Title Without Excuses/Romans 1:19-20
Man's new knowledge is built on the foundation of love and mercy. To love someone worthy of love, this is human new knowledge. So, people think about whether they have the conditions to receive God's love in their own way. And when such conditions are found, they put them first and seek God. However, despite the fact that there are conditions worthy of being loved and there is no particular bad thing that can provoke God's wrath, when difficulties arise, we cannot help but be angry with God. It is rebellion against the fact that a fair price is not given for one's good deeds, but rather a bad result is given. And they deny the existence of God. If there is a God, it is natural to love those who are to be loved, but seeing the people who deserve to be loved go through hardships and difficulties, they protest that God does not exist. This is the universal human thinking of God.
And this kind of thinking can be found everywhere in Christianity. I mentioned it when I spoke on the topic of 'I will live by faith', but the attempt to evaluate God by looking at what is happening in the world clearly shows how wicked humans are. Through such things as those who seem to have faith prosper and those who seem unbelieving suffer hardships, having a view that 'God is just and rewarding and rewarding is sure' shows the reality of living without faith. is.
But there is no one in the world who deserves God's love. Do you think you have the conditions to receive God's love? What good do you see in you? Even if you groped and groped over your life so far, you should know that the good that came from you did not exist. As I said last time, all human beings are under the wrath of God. Humans do not have the conditions to be loved by God, but rather are beings who have only the condition to receive wrath and fall into destruction. How can we say love if we come before God and give up our own things?
We talk about the fact that God sent Jesus into the world to save us and say that he is a 'God of love', but the Bible speaks of Jesus who came into the world as God's righteousness, not to introduce us to 'the God of love'. Why do we have no righteousness?' This is to explain 'Why should we wait for Jesus Christ and look only to Him?'
If we ignore this point and say only God's love and only ask for thanks for what He has given us, we will eventually raise our heads and proudly say 'thank you' and say, 'I am loved by God' to ourselves, given something to be thankful for. You will be proud of yourself. And you will have a feeling of superiority to believers who have fewer conditions to be thankful for than me.
However, since the believer's gratitude refers to the thanksgiving expressed in God's wrath, thanksgiving that ends with 'thank you' cannot be regarded as gratitude. Believers who know the wrath of God will have no choice but to feel ashamed about the salvation and love that came to sinners who deserved to die under wrath. And since he has no righteousness to receive God's love, he has no choice but to realize his filthiness and wickedness while giving thanks for the fact that Jesus had to come. This is the attitude of knowing and grateful for love as a true believer.
That is why, as long as all human beings are under God's wrath, no one goes to hell because they have done evil things. This is because all human beings are already evil sinners and are destined to go to hell, but it is contradictory to select and send evil people to hell. The thought, 'If God is love, won't He send people to heaven who do good deeds and live a good life?' is nothing more than human knowledge. However, the Bible says that we do not go to hell because we did evil things, but because we did not believe in Christ.
Verses 19, 20, “For the things that may be known of God are revealed in them, and God has revealed them to them. We have no excuses.”
He says that I can see within me the things that allow me to know God. This does not mean that humans know God, but it means new knowledge that is manifested in human religiosity. So, human beings seek God and seek God in their own way with their own knowledge of God, but in the end, it is nothing more than seeking God for themselves, not to follow and serve God.
Verse 20 says that his invisible things, even his eternal power and divinity, are clearly seen and understood by the things that have been made. In other words, if the invisible was eternally invisible, then as a human being, we have something to say. You can use the excuse, 'How can you trust someone you can't see?' In other words, we can blame God for not believing in God.
However, it is said that his eternal power and divinity were seen and known in all things. Power and divinity mean 'becoming God'. In other words, God left his own mark on the things he made. Therefore, humans can discover traces of God through all things. That the invisible appeared to be visible. However, when humans found traces of God in what they saw, they had a certain reaction.
I'll get the word out again. God is invisible. The invisible was revealed in the visible by placing his marks in the visible. But what you see is not God. God is still invisible. It is only manifested in the visible so that the world may have a consciousness of the invisible God. Therefore, if a proper human being has a consciousness of God through what he sees, it is not to serve what he sees as God, but to seek the invisible God through what he sees. But in what direction did human new knowledge lead humans? It is believing in what you see. This is the man who knows God, but does not glorify him as God, as verse 21 says. Through the creation of God, man becomes conscious of God, but he does not glorify the invisible God by believing in what he sees. And it is God's declaration that no one will escape from this wrath.
Christ has come to us. He came in the form of being ignored and despised. And he suffered and died by the world. Jesus appeared before us in the visible form of the invisible God. Therefore, we can know the heart of God through Jesus. Jesus teaches us not to believe what we see. That is why he came in a form that completely transcends the world. But people try to secure what they see again through Jesus and use it as their strength. We must not forget that this is nothing more than the image of a human being that must be destroyed.
After all, if you serve God with what you see, it becomes idolatry. Faith is serving the invisible through the visible. But in the first place, we did not have these qualities at all. That is why the Holy Spirit comes to make us realize that we have no faith, and to give up on ourselves and look only at the righteousness of Christ.
People look at the Bible to find out their mistakes and try to fix them, but the Bible doesn't ask us to correct them. The Bible only declares the despair that man cannot meet God's demands at all costs. However, since humans are desperate beings, the fact that Jesus appeared among us as God's righteousness brings us new hope. When we live our lives with Him alone as our hope, we will transcend what we see and rely on Him alone. This man is a true righteous man.