Romans 1:28-32 (First, the bad news)

Romans 1:28-32 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. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Here in the final four verses of Romans 1, Paul lays out the case for the depravity of man with a lengthy list of sins that are common to the human race. When God allowed men to follow the inclination of their fallen nature, bondage to sin became pervasive in all men. Each and every man may not become extremely depraved in every sin that Paul lists, but the inclination of his heart is evil and, apart from God’s grace, he cannot escape the depravity of his sinful nature.

When I was around nine years old, I got a BB gun for Christmas. One day in the backyard of a friend, I saw a bird similar to the cardinal in the photo above light on a limb. I took aim at the little bird and pulled the trigger and, as when Opie shot the bird with the slingshot on the Andy Griffith show, the bird fell dead to the ground. Why did I do it? I had an urge to kill the bird for nothing more than the thrill of the kill, and I was fully aware that it ought not be done just as Paul said. This desire was a part of who I was and it illustrated vividly that I met Paul’s standard for being heartless. It is not at all unusual for little boys to have these desires to hunt and kill animals for this reason alone. This sort of thing is often passed off as boys will be boys, but in reality it is boys have a sin nature. Although I may not have struggled this much with some of the other sins on Paul’s list, it clearly demonstrated that I had a serious problem with compassion. I am convinced that this sin did not improve at all until God gave me the gift of his grace some forty years later. Paul is laying out the case in these few verses that everyone struggles to varying degrees with all kinds of sin. He is asserting that fallen man has a serious and fatal sin problem known as total depravity. This is a problem that man cannot fix in and of himself.

Praise God that he did what we are incapable of doing by applying his intervening grace. He provided a savior to pay our sin debt and gave us a new heart that is needed to access saving grace through saving faith. This new heart also enables redeemed sinners to begin to mortify such sins as being heartless. Perfection has not or will not come in this life, but praise God that I could no longer kill a bird for absolutely no reason whatsoever.