“They gave up God; and therefore God gave them up to be

the playthings of their own foul desires in dishonoring their own bodies.”

(Romans 1:24 (Phillips)

St. Paul begins his description of the pagan world of his day by saying: “They gave up God.” That was the point of origin of all their miseries and frustrations, degradations and sufferings: “They gave up God.” That’s where their troubles started. Is there any inclination on our part ever to give God up?

Of course, there are lots of folks who will tell you quite frankly that this is exactly what they are doing: “Giving up God.”

Officially, this is what many a Marxist government has done in one nation after another: Russia, China, and Cuba, and many of the people’s republics of Africa and South America — “Given up God.”

At a wedding party the minister asked one of the young groomsmen: “What is your church?” The young man shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: “Oh, I’ve given that stuff up.” Then in all sincerity he said: “My folks are worried about me. They are Presbyterian. My grandfather was a minister. Maybe it is just college and one day I’ll straighten up.” For the time being the young student was giving God up.

Then there are the poor, beaten, disillusioned folks whose faith has been shattered in the shock of personal catastrophe. Perhaps it came about when a well-trained child repudiated his Christian heritage, or when an honest business venture failed while crooked deals succeeded, or when a crippling illness broke down a robust life; then, from lips that once had praised God, there came the dejected words: “God let me down. I had such faith. I prayed about this. Weeks, months on end, I prayed. Now look. This has happened. My faith is gone.”

There are people who will tell us frankly that they have tried religion, are now through with it for one reason or another, and are giving God up.

But there are lots of other people in the world today, who though they might stoutly and sincerely deny it, are actually giving God up. They are doing it not by declaration, but by default. Though the form of their Christianity remains, the force and distinctive flavor of it is gone.

A good illustration is the Old Testament story of Balaam and Balak. When the children of Israel were about to finish their wilderness wanderings and enter their promised land they came to the Kingdom of Moab and requested permission to pass through it. Balak was king of Moab. When he saw the vast multitudes of migrant Israelites under Moses’ command encamped on the frontiers of his nation, it struck fear in his heart. What should he do to preserve his kingdom and to defend his people? Being a religious man, he sent for Balaam, a prophet and a man of God in Moab. Then, instead of asking the prophet what God wanted him, King Balak, to do in such an emergency, he began to tell Balaam what he wanted Balaam, in the name of religion, to do. Balak said: “Balaam, curse these Israelites, that God may drive them away and destroy them.”

But Balaam replied: “It is not God’s will to curse these people. It is His purpose to bless them.” “Nevertheless,” said Balak, “they are a menace to me. If you will curse them, Balaam, I will elevate you to a position of high honor and wealth in my kingdom.” But Balaam, man of integrity that he was, replied: “Though you give me a house filled with gold, yet will I not curse them.”

King Balak was a man who wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. He could not understand why the church and its ministry could not be corralled to fight what he wanted fought.

The Balaks in the world today are innumerable: they want to use their religion to get what they want, to curse what they want cursed, to damn what they think threatens them. So, to the priests and prophets of God in the 20^th century they say: “Curse the communists, curse these pesky minority groups and the labor unions that come clamoring for the promised land of their equal opportunity, over-running the fields of my personal and national security. Curse them, or I will walk away from your church.” So — we have seen in our time a dwindling in church membership rolls among the mainline churches.

People would give up God even in the name of religion, following their own selfish desires rather than the revealed principles of divine truth. To attempt to make our religion the vehicle of our interests or purposes or prejudices is to deny the faith. It is to give God up.

And then again how many there are who are really giving God up for, though they have not renounced the faith, they have forsaken the fellowship. They have quit attending church. They have dropped out of participation in church work. Yet they stoutly maintain that they still believe in God. St. John in his Epistle says this just can’t be so — that if we give up the fellowship of work and worship — we are at one and the same time giving up God: “If we do not love our brother whom we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not seen?”

Now St. Paul says that the inevitable result of giving up God, whether it’s done by default or declaration, by desertion of the fellowship or blasphemy of His Name, however it’s done, the inevitable result is this: “They gave God up, and therefore God gave them up.”

The free will of man is not only a scriptural doctrine, it is a fact of experience. God will not force our affection nor compel our obedience. He wants our free faith and devoted loyalty or nothing. When the Prodigal Son wished to leave the Father’s house and go to the far country, the Father gave him up. It broke the Father’s heart, but He let him go. The Prodigal gave up the Father and therefore the Father gave him up.

But the inevitable result goes even farther. “They gave up God; and therefore God gave them up, to be the playthings of their own foul desires in dishonoring their own bodies.” St. Paul is merely observing what takes place in the lives of those who give God up — they are the God forsaken. While they once served the righteous will of their Heavenly Father, they now take their orders from their own selfish desires. The result? The dishonoring of their own bodies and souls which were made in God’s image and destined to be like Him.

Men are incurable deists, religionists. Having given up on the one true God, they have exchanged the splendor of the immortal God and worshipped lesser things of their own devising. So, there follows inevitably the degradation of men in mind and soul and body. In worship there is creative power or demonic power. What the heart adores always shapes the mind, colors the soul, corrupts or glorifies the body, and ultimately builds or destroys man’s corporate life: his society, his culture, his nation. This was the appalling lesson of the tragic end of the cult of the Peoples’ Temple in the Guyana Jungle.

It was Dean Inge who said: “Our souls are dyed in the color of our leisure thoughts.” And Alfred Noyes accused the pseudo-intellectuals of his day, who scoffed at all distinctions between right and wrong, of picking the mortar from between the bricks of civilization and preparing the world for the social debacles of World War I and World War II.

In our recent past the published works of the Soviet writer, Solzeynitzhen, documented, in horrible revelation, the brutalities, cruelties, and enslavements of men, the crippling of the human spirit that a godless communism builds into a social order when men give up God.

What hope is there to end this vicious spiral down? Just this — though God lets us give Him up — God makes it possible for us to take Him up on all His gracious promises at any moment, at the next turn in the road, through faith in Jesus Christ. Here’s another scriptural fact of God’s giving up to men: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

St. Paul in his Roman letter, after he has fully described the state of the pagan world whose bad turn had begun in giving up God and whom God gave up, comes in the third chapter to the stupendous fact of God’s providing in His amazing mercy for the salvation of hopelessly wrecked humanity through faith in Christ as the divine redeemer. “The righteousness of God,” says Paul, “which is by faith of Christ … is for all them that believe.”

Hold on to God. Whatever comes, don’t give Him up. St. Augustine says that the key verse of the 73^rd Psalm, by which the whole Psalm is interpreted is the line: “It is good for me to cleave to God.” And that is the key verse in the Psalm of life for you and me, by which all of life is interpreted and illumined: “It is good for me to cleave to God” — no matter what happens.

“See whether any evil can happen to the good and faithful which might not be converted into a blessing for them … They lost all they had. But, did they lose their faith? Did they lose their godliness? Did they lose the treasures of the heart? This is the wealth of the Christian.” (Augustine)

A student of music once asked the operatic star, Madame Emma Calvè, what was the most important thing for a girl to remember if she wanted to become a great singer herself. Without a moment’s hesitation, the incomparable Carmen replied: “The most important thing is to believe in God.” Hold on to God. Don’t give Him up.

Years ago, in a time of national peril and social chaos, Harry Emerson Fosdick voiced his answer to the enumerated difficulties of holding on to the Christian faith in those dire times in these words: “Accumulate your science, your secular education, your economic prosperity — all that is excellent; it is in Christendom that these things have mainly flourished — but this world is so inescapably a moral order, and everything we human beings gain so inevitably depends for its effect upon the quality of soul that uses it, that nothing can save us without someone who can save us from our sin. Well, I propose to stand by Christianity a while longer. At any rate, far from being romantic, it presents the most realistic view of human life up to date. And if someone says, ‘I’m giving it up,’ I ask, ‘To whom, then, shall you go? To whom?’”

When the multitudes who had once followed Jesus turned back and went no more after Him, Jesus asked the Twelve Disciples: “Will you also go away?” It was Peter who replied: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

Yes, to whom shall we go, if not to the Christ of God? What alternative do we have to the Christian faith? Don’t give God up. Hold on to Him.