This post originally appeared at https://wifamilycouncil.org/radio/a-romans-1-culture/

2023 | Week of September 18 | Radio Transcript #1532

My pastor is preaching through Romans. This past Sunday, the sermon was on Romans 1, verses 24-32. While I am very familiar with this passage of Scripture, as I read and listened, I was struck anew with the idea that when people reject God on purpose, their thinking becomes basically out of control.

Paul says because people didn’t see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a reprobate or debased mind to do what ought not be done.  He then enumerates some sins—highlighting all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. Paul says these people are gossipers, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Perhaps it’s because of what was announced last week and is taking place this week in our state that these specific truths especially arrested my attention.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announcing that effective this past Monday they will resume doing abortions at their Madison and Milwaukee facilities must qualify as an “unrighteous thing.” Since abortion is the intentional killing of an unborn child, we are also talking about murder and evil. We might even be able to add that this is an “invention of evil.”

Given that we still have in place a pre-Roe abortion ban, what Planned Parenthood is doing is illegal. As of this writing, no judge has declared that law unenforceable. The legislature has not revoked it. Planned Parenthood has taken the law into its own hands, blatantly disrespecting the rule of law our Republic is built on. So, from that list in Romans 1, I think we can add deceitful and malicious.

Certainly, Planned Parenthood is deceitful in how they mislead women regarding alternatives to abortion and about the reality that is in their womb is a human baby, not fetal tissue, not a clump of cells, not the product of conception. It’s a human life from the moment of conception on. Planned Parenthood works hard to dehumanize these unborn children and to downplay how traumatic for women abortion is. This is definitely deceitful and malicious.

Maybe we even add boastful, since Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin’s press release was pretty bold as they proclaimed they are again doing their dastardly, life-taking work.  Think debased or reprobate here.

The last phrase of Chapter 1 tells us people who have rejected God not only do these evil, debased, reprobate things, but they approve of those who practice them. Sadly, last week we had an excellent of this when Governor Evers, shortly after Planned Parenthood made its announcement, issued a press release in which he congratulated Planned Parenthood and condoned their twisted legal reasoning. This approval certainly makes the governor complicit in this evil, illegal activity Planned Parenthood is resuming.

Abortion is a symptom—a symptom of a culture that has rejected God and that God has, apparently, given over to debased thinking and debased actions—thinking and actions that are, in some instances, life-taking. We have other symptoms such as overt sexual deviancy, which means any kind of sexual behavior outside of God’s design for marriage, a monogamous, lifelong commitment between one male man and one female woman.  That deviancy includes both heterosexual and homosexual activity outside of those boundaries, although admittedly, the sexual immorality that God distinctly says is unnatural or against nature is homosexuality.

The transgender craze is another symptom. It’s built on deceit—outright lies and outright denial of biological reality.

We have many such symptoms in our culture. But here’s the good news, as my pastor made sure to point out…there is no sin that is beyond God’s forgiveness…none.  People who have performed abortions, people who have engaged in any form of sexual immorality, people who have gossiped, slandered, been disobedient to parents or have committed any other sin, can be saved.  Culturally, we need a revival, a II Chronicles 7:14 revival, that begins with us as believers.  That will result in a culture that no longer so overtly displays the symptoms of rejecting God.

This is Julaine Appling for Wisconsin Family Council, reminding you the Prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

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