02 Why Can't You Just Try Harder to Be Good?

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the second talk in a special companion series to my book, Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Each week we'll walk through one of the book's See for Yourself passages. Today we'll study Romans chapter 1, verses 18 through 32. This is from chapter 2, which is on guilt. Why do you still feel guilty after you've said you're sorry? Because guilt isn't a feeling we can shake off. Real guilt requires real forgiveness. In this episode, we'll look at another passage from Romans to uncover God's response to our sin and why that matters more than we realize. Now, if you don't have the book, no problem, you'll still be able to follow along and understand the passage and its main themes. If you do have the book, you might want to read chapter two before listening to this episode. If you're reading or listening with a friend, group, or book club, there are free discussion questions available for each chapter. There's also a companion workbook to help you reflect, journal, and apply what you're learning. You can find all of that at startstrongbook.org. Thanks so much for listening today. Let's get started. Guilt. It's one of the most common and one of the most misunderstood experiences in the Christian life. Confusion about guilt runs deep. According to the 2025 State of Theology Survey, only 23% of evangelicals agree with the statement, even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation. And 74% believe everyone is born innocent. Some people have argued that there's some wiggle room for misunderstanding in the way those questions were worded. And perhaps the numbers might move if we sharpen the phrasing, but I think the trend is clear. We underestimate sin, which means we underestimate our guilt, which means we misunderstand the mercy of God. In the last podcast, we saw why it's vital to grasp the seriousness of our sin. And today we're going to look at God's surprising response to sin. Today we'll be looking at another passage from Romans. Since this is the anchor passage, or one of the anchor passages for chapter two of my book, I thought it would be helpful to go over it in detail. It's one of the clearest passages of Scripture on the topic of God's response to sin. Let me set the stage for this letter of Romans and where we are in the letter. And if you want to go deeper, I do have a podcast series on the book of Romans, which I'll link to in the show notes. Paul wrote this letter to the church in Rome. He had not visited Rome when he wrote this letter, which makes it unique among his letters. It's the only one not written to a specific situation or about a specific problem or event. It's more of an introduction to Paul and his gospel. Paul starts the letter by explaining the gospel, and he spends the first four chapters arguing that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by keeping the law. The passage we're looking at is the one that starts the argument. There's some introductory material in the first 15 verses. Then Paul makes a thesis statement in 1, 16, and 17, which sets up his argument that we are justified by faith alone. His argument runs through the first four chapters. In chapter 5, he basically says, So what? So if this is true, what are the implications of this gospel? And then in 6 and 7, he starts a new section of the book. So let's look at Romans 1, 16 and 17. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. I want to walk through that phrase by phrase. There are four main phrases here that we really need to understand. First, I am not ashamed of the gospel. Why would Paul start there? Well, I think Paul is not ashamed of the gospel because it is true, it's valuable, and it comes from an authoritative spokesman. Both the message and the messenger are reliable. God testified that Jesus was the Messiah through the miracles that he performed, and of course the resurrection. And God has testified that Paul is one of his spokesmen through the miracles that Paul performed, and through the lives that are changed as a result of Paul's preaching. The content of the message about Jesus and what he did for us is reliable. His identity was validated by his resurrection from the dead, and there is no reason to be ashamed of that. Then he says, For the gospel is the power of God for salvation. Okay, what does that mean? Why is that important? We touched on this a little bit last week when we talked about the section in Romans 6 where Paul compares and contrasts the gospel with the law. The law had no power to change us. The law could tell us what was right and wrong. The law could point out where we were sinful, but it could do nothing to change our sin. Christianity comes along and says, you know what? You're a wretch. Not only that, you're worse off than you think. Dig down deep inside yourself, and you know what? You're still a wretch. And left to yourself, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. It doesn't matter how hard you try, you're not going to change yourself by yourself. So the gospel message starts by saying you need help. It doesn't matter who you are, you're not good enough. Once you get people to admit they have a problem, then they recognize they need change. And the gospel alone supplies the power of God to change. To everyone who believes, to the Jew first, also to the Greek. Again, this power is available to everyone who believes. Salvation began with the Jews, but it is not limited to them. The blessings of Abraham, the blessings of the Messiah are available to everyone who believes. Now not every religion is equal to every other religion. God made himself known in history to a particular people, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Jewish nation. God gave his laws to this particular tribe and promised them a savior who would come, but he also promised that savior would bless the whole world. Just because the gospel came first to a particular people, that doesn't mean they are more exalted or any less in need of saving. No one has any basis for pride. We all have the same disease and require the same cure. The gospel offers salvation to all who believe, and all who believe receive the power of God to change. And then this last phrase in the end of verse 17, the righteous shall live by faith is a quote from Habakkuk. It is the Old Testament verse most often quoted in the New Testament. Essentially, Paul is making the point that the gospel is a gift from God. It cannot be earned or deserved. It is a gift. The righteous will receive life because they have faith. So it has nothing to do with how qualified you are, what you look like, how old or young you are, how much money you have, what your name is, your tribe is, your history, where you're from, how accomplished you are. You can't earn it or deserve it in any way. The gospel is simply a choice to believe what God has done. The power of the gospel, the power to change, is freely given to those who believe in the cross of Jesus Christ. So this verse he quotes, it's a promise, it's not a commandment, and he's going to spend the next four chapters arguing that this is true, that you will receive justification and salvation on the basis of faith. So let's look at the first part of that argument, which is from 118 to the end of the chapter. Let's start with 118. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Now he just said the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. Now he says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. And notice this is present tense. It's not it was revealed or it will be revealed, it is revealed. We tend to think of wrath as something that happens later, something reserved for judgment day. But Paul says the wrath of God is being revealed now in our daily lives against unrighteousness and ungodliness. The pagans and the skeptics often imagine that God is way out there somewhere in the cosmos, that he's far removed from what's happening down here, and he doesn't really care. He started the universe running and then walked away from it because he doesn't really care what we do. But Paul says otherwise. God is not distant or engaged. His wrath is being revealed right now, every day in human experience. Nothing escapes his notice, nothing is outside his control. God sees it all, he cares, and he will act. This tells us that God's wrath is personal. It's not karma, it's not some cold cosmic force that trips us up when we misbehave. It's not random chance or bad luck or fate. It's a personal judgment from a personal God. As we'll see later in the passage, Paul says three times, God gave them over to sin. That's his wrath. That phrase is important. It's not nature, it's not chance, it's not the universe. God acted in response to our sin. This is a holy God responding to our rebellion. Now here's where we have to be careful, because when we hear this term God's wrath, we often think of human anger, which is emotional, unpredictable, and can be vengeful. That is not what Paul's describing. God's wrath is principled and controlled. It is not an unrestrained outburst. His wrath is not petty or impulsive or selfish. It is a just and reasonable response to real evil. There's no malice in it, there's only justice. He's slow to anger, he's not quick tempered, he's patient, but he will not overlook sin forever. All right, let's bring in nineteen and twenty. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in things that have been made, so they are without excuse. The pronoun they in these verses refers to the ungodly and the unrighteous, essentially humanity. And the point he's making is this ignorance is no excuse. God's wrath is not aimed at people who don't know any better. We aren't guilty because we're unaware of the truth, it's because we suppress the truth. Paul says that what can be known about God is plain and obvious because God made it plain. God revealed Himself through creation. You don't need a theology degree to recognize that someone made this world. All you have to do is look around. The beauty and complexity of nature testifies to the God behind it. The skies, the heavens, the planets, all of creation declares the work of his hands. Let me give you a quick example. My dad's an atheist, and over the years we've had lots of conversations about faith. And one time I said, Dad, imagine you're walking down the street and you come across a million pennies all heads up. Would you think they landed that way by accident? He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Of course not, he said. Someone had to place them that way. Well, exactly. That's one of the examples I used in the book. The odds of that happening by chance are astronomical. So I said, Dad, look around. The world is all heads up. You're looking at design. Now, I thought that was brilliant. My dad was not impressed, but the logic still stands, and Paul's point is the same. Creation itself is evidence. It shouts the truth about God. But instead of responding with worship, we suppress the truth. We ignore it, deny it, or try to explain it away or trade it away for lesser things. So we've seen that God's wrath is his just and reasonable response to abandon mankind to their sin. In other words, God lets us have what we want. We turn away from him, we reject him, we suppress the truth, we want lies and idols, and God lets us have it. He lets us follow our own desires even when those desires lead to ruin. This isn't passive, this is judgment. God hands us over to our sin, not because he's indifferent, but because he is just and fair and holy. He gives us what we want. And in doing so, he shows us what happens when we reject him. Now again, Paul's setting the stage here. He's explaining why we need a savior. And before we get to the good news about how we can be rescued, redeemed, and forgiven, he has to show us the reality we all face that left to ourselves we are guilty sinners and we are without excuse. Now from verse 21 to the end of the chapter, Paul lays out three key truths and he repeats them kind of like a refrain so we don't miss them. Here's the progression he wants us to see. First, we humans rebelled against God. Second, our rebellion brings death, and we talked about what death means in the last episode. By death, Paul doesn't mean just the end of existence, he means this whole principle of decay, corruption, and futility that we see in our world and in ourselves. So first we rebel, second, our rebellion brings about death, and third, God's response to our rebellion is wrath. He abandons us to death. That pattern, those three claims are going to show up again and again in this section. Listen for it as I read Romans 1 21 through 32. 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. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, and they were 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 righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them. So he starts this in twenty one, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. That's the rebellion. They knew God, God had made himself known to them, but they refused to honor him, they turned their backs on him. And what was the consequence? They became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. That's death. Their thinking became empty, their hearts became blind, the light went out. Now again, let me remind you what Paul means by death. We went over this in the chapter one podcast. Death in this context isn't just the moment our heart stops beating, it's the kind of existence where everything naturally and inevitably falls apart. It's a quality of existence we all live with. The slow unraveling of everything we care about, the breakdown of human existence, the breakdown of relationships. We see it everywhere. Our bodies age, our relationships strain, joy leaks out of life. It just takes constant effort to hold life together. And left alone, that is the natural drift of all relationships toward estrangement and alienation. That's death, that tendency to decay, to corrupt, to fall apart. That's a kind of spiritual entropy. And Paul is telling us that's the direct result of sin. That's a problem we desperately need to solve, and we aren't going to be able to fix it by ourselves. Now, the good news of the gospel is God has provided a means of escape and a way to solve that problem, but we'll be looking at that in later chapters. So let's go back to our pattern. In verse 21, Paul starts with the rebellion. Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks. He talks about the death that results. They became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Then he returns to the rebellion, claiming to be wise, they became fools, they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, and now we get the consequence. Therefore, God gave them up. That term God gave them up is I don't like that translation very well. It sometimes you'll see it translated abandoned or gave them into the custody, and I think that's a better translation. This is the kind of word that would be used in a courtroom setting when the judge hands down his sentence and then hands the prisoner over to the bailiff to carry that sentence out. He's giving them over to the bailiff, he's handing them into the custody of the bailiff. And in our case, we've been handed into the custody of sin and death, as he goes on to say. Why? Here we get the rebellion again. Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. And here's the consequence again. For this reason, God gave them up. And then what did he give them up to? Receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. That's the death and sin we now experience. And then we see the rebellion again. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, again the consequence, God gave them up to what? To death, to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. So there's that pattern we see. We rebelled, we will now experience death in all these forms, and then the consequence of that is we are now under God's wrath. He has given us up into the custody of sin and death. And just in case we don't understand what death is, Paul gives us a nice long list of things. Let me read that again starting in verse 28. 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. And then what ought not to be done? Here's a list. 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, inventers of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. That's a pretty sobering list. I mean, it just keeps going. And it goes on long enough that none of us can read it and think, oh no, I never did any of that. Because who among us can say we've never been envious or we were never gossiped or we weren't ever disobedient to our parents? He's pretty inclusive. But what Paul wants us to understand is that this list isn't just a commentary on how far we've fallen. This is the outcome of our rebellion. This is the thing we get, we are handed into the custody of when we sin and rebel. When we cut ourselves off from God, who is the source of life and goodness and holiness, this is the kind of thing that's left. And this is what he means when he says the wages of sin is death. It is this kind of stuff. These aren't just unfortunate character flaws or poor social issues. Paul is saying more than, you know, you aren't a nice person anymore. He's saying these are the visible consequences of a big, deep spiritual problem. He's not simply saying, well, you rebelled and therefore you became a not nice person. He's saying, you rebelled and God gave you over to these things. God abandoned you to these things. You are now prisoners of this kind of character. This is judgment. Yes, death is the natural consequence of sin. But God's wrath goes one step further. It's his judicial decision to hand us into the custody of sin and death so that we are now enslaved to it. So it's not just that we sin and now feel the fallout, and if we'd only stop sinning for a minute or two, we could turn back to God. We can't. We've been handed over to sin and death. We are now trapped, prisoners, in its custody, and there's no escape. No human effort can break those chains. That's what Paul means by the wrath of God. Again, this isn't random punishment. This isn't some kind of angry, impetuous, vindictive decision. This is a reasoned, deliberate, judicial decree of handing us over to our chosen path. This is the devastating consequence of our rebellion. Now, woven into this section, Paul highlights a specific sin, and that is same-sex relationships. And I want to be clear about what he's saying. This is not a progression of sins. Paul is not saying things got worse and worse and worse until we finally hit bottom. If you read through, the list just doesn't work that way, and it's not his point. I don't think he's choosing this particular sin because it's somehow worse or more serious than the others. Everything on Paul's list, from malice to gossip to arrogance to disobedience, is described as evidence of rebellion. All sin is a distortion of the truth and all of it deserves judgment, and all of it stems from rejecting the truth about God in his created order. So why does Paul single out homosexuality here? I think it's because in his day and his culture, it was one of those rare areas where pagans, Jews, and Christians, and people of all religious stripes were agreed it was wrong. It was a visible example of abandoning the created biological order. It's not that it was a worse sin than any of the others, it's that it ought to be a more obvious sin. Most of us can excuse pride, arrogance, or impatience as normal human behavior. We've all been there, lose a little sleep, get stuck in a traffic jam, and those behaviors are normal, socially tolerated, and expected. Paul chooses same-sex behavior as an example because it is visibly at odds with God's design for creation. You don't need a theology degree or a biology degree to recognize that male and female bodies were created to function together to produce children. That design is built into nature itself. When it comes to plants, animals, and people, creation teaches us that males have their private reproductive parts on the outside, females have their private reproductive parts on the inside, and if you want to reproduce, you need a male and a female. Now, of course, we live in a culture today that is working very hard to deny that that is true. Our culture is working very hard to say there's no such thing as any kind of created order. And I think Paul would say, well, you know, the denial is not new. It's simply another expression of the same rebellion, exchanging the truth of God for a lie and suppressing what we know deep down to be true. That statement, professing to be wise, we became fools, applies very much to our culture today. Now again, Paul is not elevating one sin above the others or saying that some people are worse sinners than others. I think he was choosing an example that clearly illustrates his larger point. When we reject God, we reject the design he created. And when we reject God's design, the consequences follow. Let's talk about this verb exchange. Paul uses that word three times in this section to describe our rebellion and idolatry. And I think it's a great word because at its core, sin is an exchange. We don't just stumble or misbehave. We trade what is right for what is wrong. We trade the truth for a lie. We trade the creator for the creation. We put ourselves in God's rightful place. Instead of saying, God is my creator and I will trust him, we say, I'll be God, thank you, I'll be in charge, and I will call the shots. We give up glory for garbage, life for death, truth for deception. That's what rebellion is. It's a series of exchanges, and Paul traces them here clearly in Romans 1. And notice how this progression, this exchange works. It starts with the eyes, moves to our hearts, and then is expressed in our body. We see it, we want it, and we do it. Look at verse 22 and 23. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things. So here's the sight. We see the glorious things that God has created. Maybe we see something beautiful or powerful or pleasurable. We fix our eyes on it, we admire it, and we elevate it, and that's where idolatry starts. But from there, it moves to our heart. Down in 25, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. So what we fix our eyes on eventually captures our hearts. We don't just notice it and say, oh, that's nice, it's beautiful. We serve it, we build our lives around it, and we start worshiping it. And that's the exchange. We exchange truth for a lie and we start worshiping the creation rather than the creator. Idolatry doesn't stay abstract, it is expressed in what we do, what we think, what we value, and how we live. So it starts with our eyes, it moves to our hearts, and eventually shows up in our decisions, our desires, and our actions. And that's true of any idol. Whatever becomes your idol is going to shape your values, your choices, your words, and your actions. It will demand your worship and reorganize your priorities. Now let me add this: some idols are easy to spot and some aren't. When we read a passage like this, it's tempted to focus on sins that look more extremes. But notice Paul has a wide range of things from gossip to pride to disobedience to our parents. The reason those can be harder to spot is because they feel normal. We make excuses for them. We say, well, everyone acts like that. We think maybe malice crosses a line, but you know, a little impatience, that's just part of being human. And Paul says, No, all of that is evidence that we've made the exchange. And whether that exchange looks respectable or scandalous, the root is the same. We've put the creation in God's place, we've trusted a lie, and we've turned our backs on the truth. And the result is always sin and death. So why does Paul go into all this? Why is he giving us this long list of evils at the end of chapter one? Remember, he's making one big point. We rebelled because of our rebellion, we now experience death, and God's response to our rebellion is wrath. He hands us over into the custody of sin and death. So if you rebel against God, if you exchange the truth of God for a lie, if you worship the creation instead of the creator, you get death. Not just physical death someday, but this present, ongoing sin and death every day. We see it in his list. Why give us this long list of woe? Because that's the kind of world we live in when we turn away from God. That's the consequences of rebellion. That's sin and death. It's what happens when you cut yourself off from the source of life. It's not arbitrary. It's not God smiting people out of the blue. This is the natural and inevitable consequence of sin. You turn away from God and you get strife. You chase lies and you will get frustration. You serve idols and you will get bitterness and envy and wreckage. Sin leads to death. That's the first consequence of our rebellion. But the second consequence of our rebellion is God hands us over into the custody of sin and death. We don't just experience sin and death, we're trapped by it. And that's where Paul leaves us at the end of Romans 1. But that's not the end of the story. Remember, Paul is building an argument here, and he's not finished yet. He's laying the foundation so that when we finally get to the good news of the gospel, we will understand why it's so wonderful and why it's so necessary. Paul is building a case for the fact that we are justified by faith and faith alone. And this is the first point in his argument. And this argument is going to go on through the end of chapter five. The question he's answering is this: How can anyone be saved? How can anyone be justified in the sight of God? How do we, as sinful people, get to a place where we are right with a holy God? And the first point he makes is very sobering. First, he has to convince us that we need help. He has to convince us that we are prisoners of sin and death, that we didn't just mess up a little bit, that we are guilty before a holy God. And we have to see that point before we will understand why we need the gospel. Now, how should we respond to a passage like this? That's a really important question because it's easy, especially for those who've been in the church for a while, to read this and think, hey, this really describes our culture today. And you're right, it does. But if we stop there, we've missed the point. Because Paul didn't write this to make us self-righteous. He didn't write this to make us look at our culture and judge it. He wrote this to make us humble. Because if we're honest, we ought to recognize this passage doesn't just describe our culture, it describes us as individuals. We may not worship statues or trees anymore, but we're just as prone to idolatry. We trade the glory of God for lesser things all the time. Maybe it's even good works, or maybe it's appearance, or being right, or being better than someone else. Paul's point is this describes us all. So our response to Romans 1 should be, uh oh, I'm in trouble. I better look for a savior. So Paul's not handing us a stick to beat up our culture or to beat up our neighbors. He's holding up a mirror to remind us this is where we all stand apart from grace. Now, one more thing. Paul didn't write this so we would give up in despair either. Yes, God's wrath is being revealed in human experience. Yes, we as a human race are experiencing death every day. But here's the thing that we haven't gotten to yet. We know the cure. And if you don't know it yet, you will by the end of the study. We know the gospel. We know that God made a way of escape. We know that Jesus stepped in to take the penalty we deserved, and there is real hope for guilty people in bondage. That means we believers, we're not messengers of wrath. That's already built into the fabric of the world. People are already experiencing it. We don't have to announce that. We live it every day. But we can announce the message of grace, we can share the good news of the gospel, that God in his mercy created a way out of this mess. All we have to do is look to the cross of Christ. So we shouldn't be surprised or despairing when our culture spirals downward under the weight of its rebellion. We should probably expect it. Paul told us this would happen. But we could also see this as our moment to speak. This is our chance to say, I know the answer. I know the way out. Let me tell you about the gospel of Jesus Christ. You've been listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You'll find the blog version of this episode, including links and resources, at Wednesdayintheword.com slash Start Strong Podcast 2. You can listen to all the episodes in this series on WednesdayInTheWord.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads. Just free, trustworthy resources to help you grow in your understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please consider following, rating, or reviewing it on your favorite podcast platform. It really does help people find the podcast. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. If you haven't read the book yet, you can find it wherever books are sold, or start with the free resources at StartStrongbook.org. If you're reading along in the Start Strong Book, you might want to read chapter 3 before our next episode. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can hear Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Marata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.