The Bleakest Bible Passage
Categories: Church of Christ Bulletin ArticlesIn The Fellowship Room this morning, the Fellows were asked to consider the bleakest, darkest, most despairing passage of Scripture in the Bible and why.
The following is my response:
One of the bleakest passages found in the Bible is found in Romans 1:24, where the phrase “gave them up” is found.
The phrase is again repeated in Romans 1:26,28, emphasizing the fact that when God gives an individual (or individuals) up (or over), there is no hope for that individual. They are in the same exact category as the Gentiles once were in Ephesians 2:11-12.
Through the power of personal choice (Joshua 24:15), they have “determined” (1 Corinthians 2:2) and sealed their own eternal destiny.
In his commentary on Romans, Brother Burton Coffman provides the following comment regarding this phrase in Romans 1:24:
“These dreadful words, thrice repeated with increasing intensity, are a kind of litany of the doomed, showing how dreadful is the fate of them that are given up of God, that is, handed over to the consequences of their rebellion.”
Brethren and friends, when God gives us up, there is no bleaker moment or state.