Sin tends still further to become unnatural. They dishonour themselves through licentiousness after having dishonoured God by their ideas about divinities.Ģ. "They that make them are like unto them so is every one that trusteth in them" ( Psalm 115:8).
The moment man begins to worship the man of genius and of passion, or begins to worship the lower creation, as if endowed with independent attributes, by a natural law he becomes lowered in the scale of being. Courtesans thronged the temples of Venus as her priestesses, just as the "nautch-girls" in India have their recognized connection with the Hindoo temples.
Hence in connection with these degraded religions we find:ġ. 24-31.) It is a natural transition from the deification of human or animal passions to the practice of the most frightful immoralities. THE STATE OF MORALS IS DEGRADED IN PROPORTION TO THE DEGRADATION OF RELIGION. The lowest forms of fetichism can give some account of itself, and thinks that it rests on reason. They professed to be wise in the arrangement, and would have repudiated all charge of folly. The devotees imagined that they had the best of reasons for their worship. Every heathen religion has its rationale. The inhabitants of Olympus and of the Pantheon were a "free-and-easy lot." In other cases, as in Egypt and the East, they worshipped animals of all sorts, - "birds, four-footed beasts, and creeping things."Ģ. In some cases they are "corruptible men," as the polytheism of Greece and of Rome was the worship of man, and the apotheosis of his evil propensities. 21-23.) In these verses the apostle sketches in a very masterly manner the religious situation of heathendom. THE STATE OF HEATHEN RELIGION AS LAID BEFORE US HERE BY PAUL. As we have seen that the heathen element constituted the major part of the Church at Rome, and that the Epistle was likely to touch at its very centre the heathenism of the world, we can understand Paul's purpose in placing the discussion of the condition of the heathen in the foreground. But now we are introduced to another "revelation" made in the constitution of the world - a revelation which is also grounded on justice, but its manifestation is "wrath." The present section deals with this wrath as manifested among the Gentiles, while the subsequent chapter deals with it as manifested among the Jews. By his covenant arrangements "God can be just, and yet the Justifier of him who believeth in Jesus." He can proclaim the sinner just on the ground of Christ's atonement.
In last homily we saw that the gospel Paul meant to preach at Rome, if he ever got there, was a "revelation of justice" on the part of God. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness
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