an agent of the spirit of evil which seeks to build up a world of natural power and prosperity in which God is unknown.
Verse 22 “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
Even when he had given Himself up to folly and darkness he professed himself to be wise. His activities toward that which is spiritual in creation were governed by pride. His relative natural success by this evilly organised use of his natural powers confirmed to him that he was acting in wisdom. Man judges by outward appearances but God looks upon the heart. Spiritually vain and darkened humanity is wise in his own conceits. He acts toward God in the same way as Satan originally acted, thinking in his pride that he is wise and purposeful in his activities on earth.
In doing so they became fools. “The fool has said in his heart, no God”. They had given up the search for the knowledge of God as their true spiritual response and sought after that wisdom which is from beneath. The wisdom of man is foolishness with God. Men are fools, who seek to gain worldly wisdom in order to bring good and blessing into the world. This represents a rejection of God’s provisions and a substitution of the deceptive wisdom of evil. By worldly wisdom man is far inferior to the powers of spiritual evil which still lurk in nature in the course of the outworking of divine purpose.
Verse 23 “And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image and made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”
Man was formed in the image and likeness of God. He was set by God on earth to act in His image and after His likeness so as to glorify the God of nature. In his powers he was gifted to uphold God’s glory in a world in which the spirit of evil also acted. By his activities in this spiritual realm, the realm in which spirits live and act, man changed the glory of the incorruptible God. In man there is a spirit formed by God’s inbreathing, which might have been of the utmost significance in creation for the realising of God’s eternal purpose. Man, however, gave his powers to the work of spiritual evil. He exchanged the glory of God. Glory is the display of all the attributes of God, which are contained in creation and set forth therein so that the spirit of man might know Him. God is called the incorruptible God, for He Himself is not defiled by the activity of evil. Evil cannot corrupt Him and His eternal, purposeful work, even though it has corrupted the human agent originally established on earth to glorify Him. Man exchanged this glory in that he turned aside from his eternal function to serve naturalistic ideals in his religion.
He exchanged it into the likeness of an image of corruptible man. He exchanged eternal glory for the worship of outward forms of created things. Spiritual reality was given up for the sake of that which appealed to man’s sight and emotions, rather than to the reasoning powers of his spirit. The image is the ideal which man, then already plunged into spiritual darkness, sets before himself as the sort of glory to which he will devote himself. He worshipped the likeness of the image. The likeness is the outward representation of the ideal. Naturally talented men, whose skills in making idols caused them to be accepted as authoritative and meaningful by men and whose hearts had been darkened, made the likenesses.
Despite the gospel, the naturalistic worship of evil has changed little. Humanity still worships political, socialogical, philosophical, religious ideas which have been formed in the minds of naturally wise men. Thereby man hopes to build-up the sort of world which he eagerly desires. This is a world of natural peace and prosperity, built by organised human power and genius in which the God of truth is unknown. The success of the gospel at a natural level in man’s world has stopped the worship of idols made like man and birds and quadrupeds and reptiles. Yet only the outward forms are changed. He is still in search of materialistic things in the vain belief that a world of naturalistic prosperity is that which God has established him on earth to achieve by the dedicated use of his talents.
Verse 24 “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves.”
This is stated three times in all, setting forth the downward tread of man spiritually and God’s response to this. God gave them up, allowing the spirit of evil to effect its designs in humanity. God allowed natural forces to run their course, seeing that it was impossible for Him to respond to man righteously in salvation. Because of the way in which man had turned from spiritual good to spiritual evil, God found nothing in man to which He could respond. No true product of the truth of God in creation was found in his thoughts and religious activities. God gave them up in nature as the means by which eternal blessing might be established and enjoyed. He gave them up in the lusts of their hearts. He saw man responding to Himself, after being called and gifted to glorify Him, as acting in the lusts of their darkened hearts and not in the reasoning of their spirits. The spirit of man is God-given in a special way. For example, “the spirit returns to God who gave it”, Eccl.12:7. Man did not react to God in his divinely given powers. He acted in the lusts of his heart. Man is presented here as sinning against God rather than just sinning morally. God is not here condemning man for failure to control his lusts; this is a natural impossibility. His lusts or desires are necessary for his survival in the world. The evil was that he reacted toward God, the God who had given him a mind to perceive His glory, merely at this soulish level.
Because of such a fleshly response by man, God gave him up to uncleanness or impurity. God rejected this activity of the heart of man in what was ideally a spiritual realm. He gave them up to worship and serve impurity, that which is unclean in creation in its present unblessed state. So the spirit of evil was given humanity to be the servant of its designs. Man was given up by God to worship the god of this world as a result of His judgment of man’s response to receiving that which was of God and for God. After being definitively rejected by God, man continued to act in the desires of his heart so that the final effort and product of such religious activities might be openly displayed. Then the wrath of God, preached in Paul’s gospel, is declared to be upon these end-results on earth.
Man had dishonoured God in his lustful response. God’s rejection of this response did not cause them to cease from it. He did not openly judge it as being spiritually evil but allowed it to pursue its course to the limits. Therein they dishonoured their bodies among themselves. The religions of heathendom became noted for natural corruption and not for purity in personal relationships. Man sought after worldly good and well-being but in the end arrived at dishonour. They dishonoured their bodies among themselves in the service and worship of the gods to whom God had given them up.
Verse 25 “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”
They were men who had changed the truth of God into the lie. They had received the truth of God contained in creation as the basis for a true response to Him. The truth is that, for God’s pleasure and purpose, all things were created by Him. God so formed man that he might come to enjoy eternal pleasure as a result of completing the work which God had given him and fitted him to perform. Man has exchanged this truth for the lie that he is himself purposeful on earth and that the world exists for his enjoyment and for the satisfying of the desires of his heart. The lie in fact originated in Satan, the father of thelie (John 8:44). Man believes, and has come to serve, the lie of Satan rather than the truth of God. Man has glorified evil in the use to which he has put the truth. By his deceptiveness, Satan has become the supreme governing influence over man in spiritual things. This, from God’s point of view, was to bring about a situation in which His gospel could operate.
Man has reverenced and served the creature as a result of receiving divine truth and holding it in unrighteousness. He sees nothing beyond the things that are made and feels only religious emotions and desires toward his God. The god of his system is anthropomorphic. The being whom he really reverences in such a worldly system of religion and rule is himself. He is proud of his natural gifts and of the products they can give him on earth when he devotes himself to achieving the desires of his heart. The existence and purposeful work of a God who created the world is then overlooked in such fleshly service. Man has failed to see the situation from God’s viewpoint and so cannot reverence and serve the God of truth in effective spiritual reality.
Paul declares, or reveals, the Creator to be He who is blessed forever. Amen. He is blessed unto the ages. Though He is not yet blessed by man responding aright to His gifts and calling in the world, He remains the blessed One. He shall yet be blessed universally when the ages of His purpose have run their course. God is blessed in having become the Creator, both as to His Person and to His work. His is the eternal power by which His interventions to make Himself known in blessing to humanity will assuredly be realised. He remains the blessed One despite the lie. The certainty of blessing on earth remains because of this divine procession.
Verse 26 “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.”
The next outward effect produced by God’s present definitive rejection of man in his subservience to the spirit of evil is then given. God gave them up unto vile lusts. The more sophisticated their religions became the more vile became their practices. God turned His back upon man in his unrighteousness, allowing his natural evil to increase without judging it openly as evil. Once man responds to God merely by the desires of his heart, which is world-centred and self-centred, vile lusts increase in the midst of such religions. The emphasis is upon the heart of man. The capacity for sin thus develops. His lust becomes vile and not pure, despite man’s dreams and ambitions. God thus has shown that ultimate good and peace cannot be established in the world so long as man responds in spiritual ignorance to God. Natural religions which appeal to the heart of man raise more problems than they solve.
Their females exchanged the natural use, or employment, into that contrary to nature. Instead of perfecting nature they debased it by their religious persuasions. The lusts of the heart are concerned with human reproduction. In heathen religions, sexual intercourse as a natural occupation of the body was used in religious ceremonies, contrary to nature. Interestingly, the females are put first. The female symbolises religious corruption in its worst form – Babylon the harlot. The gods of the heathens were approached by means of intercourse with the vestal virgins, women who had supposedly given up the natural use of their bodies for divine purpose. The spirit of Babylon causes humanity to ‘sanctify’ its desires to ‘higher’ ends.
Verse 27 “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”
In like manner the males also left natural uses and became inflamed in their lusts. It shows what God brought about in an earth which contained glory, when He gave men up who had dishonoured Him spiritually. An anti-purposeful world resulted which abounded in perversity because of perfidy. Their unrighteous way of responding to the God of nature caused the males to depart from the natural use of their desires. The priesthood of idols’ temples were homosexual and glorified in it. Its use was accepted by those who came to such a god as a means by which man could be made acceptable to him. They were then inflamed in their lusts. A heightening of natural evil was produced. Vile lusts were further inflamed as men became more corrupt, even by that in which they boasted. A false response to God brings out the worst in those who are devoted to it. False religion exacerbates rather than solves the problems in a world of chaos which is as yet unblessed by God.
Males with males working out shame, that which is shameless, inelegant or indecent. Males were inflamed by the system to enter into unnatural relationships with males. Thereby they effectively denied that there is any essential order or form in nature. Such practices would have ended human existence on earth, despite its claims to make man great and purposeful.They wrought an open shame and not glory. They received in their own persons the due recompense of their error. Man bears the marks, or effects, of his involvement in evil at the spiritual level. Man’s natural sufferings are increased as a result of such a spiritual misconduct. It is fitting recompense of their error which they receive in themselves. “Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap”. If they sow to the flesh they shall of the flesh reap corruption. This is in their spiritual lives and not merely the spread of venereal disease in their secular lives.
Verse 28 “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.”
God rejected them for not seeing fit, or assaying, to have God in (their) knowledge. Such humanity had not seen fit to perform the true service which God sought of man, that there might be true peace and prosperity on earth. The goal set before man is to have the knowledge of God in their minds. Man thought too much of himself to entertain true thoughts of God. They worked to procure that which they believed to be for their own greater good in the world, not considering God’s purpose in having set them on earth and setting such a spiritual possibility before them of knowing Himself. Man in the knowledge of God is the only basis for true peace and prosperity on earth. The rule of truth is the only means which can bring divine blessing to man’s enjoyment on earth.
Because man failed to rise to the spiritual possibilities, God gave them up to a reprobate and unapproving mind. Because man did not approve the acquisition of the knowledge of God, he has acquired a mind which cannot approve good and evil as they now co-exist in nature. He has responded by the heart, or soul, rather than by the mind, or spirit, to the situation into which God set him. God has given him up unto the effects of the workings of his spiritually ignorant mind. God has given him up to the spirit of evil which now works in creation. This spirit governs the mind of the spiritually ignorant. This is God’s doing and will result in the outworking of divine purpose. The power of the gospel will, in the fulness of time, break through into such a world in the form of a judgment which shall openly distinguish between good and evil, so that men will then perceive.
In a mind which does not rightly approve good and evil, men practise things which are not fitting. The fleshly mind which man develops in his worldly system of religion causes him to practice deeds which do not make for peace and stability. The kingdom formed when the spirit of evil is given free reign over man is an open condemnation of his basic spiritual conduct. It manifests his original failure. The wrath of God in His glad tidings is revealed against these fleshly deed.
Verses 29-31 “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness: full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents. Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.”
Man under the complete domination of the spirit of evil is filled with and activated by the various spiritual, or aspiritual, qualities defined by Paul. There seems to be three categories:
a. being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice
b. full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, and
c. whisperers, etc.
The first category sets forth inwardly evil qualities. The nature of man has been filled with every kind of unrighteousness in being given up by God and in coming under the total influence of the spirit of evil. He is in himself an agent of the power which stands between God and the realising of His eternal purpose in the world. He thus sins against the spiritual ideal which might have been realised within himself, if he had responded aright to the truth of the reasonings of his spirit.
The second category sets forth the spiritual qualities which acted in Satan when he rebelled against the throne of God. That which should have governed man’s life and conduct toward God, his second obligations, was perverted. He ought to have become able to glorify God by coming to appreciate His eternal power and divinity in nature. At the end of the day, however, when the gospel came to him, he was found full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malignity against truth, against the throne which God has established for the realising of divine purpose.
The third category sets forth the evil which had replaced the standards of good that ought to have regulated man’s conduct toward his fellows on earth. He ought to have acquired the knowledge of God and to have acted in that knowledge in the course of his life in the community. Instead, man’s inhumanity to man has resulted. Paul attributes this, the continued failure of man in the world, to his basic spiritual failure. There cannot be a righteous ethic so long as God remains unknown. A higher spiritual authority than his own, i.e. the knowledge of God, must be owned by man before he can enter into the kingdom of God on earth.
Verse 32 “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.”
Such men know what the righteous judgment, or decree, of God requires. Paul again sets forth the spiritual ideal in nature, in this case the divine definition of evil. Man has within him a spirit which knows good from evil spiritually, if he exercises it aright. God holds man responsible spiritually for so acting in the situation in which he has involved him in an earth in which good and evil still co-exist. The supreme question for humanity is that of righteousness, here the righteous requirement of God. If man is to enjoy His blessing he must acknowledge and honour both the fact and spiritual authority of God in the world. He must be God-fearing in a true and right sense.
Despite man’s religiosity, he has apostatised from truth in the world. Despite having a spirit within him by which God and His just decree can be known and honoured, he contradicts the truth even by the way in which he professes to act. He knows that by the just decree, they who do these things are worthy of death. In having religious and moral standards, man professes an acceptance of that which is right and a rejection of that which is wrong. In demanding ‘righteous’ standards in the system he has built up, he shows an inward awareness that those who do not conform are worthy of death, fit only to be rejected. Man knows that the qualities defined by Paul are death-producing in society.
Yet such is the naturalistic corruption of the human heart, resulting from his spiritual defection from truth and involvement in the spirit of evil, that man is seen to compromise in his established system of rule and religion. He can no longer see how he can insist upon absolute judgment between known good and evil without rupturing that which he has come to accept and establish as good. Faced with this spiritual dilemma, he not only practises acts of known evil and antipurpose but approves those who practise them. Man’s religious philosophy is that absolute good cannot be attained by any means at his disposal. He accepts this as a basic unalterable fact of life. So man has come to compromise with the spirit of evil to the extent that he actively practises that which is contrary to God’s known will. He has become actively rebellious in his spiritual ignorance, not seeing any alternative. He accepts the bondage to and service of evil as an approved and accepted way of life from which he has no known way of escape.
His rebellion goes even further. He delights in those who do such things. Man sees present worldly good attending those who practise that which is spiritually evil. He regards the pursuit of materialism as the greatest possible good to which he can attain. Such is the world in its present chaos under the rule of the spirit of evil, that men who act contrary to the reasonings of man’s spirit do ‘best’ in life. Man has come to delight in evildoing, in spiritually antipurposeful activity, for the present gains which it brings him.