Romans 1:24-25
“Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”
The first commandment (“You shall no other gods before Me.”) concerns itself with what a person worships. Worship is the devoted service one gives to what one regards above all, and what one regards above all is that person’s God. The first commandment says what we are to worship, the Creator God. Nothing else is to be given that kind of devotion.
As Romans 1:24-25 shows, one can give devoted service to created things as well as the Creator. The people Paul is speaking of turned their attention from the Creator and to things created by the Creator. It is possible to worship the wrong thing. In Colossians 3:5 Paul writes that covetousness, sexual immorality, impurity, passion and evil desires are idolatry, too. Clearly, our devotion can be given to things other than the true God and His Character.
Paul argues that God abandoned them (“…gave them up to uncleanness…”) to the sin and evil desire of their hearts, allowing them to experience the self-destructive result of sin. It is a kind of punishment. These people that Paul describes exchanged the truth for the lie.
The lie is essentially idolatry. The lie is that someone or something other than the true God can be properly worshipped and be effective for the person’s salvation. Worshipping things and learning the evil ways of worship performed by those placing devotion on things other than the Creator and the ways He desired to be worshipped (John 4:24 – God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.), turns the thrust and the direction of our lives off the true path of God’s purpose. To worship in spirit, we must be concerned with spiritual realities, not so much with places, outward sacrifices, cleansings and trappings. To worship in truth, we must worship according to the whole counsel of God’s Word, not in pretense or a mere display of spirituality. The lie puts us or other created things, in the place of God. It is the same lie stated in Genesis 3:5, “…you will be like God…”.
