Romans 1:18-31

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

(v18-31, NIV)

This is a long section. I'm stopping just short of the last verse, but what do we see here? We see God's wrath and how it rightly falls upon us. We see God handing us over to all kinds of garbage as we trade away his glory. We see the last thing he hands us over to is a depraved mind which is followed by a number of different things people have become filled with. Seeing all this gloom and doom, what we to do? Is there anything we can do to escape from this? Well, John Piper provides three different reversals that need to occur. The first one is the reversal of the wrath of God for the Righteousness of God. As mentioned earlier in the first chapter, we need God to provide the righteousness he demands from us. Without it, we cannot avert his wrath from us. His righteous wrath upon us is unswerving by our own means and efforts. It is only by him and him alone. The next thing is his handing us over. God is the one who hands us over to a debased mind and to the lusts of our hearts. If he doesn't stop doing that, we are doomed as well. In the reversal, God begins to hand us over to truth and purity. No longer are we handed over by him to a debased mind, but we grow in righteousness through him. This leads to the third thing, the debased mind. Our mind needs to be renewed in him. If our minds are not renewed, we are still carrying on with a depraved mind. This mind is like all the other worldly and fleshly minds out there. How can we have any hope carrying along with a mind like that? A renewal is required and that from God.