There are times when trusting God is relatively easy because what He says lines up with what we already want. His direction makes sense, we can see the wisdom in it, and following Him doesn’t require much of a fight. But there are other times when what we want and what God says pull in completely different directions. God says something is good for us, but it doesn’t feel good. He tells us not to go somewhere we desperately want to go. His Word tells us to trust Him, while everything in us is convinced that our way makes more sense.
Most Christians would never actually say, “God, I know better than You.” It sounds ridiculous when you put it that plainly. Yet we can live that way without ever saying the words. We can know what God says about our marriage, sexuality, money, anger, forgiveness, priorities, or relationships and still decide that our circumstances are different. We don’t necessarily want God out of our lives; we just want to retain the final say.
That’s what makes Romans 1:18–32 such an uncomfortable passage. Paul isn’t merely describing a particularly rebellious group of people who want nothing to do with God. He’s describing what happens to human beings when we know the truth about God but continually push it aside in favor of what we want. The progression he describes is sobering: we suppress the truth, exchange what God has said for something else, and eventually become increasingly unable to recognize how far we’ve gone.
The question Romans 1 forces us to confront, then, isn’t simply, “What is wrong with the world?” It’s much more personal: What happens when I know what God says but keep choosing my own way?
Paul’s answer is uncomfortable. If we insist on rejecting God’s way, there comes a point when part of His judgment is allowing us to have what we’ve demanded. Getting our way may not be the blessing we think it is.
It Starts With What We Do With the Truth
Paul begins Romans 1:18 by saying that God’s wrath is revealed against humanity “who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” That word suppress is important because Paul’s diagnosis isn’t simply that people don’t know any better. In the verses that follow, he repeatedly emphasizes that God has made Himself known. What can be known about God is “plain” because God has shown it to humanity, and His eternal power and divine nature can be perceived through what He has made.
This is what theologians often call general revelation. Creation doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about God. We can’t stand at the base of Mount Rainier and somehow figure out that Jesus died for our sins and rose again; we need the gospel for that. But creation does point beyond itself to a Creator. In the same way that a painting points to a painter and a building points to a builder, the created world bears witness to the One who made it.
That’s why Paul says humanity is “without excuse.” The problem isn’t that God left us with no directions. He has made Himself known, but humanity refuses to follow where that revelation leads. Paul says that although people knew God, “they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21). The problem, then, isn’t merely what we know. It’s what we do with what we know.
And that’s where Romans 1 begins getting close to home. Every Christian knows what it’s like to encounter something in God’s Word that we don’t particularly want to obey. Maybe it’s forgiveness when we would rather hold onto an offense, or generosity when we’d rather keep what we have. Maybe it’s sexual boundaries that conflict with our desires or admitting that we’ve been wrong when our pride desperately wants to defend itself. In those moments, the issue underneath the specific decision is whether we actually trust God enough to let Him be God.
Pay Attention to What You Exchange
Paul uses the word exchanged several times throughout the passage. Humanity exchanges the glory of the immortal God for created things in verse 23, exchanges the truth about God for a lie in verse 25, and exchanges God’s created design in verse 26. The specific expressions change, but the pattern remains the same: God reveals what is true and good, and humanity decides it would rather have something else.
For Paul’s original audience, the reference to images of people, birds, animals, and creeping things would have immediately brought physical idolatry to mind. Most of us aren’t tempted to carve a statue and bow down to it, but the exchange underneath idolatry is still very much alive. We can take something God created—career, marriage, children, money, comfort, approval, success, sex, even family—and give it a place in our lives that belongs to the Creator.
Sometimes the thing we put in God’s place is simply ourselves. We want to decide what’s true for us and what’s good for us. We may be perfectly comfortable with God being part of our lives—wanting His help, His blessings, and His provision, and certainly wanting Him available when something goes wrong. The problem is that we don’t necessarily want Him making all the decisions. We’d rather have God in an advisory role, or maybe even as a silent partner.
The problem is that God doesn’t offer to be our silent partner. He’s God. That means one of the most revealing sentences we can hear ourselves say is, “I know what God says, but…” Whatever comes after the but deserves our attention, because it may reveal exactly what we’re tempted to exchange God’s authority for.
Sometimes Getting Your Way Is the Judgment
That progression leads to the phrase Paul repeats three times in Romans 1:24–28: “God gave them up.” Paul isn’t saying that God puts evil desires into people’s hearts. Rather, He gives people over to the direction they’ve persistently chosen and allows their rebellion to run its course. Humanity says, in effect, “God, I want my way,” and eventually God allows them to experience where their way leads.
That is a frightening form of judgment precisely because it may not immediately look like judgment. We usually imagine God’s judgment as something painful that prevents us from getting what we want. Romans 1 shows us that sometimes judgment can look like getting exactly what we’ve insisted upon. The relationship works out, the opportunity opens, nobody discovers what we’ve done, or we finally get the freedom we’ve been demanding. None of those things, by themselves, prove that God approves of the direction we’ve chosen.
This is also the context in which Paul addresses same-sex sexual behavior in verses 26–27. He describes it as contrary to God’s created design, and we shouldn’t soften what Paul says. At the same time, homosexuality isn’t the only sin Romans 1 is about. It’s one expression of the much deeper exchange Paul has been describing throughout the chapter: the Creator establishes what is true and good, while His creation insists on determining those things for itself.
That’s why it would be a serious mistake for Christians to read Romans 1 and walk away thinking primarily about somebody else’s sin. By the end of the chapter, Paul’s list includes envy, strife, deceit, gossip, slander, pride, boasting, faithlessness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness. Whatever opportunity we thought we had to stand at a safe distance from the passage disappears. Paul is not merely explaining what’s wrong with them. He’s exposing what’s wrong with us.
The Danger of Getting Used to Our Own Way
Perhaps the most sobering consequence in Romans 1 is that sin doesn’t merely change our behavior; it begins to distort our judgment. Paul describes futile thinking, darkened hearts, and eventually a “debased mind.” By verse 32, people not only continue doing what they know is wrong but “give approval to those who practice them.”
There is a progression there that should concern us. At first, I know something is wrong and choose it anyway. Eventually, however, I don’t want to live with the tension of believing that something I continually choose is wrong. So I begin justifying it, explaining it, or redefining it. Given enough time, I can become so convinced by my own reasoning that I no longer recognize the thing I’m defending as rebellion against God.
That is why ignoring conviction is dangerous. We shouldn’t assume that resisting God today will make it easier to obey Him tomorrow. Continually saying no to God can make the next no easier, not harder. What once troubled our conscience can eventually begin to seem completely reasonable.
For Christians, that doesn’t mean God abandons His children. God convicts, corrects, and disciplines His children rather than simply leaving them in their sin.
But Romans 1 still warns us against the arrogance of continually telling God that we know better. When His Word confronts something we want, the right response isn’t to become better at explaining why we’re right. It’s to repent.
The Answer Isn’t Trying Harder
Romans 1:18–32 gives us a devastating diagnosis of the human condition, but Paul has already told us where the answer is found. Immediately before this passage he writes that the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). That’s important because the problem Paul describes cannot be solved merely by giving humanity more information or better rules. We don’t simply need to know more or try harder. We need to be rescued.
The good news is that the God humanity has rejected is the God who came to rescue us. Jesus Christ lived without sin. He went to the cross, took the judgment our sin deserves, died in our place, and rose from the dead. The response to that gospel isn’t, “I’ll do a better job following the rules.” It’s repentance and faith. Repentance means that I stop defending my way, turn from my sin, and acknowledge that God is right. Faith means that I put my trust in Jesus Christ and what He has done for me. That’s the gospel.
And for those who already belong to Christ, Romans 1 leaves us with a question worth asking whenever what we want collides with what God has said: Do I trust the Creator, or do I trust myself? There may be an area of your life right now where you already know what God says and simply don’t like the answer. Instead of asking how to get God to agree with you, consider whether the real issue is whether you’re willing to trust Him.
Getting your way isn’t always a blessing. Sometimes what feels like freedom is simply another way of insisting that we know better than the God who made us. Romans 1 calls us to something better: to stop defending our own way, take God at His Word, and trust that the Creator knows what is good for His creation.
Want to Know More?
If you’re interested in learning more about Jesus, growing in your faith, or simply understanding what the Bible actually says, we’d love to have you join us. At Calvary Chapel Thunder Mountain, we teach through the Bible verse by verse and want to help people know Jesus, understand His Word, and learn to follow Him in everyday life.
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