The Question Hanging Over Truth:
Whose Truth; God’s or Men’s
Paul writes in Romans that “God gave them up” (Ro 1:24). In fact, Paul repeats this phrase three times meaning that God completely gave them up; but, who did God give up, why and what does this phrase even mean? To answer that means we must go to the Old Testament before the Cataclysm {Flood} or “Back to Genesis”.
The English phrase, gave up, comes from the Greek word παραδίδωμι {paradidomi}. It means to deliver to prison and carries the connotation of judicial judgment. This is in the aorist active indicative meaning that at some point in the past God judged each individual person as ungodly and therefore unrighteous. Is it possible to trace back to when this occurred and if it still occurs today? Yes, when one goes back to Genesis.
Law of Identity means we must define our terms: ungodliness and unrighteousness. Ungodliness {ἀσέβεια/asebeia} is that which is the antithesis of God’s nature of good and truth which is the essence of His morality. When God created man in His image, He imparted this moral code to man’s nature (Ge 1:27). When man sinned he died spiritually; that is, his godliness turned completely and irrevocably to ungodliness. Man was not capable of living from his godly nature; thus, all thoughts, words and deeds proceeded from ungodliness: this is the meaning of unrighteousness {ἀδικία/adikia}. In addition, ungodliness carries the idea of voluntary separation from God. God did not separate Himself from man; indeed, He came looking for Man and Woman. It was they who sought separation from Him because of fear of judgment. God did pronounce judgment but He also showed mercy. Man and Woman sought absolution via works; they made themselves coverings out of plant leaves. These were temporary as they would quickly crumble. God made them durable clothes pointing to the need of a blood sacrifice to cover their ungodliness; i.e., sinfulness. I believe that part of their original sin was the conception of Cain or sexual immorality; their knowing of their nakedness. Another reason they chose to cover themselves. Thus, all who have been conceived have been conceived in iniquity (Ps 51:5). They were temped with the promise of knowledge being able to make them as gods. They discovered they were the evil and have sought to be as gods ever since.
Interestingly, ungodliness and unrighteousness pertain to those who did not have the Mosaic Law; thus, all people were guilty before God before Moses received the Ten Words (Ex 20:1-17; Ro 1:18-20). The violation of God’s moral code was evidenced from the very beginning in the form of guilt. Guilt is a gift of God warning each person they have violated God’s righteousness and are in danger of the judgment; another reason Man and Woman hid themselves: they felt guilty. This means that all who were ever born were sinners, are ungodly which is expressed as unrighteousness as evidenced by their feeling guilty. Ungodly man has only one recourse: suppress the truth.
Cain, raised to be the Messiah, deliverer from Satan, was the Strong One while his brother Abel was the Worthless One. In due time God accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s. Cain, the Messiah, was shown to be ungodly and thus unworthy of defeating Satan. Abel, accepted of God, showed the proper attitude man was to have with God; humble. God confronted Cain and told him he had to control his sin. Cain rejected God’s words and killed, suppressed, Abel (Ge 4:1-8). Cain went to the land of Wanderers {Nod} where he built cities; thus, he became the founder of man’s governments. Governments are simply the man’s societal use of force to attempt to control sin. This implies the use of a special class of citizens specialized in the use of force, the military or Nephilim. This brings us to God’s declaration of judicial judgment on mankind (Ge 6:1-8).
Though God Gave Man Up
He Did NOT suspend Judgment of Man
After some period of time, the descendants of Cain overflowed nearly all other families of the earth. Not only was force used but also marriage between believers of God {sons of God} and rejectors of God {daughters of men}. This corruption nearly erased the truth of God and knowledge of His so far revealed plan of salvation. God had worked through mankind through respective patriarchs: Adam and then Cain; to no avail. It was at this time God judicially gave mankind over to the lusts of their hearts; to follow their own lies. It was probably at some point that governmental leadership discovered that any morality has to have a religious basis, a source justifying one’s morality. Since it could not be God lest they repent and be saved, they chose aspects of nature. Thus, they rejected the eternal Creator for transitory elements of His creation which could not save even themselves. As Paul writes, spiritual debauchery, ungodliness, becomes expressed in physical debauchery, type of unrighteousness. The two are linked and cannot be unlinked. God used the Cataclysm to separate the land into continents so frustrate future globalization plans of truth suppression. It was also a judgment on those who had rejected Him. Allowing man to enjoy his sin, to live as he chose, did not mean that God suspended His judgment on sin. Noah, last godly family, like Abel, found favor with God. He spent 120 years building the Ark which testified to the lost of coming judgment. Judgment they ignored. God is not mocked, whatsoever man sows that will he also reap (Ga 6:7).
Man Believes in the Ever Improvement
Of Body and Spirit Until Becoming Gods
Man acknowledges the link between spirit and body but then separates the body from the spirit. Gnosticism believes that the body is inferior and will be eventually discarded as the spirit evolves into ever more god-like status. God did not create man to be as angels, He already had them. He created man to inhabit a body throughout eternity, just not this physical, fleshly body (1Co 15:42-49). For lost man his body is simply a vehicle to use as he, or she, sees fit. Paul describes what this looks like in a downward spiral into degradation. Begins with dishonoring the body, then sexually misusing the body and finally in turning from the natural sexual use of the body toward same-sex physical relationships (Ro 1:22-27). In essence, all forms of sexual impurity are signs of unrighteous living for all to see. These warn us to turn from ungodliness by turning to Christ, the author and finisher of salvation. These concepts have become very controversial today. The force of government is used to enforce these contrary lifestyles proving again that governments are not of God but of Satan.
The claim that God punishes people for sinning, in this life, flies in the face of Scripture. God gave mankind up in the past to live as they pleased and still continues to do so today. God saves individuals from their deserved fate: Christians. The degradation and violence of societies are the consequences of sin. and cannot be blamed on God. Man demands to live separate from God. Man suppresses the Truth of God even to the point of violence against those who believe the truth of the Bible. Mankind proved this by killing the One who came to die for sin as sin so people could have peace with God. That is the only mission entrusted to Christians today: preach the Gospel.
