The Root

When Paul introduces the gospel -- the good news -- to the Romans (Rom 1:16-17), he begins with the bad news (Rom 1:18-3:20). I find it interesting, then, that the bad news begins with "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them" (Rom 1:18-19). The bad news is, clearly, God's wrath. But why is God angry? He's angry at "ungodliness and unrighteousness." Okay, sure, but in what sense? He's angry at those who suppress the truth. What truth? "What can be known about God."

According to the text that follows, most of what we see around us is the direct result of that particular action. Not admitting to who God is, we refused to honor and thank Him, became futile in our thinking, dark in our hearts, and fools, worshiping the creature rather than the Creator (Rom 1:21-23). That led to depravity (Rom 1:24-25) which led to homosexual behavior (Rom 1:26-27) which led to all manner of evil (Rom 1:28-30). It appears to me, then, that the fundamental cause of sin is the suppression of truth about God. Sin, of course, is defined as a failure to obey God, but I think that failing to obey is the obvious outcome of a refusal to believe the truth about God. Interestingly, when Jesus was explaining to His disciples that the Helper, the Holy Spirit, would come, He said, "And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me ..." (John 16:8-11). Jesus connects the problem of sin with "they do not believe in Me."

Does this work? Well, if we look at the first sin, it does. The approach of the serpent was "Did God really say ...?" (Gen 3:1). Questioning God. Next it was, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened ..." (Gen 3:4-5). Directly denying God. So Eve's sin began with the suppression of the truth about God. But I think, if we look, we'll find it everywhere. Paul lays the sin of idolatry at the feet of the suppression of the truth of God. We can see most of the rest in the same light. We take the name of the Lord in vain because we believe Him to be vain. We forget the Sabbath because we don't consider a day to honor Him to be valuable. We fail to honor father and mother because we believe we have better ideas regarding what He gave us for father and mother. We murder because we disagree with His valuation of beings made in His image. We commit adultery because we think we can do better to satisfy our desires than He can. We steal because we believe He is holding back from us. And on and on. I think it is very possible to trace every sin back to a root of suppressing the truth about God.

That's all well and good, but what's the point? I think it is immensely practical. If I know that my primary reason for sinning is a failure on my part to believe what I already know to be true about God, that gives me a direction to go in my work to cease from sinning. (Mind you, I won't attain it in this life. I just want to go in that direction ... as far as I can.) If my primary cause of sin is my failure to believe who God is, then my primary tool to stop sinning is to choose to believe God. That is, I can see that "In this case I did this but God is that." So change how I think. And choose to act on what I know is true about God. Built into this, of course, is the self-realization that I am suppressing the truth about God and I need to remedy that. I need to remedy that by adjusting my thinking to Him (rather than vice versa). Sure, there is lots of work to be done ... often repetitious work. "What? I bought that lie again??" But while struggling with secondary causes -- this temptation or that -- perhaps I need most to work on my heart for God and renewing what I know to be true about God. I'm pretty sure I have errors stored in there that can be fixed with His Word.