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A Walk in the Dark

I grew up watching a show called Tales from the Darkside. A creepy-sounding musical note opened each show, along with a correspondingly creepy narrator who introduced the theme: darkness. But what I remember most is how each episode ended. “The Darkside is always there waiting for us to enter; waiting to enter us.”

That stuck with me. Darkness. Always present. Waiting for us to enter. Waiting to enter us. It’s an unsettling thought, maybe because deep down we know it’s much more than a show. For many, darkness is a reality. That’s precisely what Paul says in this passage. 

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. —Romans 1:21

A depraved mind and a dark heart. Those are the first outcomes of suppressing God’s truth. And it goes downhill from there—literally. Paul lists a down-spiraling, regressive, out-of-control path for those who reject God.

This passage serves both as a catalog on human history as well as a warning to readers. Waiting on the other side of abandoning God, is a darkness that will fill our heart and a series of events that will unravel the very fabric of our lives. Paul gives three warnings:     

FIRST, we reap what we sow: This is the proverbial playing with fire! Refusing to honor and acknowledge God brings serious consequences. This will attract judgment. 

I’m not talking about the kind of judgment an unbeliever faces either when he dies or when Jesus returns. The wrath Paul mentions is in the present tense. He says “It’s here. It’s now. It’s all around you—and all within you.” God’s wrath has broken out. It’s visible. Before, Paul told us why it came. Now he tells us how it came.  

Many verbs in this passage are in the passive tense, meaning they represent something done to us, not by us. In other words, when we reject and abandon God, something begins to happen to us. Our minds grow futile and darkness enters our hearts.

SECOND, we replace what we reject: In three different places, the word exchanged appears in this passage. It’s part of the downward spiral. The very same people who rejected God now make some replacements—some trades. They exchange glory for corruption, truth for lies, and life-giving, natural relationships for destructive, unnatural relationships. It’s definitely not an improvement. 

These three exchanges reveal something critical about the seduction of sin and the function of the human heart. We are by nature worshipers. Worship is not something we turn off and on. It’s something we direct. If not directed toward God, it’s idolatry.   

Augustine compared idolatry to disordered love. Calvin called it inordinate desires. Paul Tripp described idolatry as an unbalanced heart. All true. Idolatry is a sick heart. 

This is the sin that drives all other sins. That’s why the first commandment. “Have no other Gods before me” is first. Once we break that commandment, the rest fall easy. Biblical Counselor David Powlison wrote, “Idolatry is by far the most frequently discussed problem in the Scriptures.” 

An idol is anything we want more than God, anything we rely on more than God, anything we look to for greater fulfillment than God. Idolatry is thus the hidden sin driving all other sins. Paul warns us that if we reject the biblical God, we’ll deify something within the created order. Then he paints a picture of creation turned upside down. He uses virtually the same language that appears in Genesis. 

In the Genesis account, God created “humans, birds, cattle and creeping things.” The whole point of the text was to demonstrate how creatures were lowly, and paled in comparison to image-bearing humans, the crown jewel of God’s creation. 

In Romans, Paul shows humans bowing down to creatures they should be exercising dominion over. Idolatry leads to insanity. Consider a glorious human being bowing down to a rat or flea to pay homage. When we abandon God, we abandon reason. Idolatry always leads to a lower view of human life. That’s part of the trade. Abortion. Murder. Abuse. Addiction. Sexual Perversion.

THIRD, we become what we worship: Now Paul introduces one of the most frightening phrases in the Bible, and repeats it three times: “God gave them over.” That word “given over” means abandoned to one’s enemies, delivered over to destruction.

God’s had enough. When our idolatry has reached a limit, God does something shocking. He gives us what we want—the objects of our worship. And they consume us. 

It’s a sobering truth. Even Oscar Wilde, hardly sympathetic to Christianity, wrote, “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” In this passage, the people who pant after false gods finally get their wish. Those overpowering desires swallow them up. That’s verse 24, “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.” 

The poetic justice of idolatry is that we become what we worship. Rather than being conformed to the image of Christ, we morph and shrivel into something ugly and base. 

Listen to how the Old Testament talks about the dehumanization of idolatry: Jeremiah says of idolaters, “they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless.” The Psalmist said, “Those who make them [idols] become like them; so do all who trust in them.” 

You become like the thing you worship. Blind, deaf, hardened, and imperceptive. You will actually become less and less of a human being and more of a monster. 

I can’t help but think of all the before and after pictures of Meth addicts or Celebrities who couldn’t stop using botox. But the image that first enters my mind when I consider the effect of idolatry is from Lord of the Rings. It’s Gollum.

Once a hobbit-like creature, Sméagol’s discovery of the ring and subsequent lust for its power drove him to madness. Upon getting his wish, he went deep into the darkness of the Misty Mountains for hundreds of years where the ring poisoned his mind and turned him into the pathetic creature we know as Gollum. He got his wish—and it killed him.    

Idolatry is not a victimless sin. We’re both the sinner and the victim of our sin at the same time. We don’t just break God’s laws. We break ourselves, like rejecting gravity. When you jump off a cliff and land on concrete, what gets broken? The law or the body?

Next time we’ll get into the specifics of the “over-desires” God abandons us to when we reject him. Paul mentions a whole catalog of sins, but starts the list with sexual perversion and homosexuality. He mentions dishonorable and consuming passions, unnatural relations, and shameful acts. Those clearly refer to distorted sexual passion.  

What’s going on? God is granting the wish of idolaters. He’s turning them over to their enemies. In this case, their enemies are their misguided lusts and passions—their strongest desires. 

But this is not Paul’s final word. We are not left without hope. In chapter eight, we see the phrase “handed over” again. But this time it’s not sinners and idolaters who are handed over to their enemies. It’s Jesus! “God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). That’s a clear and present Gospel truth. 

When you see Jesus Christ giving himself over to his enemies—in our place—all the way to the Cross. When you see the Son of God plunged into judgmental darkness, and understand He was a substitute for us—that we belonged in that darkness—it will draw you to the light, truth, beauty, and surpassing joy of Jesus. It will break and replace the power of idols and every false functional savior in your life.