Actions Although Applaud Approval Approve Commit Consent Continue Death Decree Delight Deserve Die Encourage Fate Fellow Full God's Hearty Judgment Law Ordinance Pleasure Practice Practise Practising Pronounces Righteous Sentence Short Theirs Themselves Though Worthy
1:32 Who knowing the {o} judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but {p} have pleasure in them that do them.
(o) By the judgment of God he means that which the philosophers called the law of nature, and the lawyers themselves termed the law of nations.
(p) Are companions and partakers with them in their wickedness, and beside that, commend those who do wrong.
1:32 Who knowing the judgment of God. The ordinance or decree of God condemning such sinners. That ordinances is next stated. It is that those who do such deeds are worthy of death. The heathen moralists admitted this. Yet in spite of this knowledge they not only continued in their vile sins, but took pleasure in them. No deeper degree of depravity can be found than when men call evil good, and cherish it. This dark picture of heathen vices in Ro 1:18-32 is not overdrawn. It is fully confirmed by such heathen writers as Tacitus, Horace, Seneca, and Juvenal. The conclusion, from these facts, is that all such persons are under condemnation.
1:32 Not only do the same, but have pleasure in those that practise them - This is the highest degree of wickedness. A man may be hurried by his passions to do the thing he hates; but he that has pleasure in those that do evil, loves wickedness for wickedness' sake. And hereby he encourages them in sin, and heaps the guilt of others upon his own head.
1:26-32 In the horrid depravity of the heathen, the truth of our Lord's words was shown: Light was come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil; for he that doeth evil hateth the light. The truth was not to their taste. And we all know how soon a man will contrive, against the strongest evidence, to reason himself out of the belief of what he dislikes. But a man cannot be brought to greater slavery than to be given up to his own lusts. As the Gentiles did not like to keep God in their knowledge, they committed crimes wholly against reason and their own welfare. The nature of man, whether pagan or Christian, is still the same; and the charges of the apostle apply more or less to the state and character of men at all times, till they are brought to full submission to the faith of Christ, and renewed by Divine power. There never yet was a man, who had not reason to lament his strong corruptions, and his secret dislike to the will of God. Therefore this chapter is a call to self-examination, the end of which should be, a deep conviction of sin, and of the necessity of deliverance from a state of condemnation.
Actions Although Approval Approve Commit Consent Continue Death Decree Deserve Encourage Fellow Full God's Hearty Judgment Law Ordinance Others Pleasure Practice Practise Practising Pronounces Righteous Sentence Short Theirs Worthy
Actions Although Approval Approve Commit Consent Continue Death Decree Deserve Encourage Fellow Full God's Hearty Judgment Law Ordinance Others Pleasure Practice Practise Practising Pronounces Righteous Sentence Short Theirs Worthy
