LIFE ON THE SHIP
In 1879, author Henry George wrote a book called Progress and Poverty where he compared the earth to a giant, cosmic boat: “It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space.” His point being, there were enough resources on this planet to provide all human passengers with everything they needed for physical life. Whether or not his argument remains true for the future, the analogy continues to make sense for scientists and philosophers today. It also makes sense to evangelical Christians who understand that this world, like a great ship with fatal flaws, is going to burn and sink one day but that God has provisioned it with enough grace in Jesus Christ for the salvation of everyone to eternal life. One of the difficulties with this situation for the Christian is that many people don’t believe their particular condition is urgent. Paul addresses this issue in Romans 1: 18-20 where he stresses that atheists and agnostics, professing or in practice, regardless of how honest they may feel or claim to truly be in their disbelief, are wicked and condemned before God with nothing to expect out of ultimate reality but the incomprehensible wrath of the Almighty. This is just as true today as it was when Paul was inspired to write the letter of Romans to the first century Christians.
THE SHIP AT ROME IN THE 50’S
The “book” of the Bible that we call Romans was initially a letter written primarily to gentile Christians in the capital of the Roman Empire. He wrote it in the “winter of A.D. 57-58. Paul was in Corinth, at the close of his Third Missionary Journey, on the eve of his departure to Jerusalem with the offering of money for the poor saints (15:22-27). A woman named Phoebe, of Cenchreae, a suburb of Corinth, was sailing for Rome (16:1, 2). Paul availed himself to send this letter by her. There was no postal service in the Roman Empire except for official business.”[1] What Paul sent with Phoebe was a both a personal, heartwarming letter and a theological masterpiece orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. She would probably have been shocked to know just how important the parchment in her bags was to Christians throughout history!
The major theme of this letter is God’s salvation for fallen man. It built an evangelistic foundation for the early Christians in Rome as they were surrounded by people who either didn’t believe in God or who believed in different versions of God and didn’t know of or believe in Jesus Christ at all. The religious culture of this city at the center of the world was in decline and people were losing trust in attempts at spiritual truths as the religions of the day were manipulated for political ends.[2] Many people in Rome probably felt confused and exasperated with religious claims and, as such, innocent in ignorance (if there was any true religious law). It was in this atmosphere that the Holy Spirit moved Paul to begin by showing humanity’s universal guilt before a righteous God. No one is exempted and all are wicked and lost, with nothing to look forward to except the unbearable wrath of God. Natural law is evident in creation and we also have God’s law written on our hearts and we all violate both. C.S. Lewis focused on this realization as the very starting point for evangelism writing: “It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power- it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.”[3]
The people in first century Rome were not so different from us today. We are both confronted with many different religious options that are often used pragmatically by people in power with agendas. We both have the temptation to disbelieve all “revelations” and even in the Creator God. We also feel the inner temptation to deny our culpability with ignorance as our excuse. Bertrand Russell, a famous 20th century atheist, was even bold enough to put it plainly as he “insisted on his deathbed that God had not provided ‘enough evidence’ for him to believe.”[4] In short, not only do people actively disbelieve their own guilt, but they also deny the existence of God. They don’t believe the ship they are on is sinking and they actually have the audacity to believe that it was not created by an intelligent God with expectations for His creation.
THE SHIP IN CRISIS
Romans 1:18-20 makes it clear that God is revealing His anger toward people who are sinful and wicked; who actively ignore and bury the truth about God internally. Verse 1 states that “God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (NLT). The word for “suppress” here is transliterated katechó, and it gives the image of something being held down or actively restrained.[5] This suppression carries with it one important fact: in order for this verb to make sense, the subject must be in possession of the object. In other words, you can’t suppress something that you don’t have in your possession (some translations use the word “hold” instead of “suppress” which emphasizes the point even further). Paul says that God has made certain things about Himself obvious through creation but evil people, and this is part of the evil that they hold guilt for, have covered up or suppressed these truths both for themselves and others so they can continue, unhindered, in their wicked schemes. Some of the apparent facts about God, revealed through creation, are His eternal power and divine nature. Though God has hidden Himself from our direct sight, these invisible qualities can be inferred using our God-designed reason alone. Reason itself speaks of God indirectly.
Another important word to understand in this passage is the wrath of God, transliterated orgé, that is coming for everyone who is not saved by the blood of Christ. This wrath is deserved- no one has a valid excuse- and it speaks of a justified, settled, fiery anger that swells up from within God over time and is, quite literally, terrifying and unstoppable.[6] This wrath is not a sudden outburst that God will relent from but an eternal reality that has been building up like floodwaters against a damn that will break one day. Our ship is sinking into an ocean of infinite wrath because it comes from an infinite, holy God.
EVIDENCE ONBOARD
Even though some of us are raising alarms, most people refuse to believe in the icy, dark ocean waters of damnation. To suppress this uncomfortable truth they begin by pushing down the reality of God’s very existence: without a judge there can be no judgment. Paul didn’t even give this defense the dignity of a belabored response. He simply states that God “has made it obvious” in the creation of everything and in our ability to perceive it so that we have “no excuse for not knowing God” (Romans 1:19-20 NLT). Prior to this letter and after it, many pages have been written both for and against the existence of God. Many lives have been spent in pursuit of the proof that will lay this subject to rest once and for all and some interesting lines of thought have been developed along the way. At the end of the day, however, we all exist as incomprehensibly complex and mysterious beings in a universe that defies all natural explanations. And we know this instinctively- from the lowest IQ to the highest, we can identify the fingerprints of God. An intelligent man like Bertrand Russell demanding more evidence of God is as ludicrous as a skydiver demanding more evidence of gravity and Paul deals with it succinctly. Even though we are taught to be tolerant and empathetic, maybe it is time to deal harshly with this particular excuse (which is no excuse at all) and move quickly beyond it to the urgent matters at hand. As passengers on a sinking ship surrounded by people who don’t know or refuse to believe that the ship is doomed, what are we to do? Paul anticipates the argument that those who have not heard or properly understood the gospel cannot be justifiably condemned because of ignorance and throws it overboard. This means that regardless of what anyone knows or believes (or claims to believe), everyone desperately needs Jesus Christ. What are we to do?
THE ONE TRUE LIFEBOAT
Some of the excuses believers have for not sharing the gospel are disintegrated in this passage. The analogy of a doomed ship is appropriate here: there is no time to respect another’s belief that they can swim forever on a sinking ship. God has provided a life boat big enough for everyone who will get on board in His Son and it is our privilege and sacred duty to show others where this soul-saving vessel is located. For the ones who claim the current ship is not sinking at all, we must show that it is, in fact, already taking on water. God’s wrath against sin is swelling up even now as people stand in line for eternity. For the ones who ask us to respect their belief in alternate life boats that have no bottom, we must press on with our urgent news or else hate them violently as we smile and allow them to wander off to another part of the ship, deluded and damned. For the ones who claim that they can swim, that they can stay afloat under their own power, that they can be saved through their own holiness and works of righteousness, we must quickly teach about the icy, deep waters filled with evil terror and how this sea of horrors isn’t just swallowing the boat beneath their feet but is swallowing them from the inside as well. Paul illustrates the grave reality that we can’t make it on our own efforts later on in this letter- no one can swim above the coming wrath. And for the ones who are still asleep, we must lay our timid natures aside to wake them with whatever alarm is necessary or share in the wickedness of their destruction because of our own cowardice. As believers, we are not on a pleasure cruise surrounded by existential vacationers coasting the waters of the cosmos; we are on a broken boat that will sink for everyone at some point.
When we first read this passage it appears that only the damned are suppressing the truth of God so that they can continue in their wickedness and their judgment is deserved, however, there is another form of denial that can take place in us as believers and it is just as insidious: a denial of God’s judgment on those around us. The belief that God will overlook or go light on those around us who are simply ignorant or who sincerely believe a lie is a cancer in Christianity that sends souls to an eternal hell in the name of tolerance. What we are tolerating is not another person’s right to believe what they want but another person’s error sinking them in the icy, black waters of death. Do we have the stomach to watch this while we are safe and dry, in the security of our lifeboat with plenty of room for them beside us? Perhaps God has brought someone to mind as you read this and you find yourself convicted; guilty of this horrible crime of indifference and hatred! Maybe there is more than one you can identify in your sphere of influence who are trusting in their own abilities or in lifeboats like money, society, family, fame, knowledge or other false gods that will sink immediately when they touch the waters of judgment that are swelling up even now. Or, worse yet, perhaps you find yourself sitting in any boat besides the righteousness of Christ given to us in pure grace. However the Holy Spirit has spoken to us through this passage, let us pray and then act accordingly because, though we don’t know when this entire ship (the world) will sink, people are falling overboard every day and we know that Jesus Christ is the only hope for salvation.
[1] Henry Hampton Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook: An Abbreviated Bible Commentary, 24th ed., The Bible Handbook Series (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Pub. House, ©1965), 584.
[2] Mary Beard, John North, and S R F. Price, Religions of Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 117.
[3] C S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: A Revised and Amplified Edition, with a New Introduction, of the Three Books, Broadcast Talks, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality, harpercollins ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 31.
[4] John F. Ashton and Michael Westacott, The Big Argument: Does God Exist? (Green Forest, Ark.: Master Books, 2006), 21, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10626825 (accessed February 7, 2015).
[5] Bible Hub, “Strong’s Greek: 2722,” Bible Hub, http://biblehub.com/greek/2722.htm (accessed February 7, 2015).
[6] Bible Hub, “Strong’s Greek: 3709,” Bible Hub, http://biblehub.com/greek/3709.htm (accessed February 7, 2015).