Suppression Of Truth (part 1)

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness – Romans 1:18  (NET)

Immediately after speaking of what he understood to be the mysterious and inherent power of the Gospel (the proclamation that Jesus is Lord of all), the Apostle Paul launches into a statement concerning the pouring out of the wrath of the Creator God, and the connection of the pouring out of that wrath to ungodliness and unrighteousness.  Following that lead-in, the remainder of the first chapter of the letter to the Romans is decidedly direct, as Paul, in his writing here, would seem to have in mind certain individuals or groups of people to which his words are directed.  Rather than analyze in an attempt to ascertain to whom or to what situation the words from verse eighteen through thirty-two are directed, it would probably be better to take into consideration the grand narrative of the Scriptures so as to make an appropriate application. 

So in looking at the eighteenth verse, and contemplating the scope of the Scriptural narrative, one could identify the verse with the presumptive parents of the human race, that being Adam and Eve.  Because human beings were made in and as the image of the Creator God, it should be understood that an aspect of godliness is rightly bearing the divine image.  Accordingly, ungodliness could be considered to be the failure to adequately and properly bear the divine image. 

Righteousness is perhaps best defined as “covenant faithfulness” (faithfulness to the covenant, whatever that covenant may be during the course of the Scriptural narrative), and that particular trait is usually and accurately ascribed to the Creator God, though when humans find themselves attaining to righteousness, it can also be said that they are in a state of faithfulness to the particular covenant that is to govern their interactions with their Creator and their fellow man. 

Unrighteousness then, conversely, is a state of not being faithful to the covenant (covenant unfaithfulness).  When Adam and Eve partook of the “forbidden fruit,” in contradiction of their Lord’s command, they were not faithful to the covenant under which they were tasked to operate.  Consequently, they found themselves in a state of unrighteousness.  This resulted in them not being able to completely fulfill the Creator God’s intention for what was understood to be the pinnacle of His creation that bore His image, and was responsible to play the role of reflecting His glory into the world, stewarding the creation, and constantly reminding the creation of the God that was responsible for its existence. 

According to the Genesis narrative, Adam and Eve, having eaten the fruit, now found themselves unable to attain to the reflection of their God’s glory for which they had been created.  Thus, entering into a condition of unrighteousness, they also succumbed to the condition of ungodliness and they fell short of the glory of God.  This is marked out as the beginning of sin.  With this, the indication is that mankind began to lose its right knowledge of the Creator God; and with this presence of the force of sin that marred and distorted the divine image that was supposed to represent and reveal the Creator, one could say, the truth of the Creator God began to be suppressed.   

Israel & Adam (part 2 of 2)

Can one even imagine the providential and creative God’s response to being rejected by Adam?  A sense of it can be had through understanding that God’s response at having been rejected by Israel, as Jeremiah exclaims “Be amazed at this, O heavens!  Be shocked and dumbfounded…Do so because My people have committed a double wrong: they have rejected Me, the fountain of life-giving water, and they have dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns which cannot even hold water” (Jeremiah 2:12-13).  As humankind (via Adam) rejected their life-giver, turning their trust away from their Creator and looking elsewhere for support, ultimately, to other creatures now marred and cursed and corrupted, so too did Israel reject their covenant God that had redeemed them from Egypt and carried them through all their years. 

The Creator God of Israel says, “You have brought all this on yourself, Israel, by deserting the Lord your God when He was leading you along the right path” (2:17).  Effectively, this bears little difference to what that same God can have been thought to have said to Adam.  Again, it should be noted that though the Adam story may very well be a retrojection of the Israel story, it is still the story by which Israel partially defines, understands and presents itself.  Did Adam not desert the Lord and His path, bringing a curse upon all creation, as it is reported, through not heeding the warning promise?  Israel failed to heed the warning promises, and as a result, their faithful covenant God was going to bring a curse upon His people. 

Jeremiah goes on to share that “Your own wickedness will bring about your punishment” (2:19a).  For Israel, the punishment was going to be the curses of siege, destruction, exile, captivity, and oppression.  For humankind, the immediate judgment was that “cursed is the ground thanks to you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17b).  Continuing in Jeremiah, the God of Israel informs His people that “Your unfaithful acts will bring about your punishment.  Your unfaithful acts will bring down discipline on you” (2:19b).  Israel’s unfaithfulness was to the covenant, and to their God’s requirements that they do not engage in idolatry, that they reverence the sanctuary, and that they keep His Sabbaths (while also caring for orphans and widows).  Their punishment and their discipline represented their God’s faithfulness to His covenant, in response to His people’s lack thereof.  Adam fared no better.  His unfaithful act most certainly brought about punishment, as it is understood to be the vehicle that carried death into the world for Himself and all living things.  Jumping further along in the story, as the second Adam to come, Jesus reverses this so as to ultimately carry death out of the world by exhausting the curses brought about by both Israel and Adam.   

To Israel, to Adam, and to His covenant people from all nations and generations, the Creator God says, “Know, then, and realize how utterly harmful it was for you to reject Me, the Lord your God, to show no respect for Me” (2:19c).  This is what is spoken by “the Lord God Who rules over all” (2:19d).  The rejection, by Adam, of God’s singular command, brought the curse.  The rejection, by Israel, of their God’s covenant laws and responsibilities (what can be thought of as a singular command) brought exile and captivity.  Later, that rejection would be manifested in the rejection of Jesus as their God’s anointed, crucified, and resurrected King and Lord of all creation.  Submission to His rule means being brought into a fertile land, as were Adam and Israel, so as to enjoy its fruits and its rich bounty in eternal life (the life of the age to come brought into and making itself felt in the present as the Creator God’s people become the place where heaven and earth overlap as part of their service in recognition of their King) and a renewal of God’s good creation.  Rejection means a continued march into the bonds of death, under that curse forever.      

Transgressions & Sins (part 3)

Having looked at the first three verses of the second chapter of Ephesians, and having laid the groundwork for a fuller understanding of what is presented there (as well as what is to come), we can now move forward.  Upon that forward movement, we read “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ” (2:4-5a). 

So even though Israel was still in exile (a foreign power ruling over them --- “slaves” in the words of Ezra and Nehemiah), having been unfaithful to their covenant God’s intentions for them, which was to be a light to the Gentile nations; and even though in that unfaithfulness they sought not to reveal God’s glory to them, but rather harbored animosity and resentment as part of a desire to drive them from their land rather than being a beacon that would draw them to their God and His temple, the Creator God was rich in mercy towards His covenant people.  Even though all men from all nations, due to, according to the Scriptural narrative, Adam’s fall in which man willfully submitted himself to worshiping what was made rather than the Maker of all things, were in exile from God’s intention for them to bear His image and have dominion over His creation, the Creator God was rich in mercy.  He would not allow those created to bear His image to fail in that task.  He would not allow for His once good creation to remain in a condition less than that which had been intended for it. 

Why was He rich in mercy?  Because Israel was His chosen, covenant people.  He was rich in mercy because He had another chosen people, with which He was making a new covenant through union with the Christ (confession of Jesus as Lord).  God had a renewed Israel that He was bringing forth---a people in union with Christ through belief in the Gospel, that would, through a submission to His rule characterized by loving self-sacrifice (evidenced of the Spirit of God at work), to proclaim God’s glorious rule over the entirety of the cosmos (in stark contrast to all other gods) through the Christ’s universal Lordship, and so establish and extend the kingdom of God, thereby allowing that group of covenant bearing people to bea blessing to all peoples. 

Based on the Abrahamic covenant that had been passed to them through their forefathers, this had been Israel’s charge, but it had been almost completely abandoned due to their turning inward and erecting barriers and walls of separation between themselves and the peoples of the world.  Nevertheless, God exercised His great love for those that He had gone forth to redeem, doing it in the midst of their transgressions (their actions that worked against the outflow of the covenant, and after the revelation of the Christ and the way of God as represented by the Christ, their continuing to pursue the kingdom of God through inappropriate means). 

Paul, being part of two camps, Israel by descent and renewed Israel through belief in Christ as Messiah (the covenant mark of faith), speaks of all being dead in transgressions.  Effectively, the transgression of both camps was exactly the same, with that transgression being rooted in idolatry.  Israel’s continuing exile was engendered by idolatry, and though idol worship had ceased from the land, the idolatry was manifested in an exaltation of the marks of national identification that set themselves apart from the other nations whom God sought to bless, along with the desire to impose those marks upon other peoples.  For those that would be renewed Israel, the idolatry is easier to understand, as we can simply scan the pages of history up until that time and since, to see the lengths to which men will go in their creation of beings to worship, rather than worship the One being Who was their Creator.