Does God Give Up on Us?
Romans 1:28
“Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.”
Does this verse tell us that God gives up on us? No! God does not give up on us, but he will not force himself upon us.
One modern translation captures this thought well by translating it as “Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking.” God does not force you into a reprobate mind, but rather he just sadly leaves us where our mind has already gone.
One can tell this has happened when reprobate things no longer trouble us. Isaiah 5:20 warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”
Years ago I worked for a large company that would send us out to work as teams. This meant we were all far from our families. Many of the “family men” who found themselves far away from their families would go to bars at night and give themselves over to a “reprobate mind” and do things they ought not to do. I have my own flaws, but that was not one of them. I would stay in my hotel room alone and study. One night one of the other men came back early. He stopped by my room to say hello. He was a former minister and a family man. He talked about how he had been successful with women that night. I asked him, “Doesn’t it bother you to do these things?” He thought for a second and then said, “What bothers me is that it doesn’t bother me.”
God will never give up on us and push us away, but he will give us our free choice. Choose wisely.
Lonnie Davis