[Editor’s Note: This is part of a devotional series through the book of Romans.]
Romans 1:24–32
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, [25] because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
[26] For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; [27] and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
[28] 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.
After noting how Paul says three times “God gave them up” (vv. 24, 26, 28), the ESV Study Bible explains,
In every instance the giving up to sin is a result of idolatry, the refusal to make God the center and circumference of all existence, so that in practice the creature is exalted over the Creator. Hence, all individual sins are a consequence of the failure to prize and praise God as the giver of every good thing.
This observation is greatly helpful for the pastor. To recognize that “all individual sins are a consequence of the failure to prize and praise God” is one of the most significant shepherding strategies to remember. Idolatry, in other words, is at the heart of all particular sins. This means that the pastor aims to help people smash idols. Or to put it positively: the pastor works to ensure that their people above all things “prize and praise God.”
In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin famously observed that “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols” (1.II.8). Indeed, since the fall of mankind into sin our hearts are (to use the Beveridge translation of the Institutes) “a perpetual forge of idols.” Alan Jacobs helps us understand still more vividly what Calvin had in mind with this phrase:
Here’s the Latin: Unde colligere licet, hominis ingenium perpetuam, ut ita loquar, esse idolorum fabricam. The word Beveridge translated as “forge” — a synecdoche for “the place where a blacksmith does his work” — is fabrica, which actually has a more general meaning: it’s a workshop. It’s a place where things are fabricated. The human mind is, then, a workshop that perpetually cranks out idols.
The human mind (or heart) as a “workshop that perpetually cranks out idols” is a graphic (and alarming) way to describe what has happened to humanity as a result of the fall. And this seems like an ideal metaphor to help explain what Paul is outlining in Romans 1:24–32. He’s describing humanity as an idol factory constantly at work cranking out a dizzying array of sins. In fact, there are so many sins coming off the production line that at one point Paul simply mentions among the list, “inventors of evil” (v. 30). There is no end to our creativity, apart from Christ, to manufacture idols. This, of course, is an example of the present judgement of God on sin: he gives us over to our idol-making ways.
Coming back to pastoral ministry, the shepherd is one who knows what the heart is capable of—in fact, what it is engineered to do since the fall. And knowing this, a faithful pastor works to destroy the idol-making capabilities within his own heart and the hearts of his people. This is unconventional warfare and a reminder to the pastor that his work is primarily spiritual. Pastors declare in manifold ways that the idol factory has been shut down; it has been decommissioned in Christ:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:1–4).
Instead of an idol-factory, our redeemed hearts are now (to change the metaphor) orchards of grace. No longer are we to produce idols, but as Spirit-led people we are to produce fruit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:23–24).
Father in heaven,
It grieves me to know what my heart was capable of apart from Christ. Indeed, Paul rightly describes me before you graciously removed my idol-making heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh. You had given me over to my idol-making desires. But praise be to you for not leaving me in my pitiable estate—praise God for shutting down the factory! I pray that by your Spirit I will continue to put to death my indwelling sin, and labor well as a pastor to help others do the same, so that a harvest of righteousness might grow up in us. All to the praise of your glorious grace that will do it.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.