Why must we take the gospel everywhere?
Text: Romans 1:14-32
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2026 CrossTalk Global
Brian: According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, in 2018, the average American threw away 4.9 pounds of solid waste per day. For a total of 292 million tons of trash annually. And those statistics are from 2018. Imagine how much more there is today. Everywhere around the world, people examine items in their homes and assign them value. Every day, people examine objects and decide what is valuable and what is not. They keep some things and discard others. And that's not wrong when applied to the things we own, but it is tragic when we do so with people. Every day we meet people and consciously or unconsciously make almost instantaneous decisions about whether they are valuable or useful to us. We do this with individuals we pass on the street or in the grocery store, but we can also do so with entire groups or cultures of people. That happened in the first century, and it happens today. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, both a priest and a Levite walked passed a half-dead man lying on the side of the road. Why? They did not value the non-Jew lying on the side of the road. Because he was not a Jew, because he was not a member of God's family, he was not worthy of their time or energy. He was valueless. And that attitude is more common than we like to think. Many Jewish people viewed non-Jews that way in the first century, in the same way that too many Christians view Muslims. Hindus, Wiccans, and secularists today. Why should I reach out to those people who live immoral lives and worship false gods or no God? Why should I invest my limited resources on them? Why should I value them? The Apostle Paul didn't do that. He found value in the kind of people that many God-followers treated as trash. Why? Listen in as Vicki Hitzges, Nathan Norman, and Kent Edwards reveal the Apostle Paul's surprising perspective in Romans chapter 1, verses 14 to 32. Welcome to Crosstalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life into all our lives. I'm Brian French. Today, Dr. Kent Edwards, Vicki Hitzges, and Nathan Norman continue their discussion in the book of Romans. If you have a Bible handy, turn to Romans 1:14-32 as we join their discussion.
Kent: If money talks, what does Christian giving reveal about our values?
Vicki: Well, where your money is, there your heart is also.
Kent: Yeah. And is that evident today?
Vicki: Well, it's always evident where you spend your money. It's convicting to be talking about this. Where you spend your money is where your love is.
Nathan: I mean, I think in general, Christians, especially Christian Americans, have consistently been giving less and less percentage-wise of their income. So I think that speaks loudly that we aren't as charitable either with our churches or our— or charities in general.
Kent: I found it interesting that the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary found that of all the money given to Christian causes, well, it may not be as much as it should be, but 82% of what was given funds local congregations. Okay? So 82% looks after the local church, the heat, the staff, etc., etc. 12% funds evangelism within the country of which we live. And again, this is global, right? This is the whole world. The whole world gives 82% to the Laurentian Church, 12% to people reaching out to people in their own country, but only 6% for countries that are not their own. That's pretty astonishing.
Nathan: Yeah.
Kent: Which means we tend to give to our own people not others. It's fascinating as well that someone broke down these numbers in terms of United States giving and said that for every U.S. Christian who makes $100,000— and not everyone makes $100,000— they give $1.83 to the unchurched.
Vicki: Wow.
Nathan: Yeah, that number is staggering. What percentage is that? That's like 1% of 1% of 1%.
Kent: I can tell you with Crosstalk, when we look for funding, because, you know, we work mostly overseas and $1.83 per person doesn't cover a lot, we'll look for grant organizations, people who support Christian ministry with significant resources. And yeah, if you want to do something inside the United States, you might be able to have an application form submitted, but there's virtually no interest in overseas. Wow. Absolutely nothing. Where the need— where the need is the greatest. I am shocked to learn that Americans spend more money on Halloween costumes for their pets than they give to reach the unreached.
Vicki: Oh, that's tragic.
Kent: Isn't that bad?
Nathan: It is tragic. I'm not shocked because I'm at heart a cynical person. So that doesn't surprise me. But it is very sad and tragic.
Kent: And it means we don't value these people. We don't care. It is unimportant. They don't matter. My question is, if that's how we operate today, why in the world would the Apostle Paul put so much energy in reaching the Gentiles, the people outside of his culture in his day? We give $1.83. Paul just wanted to give everything he could. To reach cultures that were very different than his. I mean, why? What makes the difference? Well, as we continue our look in Romans chapter 1, the question grows even more, uh, more clear when I realize that Paul was under no illusions. He understood that the pagan cultures outside of his own Milleu were skewed. I mean, look at what he says in Romans chapter 1, verses 18 and 20.
Vicki: He said, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godless and wickedness of people 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 people are without excuse.
Kent: Well, that's harsh language, isn't it?
Vicki: It's true, though. It's true, though. I had a friend who was a doctor, and he could talk in detail about how the human body worked and how amazing it was. But When I would talk to him about God, he'd say, "Vicki, I just don't see any evidence of God." Ugh.
Kent: And Paul says the wrath of God is coming on the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth. Like your doctor, they should have known better. He does know better because, as Paul said, what may be known about God is plain to them. His invisible qualities have been clearly seen from what has been made. Why do you think that your doctor was ignoring the obvious about God?
Vicki: I think he didn't want to know God.
Kent: He didn't. And but what evidence did he have that should have led him into an opposite conclusion?
Vicki: I mean, Look up in the sky, look at the heavens, look at how a body works, it's amazing. And yet nothing plus time equals everything in his mind.
Kent: The fact is, as Paul is alluding here, creation demands a Creator. Nathan, do you remember that metaphor that was, at least I found helpful back in school, when we talked about Paley's watch?
Nathan: Yeah, if you're walking along a beach and you come across a watch, what are you going to think? That, uh, somebody dropped a watch, left it there, or lost it? Or you're going to think that over time the sands and the sun perfectly aligned to create a domed top, and then the right minerals came and washed up in such a way that they created a perfectly synchronized gear system, and then lithium washed up into— under it and Right. Yeah. No, you're not. And a cow died on top of it and the hide tanned into a band that could fit around the human arm. No, no, of course. Of course, it's much more plausible that somebody put it there.
Kent: Yeah, they— that's why he says that the truth about God is obvious, but they suppress the truth. You can't help but recognize that where there is creation, there has to be a creator. I've owned a house long enough to know if I don't do hard work, my lawn and my garden does not automatically get better. It gets worse. When I look at beauty, someone made it, someone put it there, and they are deliberately suppressing the truth. The image that comes to mind when I think of suppressing the truth is when I see kids in a pool At least here in America, kids will play in a pool and often they'll have these Styrofoam little flutter boards they'll play with. One of the things about Styrofoam is that it doesn't sink. You can hold it down under the water, but you let it go and it pops up. I used to play games like that. How low could I get it and how high could I get it to pop up? I had to suppress its natural tendency to pop up. To hold it underwater. Paul's saying you're doing the same thing. You're taking clear evidence of God and you're suppressing it. You are deliberately ignoring it. Paul knows that this Greek society, this non-Jewish— these non-Jewish people, they are deliberately suppressing the truth. Their worldview is skewed, which is why in verse 21 he says their thinking became futile. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, worshiping idols of animals. Oof. Paul is certainly clear-eyed here about the worldview of these pagan people. But secondly, Paul also sees the consequences that they're going to face. For rejecting God. And man, he is blistering in his assessment of them, in his prediction of what is going to happen. What does he say in verses 24 to 27?
Vicki: Oh, he says, therefore God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts, to sexual impurity, for the degrading of their bodies with one another. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones, and in the same way the men also abandoned natural relationships with the women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Kent: Wow.
Vicki: Is due penalty disease?
Kent: Hey, I think due penalty is— can be, but I think it is a complete disorientation of reality. It skews their view of how the world works. There's no question Here, that one of the consequences of a distorted view of God is a distorted view of sexuality. And God does not stop them. Our society has certainly moved a long way from the Garden of Eden, hasn't it? When God made one man and one woman for life.
Nathan: Yeah, certainly in Paul's day, there are a lot of sexual practices which we would find pretty similar to the sexual practices we see in 21st century America.
Kent: Mm-hmm.
Nathan: They also did some things that we would say, oh, that's illegal and that's wrong and they're terrible for that. But they would do the same looking at us. We, we as a human species try to go away from God's intended design over and over and over again, and we will try different things. You know, we've, we've tried polygamy, we try polyamory, which is, um, you know, multiple partners. You know, we, we try, uh, same-sex relationships, um, just over and over and over again. And, and we have, uh, these desires, and we try to— in 21st century America, we try to define ourselves now. At least there's a big segment like trying to define ourselves based on our sexual desires, which is really, really far askew from anything God designed or God planned. It's very easy if you are not focused on Christ to become very disoriented from his design and to say what is not normal is normal.
Kent: Yeah. When God is not the North Star of our lives, the compass goes crazy. It is easy to get disoriented.
Nathan: I heard a good metaphor years ago where it's like if you were put in a round, a perfectly round room and it's totally dark, but you had a chair bolted to the floor, you could always keep yourself oriented based on feeling the chair. Uh, but then if you get a rolling office chair and stick it in there, you're never going to know which way you're at, right? And that's kind of what happens with when you reject the scriptures and God's word as your recalibrating force in your life. Now you've just— you're just spinning around and you're not sure where you're at.
Vicki: Yeah.
Kent: Well, Paul said because these people had rejected God, they were falling into sin. But we see that in our own day. The proliferation of pornography is absolutely everywhere. It's a tsunami of sex gone wrong. Today, people on sites like OnlyFans are influencers trying to push the boundaries to be more and more away from God's standards in order to get more and more likes and more and more hits. We look at that and we shake our heads and say, yeah, well, guess what? It's not that different from Rome. I remember seeing friezes that came from the walls of Pompeii and see the images that were there, the sexual images that were degrading and awful. This is nothing new. And we talk about Greek You and I know that Greece was famous for its homosexuality and lauded homosexuality as preferential and better than heterosexual love. Paul is looking clear-eyed. He knows that the people he's trying to reach have a skewed worldview that rejects God, and he knows that that has led to total distortion of their relationships. He sees the consequences of rejecting God. But he also knows that the moral collapse of that same society is inevitable. Look at what he says in Romans 1:28 and following.
Vicki: He says, since they did not retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind. They have been filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are God-haters, inventing ways to do evil, with no love, no mercy. Although those who do such things deserve death, they continue to do those things and approve of those who practice them.
Kent: Isn't that depressing?
Vicki: Yes.
Kent: Paul says, "I know these Gentiles. These are people who have deliberately rejected the clear knowledge of God and have decided to go the opposite, and it has skewed their relationships and destroyed the moral fabric of their society. And it's only going to get worse." They're God haters inventing ways of doing evil, as you just read, with no love and no mercy. And it happened. When historians explain how Rome, one of the world's greatest empires, fell, they often cite factors such as economic woes and barbarian invasions. But the moral decline of that empire, as forecasted by Paul, really was the underlying factor. The acts of betrayal, the lying, the cheating, the evil that penetrated that society caused its own destruction. As Solomon wrote, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin Sin condemns any people. Well, this is a depressing podcast. The whole world is rejecting God and the consequences are moral turpitude. And he knows that that's going to lead to only more sin. So I return to the question, why should we, or why would Paul invest so much energy into reaching these same pagan Gentiles that he's just described? Why in the world would he go out of his way to try and people who look more like trash than treasure?
Vicki: Well, he tells us, he says in Romans 1:16-17, he says, I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, "The righteous will live by faith." Those are powerful words, inspiring words.
Kent: Paul is saying, I know that Roman society is infected with sin, I'm looking clear-eyed at how evil it is, but all is not lost. It's not lost because of the gospel. He knows that personally. He knows that the gospel shattered his life. He was at one point an enemy of the gospel, of the Christian faith, trying to kill Christians. But when his life, when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, The resurrected Christ utterly transformed him in every part of his being, in his goals, in his actions. He was never the same again. And I think Paul knew if he can do it for me, he can do it for them. In fact, I know it doesn't say in the text, but I kind of wonder if Paul was thinking of Sodom and Gomorrah when he wrote this. 'Cause there's some parallels here, aren't there, Nathan?
Nathan: Well, in Genesis 19, God described the cities as grievous. It says, "But when Abraham asked God, 'Will you be righteous with the wicked? What if only 10 righteous people can be found there?' The Lord said, 'For the sake of 10, I will not destroy it.'" So is that true?
Kent: Is the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah grievous?
Nathan: Oh yeah.
Kent: Doesn't this sound a lot like what I was just describing, Brome? People who have rejected God, who have fallen into sin sexually and otherwise, a totally depraved culture. And Abraham's begging God, is it possible to save them? And God says, if only 10 come, I will preserve this culture. Why? To give them more time to repent. Because I want them to be changed. If 10 of 100,000 are righteous, God says his hand of punishment will be stayed.
Vicki: Think about that. 10 of 100,000.
Kent: Just 10. There is hope. Valuable people can be saved. They have been saved. History tells us that. America's history was altered. This nation, it was morally transformed by the Great Awakening in the 1740s when Jonathan Edwards preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and called for repentance and new birth in Christ. And America was changed from the inside out. It happens. It did happen. It can happen. Paul is confident of that. And he's telling us no political party is going to save our nation. No law court is going to bring righteousness back to our people. As we saw on the podcast in the book of Galatians, the only hope for our sinful societies is the gospel, stupid. That's what Paul is saying here. My life was transformed by the gospel. Their life is transformed by the gospel. Let's not give up on Rome. Left to its own, that's where it's going. But we've got an option. We can save them. I know, like Rome, our nation's worldview, our world's worldview is skewed. And we are witnessing the consequences of societies rejecting God. We can see the moral collapse of society is inevitable unless something dramatic changes. But something can change. Lives and destinies can be altered with the gospel. Come on, let's value human life, all human lives, even those who live in gross immorality or worship idols. Let's obey the Great Commission and go into all the world and preach the gospel and invest in the gospel around the world, because people are dying when they do not— by not hearing it. Let's take the good news of Jesus Christ to those people and places who need it the most, because God views all people as treasures. Who can be saved from the trash.
Brian: It's important to take the gospel to the entire world because those who do not accept God's forgiveness will descend deeper into sin and deeper into God's wrath. The Crosstalk Podcast is a production of Crosstalk Global, equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more about this educational nonprofit organization, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. Crosstalk is getting ready to train biblical communicators in Southern California, Cuba, Bucharest, Moldova, and Nepal. Help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click Donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also support this show by rating it on whatever platform you're listening to us. Be sure to join us next week as we continue our series through the book of Romans. You won't want to miss it.
Nathan: We do this with individuals we pass on the street or in the grocery store, but we also do this with entire groups or cultures of people. That happened in the first century. It happened in the first century.
Vicki: It sure did. And lest you forget, it happened in the first century.
Kent: See? Did it happen in the first century?
Nathan: I'm unclear.
Kent: I want to make sure you got it.
Nathan: So did you mean to write that happened in the first century?
Kent: Yes. It happens today.
Nathan: Okay.
Kent: Okay.
Vicki: And it happens today.
Nathan: Do you want to say it happens today or it happens in It happens today in the 21st century.
Kent: It doesn't matter.
Nathan: Well, I don't know. You were obviously really trying to make a point here. The best part was that Kent saw that as we were going into it and just knew that we were going to give him a hard time about it.
Kent: No, I was caught off guard. I was surprised you'd give me a hard time.
Nathan: Normally so gracious.
Kent: Yeah, I know.
Nathan: Smoothing over all of my errors like a good collectivist society.
Kent: Mercy flowing like a dried-up stream.