Becoming Fools

Romans 1:22

We continue to look at the unbelievers who are without excuse. Last article we read about how unbelievers choose to deny God and how it ultimately darkened their heart. Today’s verse follows that same thought.

In Romans 1:22, Paul writes, “Professing to be wise, they became fools.” This is a short, simple verse but like every other verse in the Bible it is rich with truth. We will look through it and aim to pull as many truths as we can out of it.

Verse fourteen speaks about “the wise” and the article To the Wise and the Unwise helps explain what Paul means by this wisdom. It is speaking about the wisdom of the world, not true wisdom. The unbeliever professes that they are wise by rejecting God. They reject what they know is true.

They profess to be wise which means that they believe that they are wise because they reject what they know is true. In their minds, they are smarter or wiser then God. This is their pride blinding them. They do not accept that God is the Creator. They do not accept that they are sinners. They do not want to accept that they need God and therefore they decide in their minds that they don’t need Him.

This is why Paul says that they became fools. They know the truth and yet choose to deny it. It is like taking a test, knowing the answer, and choosing a different answer. That would obviously be foolish. The difference is this is a foolish choice that has eternal significance. Man’s pride condemns them to hell.

It is a sobering thought. The pride of man ultimately determines where they end up. It is even more sobering when we acknowledge how prideful we are every day. We are selfish and arrogant. We have self-pity. It is a constant battle to humble ourselves. It shouldn’t be. We should fear God and humbly revere Him, but the truth is we don’t, or at least not as often as we should.

The unbelievers are fools; there is no sugarcoating it. Denying what you know is true is arguably the epitome of foolishness. We will look into what this foolish decision costs them in our upcoming verses. What we, as believers, ought to take from this is that we need to humble ourselves. We should recognize that we could have made the same foolish decision to reject God. We could have easily allowed our pride to make us fools. It is due to the grace of God that we are able to call ourselves His adopted children.

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