We are focusing on Romans 1:29-30 and studying the words Paul uses to describe the human condition. It Is good to know what we are up against especially when the world is busy convincing us that we simply need to try real hard and make ourselves better. The hopeless situation the scriptures describe is not popular, the self help theology folks won’t acknowledge it but let’s look.
verse 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, –
We wrote in a previous blog that since they would not approve of God he disapproves of them. In their determination to forget him, he left them to a state of mind which was evil, and which he could not approve. In this word we have a picture of true insanity. The place in the human heart that should be filled by God is filled with other stuff.
That is where pléroó comes in. Remember the times when something happened in order to “fulfill” the scriptures? Jesus “fills up” the Old Testament scriptures so there is no room for other ideas about what they meant. Remember the disciples beheld God’s glory shining in the face of Jesus’s because he was full of grace and truth. He not only was filled with those things, he fills them. The fullness of grace is Christ. The trueness of truth is Christ.
Human beings apart from God are “filled up” with all kinds of stuff. If you have ever used the phrase “he/she is full of it”, whatever “it” is, you get and inkling of what we mean here. We are so full of it, there is no room for God or the neighbor.
So what is it? More tomorrow.
