As I was just saying after a baked potato lunch at church Sunday, I wish I still had my spud gun. No, not a big PVC bazooka that fires whole potatoes, but a little metal toy pistol that with a blast of air fired eighth inch plugs extracted from potatoes snitched from the kitchen cupboard. I got the spud gun by trading with a friend, then foolishly traded it away, I think for a tiny “spy camera” for which I could never find film nor anyone to develop the film if I found it. It was a bad trade. I’d love to play with the spud gun now. I wish I had never given it up.
In this week’s look at Romans 1:18-32, the word “exchange” or “barter” or “trade” is used three times, in verses 23, 25 and 26 to identify how human beings exchanged a true natural knowledge of God and sexual morality for false beliefs and depraved ways.
The word that means “to give up” is also used several times both from the human and the divine side. God’s response to human bad exchanges, a giving up of a possessed good for something lesser and evil, is to Himself give up humanity to the consequences of their bad trades. So we read “God gave them up,” in verses 24, 26 and 28. On the human side, in verse 27 “give up” is used of men relinquishing normal heterosexual relations for homosexual activity.
All these trades are disastrous for humanity and the catalog of sins and vices at the end of the passage in verses 29-31 is the inevitable result. Ultimately, the just consequence is death as is said in verse 32.
Fortunately we get to pair this text this Sunday with the story of Nicodemus’ visit to Jesus in John 3, which of course includes that wonderfully familiar verse about God’s great exchange on our behalf in verse 16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
God’s great trade is the life of His Son for our salvation. And God’s trade allows us to trade back our sins and sufferings for the knowledge of God we lost and for a new, eternal life that recovers the holiness we gave up. May we all enjoy the grace of Jesus to trade back our poor exchanges for all the good things we foolishly give up.