“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” – Romans 1:18
There’s a seldom-considered and incredibly vital truth contained in the final part of this verse: our unrighteousness suppresses the truth. Not objectively, of course, but in our minds and our spheres of influence. This is an incredibly important dynamic that explains so much of what goes wrong in our own lives and in the wider world!
When humans indulge in any pattern of activity, words, or thoughts contrary to God’s design, we not only sin, we suppress the truth about that sin. We argue whether it’s really sin, we question it’s seriousness, we redefine reality to avoid acknowledging our sin. The more we embrace unrighteousness, the more we suppress God’s truth – in our minds, hearts, words, and actions.
Sin isn’t just denial of God’s authority, it represents a distortion of the truth. Such distortion helps us cope with the evil we’re practicing against God, but it does far more than that! It creates a downward spiral of sin and deception. Suppressing the truth makes it easier to practice more unrighteousness, which suppresses the truth further, which makes it still easier to practice yet more unrighteousness, which suppresses the truth even more…
This dynamic is why we so easily become dis-oriented to the things and will of God. This is how we arrive at a season in which we individually and culturally can declare evil to be good and good to be evil, truth to lies, and lies to be “our truth”. We are already very deep in a feedback loop of truth suppression and unrighteousness!
There are only two ways out of such a downward spiral: repentance or wrath. Either we recognize the truth about the unrighteousness of our ways, repent, and pray for God’s truth to fill and change us in Christ, or we will endure God’s righteous wrath forever apart from Him!