Or, Nature’s Light on Neutrality’s LiesRomans 1:21-23October 17, 2021 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins

Hubris really is the right word for all of this. Hubris is juicy pride; press it like rare steak and self-conceit squishes out like blood pools on the plate. Hubris is arrogance, but with a fist raised toward heaven more than against other humans. Hubris is a kind of insanity, so we can modify Einstein’s definition to fit: hubris is receiving the same gifts over and over and expecting the Giver to be gone the next time. Hubris is also expecting the Giver not to mind being ignored.

It is funny, as in, so shockingly unbelievable, that you’d think it must be satire. Imagine the headline: “Man gets breath, would rather die than say ‘Thank you.’” We aren’t shocked because we breath ingratitude’s exhaust all the time. We’ve been lead to believe, by God’s enemies, that honoring God is weak and foolish. It’s supposedly simplistic to acknowledge and worship God. But deep down in places people don’t talk about at parties, they know. Their knowledge haunts them like an embarrassing shadow.

The wrath of God is being revealed against this suppression of truth. They are desperate to keep it on the down low, even though they know.

They know that there is a God who made all that they see, a God who made the the world and who made them. God showed and is showing Himself to all men through creation and they are “without excuse.” The Greek word (ἀναπολογήτους) means without apology, as in, they have no defense.

In verses 21-23 it’s as if Paul backs up the theological bus and runs over the Great Pumpkin of Hubris again. He gives a second “because” (διότι), a second set of refusals with reasoning based on their knowledge of God, knowledge that is real, relevant, and that they are committed to reject.

Five characteristics of this hubris:

1. Without a Sense of Obligation

The first part of verse 21 is the fundamental failure of man since the fall. It is the face of suppression. Certainly some men go out of their way to protest against God, so-called militant atheists, but this is the typical, mundane “practical” atheist version of unrighteousness.

“The wrath of God is being revealed…because having known God they neither give God glory nor give God thanks.”

The ESV “honor God” is okay, but the verb (ἐδόξασαν) is related to the noun doxa, glory. Men will not give glory to God. They refuse to acknowledge His worth.

It’s so insane it is immoral. How can a person be trusted who can’t, who won’t answer such a simple A or B choice correction? Jonathan Edwards once proposed the following thought experiment. Imagine there was a third-party judge in the universe with impeccable wisdom and courage. Imagine this judge was assigned the case of determining worth between two sides. On one side is God and on the other side is all the best of mankind and the rest of the universe. The judge looks at the scale. There is no question. Even considered collectively, all creation cannot be more glorious than the Creator.

To know just a little bit more than the above is to know that man’s glory goes with God’s; reflections are only as good as they are turned toward the original. When we worship the God of glory we are being made full (see Ephesians 3:19), and failing to do so we shrivel, we are hollowed out, we are nothing but dust. This will be obvious soon.

It is an interesting connection: they did not give God glory and they did not give God thanks. Both praise and gratitude are parts of worship, sometimes overlapping but able to be distinguished. But it is ingratitude that corrupts man and rusts out his soul in hubris and resentment. Men will call themselves women before they will give God thanks. Men will literally go to hell rather than give God thanks.

Being thankful is the image-bearers godly response to all the gifts of God. Being thankful is inve[...]