Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Who, х Hoitines (G3748)] - 'Such as,'
Knowing, х epignontes (G1921)] - 'knowing well'
the [righteous] judgment of God х to (G3588) dikaiooma (G1345) - see the note at Romans 5:16] - the stern law of divine procedure, to which every man's conscience bears witness,
That they which commit such things are worthy of death. The word "death" is here used in its widest known sense-namely, the uttermost of divine vengeance against sin. What that is will be variously conceived according to the light enjoyed. The mythic representations of Tartarus sufficiently show how the pagan conscience in classic lands pictured to itself the horrors of the future "death."
Not only do the same - which, under the pressure of temptation and in the heat of passion, they might do, even while abhorring it, and abhorring themselves for doing it,
But have pleasure in (or 'consent to') them that do them, х suneudokousin (G4909)]. The word conveys the idea of positive satisfaction in a person or thing (see the note at Acts 8:1). The charge here brought against the pagan world is, that they deliberately set their seal to such actions by encouraging and applauding the doing of them in others. This is the climax of our apostle's charges against the pagan; and certainly, if the things are in themselves as black as possible, this settled and unblushing satisfaction at the practice of them, apart from all the Blinding effects of present passion, must be regarded as the darkest feature of human depravity.
Remarks:
(1) "The wrath of God" against sin has all the dread reality of a "revelation from heaven" sounding in the consciences of men, in the self-inflicted miseries of the wicked, and in the vengeance which God's moral government, sooner or later, takes open all who outrage it. Nor is this "wrath of God" confined to high-handed crimes, or the grosser manifestations of human depravity, but is "revealed" against all violations of divine law of whatever nature - "against all ungodliness" as well as "unrighteousness of men," against all disregard of God in the conduct of life, as well as against all deviations from moral rectitude; and therefore, since no child of Adam can plead guiltless either of "ungodliness" or of "unrighteousness." to a greater or less extent it follows that every human being is involved in the awful sweep of this "wrath of God." There is a tendency among some critics to explain away all such language, as purely anthropathic, or as merely accommodated from human feeling to the divine nature; and some of the soundest divines think that they exhaust its legitimate application to God when they say it expresses 'the punitive justice of God,' or 'the calm, undeviating purpose of the divine mind, which secures the connection between sin and misery.' (So Hodge).
But "wrath" - whatever be meant it in relation to God-is a feeling, not a purpose; not can it, in any fair sense of the word, be identified with justice. Of passion, indeed-in the human sense of the term-there can be none in the divine nature. But are we to strip the divine nature of all that we mean by the word 'feeling?' Is there no such thing essentially as love in Him of whom it is said, "God is love?" Those who say so-alleging that all such language must be understood metaphorically, nor metaphysically, and that all such ideas are regulative, rather than real in God-divest the Godhead of all that is fitted to awaken the affection of love in reasonable creatures. Straining after metaphysical accuracy, they dry up the springs of all that the Bible enjoins, and the human heart feels to be its own proper emotions, toward God. If God loves no object and no quality, nor is capable of dislike or displeasure against anything that is unlike Himself, how can He be capable even of approving or disapproving! And if not that, what Personality, that is worth the name, remains to the Godhead?
(2) The apostle places the terrible truth, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, in the forefront of his argument on Justification by faith, in order that upon the basis of universal condemnation he may rear the edifice of a free, world-wide Salvation; nor can the Gospel be scripturally preached or embraced, except as the good news of salvation to those who are all equally "lost."
(3) We must not magnify the supernatural Revelation which God has been pleased to make of Himself, through Abraham's family to the human race, at the expense of that elder and, in itself, lustrous Revelation which He has made to the whole family of man through the medium of their own nature and the creation around them. Without the latter, the former would have been impossible; and those who have not been favoured with the former will be without excuse, if they are deaf to the voice and blind to the glory of the latter.
(4) Wilful resistance of light has a retributive tendency to blind the moral perceptions and weaken the capacity to apprehend and approve of truth and goodness; and thus is the soul prepared to surrender itself, to an indefinite extent, to error and sin.
(5) Pride of wisdom, as it is a convincing evidence of the want of it, so it makes the attainment of it impossible (Romans 1:22; and cf. Matthew 11:25; Matthew 1 Cor. 13:18-20).
(6) As idolatry, even in its most plausible forms, is the fruit of unworthy views of the Godhead, so its natural effect is to vitiate and debase still further the religious conceptions; nor is there any depth of degradation too low and too revolting for men's ideas of the Godhead to sink to, if only their natural temperament and the circumstances they are placed in be favourable to their unrestrained development. The apostle had Greece and Egypt in his eye when he penned Romans 1:23-25. But the whole Paganisms of the East at this day attest its accuracy, from the more elaborate idolatry of India and the simpler and more stupid idolatry of China, down to the childish rudiments of nature-worship prevalent among the savage tribes. Alas! Christendom itself furnishes a melancholy illustration of this truth; the constant use of material images in the Church of Rome, and the materialistic and sensuous character of its entire service (to say nothing of the less offensive but more stupid service of the Greek Church) debasing the religious ideas of millions of nominal Christians, and lowering the whole character and tone of Christianity as represented within their immense pale.
(7) Moral corruption invariably follows religious debasement. The grossness of Pagan idolatry is only equalled by the revolting character and frightful extent of the immoralities which it fostered and consecrated. And so strikingly is this to be seen in all its essential features in the East at this day, that missionaries have frequently been accused by the natives of having forged the whole of the latter part of this chapter, as they could not believe that so accurate a description of themselves could have been written eighteen centuries ago. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah furnish a striking illustration of the inseparable connection between religion and morals. As the great sin of the kingdom of Israel lay in corrupting and debasing the worship of Yahweh, so the sins with which they were charged were mostly of the greaser kind-intemperance and sensuality: Judah, on the other hand, remaining faithful to the pure worship, were for a long time charged mostly with formality and hypocrisy; and only as they fell into the idolatries of the pagan around them did they sink into their vices. And may not a like distinction be observed between the two great divisions of Christendom-the Popish and the Protestant? To test this, we must not look to Popery, surrounded with, and more or less influenced by, the presence and power of Protestantism; nor to Protestantism under every sort of disadvantage,internal and external. But look at Romanism where it has unrestrained liberty to develop its true character, and see whether impurity does not there taint society to its core, pervading alike the highest and the lowest classes; and then look at Protestantism where it enjoys the same advantages, and see whether it be not marked by a comparatively high standard of social virtue.
(8) To take pleasure in what is sinful and vicious for its own sake, and knowing it to be such, is the last and lowest stage of human recklessness. 'The innate principle of self-love (says South, in a sermon on the last verse of this chapter-we take the passage from Wordsworth), that very easily and often blinds a man as to any impartial reflection upon himself, yet for the most part leaves his eyes open enough to judge truly of the same thing in his neighbour, and to hate that in others which he allows and cherishes in himself. And, therefore, when it shall come to this, that he approves, embraces, and delights in sin as he observes it even in the person and practice of other men, this shows that the man is wholly transformed from the creature that God first made him; nay, that he has consumed those poor remainders of good that the sin of Adam left him; that lie has worn off the very remote dispositions and possibilities to virtue; and, in a word, has turned grace first, and afterward nature itself, out of doors.' Yet,
(9) This knowledge can never be wholly extinguished in the breast of man. So long as reason remains to them, there is a still, small voice in the worst of men, protesting, in the name of the Power that implanted it, "that they which do such things are worthy of death."