The Truth About God - Assumed, Repressed, and Exchanged
Genesis 1:1 and Romans 1:16-32
The first 10 words in the Bible are arguably one of the most important statements of the Christian religion. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Because this phrase is so familiar, it is often dismissed as not that important. But many denominations have catechisms for children, and Genesis 1:1 is often the very first question or doctrine taught to a child. So it is fundamental to everything. Genesis 1:1 is also used by the Bible itself to demonstrate the absolute power of God to create EVERYTHING out of absolutely NOTHING, as Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible.”
The Truth About God Assumed
Here is the very first and most important thing to remember about Genesis 1:1. The Bible ASSUMES the existence of God. The Bible never tries to prove God’s existence. It is assumed because Romans 1:18-23 teaches that all men already have an innate, inborn knowledge that their Creator exists and that He is Almighty. Regardless of what anyone says, everyone already knows this. But if everyone already knows it, then why are there so-called atheists and New Age theology people who repudiate a Creator and a wholesale movement in the United States to eliminate God from every facet of American public life as if there is no such thing?
The answer to that question is in Romans 1:16-25 in the New Testament. In verse 16 and 17, Paul introduces another marvelous statement from Scripture about the fate of one’s eternal destiny that should be shouted non-stop in everyone’s ears till the day he dies. “the gospel...is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last...”
Think about that for a moment. “Salvation for everyone who believes ..the righteousness of God ... that is by faith from first to last.”
My question - and most other people’s logical question - is why can’t I be righteous by just being a good person? No, that possibility is excluded. It is explained why in Romans 3:10-19, leaving “by faith” the only option for being righteous before God. The righteousness that God has revealed is “by faith from first to last.” That is the only way it can be obtained. Other than what Paul teaches in Romans 3:10-19, there is also another reason why it has to be by faith.
The Truth About God Suppressed
That answer is found in Romans 1:18, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness...” Okay. There are MAJOR problems with the whole idea of thinking you can make God happy by being good. First, there is the really huge problem of one of the most dreadful things one can imagine. The wrath of God. Paul says that right NOW the wrath of God is very active against every member of the human race. Why? Because All of us have SUPPRESSED THE TRUTH about God. That is, even though everyone knows there is a God and that He is almighty, everyone is guilty of subduing, holding down, smothering, and putting a lid on that idea. Paul uses the perfect word for it here. GODLESSNESS. Or, God-lessness. That is, diminishing God or making Him less, as if He did not exist at all. We have ignored, dismissed, denied Him, cursed Him, not thanked Him, and not glorified Him. We have not made Him first. We have made Him last. He is not the Hero; He is the zero. Rather than love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, and all of our souls, and all of our minds, and all our strength, we have done just about anything we can think of to shut God out, forget about Him, and virtually never acknowledge or mention His name other than in profanity. In fact, our society has made it almost embarrassing to even mention the name of God in any context. The TV networks never say that the Lord is bringing storms across the land; Mother Nature does. Thanksgiving has become Turkey Day. God is being removed legally and systematically from every vestige of public life in Western culture, including politics, the judicial system, the Boy Scouts, public education, and our developing health care system. We live in a god-less society and a god-less world. All of this amounts to the suppression of the truth about God. It is God-lessness as if He wasn’t there. We are working very hard to deceive ourselves by choosing to completely disregard what is evident everywhere about us.
The Screaming Creation
Well, just how evident is it? Paul piles up a number of phrases to emphasize the clarity we all have about our Creator. He says in Romans 1:19, 20 “...since what be known about God is PLAIN to them because God has made it PLAIN to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been CLEARLY SEEN, being UNDERSTOOD from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Well if the knowledge of God is so plain, clearly seen, and understood, where is it so visible? Paul says In the general revelation that is all about us, “...from what has been made.” Psalm 19:1-3 enlarges on this and explains it this way:
The heavens declare the glory of God
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
Night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
The stars, the earth’s continuous orbit about the sun, the moon, planets, nebulae, constellations are visible signs in the heavens that announce the glory of God. The galaxies blink, shine, twinkle, declare, proclaim, display and pour forth speech about God’s handiwork non-stop from one end of the horizon to the next, signifying 24 hours a day for as long as you breathe air that this is God’s world and that it was made by Him with unimaginable divine power and intelligence. (Romans 1:20). There is not a single second of your life that this witness is not there for you to see and hear. It cries out during the day and continues the same report after the sun sets until it rises again. Wherever one turns his head and looks, he sees and has knowledge of the glory of his Creator. In fact, it makes no difference how many languages are on the earth, or how many languages Wycliffe Bible Translators will tell you have no Bible in their language, or how remote one may be from civilized populations or whether one can read or hear or speak or whether he has ever heard a sermon or whether he has a Bible. It does not make any difference if he lives in the Arctic or whether he teaches science or dialectical materialism in a prestigious university and is gifted with supreme intelligence or hides in a remote South American jungle and has absolutely no education and is as ignorant as can be. The message that the heavens, the mountains, vegetation, rivers, oceans, wildlife, and the amazing human body sends out is heard clearly, plainly, and is understood by all people without exception - there is a divine Creator who is all-powerful. Not one single word is ever spoken, but it does not need to be. The silent communication and meaning is screaming at deafening decibels that we all hear every single day we live. So-called arguments that prove God exists are not needed. They are pointless and useless to people who know the truth about the Creator but, regardless, repress, choke, and suffocate that knowledge. It is this that makes Genesis 1:1 so important in the Bible and why it is announced at the front of God’s inscripturated revelation that the Creator made everything as an assumption we all own.
Not Glorifying or Giving Thanks To Him
Now if anyone says to himself, “I have not suppressed the truth about God. I know He is there, and I believe in Him. Isn’t that enough to please Him and be righteous?” No. There is a little bit more to this suppression of the truth about God than simply denying His existence. There is a facet that a lot of people have not thought about. Romans 1:21, 24, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him ...who is praised forever.” Suppression of the truth about God extends into not just not acknowledging the truth about His existence but how one responds to Him even if He believes God is the Creator. All have withheld from the Creator the gratitude, worship, and honor due Him for absolutely everything that comes to them by God’s hand - our very life and breath, our food and sustenance, the rain and sun that bless us , the order of the earth and solar system, and the seasons that refresh us. Think of it. Who has not been ungrateful to His Creator or has forgotten to thank Him? Most of if not virtually all of the time? It is just another form of god-lessness.
Without Excuse
So what is the effect of all this? It is two-fold. First, Paul makes the sobering conclusion in verse 20 that the end result of all this plain, clearly seen, and understood witness for which we do not give thanks or glorify the Creator is the same for every human without exception - “...people are without excuse.” The creation’s witness alone will condemn every man, woman, boy, and girl even if he never reads a Bible or hears the gospel or has a missionary come to his tribe to tell him about God. There will never be anyone who is not justifiably guilty of knowing God and rejecting the truth that is revealed about Him in the creation. He will either acknowledge the Creator AND glorify Him, give thanks to Him, and serve Him (verse 24), or he will be god-less by suppressing the blazing truth about Him and thus denying Him glory and thanksgiving.
Though general revelation about God in the creation is known by all, we all reject it and are thus under the wrath of God. The only way to alter this condition is in Romans 1:16, 17, ““the gospel...is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed--a righteousness that is by faith from first to last...” It will take special revelation, or the preaching of the gospel, that Jesus the Redeemer satisfied God’s wrath toward men by His atoning sacrifice on the cross to change everything. There is no work to do. You cannot remove God’s wrath. Christ has done it for us. When that gospel is believed in the heart, then people become righteous by faith, repent of their sin against God, and worship Him in truth.
The Truth About God Exchanged
The second result of suppressing the truth about God is that people make an EXCHANGE. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and EXCHANGED the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They EXCHANGED the truth about God for a LIE, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” (Romans 1:21-25)
When the above sequence sets in - suppressing the truth about God, not glorifying God as God and not glorifying and giving thanks to Him - an ominous, moral, downward progression soon follows. People began to think that they are more intelligent than those about them, that they have become enlightened and sophisticated, that everyone else is a weak fool who depends on a crutch for believing such silly things about God. As Paul says in Romans 1:22, “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools..” The person who is god-less has become the fool instead. He did notice that a dark pall had slipped over his mind as a judgment for disregarding His Creator. His “wisdom” made his ability to think totally vain and useless to him when he tried to discern the truth from that moment on. He was totally unaware that in his heart and mind he had now become an idolater. He had made the worst bargain of his existence. In his heart and mind, he had just transacted an EXCHANGE.(verses 23 and 25). What did he exchange? The TRUTH ABOUT GOD is EXCHANGED for THE LIE. The English text Bibles say “a lie”, but the Greek text indicates the correct interpretation should be “THE LIE.” This wold consists of just two very distinct, overriding, and very clear options. There aren’t three or four or a myriad of them. According to the Bible, there are just two: there is the truth about God, and anything else other than that is THE LIE. That’s it. Everyone in this world is following one of these two ways - the TRUTH ABOUT GOD as found in the Bible or THE LIE. Everything other than God’s truth found in the Scriptures is swept into the lie column.
In other words, if you work really hard at self-deceit and suppress self-evident truth about God that is flashing in front of you wherever you look and do not give Him gratitude that is His due, you will soon skew your mind to ruination. Your thinking will be altered and become ineffectual in helping you divine truth from that moment on. A dark cloud of divine judgment will fall upon your heart as the truth about God begins to fade and become foolishness in your view. And although you will think that you have finally been freed of all that God stuff and have become demystified, Instead of worshipping and serving the Creator who made you and everything else, you will instead begin to worship and serve everything the Creator made. Sex, money, things, pleasures, drugs, alcohol, even other people will become the things you serve in your idolatrous and newly informed state. Not the Creator.
The Spiral Continues
As Paul finishes Romans 1 from verses 24-32, he tells of the further judgment upon all men and wrath of God that continues to pour out as all these things above take place. This is found in verses 24, 26, and 28 and is described as “God gave them over.” Just read what God gives them over to. It is a terrible thing. God gives them over to wickedness. That is the judgment that befalls those who are god-less. The wickedness described in verses 24-32 descends upon those who reject the truth about God. God turns them loose and restrains their wicked nature no more as He lets them fall uninhibited into further sin and depravity for suppressing the truth about Him and being ungrateful to Him. So there is a double judgment here. He sends them into wickedness as punishment for their god-lessness, and then he judges them for the wickedness with which He punished them. (verse 32)
Now all of this is to say the gospel is about a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. The reason that righteousness is obtained by faith alone is because God’s wrath burns in judgment against godlessness and wickedness. Since we have all suppressed the truth about God, have not given thanks to Him, and have exchanged the worship of Him for the worship of what He has made, we are all godless and under the curse of His wrath. There is no hope for us to erase or undo these things because of the righteous nature of a holy God. Only God’s grace and mercy can spare us. And that is what God did when He so loved the world by giving His own Son to satisfy God’s justice for sin in our place. God’s righteousness that is by faith from first to last is available today, even to those who have suppressed the clear truth about God and not given Him thanks or glorified Him.
“the gospel...is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last...”
Because this phrase is so familiar, it is often dismissed as not that important. But many denominations have catechisms for children, and Genesis 1:1 is often the very first question or doctrine taught to a child. So it is fundamental to everything. Genesis 1:1 is also used by the Bible itself to demonstrate the absolute power of God to create EVERYTHING out of absolutely NOTHING, as Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible.”
The Truth About God Assumed
Here is the very first and most important thing to remember about Genesis 1:1. The Bible ASSUMES the existence of God. The Bible never tries to prove God’s existence. It is assumed because Romans 1:18-23 teaches that all men already have an innate, inborn knowledge that their Creator exists and that He is Almighty. Regardless of what anyone says, everyone already knows this. But if everyone already knows it, then why are there so-called atheists and New Age theology people who repudiate a Creator and a wholesale movement in the United States to eliminate God from every facet of American public life as if there is no such thing?
The answer to that question is in Romans 1:16-25 in the New Testament. In verse 16 and 17, Paul introduces another marvelous statement from Scripture about the fate of one’s eternal destiny that should be shouted non-stop in everyone’s ears till the day he dies. “the gospel...is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last...”
Think about that for a moment. “Salvation for everyone who believes ..the righteousness of God ... that is by faith from first to last.”
My question - and most other people’s logical question - is why can’t I be righteous by just being a good person? No, that possibility is excluded. It is explained why in Romans 3:10-19, leaving “by faith” the only option for being righteous before God. The righteousness that God has revealed is “by faith from first to last.” That is the only way it can be obtained. Other than what Paul teaches in Romans 3:10-19, there is also another reason why it has to be by faith.
The Truth About God Suppressed
That answer is found in Romans 1:18, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness...” Okay. There are MAJOR problems with the whole idea of thinking you can make God happy by being good. First, there is the really huge problem of one of the most dreadful things one can imagine. The wrath of God. Paul says that right NOW the wrath of God is very active against every member of the human race. Why? Because All of us have SUPPRESSED THE TRUTH about God. That is, even though everyone knows there is a God and that He is almighty, everyone is guilty of subduing, holding down, smothering, and putting a lid on that idea. Paul uses the perfect word for it here. GODLESSNESS. Or, God-lessness. That is, diminishing God or making Him less, as if He did not exist at all. We have ignored, dismissed, denied Him, cursed Him, not thanked Him, and not glorified Him. We have not made Him first. We have made Him last. He is not the Hero; He is the zero. Rather than love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, and all of our souls, and all of our minds, and all our strength, we have done just about anything we can think of to shut God out, forget about Him, and virtually never acknowledge or mention His name other than in profanity. In fact, our society has made it almost embarrassing to even mention the name of God in any context. The TV networks never say that the Lord is bringing storms across the land; Mother Nature does. Thanksgiving has become Turkey Day. God is being removed legally and systematically from every vestige of public life in Western culture, including politics, the judicial system, the Boy Scouts, public education, and our developing health care system. We live in a god-less society and a god-less world. All of this amounts to the suppression of the truth about God. It is God-lessness as if He wasn’t there. We are working very hard to deceive ourselves by choosing to completely disregard what is evident everywhere about us.
The Screaming Creation
Well, just how evident is it? Paul piles up a number of phrases to emphasize the clarity we all have about our Creator. He says in Romans 1:19, 20 “...since what be known about God is PLAIN to them because God has made it PLAIN to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been CLEARLY SEEN, being UNDERSTOOD from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Well if the knowledge of God is so plain, clearly seen, and understood, where is it so visible? Paul says In the general revelation that is all about us, “...from what has been made.” Psalm 19:1-3 enlarges on this and explains it this way:
The heavens declare the glory of God
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
Night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
The stars, the earth’s continuous orbit about the sun, the moon, planets, nebulae, constellations are visible signs in the heavens that announce the glory of God. The galaxies blink, shine, twinkle, declare, proclaim, display and pour forth speech about God’s handiwork non-stop from one end of the horizon to the next, signifying 24 hours a day for as long as you breathe air that this is God’s world and that it was made by Him with unimaginable divine power and intelligence. (Romans 1:20). There is not a single second of your life that this witness is not there for you to see and hear. It cries out during the day and continues the same report after the sun sets until it rises again. Wherever one turns his head and looks, he sees and has knowledge of the glory of his Creator. In fact, it makes no difference how many languages are on the earth, or how many languages Wycliffe Bible Translators will tell you have no Bible in their language, or how remote one may be from civilized populations or whether one can read or hear or speak or whether he has ever heard a sermon or whether he has a Bible. It does not make any difference if he lives in the Arctic or whether he teaches science or dialectical materialism in a prestigious university and is gifted with supreme intelligence or hides in a remote South American jungle and has absolutely no education and is as ignorant as can be. The message that the heavens, the mountains, vegetation, rivers, oceans, wildlife, and the amazing human body sends out is heard clearly, plainly, and is understood by all people without exception - there is a divine Creator who is all-powerful. Not one single word is ever spoken, but it does not need to be. The silent communication and meaning is screaming at deafening decibels that we all hear every single day we live. So-called arguments that prove God exists are not needed. They are pointless and useless to people who know the truth about the Creator but, regardless, repress, choke, and suffocate that knowledge. It is this that makes Genesis 1:1 so important in the Bible and why it is announced at the front of God’s inscripturated revelation that the Creator made everything as an assumption we all own.
Not Glorifying or Giving Thanks To Him
Now if anyone says to himself, “I have not suppressed the truth about God. I know He is there, and I believe in Him. Isn’t that enough to please Him and be righteous?” No. There is a little bit more to this suppression of the truth about God than simply denying His existence. There is a facet that a lot of people have not thought about. Romans 1:21, 24, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him ...who is praised forever.” Suppression of the truth about God extends into not just not acknowledging the truth about His existence but how one responds to Him even if He believes God is the Creator. All have withheld from the Creator the gratitude, worship, and honor due Him for absolutely everything that comes to them by God’s hand - our very life and breath, our food and sustenance, the rain and sun that bless us , the order of the earth and solar system, and the seasons that refresh us. Think of it. Who has not been ungrateful to His Creator or has forgotten to thank Him? Most of if not virtually all of the time? It is just another form of god-lessness.
Without Excuse
So what is the effect of all this? It is two-fold. First, Paul makes the sobering conclusion in verse 20 that the end result of all this plain, clearly seen, and understood witness for which we do not give thanks or glorify the Creator is the same for every human without exception - “...people are without excuse.” The creation’s witness alone will condemn every man, woman, boy, and girl even if he never reads a Bible or hears the gospel or has a missionary come to his tribe to tell him about God. There will never be anyone who is not justifiably guilty of knowing God and rejecting the truth that is revealed about Him in the creation. He will either acknowledge the Creator AND glorify Him, give thanks to Him, and serve Him (verse 24), or he will be god-less by suppressing the blazing truth about Him and thus denying Him glory and thanksgiving.
Though general revelation about God in the creation is known by all, we all reject it and are thus under the wrath of God. The only way to alter this condition is in Romans 1:16, 17, ““the gospel...is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed--a righteousness that is by faith from first to last...” It will take special revelation, or the preaching of the gospel, that Jesus the Redeemer satisfied God’s wrath toward men by His atoning sacrifice on the cross to change everything. There is no work to do. You cannot remove God’s wrath. Christ has done it for us. When that gospel is believed in the heart, then people become righteous by faith, repent of their sin against God, and worship Him in truth.
The Truth About God Exchanged
The second result of suppressing the truth about God is that people make an EXCHANGE. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and EXCHANGED the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They EXCHANGED the truth about God for a LIE, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” (Romans 1:21-25)
When the above sequence sets in - suppressing the truth about God, not glorifying God as God and not glorifying and giving thanks to Him - an ominous, moral, downward progression soon follows. People began to think that they are more intelligent than those about them, that they have become enlightened and sophisticated, that everyone else is a weak fool who depends on a crutch for believing such silly things about God. As Paul says in Romans 1:22, “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools..” The person who is god-less has become the fool instead. He did notice that a dark pall had slipped over his mind as a judgment for disregarding His Creator. His “wisdom” made his ability to think totally vain and useless to him when he tried to discern the truth from that moment on. He was totally unaware that in his heart and mind he had now become an idolater. He had made the worst bargain of his existence. In his heart and mind, he had just transacted an EXCHANGE.(verses 23 and 25). What did he exchange? The TRUTH ABOUT GOD is EXCHANGED for THE LIE. The English text Bibles say “a lie”, but the Greek text indicates the correct interpretation should be “THE LIE.” This wold consists of just two very distinct, overriding, and very clear options. There aren’t three or four or a myriad of them. According to the Bible, there are just two: there is the truth about God, and anything else other than that is THE LIE. That’s it. Everyone in this world is following one of these two ways - the TRUTH ABOUT GOD as found in the Bible or THE LIE. Everything other than God’s truth found in the Scriptures is swept into the lie column.
In other words, if you work really hard at self-deceit and suppress self-evident truth about God that is flashing in front of you wherever you look and do not give Him gratitude that is His due, you will soon skew your mind to ruination. Your thinking will be altered and become ineffectual in helping you divine truth from that moment on. A dark cloud of divine judgment will fall upon your heart as the truth about God begins to fade and become foolishness in your view. And although you will think that you have finally been freed of all that God stuff and have become demystified, Instead of worshipping and serving the Creator who made you and everything else, you will instead begin to worship and serve everything the Creator made. Sex, money, things, pleasures, drugs, alcohol, even other people will become the things you serve in your idolatrous and newly informed state. Not the Creator.
The Spiral Continues
As Paul finishes Romans 1 from verses 24-32, he tells of the further judgment upon all men and wrath of God that continues to pour out as all these things above take place. This is found in verses 24, 26, and 28 and is described as “God gave them over.” Just read what God gives them over to. It is a terrible thing. God gives them over to wickedness. That is the judgment that befalls those who are god-less. The wickedness described in verses 24-32 descends upon those who reject the truth about God. God turns them loose and restrains their wicked nature no more as He lets them fall uninhibited into further sin and depravity for suppressing the truth about Him and being ungrateful to Him. So there is a double judgment here. He sends them into wickedness as punishment for their god-lessness, and then he judges them for the wickedness with which He punished them. (verse 32)
Now all of this is to say the gospel is about a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. The reason that righteousness is obtained by faith alone is because God’s wrath burns in judgment against godlessness and wickedness. Since we have all suppressed the truth about God, have not given thanks to Him, and have exchanged the worship of Him for the worship of what He has made, we are all godless and under the curse of His wrath. There is no hope for us to erase or undo these things because of the righteous nature of a holy God. Only God’s grace and mercy can spare us. And that is what God did when He so loved the world by giving His own Son to satisfy God’s justice for sin in our place. God’s righteousness that is by faith from first to last is available today, even to those who have suppressed the clear truth about God and not given Him thanks or glorified Him.
“the gospel...is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last...”