Lesson 2: Man’s Sin of Non-thankfulness – 1:18-32
 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
20 For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 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.

 Mankind’s problem is sin. Just one sin sentenced each of us to death. And this first sin was not one we would rank as a great sin. Read Verse 21 to see the two sins listed there – not giving honor to God, and not being thankful to Him. And now, with this sentence of death on us, there is not even one thing we can do to escape it. There is no good deed, no good act of keeping another law, nothing at all we can ever do to erase that sentence of death on our life.

But our problem does not stop with this single act of not being thankful to God. Sin has consequences. In Verse 22 we find the first consequence – we believe we are wise. We tell ourselves we will never sin again, we will do everything right. But the harder we try the greater fool we become because we believe we can solve our sin problem ourselves. And the simple act of us thinking we can solve our problem ourselves means we turn away from God. Since God is light (1 John 1:5) it means we turn away from that light, which is why our hearts are darkened.

But sin does not stop there. The next step is that we make something else to be the god of our life. Then we begin to follow the passions of our bodies, giving in to whatever our bodies desire, sinking deeper into shame and evil. Verses 23-32 tell us of a downward circle of evil as we walk away from God into our own world filled with hate and envy and murder and strife and all the other things listed in these verses.


It is important for us to understand how completely impossible it is for us to do anything about our sin. We are helpless and hopeless in the face of the death penalty which has already been given to us. For us to even try to make it right with God is an insult to Him because we are telling Him we think we are equal to or greater than He is.

The only answer possible is that we must ask God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We must give ourselves to Him by our own choice – for He will not demand this because then we would be nothing but His puppets. He wants us to choose Him over ourselves.

*If you have never given yourself to Jesus, asking Him to be your Savior from this sin and death sentence in your life, I urge you to ask Him right now.
*If you have accepted His gift of life but are still trying to please Him by following the Commandments, I urge you to ask His forgiveness. Ask Him to teach you to walk with Him by faith.