The hardwood gleams under arena lights. Cameras sweep the floor. Logos flash across giant screens. A league, a brand, a culture, all of it polished and amplified, all of it trained to catechize the crowd in what must be celebrated, what must be affirmed, what must be called good.
Then, somewhere far from that noise, a Christian sits at a kitchen table before daylight with an open Bible and the words on the page say something the world now punishes.
That collision is no longer theoretical.
It arrived again in the story surrounding Jaden Ivey. A young athlete spoke publicly against the celebration of homosexual sin, and the cost came quickly. Whatever else may be said about the man, or his manner, or the larger storm around him, one line from his public remarks cut straight to the nerve of this age: “The world can proclaim LGBTQ, right?” Ivey said in his latest video. “They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA. They proclaim it. They show it to the world. They say, ‘Come join us for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness.’ They proclaim it. They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim in the streets. Unrighteousness. So, how is it that one can’t speak righteousness? Who are they to say that this man is crazy?”
That is the question pressing against the conscience of many American Christians.
How is it that sin may be praised publicly, corporately, loudly, repeatedly, while righteousness must whisper and apologize?
Romans 1 answers with terrible clarity. It does not begin with man’s confusion. It begins with God’s wrath. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).
Our country’s crisis runs deeper than politics, deeper than corporations, deeper than generations. At its root, it is theological. Men suppress truth. God reveals wrath. Men push down what they know. God gives them over to what they want.
Paul writes as if he has walked through our streets.
He says mankind knows God. The proof is stitched into the world itself. Sky and mountain, river and storm, the strange workmanship of the human body, the steady witness of conscience, all of it speaks. “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them” (Romans 1:19).
The sinner may laugh, curse, scroll, mock, and boast, yet he still lives every hour on borrowed breath in a world full of God’s fingerprints.
That is what makes sin so dreadful. It is deliberate.
Romans 1 does not picture humanity fumbling in a dim hallway, reaching for truth it cannot quite find. It pictures men closing the shutters against midday sun. They know enough of God to honor Him, thank Him, seek Him, fear Him. Yet “when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful” (Romans 1:21).
Ingratitude is not a small crack in the wall. It is a crowbar at the door of rebellion. The creature takes gifts from the Creator and refuses to bow. He takes the meal and forgets the Giver, prizes the body while scorning the One who formed it, and chases joy stripped of holiness, appetite freed from restraint and pleasure severed from God.
From there, the descent gathers speed.
False worship never stays in the sanctuary of the mind. It spills into the body. It stains desire. It alters what a people praise. Paul says men “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). That sentence explains far more than pagan statues. It explains modern America.
Once man enthrones himself, his cravings become sacred. His feelings become authority. Then the culture rallies around him with banners, slogans, merchandise, and applause.
That is why Romans 1 speaks so directly to homosexuality. “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections” (Romans 1:26). Scripture is plain here. Homosexual practice is sin. Sodomy is sin. Celebrating it in public is sin. Pressuring others to affirm it is sin. Wrapping it in cheerful language and corporate polish does not soften what God has said. Heaven does not revise its moral law because a league office issued a campaign calendar.
The Christian must say this plainly because the age does not merely want tolerance. It craves blessing, songs, slogans, flags, curriculum, commercials and the smiling silence of the church. It wants the people of God to gaze at what Scripture condemns and call it beautiful.
Romans 1:32 speaks with frightening accuracy about those “who knowing the judgment of God” still continue in sin and then “have pleasure in them that do them.” That is more than private rebellion. That is shared delight in evil.
A believer cannot join that parade.
Yet this is where the heart must stay tender.
Romans 1 is not a weapon handed to the church so that she may feel cleaner than the world. It is a mirror held before the whole fallen race. The chapter names homosexual sin, and it also names envy, murder, deceit, malice, pride, disobedience, covenant breaking, and mercilessness. It drags man from every hiding place. The polished executive stands in this chapter, and so does the self-satisfied church member, the sneering activist, the man addicted to secret filth and the woman whose smile covers a cold and bitter heart. Left to ourselves, all of us belong somewhere in this ruin.
That is why the tone of a faithful Christian must carry both steel and tears.
Truth without grief hardens into cruelty. Grief without truth melts into cowardice.
Scripture gives us neither option. Scripture teaches us to name the sin honestly and then plead with sinners earnestly. A church that will not call homosexuality sin has betrayed God’s Word. A church that speaks of homosexual sinners as though they are beyond the reach of mercy has forgotten the gospel.
Paul would not let us forget it. After listing sins that shut men out of the kingdom, including homosexual practice, he writes, “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Those words shine like a lamp in a collapsed house.
Such were some of you. Paul is speaking to former fornicators, former idolaters, former adulterers, former homosexual offenders, former thieves, former drunkards, former revilers. He is speaking to people whose lives once bore the smell of the grave. Then Christ laid hold of them.
That is the Christian hope for this sin, too.
Not self-expression or affirmation. Not therapeutic slogans. Cleansing. Forgiveness. A new heart. A new Lord. A new life.
This is why the church must not grow silent when public pressure rises. A silent church does not love the sinner. It leaves him sleeping beside a cliff edge, mistaking judgment for freedom and the thickening darkness around his desires for harmless night.
A man may lose a job or a platform for saying what God has said. He may be mocked as unstable or hateful. He may be shunned by the polished classes that run our institutions. Yet Christ never promised His people safety in exchange for faithfulness.
He promised a cross. “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18).
America has spent years teaching its citizens that moral courage means celebrating what God condemns. Romans 1 teaches the opposite. Moral courage means standing under heaven’s light when the crowd chants for darkness.
Faithfulness teaches children that God created male and female, refuses to call rebellion beautiful, speaks with a broken heart about the wrath resting on unrepentant sin and warns a nation that public celebration of sexual perversion marks judgment already at work, not progress.
Even so, the final note for the Christian is never wrath alone.
At the end of all this ruin stands Christ.
He stands where guilty people can see Him…with scarred hands and a blood-bought righteousness strong enough to cover the vilest sinner who comes.
The answer to Romans 1 is not cleaner politics or stronger branding from the church.
The answer is the crucified and risen Son of God. He bore wrath for sinners and entered the place of judgment. He rose in triumph an receives those who turn from their sin and trust Him. “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way” (Isaiah 55:6-7).
That invitation stretches farther than our fear and deeper than our shame.
So let the Christian speak with conviction. With humility and an open Bible before him, the Christian must speak while God still gives him breath. He must tell the truth about sodomy and homosexuality, expect the world’s anger when light exposes cherished darkness and hold fast to the mercy of Christ, who commands repentance and cleanses the foulest sinner.
The arena lights will dim. The billboards will come down and the slogans will rot like wet paper.
God’s Word will still stand and every sinner who fled to Christ will stand with it.
For more devotions click here.
Sign up for my email list here.
For a list of other essential Christian reads click here.
Enjoying this content? If you’d like to support my work and help me create more Bible-centered resources like this devotion, consider buying me a coffee! Your support means the world and helps keep this ministry going.
