19. Time

Meditations in Ecclesiastes : 19 :  A Time for Everything

Eccles 3:1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven

Having reached a point of truth after all of his ponderings about the meaningless activities of life, in this new chapter Solomon considers the thought that although life seems meaningless from his jaded, somewhat godless perspective, nevertheless there is an order or rightness for living. Now it is no coincidence that this follows his declarations in the last three verses of the previous chapter where three times he refers to God. When atheists tell us there is no God, the one thing they cannot explain is why there is such an ordered world. They resort to mechanistic language such as ‘natural selection’ but that goes nowhere near explaining how inanimate material came into being and then created life, all of which ‘works’ with amazing order. It was that order which enabled the early scientists, who worked out of a Christian way of thinking – of an ordered universe designed by God – to investigate the world. We take for granted the orderliness of the world. If there was no God and it truly was all the result of random chance, then there would be no reason why it was not random chaos with things being very different from the incredible order that we see today.

Remember, Solomon was a ‘scientist’ of his day. He had studied and explored (1:12), he had applied himself to understand everything (1:17) like no one before him, and few since. Solomon knew about life, and many of his findings about human behaviour are what form the book of Proverbs. Solomon knew about order and about timing.  Order and timing go together.  In the way God has designed things, one particular thing follows another particular thing – in a certain time. You see this in child development and in the development of all creatures. Watch how that order brings forth a butterfly. You can’t change it and it takes time. Different animals have different lengths of time that they carry their babies in their womb. To bring to maturity ready to live in the world, it needs time. Growth is orderly development and it takes time.

Wherever we look we are constrained by time. Time appears again and again significantly in Scripture: “he chose us in him before the creation of the world.” (Eph 1:4) The timing of salvation shows us that it was planned even before the Godhead brought the world into being. Then we see, “when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.” (Gal 4:4). The execution of that plan was brought into operation at exactly the right moment in history. “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” (Lk 9:51). The climax of the plan was being brought about according to an exact preplanned timing. The Passover, after three years of ministry was to be the climax resulting in the death of the Lamb of God. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” (Rom 5:6)

Paul understood this. Israel were utterly helpless in sin and in failure and spiritual barrenness under the Roman oppressors, after centuries of pointless squabbling. It was almost as if God waited for them to be at their weakest, and then He came in the form of His Son. “The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” (Psa 110:1) For the ongoing working out of the plan, there is that same sense if timing. Jesus will continue to reign at his Father’s right hand until he has achieved what the plan decreed. “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” (1 Cor 15:25). It hasn’t happened instantly. In accordance with the way God has designed all things, so with salvation, there is a gradual working out of the plan of salvation of the world.

Again atheists struggle with the idea that God developed the world gradually. Surely they say this slow gradual social evolution of mankind can’t have been God. Why didn’t He just bring it all into being as it is now, why wait all those centuries of social development? Because that is how God designs everything – to grow and develop slowly, in stages, one stage building on the previous one. Why didn’t God accelerate it and give men ideas of great scientific inventions to bless mankind thousands of years ago? Why wait until modern history? Because three thousand years ago it would have been meaningless to them, so what they ‘invented’ was on a par with the level of their knowledge then. Wherever we look it is the same – gradual development. Order. Timing.

When you look at your life, the same will be true. We can’t rush maturity. It is a slow, gradual thing. There is no instant maturity. No, maturity takes time and experience. If that is true of me, it is true of all of us, and I therefore need to learn to be patient with other people and simply accept them where they are in their development now. Do you see, it applies in every area of life! In the days to come, we’re going to let Solomon open us this line of thought for us and, with the Lord’s help, perhaps come to a greater understanding of life than we’ve ever had before!

18. Rewards

Meditations in Ecclesiastes : 18 :  Rewards

Eccles 2:26 To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind

It is interesting; even the man or woman who is far from God knows some truth. We can’t but help know truth because it is the way God has made us. Here is Solomon, jaded by a largely godless life and yet as he works through the truth of life, he can’t help himself but arrive at truth. He knows it because he’s come from it. In our society there are many elderly people who know the truth because they heard it when they were children and went to Sunday School. Yes, when the older generation were young it was the usual thing to go to Sunday School and there they heard and learnt things they’ve never been able to quite forget.

Others have had ‘chance’ encounters with religion and briefly they heard the truth, and it is still there in the back of their minds. Oh yes, God has a strange way of confronting us with the truth. Solomon felt moved in his old age to write these things down. He had written the Proverbs and the Song of Solomon; he was a prolific writer and even in old age he can’t stop himself and so he finds himself writing this rather jaded diatribe about life, but even in the midst of it the truth rises up and has to be written.

Put in its most simple form, it is that God blesses the righteous and curses the unrighteous. Or, if you like, in purely materialistic terms the person who lives God’s way has a good life and the person who doesn’t has a wearisome life. Why is that?  Partly it is the way God has made us and partly it is to do with the relationship we have with him.

Two lives. Let’s take the sinner or the unrighteous man first. This is the person who is self-centred and thus godless and who seeks to live their way and only their way, living for personal peace and comfort. This person ultimately has no restraint, they have nothing on which to fix their standards or their ethics, and so they find themselves cutting corners in life, doing others down, ever pressing themselves upwards, and all the while the edges of what is permissible gradually move more and more until there are no boundaries. This person is ever striving to achieve, striving for more, and all the while deep down there is an unhappiness, a discontentment, a feeling of being jaded with life.

The best they feel they can get is just to work and work to get more, but deep down they know they it is all a waste of time because they cannot take it with them, so what’s the point? Perhaps if I work harder, perhaps if I achieve more, perhaps if I can climb one more rung up the social or business ladder, I will feel good, and so they strive and strive, but the feeling good never actually comes. They try to cover it up and pretend it is not there, but the feeling of lack of fulfilment and lack of purpose is still there, because after all is said and done, without God that is all there is. Quite often along the way, the Lord brings circumstances into their lives that are designed to drive them to Him, but like Pharaoh with Moses, they harden their hearts and refuse to respond and come to Him. But on the last day they will never be able to say they didn’t know.

But then there is the ‘righteous’ man, the man or woman who pleases God. How do people please God?  They are honest about who they are; they acknowledge their sinfulness, their godless tendencies and their unrighteous tendencies and they recognise their need. Then when they hear about Jesus Christ, they come to God with penitent, open, seeking hearts, hearts that are willing to surrender and give themselves to Him for Him to do whatever needs doing. They are people who are then forgiven and cleansed and adopted as God’s children; they are people who receive His Holy Spirit. They are people who start learning about God’s way of living from His word; they are people who start learning to live in response to His Holy Spirit’s guidance.

As they start living with God’s standards, they find that a life of honesty and integrity, of love, care, thoughtfulness, consideration for others, acceptance of others, and plain goodness, is good! They find God speaks to them and guides them. They find that His guidance means they do things well or good things happen and they are blessed. They find that living as a child of God is good and wholesome and enjoyable. They catch a sense of purpose and as they go with the will of God for them, they realise it is good and a blessing. They find a sense of fulfilment in flowing with that will of God and they marvel at the wonder of God’s love for them.

Did you notice in this paragraph above there was no spiritual language? Yes, they probably read their Bible to find out more of God’s way for them, they probably pray as they talk out their lives with their heavenly Father, they probably worship as they let their hearts rise up in adoration for God, and they probably share God’s love with others, because it is the natural thing to do. But those are all additional expressions of their lives with God. The important thing is that they live, and living with God is good and they are blessed. Knowing God is a life transforming thing. It’s not just for Sundays or for Quiet Times; it’s for the whole of life. Their relationships, their learning, their working, are all transformed by the love and blessing of God. Oh yes, the statement, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness almost seems an understatement, but perhaps that was because it was coming from the pen of a jaded man, but it is still the truth, even if it doesn’t say the half of it!

17. More than work

Meditations in Ecclesiastes : 17 :  More than just work

Eccles 2:24,25 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

It’s taken two chapters of pondering before Solomon comes up with this conclusion. But isn’t that how it is with us foolish, sinful human beings. We have to rumble through all the possibilities until we see that most of them are futile and there is only one answer worth holding onto. The trouble is today that most people will not work their way through these things like Solomon did. One of the enemy’s strategies is to say, “It’s all right, you don’t want to think about such things, only religious people do that. You’re all right as you are!” This is true about the futility of the sin of mankind and it is true of the wonderful good news that the Gospel brings us: most people just don’t want to bother to think about it.

Somebody once wrote: “Cannon J.B.Phillips  recalls in The Ring of Truth, ‘hundreds of conversations with people, many of them of higher intellectual calibre than myself, who quite obviously had no idea what Christianity is about.’   He concluded that ‘they knew virtually nothing’ about the New Testament. The Resurrection ‘the most important even event in human history is politely and quietly by-passed. For it is not as though the evidence had been examined and found unconvincing; it had simply never been examined.’”  This is the horrifying truth, that millions of people will go to hell because they could not be bothered to think about the truth about life and the truth about the Gospel.

Solomon has been thinking, admittedly from a jaded perspective where his relationship with the Lord has lost its power, but even from there he comes to this wise conclusion. Remember, he has just been going through a number of reasons why struggling and striving to achieve through work or a career can be a thankless task, and so his conclusion is as a result of all of that thinking. You can struggle and strive and achieve great things, he had said, but at the end of it all, you hand it over to others to enjoy, you die and have to leave it all behind. If you think your work is going to have eternal impact, don’t waste your time; it won’t and it can’t!

So what does that leave you with? It leaves you with the only conclusion possible: you must learn to enjoy each day as it comes, and get fulfilment from what you do, because that is all God has allowed of you.  Now that is interesting because it is only the second time in two chapters that he has mentioned God. The first one was in chapter one when he said what a burden God has put on mankind giving them so much to learn. These references to God, seem a grudging acknowledgement of the Lord, the One who at one time had been the all-important person in Solomon’s life. Sadly now, that is no longer so, and all he is left with is the grudging acknowledgment of how God has designed things to be.

So is this truth, this statement of Solomon’s?  A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. Is it true that all we can do is get on with life on a daily basis, enjoy our food, enjoy our drink, and find some satisfaction in our work?  Well from the standpoint of a person who does not know the Lord – or who has lost contact with the Lord – yes, it is true. What else is there? But there is, as it keeps on coming up in these meditations,  the crux of the matter. It is all about knowing the Lord or not knowing the Lord?

Notorious atheist Richard Dawkins, making waves in the early part of the twenty-first century with his writings and TV programmes inadvertently reveals the truth. He complains that atheists are not having impact and it’s been the Christians who have made all the running. Well yes, it is the Christians who have made the running! Christians who have been motivated by the love of God to start schools, build hospitals and orphanages, start Unions and so on. It hasn’t just been ‘work’ it’s been the God-given vision of meeting the needs of the poor and of blessing others. The energy and life of God in them has taken them outside themselves.

Yesterday I wrote about the balance of “the Lord, family, work, recreation, and giving out.” Many people omit the first and the last of those five things, and their lives are meaningless. It is when you add the first and the last that meaning and purpose and fulfillment truly come. It is that last one that Christians have been known for – giving out – and that has resulted in the world being blessed and God being glorified. If we do the ‘giving out’ without God, it just becomes a self-centred, godless thing, and it is seen as something just to build our egos. When it comes with God’s motivation, out of a relationship with Him, then it comes with a selflessness that is good to behold. This is the dimension that takes us beyond merely eating and drinking and getting satisfaction from our work. Tragically so many miss out and have never seen it. See it, live it, be blessed and be a blessing!

16. Who will follow

Meditations in Ecclesiastes : 16 :  Who will follow me?

Eccles 2:18,19     I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless.

Do you ever find yourself in light sleep and a particular dream or set of thoughts keeps on going round and round. It’s a little bit like that here with Solomon. He’s started with the thought that all he’s ever done is meaningless because one day he’s going to die and whether he’s wise or a fool that is going to happen. Death was inevitable. But then as he thought some more he also realised that all that he had done and achieved was meaningless in the face of death because he could not take it with him.

As that thought settled in his mind, he then realised that not only could he not take it with him, but he would have to leave it to someone, probably in his family, who would be left after he had gone, and who would then take everything he had left and use it as he will. That thought didn’t settle very well in him either. He continued on, almost in despair, from our verses above, “So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.” (v.20,21).

Here he was; he had put all his life into great projects, bringing prosperity to the country and to his family, great riches and wealth like few had seen before him, and for what, to be left to his children who may squander it all foolishly. Whatever was the point of all of that? What a waste of time!

In fact, for Solomon, these thoughts were not too far from the truth, because after he died, his son Rehoboam acted foolishly and lost three quarters of the kingdom. Before long Israel had been invaded and soon all of Solomon’s wealth was taken, but it was all for the same reason: Solomon’s foolishness in drifting away from the Lord because of his foreign wives.

So is it a total waste of time being successful during our lifetime? Is it meaningless that we have to hand it all over to our children when we die, not knowing if they will use what we leave wisely or not? There have got to be at least two aspects to the answer to those questions. The first one is to recognize what we have already been saying in these mediations, that our lives will only have real meaning as far as we have a living relationship with the Lord. Knowing Him, knowing His guidance, sensing His purpose for our lives, these are the things that bring meaning to us. Our work, our career etc. should flow out of that relationship and because they do they should receive the guidance and blessing of the Lord.

When it is like that we have a real sense of purpose, achievement and fulfillment that is properly balanced, that enables us to form, keep and maintain relationships in a family that are not drained away by our work. Work becomes just a part of our lives; relationship with others is the healthy balance.

Indeed if we have a healthy balance from the Lord, then there will be other things in our lives as well as work, which we use and enjoy as recreation, the fourth balancing part of our lives – God, family, work, recreation. Indeed if we are wise and allow the Lord to lead us, our lives will have a giving element to them as well, the fifth balancing part to our lives, as we look outwards and allow the Lord to use us to bless others. When we can find this fivefold balance to our lives – the Lord, family, work, recreation, giving out – then we will truly find a sense of fulfillment and meaning and purpose. That will truly be a good life.

But what about leaving everything to our children? Is that meaningless?  That raises the question of what we leave to them. If it is purely money and possessions then we have missed half of what could be. Surely the greatest things we can leave them include the knowledge of being loved by us, a sense of security in that love, an understanding of the good and right way to walk with the Lord and to live out their lives in a relationship with Him, walking in righteousness and holiness. We cannot guarantee they walk in these things but we can leave them an example in their memories. Hopefully they will follow our example, but that is up to them for we cannot make them.

If we leave them money and possessions, we need to do it in love and trust, leaving them to use it wisely – or otherwise. It will be down to them. What they do with it may be a memorial to our memory – or not. As we pass on we may ask the Lord to give them wisdom to use it wisely, and trust that He will. We may also pray that He helps them have the same balance in their lives, after you have gone – the Lord, family, work, recreation, giving out, and in that way you will know that your life was meaningful and you contributed to the same being able to be said about theirs. May it be so!

26. You Deserve

Meditations in Romans : 26 :  Get what you deserve

Rom 2:5,6 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will give to each person according to what he has done.”

Paul has been warning all self-righteous, religious people (possibly there in Rome, but generally as well) against feeling smug and secure when they look down on others for being less than perfect, when they themselves are similarly less than perfect. More than that, when we are in that position we tend to feel we are all right and that God will overlook our failings, our ungodliness and even our unrighteousness – because God doesn’t seem to be doing anything in respect of us! But that is a misunderstanding, he has been saying, because God is simply giving you space to come to your senses and to realise your position and your need, so that you then come to repentance.

It hinges about this who thing of God holding back but, says Paul, you may think you get away with it but in reality you are stubborn and unrepentant if you just carry on like that and there IS going to come a day of reckoning for you! In the previous meditation we noted Peter’s words: “the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” (2 Pet 3:7). There IS coming a day when God will wind everything up and everyone will have to account to Him. Don’t be under any illusions; this is coming and you need to be ready for it.

When that day comes, says Paul, “his righteous judgment will be revealed.” When God judges all men and women, when he assesses their lives, His assessment will be right, or accurate, or perfect. We will not be able to question anything He says for He will know everything there is to know about us, and if today we tend to shrug off our ‘minor imperfections’ they will be truly seen for what they are – Sin! There will be no excuse making.

Now in your Bible at the end of verse 6 you will probably see a reference to a footnote that tells us that Paul is simply quoting the Old Testament when he speaks about this: “One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving. Surely you will reward each person according to what he has done.” (Psa 62:11) When the psalmist spoke about God being loving, he meant that God would never be biased against someone or be unkind to them; He would always reward people according to what they had done.

Now we’ll see Paul unpack this some more in the verses ahead but we’ll leave that to the next meditation. For the moment we simply focus on the overall principle. Solomon reiterated it in the Proverbs: “If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?” (Prov 24:12). There the same thing comes over, that we may make excuses but God weighs our hearts and sees and hears and knows everything there is to know about us and so He will repay according to what He sees, hears and knows. The message in this chapter should come over loud and clear: NONE of us has any room to make excuses; we are all sinners and we all fall short of perfection, and if we carry on in a self-satisfied way, without doing anything about it, then we are in for big trouble when we come face to face with God and have to account for every detail of our lives to Him.

Now there are usually three responses to this. The first rejects the whole thing and unbelief denies all that has been said. That person simply reveals the hardness and stubbornness of their heart, and simply confirms what Paul has been saying. The second response is to strive harder to be good. This person recognises the truth that they are less than perfect but believes that with a bit more effort they can reach the target, but when tomorrow comes, the target is still just as far away despite all the efforts of today. No, this person has embarked on a fruitless task!

The third response is to turn to God in desperation. This person recognises the truth of their own hopelessness and helplessness and also that without God’s mercy and grace they are doomed. If there is an answer, God has to provide it, for we cannot.

And that, of course, is what the Gospel is all about. That is why Paul is taking so much time to lay out the awful state of the human race, to show us our terrible state, and to show us our helplessness, so that we may see our need of the Gospel.

To the church at Corinth he declared, “we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Cor 1:23). To the religious, self-righteous Jews, Jesus dying on a cross for them was a stumbling block that they could not cope with. For the intellectual Gentiles, talk of the Cross as a means of salvation was shear folly. In fact before that he had said, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:18) To the person who is still in the place where they are perishing (before coming to Christ) the Cross seems crazy. It is only when we come in repentance to God, convicted by the Spirit of our sins and our terrible state, that suddenly that all changes and the cross becomes the means and the power by which we are saved and delivered from his hopeless and helpless plight. Hallelujah!

25. Contemptuous

Meditations in Romans : 25 :  Contemptuous?

Rom 2:3,4 So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?

The trouble with life is that it is so easy to jump to wrong conclusions about God. If you read the book of Job you find Job’s three friends jumping to the conclusion that all his misfortunes were the judgment of God on his sin, but the truth was that God had declared him righteous and the misfortunes were simply a test. Now I say this because so often silly people jump to the conclusion either that there is no God or that he is impotent, because they see so little of His corrective activity. The sinful man doesn’t realise that God is holding out a hand to him to save him, and because he doesn’t see God moving to deal with and stop him sinning, he is contemptuous of God’s inactivity and so carries on sinning even more. Wrong assessment of God, friend!

In the previous meditation we considered the danger of pointing fingers at other people and judging them for being less than perfect. We did stray into verse 3 and recognise that we are in trouble if we do that when we ourselves do similar things to those Paul listed, if not actually some of them.  We did observe our inability to live completely righteous lives and therefore the folly of judging others when we are just the same.

So now we move on a little bit from that and consider in more detail the second folly, that of being contemptuous of God’s grace and mercy, for that is what it is when we disdain God’s restraint in respect of us. This restraint of God has always been a stumbling block to people. We see it in the book of Job when even Job himself falls into the trap of wondering why bother being righteous when God seems to let sinners get away with it.

In fact so big a problem is it to some that even the apostle Peter weighs in on this subject when he says, “By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Pet 3:7-9). Yes, says Peter, there is coming a day of judgment when God will wind everything up on the earth but don’t be confused by the fact that God is waiting for this day; it is just that He is giving you every opportunity to come to repentance and be saved.

Now do you see that last bit? That is exactly the same as Paul is saying when he speaks of people, “not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance.” That is what God is working for, our repentance. Repentance simply means a one hundred and eighty degree turnabout. We have been living self-centred, unrighteous lives and He is waiting for us to come to our senses and do an about turn to seek after godly and righteous lives. That is why He is waiting and not bringing destructive judgment on you. Merely because you seem to be getting away with it for the moment, don’t think that you are safe! You’re just being given breathing space in which God wants you to come to your senses and see the hopelessness of your godless situation and turn to Him for salvation that he wants to bring through His Son, Jesus Christ.

This is the frightening thing about life before God who looks on and sees all that we do. In His grace, instead of striking us down, He gives us this awesome responsibility of taking decisions for our lives, decisions that can take us further and further away from Him and further and further towards destruction. And what is even more scary is our apparent blindness while this is happening; we fail to observe the symptom of sin and its effects and we take for granted the fact that we feel miserable or depressed, that we seem to always be striving to achieve self-worth, that we seem to always be at odds with other people, that we are having money problems, sex problems, health problems and indeed, problems in every area of life. We don’t realise that these things are NOT natural, are not part of the lives that God has designed us to live, but are symptoms or effects of the sin that drives self ever deeper into these things. We seem utterly blind to these things!

And all the while, there in the background is God’s “kindness, tolerance and patience” that continues to desire good for you.  All the while He is giving you free reign to do your own thing in the desire that you will eventually realise that ‘doing your own thing’ is not the best way. In fact it just leads you down this downward slope towards ultimate destruction – and you thought you were free! No, this is God giving you space to come to your senses. How far down the slope do you have to go before that happens? If this is you, it’s time to stop and take stock of your folly and come to your senses. You’re heading for destruction but God wants something wonderful for you – to bring His blessing into your life, to call you a child of God with an eternal destiny and a new purpose in life while still here on this earth, but that can’t come until you turn to Him. What if He calls, “Time’s up!” tomorrow. Don’t presume that His grace will last for ever. Today is a day for action.

24. Passing Judgment

Meditations in Romans : 24 :  Passing Judgment

Rom 2:1,2 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.

It is so easy to point fingers at other people, to look down on them for their less than perfect lives.  This error tends to be the prerogative of the rich and the religious. We are concerned here only with the latter. It is an amazing thing that the Jews had such a feeling of superiority over Gentiles because, as we’ll see as Paul moves on, they had been the people chosen by God and they were the receivers of the divine revelation – and the Gentiles (the rest of the world) weren’t! Moreover tales from around the world of the immoral behaviour of the Gentiles made the Jews feel even more superior as they kept the Law. Except the only problem was that they didn’t!  At least they didn’t keep it completely; they never managed to keep every single item of the Law. Indeed one of Jesus’ objections about them was that they were more concerned with keeping the exact standards of the written law than they were in loving people and loving God. We might also say that, looking back on their history of repetitive failure in respect of their relationship with the Lord, they really had no grounds to feel superior – but they did.

So Paul is going to address the Jews in Rome first, and it will soon become obvious that it is the Jews he is addressing. He says that if they pass judgment on others, they have no excuse and are actually condemning themselves. He’s going on to explain that in more detail in a moment, which we’ll see in the next meditation, but for the moment let’s just note Paul’s objective in this section.

He has just spoken about how the ungodly world has gone down in a spiral of sin as they have let their depraved minds carry them away – and this has all been part of God’s judgment. The sins that we have considered would have mostly been ones that the Law-keeping Jews would have mostly considered scandalous – as would most Christians. Oh my goodness, we might exclaim, I wouldn’t do those things! Really? Paul says to the Jews that they had no ground to pass judgment on others because they do the same things! Well, it’s only a little bit of harmless gossip. No it’s not; it’s still gossip. Oh there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of ‘retail therapy’. Is that another way of saying it’s alright to fuel your greed that looks to get more and more?  Oh it’s all right, surely, to want to be like those who are more beautiful, handsome or gifted than me? Is that another way of excusing your envy and covering up your lack of contentment? And when we see TV pictures of refugees and make negatives comments about how these ‘Third world people’ live, isn’t that an expression of heartlessness?  Indeed even when we hear of growing numbers of teenage pregnancies and decry their immoral behaviour, isn’t that actually the same heartlessness?

But there is something worse. Paul’s list is not exhaustive. I have noted something over the years and it is that when people start trying to categorise sin they find that they never quite know when to stop. That’s what the Pharisees of Jesus’ day did. They sought to detail and explain the Law bringing everything under the umbrella of those rules. After a while life becomes so restrictive that you find you are only focusing on failure.

The apostle John had the same thing in mind: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1 Jn 1:8). The point that is being made again and again is that none of us have grounds to point fingers at others, first of all because we ourselves are not perfect. But there is another reason that is implied in our verses above: God’s judgment is based upon truth – ours is based on only partial knowledge. When we point fingers at others, we don’t know the whole picture.

We don’t know the truth of what we think about them and we don’t know the truth of why they are acting like they are. If we knew the whole truth we might restrain our judgmental tendencies. One writer tells the tale of how he was quietly sitting in a three quarters empty underground train when at the next stop a man and two young children boarded. The children were noisy and disruptive and the father made no attempt to subdue them. When it came time for this threesome to get off, the father, obviously aware of his children’s noise, apologetically said to the writer, “I’m sorry, we’ve just visited their mother in hospital and she’s dying of cancer and has only hours to live.” Suddenly the writer felt differently about this man and his children.

God’s judgment is fair and just and based on the whole truth. Ours is not, and so we have no grounds on which to judge others. The final truth? We are all in need of the salvation that comes only through Jesus Christ.

23. Deserving Death

Meditations in Romans : 23 :  Deserving Death

Rom 1:29-32 They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them

We are working through this list that Paul presents to us, that are ways a depraved mind expresses itself through the lives of the godless. In the previous meditation we had got as far as ‘boastful’. Before we continue with the list it is worth reminding ourselves that these are the outworkings of a mind, we said, “that has been spoiled, damaged and doesn’t work properly.” That is what depraved means and that is the mind of every person, says the Bible, who has never come to God and surrendered their lives back to Him. Let’s continue the list.

“They invent ways of doing evil” i.e. these people are ever looking for new things to do to express their hearts, they are never content with where they are, there always needs to be something more, because nothing satisfies. One level of sexual perversity is never enough, there has to be more. One level of drug taking is never enough, there has to be more.

“They disobey their parents” i.e. they reject the first level of authority that they ever encounter in the world. In God’s design parents are crucial to a good life and to blessing; that is why we find in the Ten Commandments, “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” (Ex 20:12) which Paul himself later reiterates: “Honor your father and mother”–which is the first commandment with a promise– “that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” (Eph 6:2,3). How tragic it is in so many families that the parents provoke their children to disobedience and the children end up missing out on God’s blessing!

‘Senseless’ means having no good sense, being stupid or foolish or having no real point or purpose in life, meaningless. The expression of the depraved mind here is that they reveal that they are aimless by the stupid things they do. If they were rational they would look at what they do and realise this.

‘Faithless’ means they lack faith or do not keep faith, which suggests being dishonest, disloyal, unreliable and undependable. They lack character.

‘Heartless’ means they are hard and pitiless, they lack kindness or feeling, they are callous. Heartless people don’t mind what happens to others, and look on others’ misfortunes with scorn and derision.

‘Ruthless’ means they are absolutely without pity in their activities in life, and this is just a further stage down the path away from God’s design. Ruthless people cause harm to others without concern for the consequences or for the feelings of those they hurt.

Each of these latter descriptions take us further and further away from God’s design for mankind and show us people who are behaving more like vicious animals than human beings made in the image of God, and all of this is the outworking of a mind that no longer works properly.

But these godless and unrighteous people continue down this path willfully and with knowledge. They know deep down that these things are utterly wrong and that before God they deserve to die. They are damaging themselves, they are harming others and they are damaging God’s world. It is a miracle of grace and mercy that they are still alive! If we were God we would almost certainly have wiped them off this beautiful world that we had made, but God’s grace and mercy has other plans!

Yet these people continue down this terrible path. They don’t only do all these terrible things but they approve others who do them as well. It is like any form of sensitivity has been dulled or anaesthetised and so they are utterly careless as to where this path is taking them and about the effects they are having on others. They are utterly taken up with ‘self’ regardless of the consequences. This is the plight of the human race and it is only a matter of degree as to its outworking. When God’s hand of restraint rests upon us, these things are limited but when, in His wisdom, He decides that people are so set in their ways that He has to act, more often than not He simply lifts His hands of restraint off so that we are free to go down this terrible downward path until we are either destroyed or we come to our senses and call to the Lord to be saved. That is the divine strategy behind all we have been seeing in the latter part of this first chapter of Romans.

22. Wickedness

Meditations in Romans : 22 :  Every kind of wickedness

Rom 1:29-31 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful;

Now a tendency in the Christian world is to get upset mostly about sexual sin and especially that between members of the same sex. Yet the Bible is equally against adultery and promiscuity which are rife in modern western society. Moreover we are about to come to a list of things that are equally bad, some of which may shock us. Paul starts out with the descriptions we have already covered: “wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.” Greed is probably the one that hits nearest the Christian community sometimes, when men and women get sucked into materialistic wanting more and more and eating more and more. That is just greed by another description. So when Paul carries on the list of things that are the outworking of depraved minds (ones that have been spoiled, damaged and don’t work properly), it is a list that is equally bad as anything we have considered so far in these verses. Let’s consider them one by one.

‘Envy’ is being jealous of what other people have got, whether is it possessions, position or abilities. If you look at anyone in a negative way because of what they have and you don’t have, this is you! And it’s just as bad as all that has gone before!

‘Murder’ is the unlawful taking of life. We probably all accept that is wrong!

‘Strife’ refers to the act of striving with others; being in competition with them, fighting or quarrelling, struggling in conflict with them. In how many homes does this take place? In how many businesses does it take place? Instead of living in peace and harmony this speaks of a world of conflict where self-centredness fights for self against all-comers. This is what ungodly people do and what godly people should not be doing!

‘Deceit’ is about representing as true what is known to be false; it’s deceiving or lying, being dishonest.  Again in the stress and competition of modern life how much deceit is there, in families, in schools and colleges and in businesses?

‘Malice’ is active ill will; it is the desire to harm another by word or deed, to do them mischief out of spite. It is evil intent. Many of these things are all about bad attitudes and take us far from the people God designed us to be!

‘Gossips’?  Isn’t this the oil that lubricates the wheels of modern life? Isn’t it what everybody does? A definition of a gossip is ‘a person who chatters or repeats idle talk and rumors, esp. about the private affairs of others’. But, I suggest, it is usually more than this; it usually has an element of malice about it. Gossips usually tear apart a person’s reputation, usually pull down that person. A gossip doesn’t just pass on information; they do it with the desire to show that person in a bad light. That is not godly!

‘Slanderers’! Surely that’s not me! So what is a slanderer? It is ‘speaking to others what is false about another person’s character or reputation.’ It may be the expression of gossip or it may just be a straight forward pronouncement about another that is not true. How often are the media careless about checking the truth of what they say? I have spoken to a number of people who have been around a news item and rarely does anyone say it was reported accurately. American writers Rosenberg and Feldman wrote ‘No Time to Think’ about the news media. The back covers declares, ‘They point out the half-truth, misconstrued truths, and outright lies that permeate the 24-hour news cycle.’ It is devastating reading. It says that slander is a regular part of modern news in so many places.

‘God-haters,’ being ‘actively hostile against God’ must surely refer to the modern crusading atheists, but it must surely also include anyone who has a stake in making money immorally in the modern world, and there is a lot of that about. Such people often wouldn’t like to be labeled a ‘God-hater’ but if they are avidly anti-God that is what they are.

‘Insolent’ refers to ‘language and behaviour that is disrespectful and contemptuous’, and is often in respect of authority or of ethical morality. It is the abuse that you receive from those who feel threatened by your respectability, and there is a lot of it around!

‘Arrogant’ refers to ‘the attitude that is full of haughty pride and self-importance’. It goes with brash behaviour. It is seen in those who think they are something and that you are nothing. It is delusion.

‘Boastful’ refers to the expressions of the insolent and arrogant; it is bragging or boasting or making out they are greater of better than they actually are. It is another sign of delusion, or of a depraved mind that is not working properly.

There, we have just seen, are eleven expressions of this depraved mind that is not working properly, for that is what all these things are. They are people in whom sin twists or distorts their thinking so that these things are the outworking. There are more to come, but these are enough to be going on with for the moment. They come as a challenge to us. Oh yes, we Christians say, that’s what the world does, but check out the descriptions of these things again and make sure that there is not an ounce of them in your life!

21. Depraved Minds

Meditations in Romans : 21 :  Depraved Minds

Rom  1:28-29   Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.

We commented in the previous meditation on the use of parallelism in the Scriptures, the repeating the verse but in a slightly different way. We have that again here. Previously Paul had said, “they … exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images,” (v.23) and “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” (v.25). Thus Paul has spoken about ‘the glory of God’, the ‘truth of God’ and now simply the ‘knowledge of God.’ Twice he has said they swapped it for something else and now he says they simply failed to ‘retain’ it. They have let it go and taken on board something else, something completely different.

Note two things in passing: first Paul assumes that these three expressions about God are obvious to all people and, second, it has been an act of will on behalf of each person that has brought the change. They gave up their belief in God and took on some other belief. In fact here in these verses above he speaks about the sinful human attitude that brings this all about: “they did not think it worthwhile to…” That refers to the process in the human mind of thinking about something and coming to a judgment about it and the ‘it’ in question is the knowledge of God. Now we may wonder how a person who has a knowledge of God can turn away from it but it is something we all do in our lives. Paul maintains that the truth of God is obvious from the wonder of His world but rather than let the wonder of His world point us to Him, we turn away from that and move into a life of self-centred, godless existence. That is what sin in us does, and we give way to it.

So the inclination is there within us and as we turn to it, God steps back and respects our foolishness and let’s us go further and further into that way of thinking and living. It would appear from an observation of history that this happens in different seasons of history in greater or lesser measure. In the first half of the twentieth century there was a measure of restraint in the moral attitudes of the West. In the latter half of the twentieth century there was a casting off of restraint. Did God see that we had not learnt through two World Wars, and so permitted us to follow a different way whereby over the coming years we would throw off restraint, as He allowed us, until we would eventually come to a place where we recognised the awfulness of this godless, foolish way of thinking and lifestyle, and would turn back to Him in a massive revival? Time will tell. But remember, it is not merely a human reaction, this casting off of restraint; it is a divine action also, of God allowing us to go down that path, with a very specific outcome in mind, as we reminded ourselves by reference to the parable of the prodigal son previously.

Now Paul moves on from what we do with our bodies (sexual activities) to explain that it is all because of what goes on in our minds. There is a distinct link between mind and action: “he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.” A depraved mind leads to wrong action. ‘Depraved’ simply means morally corrupt. When we talk about a corrupted computer disk we mean it has been spoiled or damaged so it doesn’t work properly. A depraved mind is one that is, yes, morally bent, but more it is one that has been spoiled, damaged and doesn’t work properly! It can’t think straight; it can’t think clearly; it gets it wrong all the time. Having moved away from the knowledge of God, from the knowledge of the truth, it constantly lives a lie, constantly lives in deception.

The outworking of this damaged thinking is that human beings thus become “filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.” Wickedness is simply moral wrong. Evil is the over-arching description of all that is wrong and utterly against God and God’s design. It twists, distorts and causes harm to both people and property. Greed is self-centred desire that wants more and more to satisfy self-centred sensuousness. We see it in those working in the money markets and in politicians who feather their own nests – but it is there waiting for opportunity in every one of us. Depravity, as we have said, simply refers to our overall state of being corrupted, of being spoiled or damaged so we no longer work as we were designed by God to work.

A mind that has moved away from the truth has no checks or balances to restrain it and so continues in a downward spiral with behaviour to match. We think we are so great and we think we are free, but the reality is that we are slaves to sin and we cannot break free from this way of thinking and this way of life. It is only, as we have said before, as we are ploughed by the crises of life that the Holy Spirit is able to sow the seeds of conviction that draw us back to God where we can receive His salvation through Christ. Until then we are lost, confused by a depraved mind and dragged down by ever increasing desires for more personal pleasure to cover up our emptiness and meaninglessness. These verses are an accurate and graphic description of the human condition and reveal our need for the salvation that only Christ can bring. Pray for it to come to our nation.