"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness... For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of God for images..." (Romans 1:18, 21-23).
The exchange in Romans 1:23, the exchange of the glory of God for images, is common to all people. Instead of worshiping and serving the Creator God, we worship and serve images. The list of created things that we worship is incredibly long. And our ability to dismiss God and withhold from glorifying Him and thanking Him is incredible. In fact, this morning I have given very little worship or even thought to God. Granted I have already had my devotional time of reading the One Year Bible... But I immediately got up from that experience, drove to the office, and began to work without giving glory to God. I've got a task list... that task list is what is important when I work. God is not central to my work, work is. I have not gloried in God yet today, I glory in work. You may think, "Cory, this is a bit ridiculous! You have already had a quiet time and work is for work. Don't beat yourself up." But, we are to work as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23). That requires a conscience awareness that my work is for God and to God. I am working today but not as if God were the central part of it. Do you see how subtle this exchange can be!?
Furthermore, there is much that we do that is not only unaware of God, but actually in opposition to Him. Sometimes we don't acknowledge God, but other times we simply don't care what He might want. We exchange His glory for whatever we want (vs. 23). And we think we get away with it! Because most days we don't see or feel the wrath of God towards our sin... we get away with it. God must not be that concerned because He doesn't do anything about it. So we persist in our sin. Is it really that bad to persist in sin? Sinclair Ferguson speaks to this issue:
[Men and women] think, "We despise His laws, and break them freely, yet no threatened thunderbolt of judgment touches us." In fact however, they are judicially blinded and hardened. They cannot see that the conscience-hardening and body destroying effects of their rebellion are the judgment of God.(In Christ Alone, pg. 40,41. Emphasis added).
I hope you feel the weightiness of this quote. The very fact that you are able to exchange the glory of God and worship created things as if you were getting away with it... is the punishment of God. That is the argument that Paul goes on to say, "God gave them over" (vs. 26). God, in a sense, lets go and lets us pursue our sins. We don't actually get away with disregarding God. We actually get exactly what we wanted.
Let me just point out how bogus this exchange is. We trade the infinite and awesome God for our petty pleasures. We rob ourselves. Thanks be to Jesus Christ that He redeems us from our futile thinking and foolish hearts. He rescues us. He rightly occupies our place of worship and restores us to a right relationship with the Father. He helps us to glorify God and give thanks to Him. He trades us His obedience and righteousness for our rebellion. We make a poor exchange but Christ strikes a killer deal with us. We get it all (His inheritance)... and our foolish rebellion is nailed to a tree.
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