Human beings share many things with their Creator. They are like him in more ways than they would like to admit. God himself says that they are made in his image (Gen. 1:27). We can see that this is true in many ways. For example, we enjoy a capacity for logical thought, the ability to love and to despise, the power to speak and to communicate, and even a marvelous though limited aptitude for creating and making things. But in the area of personality we also share some of his traits. We experience emotions in some ways just as he does. We become angry with others out of frustration with them, on account of their attitudes or behaviors, and at times we even throw up our hands and give up on them.

The Bible says that God does the same thing, except for the throwing up of the hands part. God, quite literally, gives up on people. Paul expresses that notion in his letter to the Romans. After having explained that the Lord revealed to the human race many things that could be known of himself through the physical creation, especially “his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:19, 20), he went on to express that deity became frustrated with those who “knew God, but glorified him not as God, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” Their most frustrating tendency, said Paul, was their relegation of the divine to images of physical things. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:22-23, ESV). God hated idolatry then just as he does now.

On this account, Paul tells us, God “gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (v. 24). Not only so, but as their sin progressed from one stage of perversity to the next, God “gave them up to vile affections” (v. 26). Finally, on account of the disgusting level of their wickedness, God “gave them over to a reprobate (or debased) mind, to do what ought not to be done” (v. 28). All sorts of evils attended this mindset, and the Lord abandoned them to their detestable ways.

There is a lesson in this for all of us. We have a rather natural tendency, in our own day especially, to read this passage with a concentration on the vile homosexual behaviors that Paul describes here. And that wickedness must not be ignored or minimized as many tend to do in our time. But there is also a grander and more important sense in which this must all be considered.

And that lesson is this. Just as human beings at time will give up on other persons or even inanimate things because too much time and effort has been expended on them already, and any further would merely represent a foolish waste that cannot be logically justified, God reaches a point of exhaustion with certain parties at specific points in time, and in his utter frustration he “gives up on them” and abandons them to their just desserts.

I do not want to be one of those people. And neither do you. In such a case the future can only be dark and dismal. As Paul says, we “know the judgment of God, that those who do such things are worthy of death” (v. 32). The ending will not be a happy one. So, do not frustrate the grace and mercy of God. Persisting in evil doing, of whatever kind, will only lead ultimately to destruction and death. At some point, of God’s choosing, he will abandon us to our own ends. So, while there is still time, give God some reason to continue to be patient with you.