February 1, 2022 -- Romans 1:28-32 -- Answering the Atheist's Objection

People loved by the Father, in the Spirit's power: Sh'ma ~ hear and obey Jesus!

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Acts 1:28-32 ESV

Will a good person, who doesn’t know God, go to heaven? It is a test question. Many Christians have had it posed to them. Often the one asking it already knows the answer, he is merely seeking to be justified in his own eyes. To put it bluntly, there are no completely innocent people, no good people. In fact, the world portrays this truth of this over and over again. Think about the last time you watched a murder mystery. Consider how often the murderer, when finally caught, was the least likely person. Someone who from the viewer’s perspective was unexpected. It is what makes the genre so mesmerizing.

It turns out the murder is the kind, grandmother figure who is hiding a horrid past. Perhaps the chain of evidence leads the police officer to an upstanding member of society, who has long hidden this murder under layers of guilty-conscience-driven acts of good deeds performed as penance for a long-hidden crime which seared the conscience but remained unconfessed. Even the detective relentlessly pursuing the murderer is proved to be compromised, cutting corners, plunging deeply into grey areas of what might be considered dishonorable practices in order to uncover the culprit. Odd, isn’t it, murder mysteries are fascinating exactly because there are many viable suspects. Every person presented in each episode has some sort of secret which shows the evidences of evil which resides in the heart.

In presenting this list to the Romans, which includes everything from disobedience to parents, a debased mind, to murder and being heartless, Paul is diagnosing the condition of the human heart. There is no good person. It is a fact established long ago in Scripture: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). This is exactly why the goodness of our God and Father is so great—while we were yet sinners, deceitful, rebellious, hating Him—He provided the way of salvation. Jesus punished in the place of wicked, ruined sinners. The Spirit given so that wicked people receive a heart transplant—completely new life, new thoughts, an alien goodness which is from God given to the believer.

The believer knows his guilty past. The Christian knows the full-on wickedness of former days and she praises God because what she was she no longer is. In Christ, one is a new creation. The old is dead, the new life has come. Even then, it is not the Christian who is good, it is Christ Who is for the Christian every boast, every evidence of goodness. It is the Spirit Who leads the believer to kneel before the God of Glory and confess—”this heart, once beyond human cure, has been transplanted from above, so that it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me!”

Contemplating Your Greatness, Father in heaven, leads the believer to borrow the words of the hymn writer who declared: ^"Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven! To His feet your tribute bring, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore His praises sing!" King of Wondrous Blessedness, Source of Every Good, by the presence of Your Spirit help me to walk in the way of Christ, the Redeemer-Savior. Let my life and actions, words and deeds be a bold boast of Christ and Him alone because it is in Him I have this heart transplant and everlasting life which are for the honour and praise and glory of the Generous Father. Amen.

^Henry F. Lyte, who based his hymn on Psalm 103

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