who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the created thing rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
Truth to Learn
We all choose to believe either the truth about God or the lie.
Behind the Words
“Exchanged” is translated from metallassō, which is made up of meta, denoting “a change of place or condition” and allassō, meaning “to change.” The word, metallassō means “to convert from one state to another.”
The word translated “glory” in verse 23 is “doxan,” the root of which is “doxa.” According to the Complete Word Study Dictionary, “the word primarily means thought or opinion, especially favorable human opinion, and thus in a secondary sense reputation, praise, honor (true and false), splendor, light, perfection, rewards (temporal and eternal).”
In today’s verse, the phrase “truth of God” is a Hebraism (an idiomatic Hebrew phrase) meaning “the true God” or “the truth that He, and He alone, is God.”
Meaning Explained
On first glance it appears that this verse is a restatement of verse 23, but there are a couple of significant differences here. In verse 23 Paul said they “changed the glory of the incorruptible God” and in this verse he says they, “exchanged the truth of God.” Thus verse 23 says that they changed the reputation or splendor of God into an image. So we see that in verse 23 those who deny God and His power use an image for worship, which is a representation of a created thing. In this verse they have progressed to the point where they deny the truth that Jehovah is the one and only God who is to be revered and worshipped. Paul says that these who deny God’s existence convert that truth into a lie (actually, the Greek text says “the lie”).
These non-believers, according to Paul, both worship and serve the created thing more than the creator of all things. Why do they do this? It’s because they don’t want to submit to Almighty God. Instead, they are willing to submit to a false god, knowing all the time that it really is no god at all. In the case of secular humanism of today, they make man the god and worship and serve self rather than the creator. Hence, the lie that is being subtly propagated today is, “since we have evolved from lower life forms and there is no proof of a creator, we are the supreme beings (i.e. we are gods).
Paul now does an interesting thing in this verse. As he finishes this comparison of false gods and the true God, he is so focused on the divinity, majesty, and holiness of God (the doxa glory of God), that he is compelled to proclaim a “doxology” ascribing praise to God. It is almost as if he is once again so struck with the very truth he is proclaiming that he is compelled to give God the glory He is due. And he follows it with a proclamation of amen, meaning “it is so!”
Application
Let me ask you, have you bought into the lie that we are the highest form of evolved creatures? Or, do you find yourself awestricken by the divinity, majesty, power, love, and holiness of God? Or do you find yourself somewhere in between, not accepting the lie but not in awe of our Creator God?
How you answer these says a lot about your relationship with the God who sent His Son to die so that we can know Him personally.
In God's service, for His glory,
Copyright © 2017 Will Krause. All rights reserved