A pastoral note before we begin: The subject matter ahead is weighty and sensitive. Before reading further, take a moment to examine your heart. Come not with a spirit of judgment or self-righteousness, but with humility, compassion, and reverence for God’s Word. These truths are offered in love, for the redemption and restoration of every soul.

“Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at evening, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, watch” (Mark 13:33-37 KJV).

Let us get started. “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men” (1 Corinthians 6:9 NIV).

“Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:24-32 NASB).

For many years John Wesley professed to be a Christian, and yet when he truly examined himself he realized he was not “in the faith,” as illustrated by this brief excerpt from his sermon entitled “The Almost Christian.” Wesley wrote of using diligence to nail to the cross all evil, and to have a conscience void of offense, redeeming the time, buying up every opportunity of doing all good to every man and woman, constantly and carefully using all the public and all the private means of grace, endeavoring after a steady seriousness of behavior at all times and in all places.

He said, “God is my record, before whom I stand, doing all this in sincerity, having a real design to serve God, a hearty desire to do His will in all things, to please Him who had called me to resist the devil so he will flee.” Let us not forget that our goal is to lay hold on eternal life. Yet Wesley’s own conscience bore him witness, in the Holy Spirit, that all this time he was but almost a Christian.

These men and women in Romans 1 were given over to a mind that God tests but finds wanting, and is thus rejected by Him as worthless because it does not stand the test. The ultimate test of life is usefulness, and the man or woman whose influence is ever toward that which is unclean is of no use to God or to our fellow man. Instead of helping God’s work in the world, they hinder it, and uselessness always invites disaster.

This speaks of a mind that is so clouded by sin that it is no longer able to make reliable moral judgments. Here we have gone beyond deliberate iniquity to something much more frightening. At this stage people have lost the desire and the ability to think clearly. They have lost their mind, morally and spiritually speaking, and they do not even know it.

The NKJV translates the Greek word adokimos as “debased,” a word that was used by a blacksmith who, when he’d finished forming a horseshoe, would place it on his anvil and hit it with his hammer to test whether it was tempered correctly. If it failed the test, it was said to be debased, not quite right. Debase also conveys the meaning of reduction of intrinsic value, for example a coin by increasing the base-metal content, and implies a loss of position, worth, value, or dignity.

The idea in Romans 1:28 is of a mind that isn’t quite right, that has some flaw in it that affects its ability to make righteous judgments. The result is a world that has left God far behind. It is a society with all restraints removed, a culture devoid of all sense of right and wrong, where everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes.

In a parallel passage in the Old Testament, Jehovah appointed His prophet Jeremiah to assay His people Israel, declaring: “I have made you an assayer and a tester among My people, that you may know and assay their way. All of them are stubborn and rebellious going about as a talebearer. They are bronze and iron; they, all of them, are corrupt. The bellows blow fiercely, the lead is consumed by the fire; in vain the refining goes on, but the wicked are not separated” (Jeremiah 6:27-29 NASB).

Jehovah concludes that because the impurities cannot be removed from His people, they will be called rejected. “They call them rejected silver, because the Lord has rejected them” (Jeremiah 6:30 NASB). This is exactly what Father God has done to these ungodly men and women in Romans 1:28: “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper” (Romans 1:28 NASB).

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals” (1 Corinthians 6:9 NASB). This sin had swept like a cancer through Greek life and from Greece invaded Rome. We can scarcely realize how riddled the ancient world was with it. Fourteen out of the first fifteen Roman emperors practiced unnatural vice. At this very time Nero was emperor. He had taken a boy called Sporus and had him castrated. He then married him with a full marriage ceremony and took him home in procession to his palace and lived with him as wife. With an incredible viciousness, Nero also married a man called Pythagoras and called him his husband. When Nero was eliminated and Otho came to the throne, one of the first things he did was take possession of Sporus.

Much later, the Emperor Hadrian’s name was associated with a Bithynian youth called Antinous. He lived with him inseparably, and when he died, he deified him and covered the world with his statues and immortalized his sin by calling a star after him. In this particular vice, in the time of the early church, the world was lost to shame, and there can be little doubt that this was one of the main causes of its degeneracy and the final collapse of its civilization.

Family of God, please know that a person who has not surrendered their life is very much inclined to flatter themselves that they may live in sin, yet die in Christ, and go to heaven. But we cannot hope to sow to the flesh and reap everlasting life. We are reminded what a change the gospel and grace of God can make in us. The blood of Christ and the washing of regeneration can take away all guilt. Our justification is owing to the suffering and merit of Christ; our sanctification to the working of the Holy Spirit; but both go together. All who are made righteous in the sight of God are made holy by the grace of God.

This is why Jesus says, “Watch.” Watch your heart. Watch your mind. Watch the slow drift that begins not with a single dramatic fall but with a gradual exchange, exchanging the truth of God for a lie, exchanging the Creator for the creature, exchanging what is right for what feels right in the moment. The watchman who falls asleep does not notice the master’s absence until it is too late.

This is the warning of Romans 1: a society, and individuals within it, can drift so far from acknowledging God that they lose the very capacity to recognize their own condition. The mind becomes debased, like metal that fails the test, no longer fit for the purpose it was made for. This should sober us, not so that we look with contempt on those described in this passage, but so that we watch our own hearts with humility, knowing that any one of us, apart from grace, could drift in the same direction.

But here is the good news. The blood of Christ and the washing of regeneration can take away all guilt. No one is beyond the reach of that grace. The same gospel that exposes the darkness of Romans 1 also offers the light of redemption to anyone who will receive it. Watch, therefore. Watch your own heart. Watch for the Master’s return. And while you watch, extend the same grace that has been extended to you, for all who are made righteous in the sight of God are made holy by the grace of God, not by their own merit, but by His.