21 For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,

23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

— Romans 1:21-25, 28

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

— Isaiah 5:20

And He [Jesus] said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

— Luke 16:15

Thoughts on Today’s Reading

Grace, mercy and salvation from Christ to you.

Romans points out willfully rejecting God as Creator and Provider renders human thinking futile. When the truth about God is suppressed, only inadequate and insufficient understanding remains. People can make superficial observations, but without God as the starting point, no one can discern spiritual, moral, and practical realities beneath the surface. Distorted thinking launches further disaster.

This corrupted reasoning inevitably spirals into idolatry and moral chaos: exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, animals, and creeping things, people then hand themselves over to degrading passions and a debased mind that maliciously endorses every form of unrighteousness. What begins as intellectual suppression ends in the full endorsement of evil. It confirms that futile thinking does not remain neutral but actively multiplies disaster in both personal lives and society.