Sermon Transcript
Romans 1:24-25. 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 about God for a lie and worshiped 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 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 righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges, for in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.
We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart, You are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
In Luke 15, Jesus tells perhaps his most well-known parable. We call it the parable of the prodigal son or the lost son. But it’s actually the tale of a father with 2 sons. The parable begins with the younger son demanding the father immediately give him his share of the inheritance, which was tantamount to wishing the father was dead. It shows the younger son does not care about the father.
He only cares about the father’s things, his money. But nevertheless, the father obliges. He gives him the share of the inheritance. So the younger son takes the money, he goes off to the of our country squanders his wealth in wild living, as the Bible records. He’s irresponsible, he’s hedonistic, and he runs out of money.
So he sells himself into someone’s service, and he continues his downward spiral until he sees that even the pigs are living better than he is. He says, if only I could eat what the pigs are eating, I would have a better life than I do now. That moment seems to be some kind of wake-up call for him. He’s filled with remorse over what he’s done, and so he determines to go back home, confess to his father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you. Will you just let me be one of your servants?
So he sets out, but before he gets home, his father sees him from a long way off, and the father runs to his son, embraces him, and then throws a party kills the fattened calf, celebrates. He says that his dead son is alive again. It’s a wonderful picture of reunion, and we might think that’s the end of the story, but it’s not. Because remember, there were 2 sons. The older brother hadn’t left, didn’t squander the wealth.
He followed all the rules. But when his younger brother comes back home and the father throws the party, the older brother is furious. He marches up to the father and rants, all these years I’ve slaved for you and I’ve never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me even a young goat so that I could celebrate with my friends. But when this other son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him. And in that moment, we see the 2 brothers really aren’t that different after all.
Because the older brother, like the younger brother, just cares about the father’s things. I want my goat. The only difference between them is the older brother thought the path to getting the father’s things was his obedience. Be good enough, right enough, long enough, then I get my goat. I’m entitled to it.
But both of them, older and younger, they both see the father as means to an end— get the father’s money. Neither of them have a real relationship with the father, and in that way they are both lost, which means it would be more accurate to refer to the story as the parable of the lost sons, plural, instead of parable of the lost son, singular. One of the most troubling aspects of the story for religious people is that at the end of it, when the younger brother is reunited with the father inside enjoying the party, the older brother is still outside, angry, refusing to go into the celebration. Now it’s a parable, right, so it’s unclear how much to read into that, but it appears that the older son, the obedient one, it appears he is still lost at the end, only cares about the father’s things, getting what is rightfully his because he has earned it.
One of the points of the parable is that there are 2 ways to miss the father, to miss God. We can be separated from God, of course, by wanting nothing to do with him, by running away from him like the younger brother. Of course, that separates us from God. But we can also be lost by trying to do all the right things, like the older brother. Jesus’ point in telling the parable is that the path to reunion with God is something entirely different than obedience or disobedience.
It’s something different than religion or irreligion. The path to God is the gospel. It’s not what we do or what we don’t do, but it’s what Christ has done for us. That’s what gets us home. We’re in the second week of our Romans series.
Last week, in our first week, we saw what the gospel is. It’s Christ’s work on our behalf to reconcile us with God, to bring us home. That’s the gospel. That was last week. This week in Romans 1 and 2, really just like the parable of prodigal sons from Jesus.
Paul parallels that parable and makes the case that both religious people and irreligious people need the gospel. Religious people meaning those who, you know, really care about God’s rules and honoring him. Irreligious people meaning those who don’t. Either because they outright want to defy the rules, you know, like the younger brother, or it’s much more common in our culture, God just isn’t on their radar. You know, secular people aren’t trying to break God’s rules.
It’s just that God never really enters their mind. You know, God’s not part of their life. But whether we are religious or irreligious, Paul’s point and Jesus’ point is we both need to receive the gospel, what Christ has done for us, in order to be reconciled to God. However, in our passage here, Paul approaches those 2 groups quite differently. He appeals to different sensibilities that they have, because what’s going to convince the older son that he needs the gospel is different than what’s gonna convince the younger one, probably.
So as we look at these 2 chapters today, we will see what religious people need to know. We’ll start with them in chapter 2. Then we’ll look at what irreligious people need to know, which is when we will talk about the section that you’re really curious about from chapter 1. And then finally, how the gospel saves them both. What the religious need to know, what the irreligious need to know, and how the gospel saves them both.
So first, what the religious need to know: they haven’t kept the rules as good as they think they have, which is exactly what we want to tell the self-righteous, isn’t it? People who act like they have everything together and they’re judgy of others, they’re condescending, they look down their noses at people who aren’t as religious as they are themselves. You know, the legalists, the Pharisees, We want to tell them, you’re not as good as you think you are. You know, in Jesus’ parable of the 2 sons, I’m sure the younger brother would want to tell the older brother, you think you’re so perfect, but I have news for you. You’re filled with pride and arrogance.
You’re judgmental. You’re not forgiving. You’re jealous. You’re jealous Father gave me the calf. You’re just as big a mess as I am.
You have all kinds of darkness in your heart. And that’s what Paul tells the religious from chapter 2. He says, in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things. Or down in verse 21, which we didn’t include in our reading at the beginning, but still chapter 2, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who boast in the law and think you’re so good at it, right?
You dishonor God by breaking that same law. Paul shows them they aren’t as good as they think they are. These people who, I mean, in their minds they believe that they are on good terms with God. They think that God will grant them favor, that God will bless them because they have been good enough, right enough, long enough. They’re older brothers.
I’ve slaved for all these years, give me my goat. Paul says, not so fast.
You think that you have to measure up, but you haven’t measured up. You think the path to the Father’s things is performance, but you haven’t performed. So what now? The thing that you were trusting in has failed you. You’ve failed yourself.
I mean, really, you’ve made an idol out of your own goodness, or you thought your morality would save you. Your moral record is your savior. You’re counting on, you know, your, your spiritual resume to come through for you. The things you’ve done will grant you favor and blessing and acceptance by God, but it didn’t. Your resume has all kind of holes in it.
You need the real Savior. You need God to work on your behalf to make you right with him because you are not right with him through your attempts at rule keeping. You have failed. And for religious people, that approach can be quite convincing. Now, for irreligious people, who we’ll talk about in a minute, Paul will have a totally different approach because irreligious people don’t care about keeping God’s law, right?
So telling them they failed at God’s law, basically irrelevant. But for people who do care about God’s law, showing them that they have fallen far short of it can help them see why even they need a Savior. And for many years in our country, uh, like, this is the strategy that evangelists would use. You know, they would roll into town, they would tell people You know that this is God’s standard. This is how you’ve fallen short of it.
Therefore, you are in trouble with him, which would alarm the people, right? Because they don’t want to be in trouble with God. That’s part of their personality matrix. So they would cry out, oh no, what am I to do? Well, turn to Christ, the evangelist would say, right?
Stop trusting in yourself. Trust him. And for people who inherently thought they needed to measure up for God, hearing that God had measured up, or Christ had measured up for them when they had failed, well, that was great news, right? That, that approach has been effective, certainly, you know, 50 years ago, but as recently as 20 years ago, and still in certain circles in our country, people had enough, we’ll say, Christian sensibilities even if they weren’t Christian, there was enough Christian framework in their minds, some awareness of the 10 Commandments, for instance, some understanding of consequences for disobedience, some desire to be on the right side of God. There was enough of that up and running for them to respond to that kind of gospel presentation, and they did.
People who study revivals observe that revival happens when people who think that they are Christians, such as like through their own morality, they realize that they aren’t, and then they find Christ in a way that they hadn’t before. They might say, oh, I really get it now. You know, I used to think I needed to be good enough, but now I see that Christ was good enough for me. Like, if that light switches on, especially if it switches on for a bunch of people at the same time, revival, which is wonderful. I pray that happens for us every week.
But as you know, the number of people, um, in our country and around here with that basic Christian framework already up and running in their minds isn’t as many as it used to be. We have far more younger brothers than we have older brothers around here. And if you are a younger brother, you know, you’re breaking— and we go to a younger brother and we say, you’re breaking God’s law, don’t you know? The younger brother is likely to say, so? Because he doesn’t care about that, either because he outright wants to break the rules like the younger son in Jesus’ parable, or, you know, he never cared about being in the father’s house to begin with.
It’s just not on his radar. So how do we approach that person? What do the irreligious need to know? It’s that their freedom isn’t as free as they think. If there is an American mantra, it’s freedom.
And more specifically, it’s a freedom where we say, I do what I want, when I want, with whom I want, for as long as I want. I will choose to live my life in any way I desire. Freedom defined as the absence of any and all constraints. That’s probably what we should print on our money instead of In God We Trust. I get what I want when I want it.
We are all like— we are a lot like The younger brother. Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t put any limits on me. I want to be free. Younger brother.
But like him, if we pursue that path, we will find out that there is no such thing as that kind of freedom. Because like him, sure, we’re free to make choices, but whatever choice we choose comes with strings attached. There’s no such thing as no restrictions. You know, for the younger— for the younger brother, his freedom really led to a type of enslavement. I mean, literally, he sold himself into servitude.
But also, he’s emotionally spent. What he thought would satisfy— and it probably did satisfy in the short term— it eventually emptied him. It emptied him of his money, emptied him of his joy. It took away the fruitfulness of his life. Ironically, he would have been more free if he stayed home, even though there were constraints if he stayed home.
You know, can’t hire the prostitutes if you’re under dad’s roof, probably. But those constraints would have led to a more fuller life, which is a better type of freedom. As Tim Keller says, real freedom is not the absence of constraints. Because you can never have that. Real freedom is found in choosing the right restraints.
This is true in all areas of life. I mean, how we eat, how we spend our money. We’re free to eat whatever we want, right? All day long we can eat whatever we want, but if we make unhealthy choices, that comes with strings attached. Our bodies break down.
We won’t have as much energy. We won’t be able to do as many things as we want to do. You know, the food that we thought we, you know, we’re free, we’re expressing our freedom by eating whatever we want. It has now actually enslaved us in a different way. Similarly, we’re free to spend our money however we want, buy whatever we want, but if we go into debt, then that adds a weight to our shoulders, right?
There is no such thing as living without any constraints whatsoever. There will always be constraints, always. The, the only question is which constraints lead to more life and which constraints lead to less life. You know, if we restrain what we eat, if we’re financially responsible, we put those limits on ourselves, we will find more abundance than if we don’t. And that’s how Paul approaches the irreligious.
He says what you’re doing isn’t the freedom that you think it is. In our passage, he uses the phrase, God gave you over to it. These things that you’re doing, he gave you over to it. Verse 24, verse 26, verse 28, gave you over. It’s an image that this thing has mastery over you.
It has it in your grasp. You are, I mean, you chose it, but now you are submitting to its strings. It’s not real freedom, not that kind of freedom. To some degree, it’s slavery. Later in Romans, Paul will speak of sin as slavery, meaning it will take something away from you.
Maybe something big, maybe something small, but we will have more abundant life by submitting to God and his strings than if we submit to sin and its strings. But we’re going to submit to something because everything comes with strings attached. It’s only a matter of which strings lead to the most life. This is the light that seems to turn on for the younger brother. You know, he doesn’t wake up because he suddenly realized that he broke the rules.
He already knew he broke the rules. That was the whole point and why he left. That’s not why he wakes up. He wakes up because he sees he’s not free. He’s given himself over to something that robbed from him when he should have given himself over to his father.
So for the irreligious, Paul lists a bunch of different ways that we give ourselves over to various things, the things that don’t lead to the most abundant life. There’s strings, you know, bind us. Now, not all the things he lists come with the same strings attached. So for instance, he lists both gossip and murder. Giving yourself over to one of those is quite different than giving yourself over to the other one.
Sure, but both rob from us. Gossip will harm our relationships. No, if we restrain— but if we restrain ourselves from gossiping, it’ll lead to more fruitful relationships, right? We understand that. Likewise, he mentions envy and covetousness.
If we let those run free in our hearts, they will eventually become burdens. I mean, we say people can be consumed with envy. That’s a phrase we use. If we spend all of our time jealous of, you know, other people’s jobs, other people’s families, other people’s vacation, if we’re like, I wish had that. If that occupies our headspace, we won’t be content.
We will lose our peace. It’s so restraining ourselves from envy, um, or gossip, right? It leads to a more abundant life. That is the correct restraint to give us true freedom. And so it is with everything Paul lists, which brings us to the topic that we really have questions about.
Men pursuing sexual relationships with men, women pursuing sexual relationships with women. As you probably know, there is much dialogue about this in the church today. People ask, is Paul really speaking about all kinds of gay relationships or only some types? You may be aware, we’ll say the last 30 years, there have been an increasing number of people who say Paul is only talking about the type of sexual interactions that we even today would consider to be grotesque. So for instance, in Paul’s day with all the pagan temples, sometimes outside those temples there would be prostitutes who could be young boys, and we understand why Paul would condemn that.
We would too. Or another practice in Paul’s day, especially with the affluent, You know, they would have essentially a slave who would even travel with them, again, often a young boy for illicit purposes, which again we would condemn. But is that the only thing Paul is talking about, these kind of exploitative, abusive situations or in some way associated, you know, like with a pagan temple? Are those the only types of gay interactions that Paul is against? Would Paul approve of lifelong, committed, consensual relationships between adults?
Did they even have those then? Had that been invented yet? Maybe they hadn’t had anything, that didn’t have anything that even, you know, closely, even whatsoever resembled, we’ll say, gay marriage. So if they didn’t have it, then of course Paul couldn’t be against it. These are some of the questions that Christians ask today.
So to respond to the last question first, yes, they had committed consensual gay relationships between adults in biblical times. There have actually always been those throughout history. Some kings even. It won’t take you long to find examples if you go look it up. You know, a king had a lover on the side.
It was like a public secret. Everybody knew what was going on, even though the king probably officially had a queen in order to have children or to form an alliance with another country. His real person was this other guy. That happened in Paul’s day. It happens in our day.
It is not new in the last 100 years. That’s easily provable. So, how do we know that Paul was also speaking against those types of relationships? Relationships and not just the exploitative, abusive, or idolatrous ones? Well, there’s many ways we know that, but just one way from our text is Paul’s mention of women.
Paul doesn’t only mention men pursuing men. He mentions— he includes women doing the same with women. And women didn’t go to pagan temples and pick up women prostitutes. And women weren’t exploitive or abusive in relationships over other women. Affluent women didn’t have, you know, a young slave girl traveling with her for illicit purposes.
By and large, didn’t happen. Of course, millions of people in the ancient world, we can’t say nothing like that ever happened once. Okay. But it was not a practice of the day, which means Paul could not have used it as an example for his point because people wouldn’t have even ever heard of it. What was common enough to mention, I mean, this is ancient Rome, right, was, we will say, affectionate relationships between women.
It even, you know, historical record, it shows up in some poetry, some art, in their mythologies, actual, we’ll say, loving relationships between women was common. And of course between men too. And all the illicit stuff. Paul’s claim is that won’t lead to the type of freedom that you think that it does. That’s not the path to the highest freedom.
To which we would say, might say, well, I don’t know about that, Paul, because I certainly know gay people who seem to really enjoy their relationship. They seem to really have full lives, so maybe there is freedom in that direction. That’s a fair point because I know people like that too.
As a counterpoint, I would commend to you a current Christian leader and author, Sam Allberry. A-L-L-B-E-R-R-Y. Sam Allberry. Sam is currently one of the teaching pastors at Immanuel Church in Nashville. Perhaps more notably, Sam Allberry is who Tim Keller chose to deliver the message at Tim Keller’s funeral.
Sam is the person, the one person, I mean lots of people shared stories about Tim, but Sam is the one person who preached at Tim Keller’s funeral. And Sam is attracted to men, not women. One of the reasons I give you his resume is in case if anyone here is attracted to people of the same gender, I want you to know those desires do not outcast you from Christianity or even Christian leadership, even as prestigious as an opportunity of preaching at Tim Keller’s funeral. I know some churches, it’s possible, could have treated you as an outcast or unclean, but that’s the church’s error, not yours, because really you’re no different than anyone else in church. I mean, we— every single one of us, we all have desires within us that we didn’t really choose.
They’re just there. We may not even want some of the desires that we have, but there they are, right? And then we all— all of us need to figure out which one of those desires we’re going to pursue, which ones we aren’t. We all need to decide which of our desires lead to life, which ones we should resist. We all need to figure out the right constraints, and none of us always make the best choice.
So if we outcast you for your desires, we’re just going to need to go ahead and outcast all the rest of us. Which means whatever temptations you’re facing, you have a place here.
Okay, back to Sam. Sam has chosen not to pursue his attraction to men. He tells much of his story in his book, Is God Anti-Gay? Is God Anti-Gay? Sam Alber— Sam Sam Alberry, I commend it to you.
He’s brilliant, thoughtful, nuanced, knows the gospel, loves Jesus. He’s pursuing holiness. We should all be like Sam. But he became a Christian around the same time that he realized he was having these feelings. He had to decide, what am I going to do about it?
Am I going to pursue these desires or not? Am I going to restrain myself or am I going to go for it? Which way leads to more life? And he admits it’s super hard at times. He’s very honest about the struggle, but he has concluded if Jesus is who he says he is, you know, if Jesus is Creator of heaven and earth, Creator of Sam, Jesus knows more about Sam than Sam knows about Sam.
If Jesus is infinitely loving, Jesus loves Sam more than Sam loves Sam. If Jesus is willing to sacrifice anything for Sam, to be with Sam, to provide a future for If that’s who Jesus is, then Sam’s conclusion is whatever he might gain, whatever he will gain through singleness must be better, must be more life-giving than what he might gain through pursuing his attraction to men. He just believes Jesus when Jesus says, I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. Even if it’s hard. Sam has decided, I would rather have Jesus’ plan for me, even if it means lifelong singleness.
To which some in our society would say, well, that’s not fair. It’s not fair Sam has to be single. That’s a curse. Singleness is such a burden for him and everyone. And this is where Sam comes in and says, Not only is our society wrong about that, it’s damaging.
He has a book on singleness too. I might actually recommend that you read that one first. It came out later. He was a better writer by then. So start with his book on singleness, 7 Myths About Singleness.
Sam Allberry. One of his observations is that most people in the world, most people will be single even if they aren’t now, even if they are married now, even if they stay married until death. I mean, one of those spouses is going to be single again when the other one dies. It’s not like you and your spouse are going to go fold notebook and die at the exact same moment, which means, right, best case scenario, best case It’s half of the married people will be single again. And then if you add to that number the lifelong singles and then the people who have gone through divorce, you add all that up, it is far more than half of the overall population will be single.
And so for society to imply that singleness is some kind of curse, you have to have a partner in order to have full life, or you have to have a sex life to have a full life, when more than half the people are going to be single, Sam says you mustn’t do that. It’s wrong to do that. It makes, you know, more than half the world feel less than when they shouldn’t. So he contends it is not the Christian sexual ethic that is damaging or burdensome. For people.
It’s not the Christian point of view that’s a burden. He’s like, it’s societies telling people that they must have this thing when they may not ever have that thing. That’s what burdens people. You know, Christianity, which says you can be a whole and complete person without a relational partner sexual relational partner. That’s what, that’s what actually frees people.
Obviously there’s much more that can be said about all of that, so read his book, okay? All his books. Again, he’s brilliant. While you’re at it, read all of Tim Keller’s books. Much of what I’ve said about the 2 lost sons today comes from Tim Keller.
I want to cite my source. I’m not plagiarizing. But what I want you to see for now is there’s just another way to understand attraction to the same sex besides, you know, if I have these feelings, I must pursue them, otherwise I’m not being true to who I really am. There’s just another way to look at it.
And the Bible contends you will find more freedom in the Christian approach. Than you think that you would. At least Sam has. Sam says he has found immensely deep, meaningful life by putting the right restriction on himself. Following Jesus’ sexual ethic has, according to him, has given him more abundant life than if he had pursued his desires.
So that’s how Paul approaches the irreligious people. Your freedom isn’t as free as you think. Now finally, how the gospel saves both types. It provides what we miss on our own. For the religious person, the older brother, the gospel says you were right that God’s law matters, holiness matters, obedience matters.
You were right, but you were wrong about who fulfills it. It’s not you, it’s Christ. Jesus kept the law perfectly for you. Where you failed to measure up, Christ succeeded. So the gospel releases the religious person from the crushing burden of self-salvation through works.
You don’t have to perform for the Father anymore. You don’t obey to get your goat because Jesus already accomplished all of that for you. The endless treadmill of good enough, right enough, long enough finally stops. That’s freedom for the religious heart. For the irreligious person, the younger brother, the gospel says, you were right to long for freedom, to want joy, to want life.
You were right, but you were wrong about where to find it. The freedom you’ve been chasing is too small. In Christ, you have a better freedom. Give yourself over to him, and it will lead to more abundant life than anything else. It’s a little like what we experience when we are in love.
When we are head over heels for someone and that person is head over heels for us, when that happens, right, we’re willing to do anything. We make a fool out of ourselves, we rearrange our schedules on a moment’s notice. We— when we give ourselves over to the other person and that person does the same for us, it feels like freedom even though we are constrained. I mean, we can’t be with anyone else, right? We’re an exclusive relationship.
Our schedule gets complicated. We are restrained We have restraints, but it doesn’t feel like a burden when we’re in love. It feels like freedom. That’s the freedom you have in Christ, because in Christ you are cherished to a level that you can scarcely imagine. Jesus is head over heels for you.
He’d climb any mountain for you. He’d pay any price to have you. He did pay the ultimate price to have you. He erased your debt with God on the cross through his death so that you could be together. He has already given himself over to you fully.
So giving yourself over to him in return is the highest freedom you can experience. He’s better than any other lover that you will ever find because no other lover will sacrifice for you like he already has. No other lover will know you like he knows you and yet still die to be with you. With him, you— it’s a cosmic romance. You have a lover who laid down his life for you, which is, you know, that’s the ultimate climax of many great love stories.
One person dies to save the other. It’s just as apocalyptic of a romance as you can get. But unlike all the love stories that we write where one person dies to save the other, Jesus’ story doesn’t end in tragedy. Even though he dies for you, you don’t lose him. He’s not gone.
He comes back from the grave so you can be with him forever. In him, you have a love story that even death can’t spoil. It’s ultimate freedom. So whether you’re religious or irreligious, give yourself over to him. He’s your Savior, he’s your freedom, he’s your righteousness, and he will bring you into glory.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for Jesus who saves us no matter who we are or what we’re like or what our desires are. Lord, thank you for being a better desire than any other desire. Thank you that the constraints you put on us lead to the best freedom that we can ever find. Help us to fall more in love with you, Lord.
Help us for our love to be some approximation of your love for us. That we could delight in one another. We know that one day we will, Lord, fully, when we are with you in glory. But we pray you bring some of that joy into our day today. We pray those things in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
