Scandalous Thanks: A World of No Thanks
Romans 1:21
Some years ago, I saw a remarkable truth in 1 Timothy 4.3 that has been very helpful and fruitful to contemplate ever since. Paul says there that God created food ‘to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.’ Now, I had known for many years that God wants people to be thankful to him, for food and for other things. I grew up in a Christian family that always prayed and thanked God for our food before meals. So, that was not a new insight.
But what struck me afresh in 1 Timothy 4.3 was the teaching that God created food – and, by extrapolation – all other things, in order that it might be received with thanksgiving. In other words, it was God’s purpose, in creating things, to produce thanksgiving flowing back to him. That was God’s aim in creation. That was a new, powerful thought for me. It’s not that God created things and then afterward thought, ‘That’s good; I’d like people to thank me for that.’ No, producing the human response of thanksgiving was God’s purpose (or at least one of his purposes) all along, from the very beginning. Human thanksgiving is one of God’s creational purposes.
Thankfulness is a God-designed follow-through to God-given blessing.
To picture how the world is designed by God to work, to function properly, at its best, imagine a great big circle. God is at the top of the circle. God creates good things (health, parents, children, computers, jetskis, Misto coffees at Starbucks, used bookstores, the Bible, good prayer times, flowers, chainsaws), and he gives these good things to human beings to use and to enjoy. The proper response of humans is to receive these good things as gifts from God, to enjoy them fully, to share them with others, and then to return thanks to God for the gifts he’s given.
It’s a circle of gift and gratitude. And we see this all over the Bible. In Psalm 116, the Lord is good to the Psalmist; the Lord hears his cry and he acts and saves him. So, the Psalmist says, ‘What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?’ And he answers his own question: ‘I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.’ Gift and gratitude, constantly flowing in a great circle.
The key point here is that God designed both these parts of the circle. God means for human beings to respond with thanks. When he gives a gift, it’s like he’s inviting us to dance. We’re meant to move. He’s holding up his hand for a high five and expecting that we’ll return it. In other words, his creation of food, and drink, and sunsets, and oceans, and mountains, and animals, and every other good thing, is an invitation to relationship, an invitation to response.
According to 1 Timothy 4.3, this is the way the world is designed by God to work. Saying thank you to God, feeling deep thanks to him, is living along the grain of the universe. It’s living in sync with the Creator and with his plan.
But, as we all know, it often does not work this way! Let me give you an example from my own life of how easy it is for me not to get this circle of thanks right. Years ago, a couple in our congregation had twins born 14 weeks early. They were delivered at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, which has one of the top neo-natal units in the country. I had known that the twins would likely come early, but when I got the call that they were actually being delivered 14 weeks early, I knew it was a serious situation. So, I got in my car and began driving into Boston, and as I drove, I was pouring my heart out to God, praying earnestly, asking him to spare the lives of these two little twins and to gift the parents with deep faith in him, no matter what happened. So, I’m driving my car, lips moving, prayers flying and then I get another call. I’m told that the twins have been born, they are safe, and the mother is doing well.
You know what I did? I said ‘Yes!’ out loud, I felt great relief and joy, I hung up the phone, and I stopped praying. I turned on the car radio, and I thought, ‘Now I can relax on the rest of my trip down to Boston. The rest of this night is going to be a celebration. This is going to be fun.’
I drove for about a minute, and then God brought 1 Timothy 4.3 to my mind, and I realized I was totally missing the whole point of what had just happened. The point, the purpose, of God giving a safe birth to these two tiny babies was to win praise and thanks for himself as he displayed his character of mercy and grace. The good news of a safe delivery wasn’t supposed to be the end of my praying, but rather the beginning of my thanks. I was missing the whole point of what was happening, like me watching cricket when I’m in the UK. I don’t really understand what they’re trying to accomplish, I don’t get the point of all the running around.
And this is easy for us to do. It’s easy for us to miss the point! When you sit down to eat a meal, and you’re really hungry, it’s tempting to rush through the prayer to get to the meal, right? I understand that. Our kids will often say to us: ‘Can we pray? My mouth is watering!’ But actually, praying so you can eat reverses the proper relation of things. The point of saying thanks is not to get to the meal – the point of the meal is to produce thanks. The thanks to God is not the precursor to the main event, it is the main event of that meal, the most important thing that happens.
So, in my car, traveling toward Boston, God called me back to prayer, this time to thankfulness. I switched off the radio. And I began to give specific, heart-felt thanks to God for all the amazing things he was doing for this young family. And God met me in my car. My heart connected with him in a fresh and powerful way, to the point of tears. It was really, really good; one of the best prayer times God had given me in a long while. And I almost missed it.
Stopping prayer after getting an answer from God means that you were really praying all along for the answer rather than for the relationship with the one who gave the answer. It reveals a misunderstanding of prayer, and, even more, of God.
I don’t think I’m alone. I don’t think I’m the only one who has a hard time remembering to thank God. The scandal of thanks is that millions of people every day, in a world that God has created and furnished with many good things, enjoy those good things and do not give thanks to God for them. And this is a huge scandal that matters greatly to God.
Now, because God made the world as he did, to give thanks to him, there are vestiges, remnants, of his good plan, of the circle of thanks, everywhere we look. For instance, even though people neglect to give thanks to God, person to person thankfulness is common. Think of all the television award shows, where actors or musicians receive a Grammy or Oscar or whatever. What do they do when they get up on stage? They give thanks…at times, seemingly endless thanks! Or think of the huge industry of Hallmark thank you cards; did you ever need to suffer through writing thank you cards when you were a kid? We drill this into our kids, don’t we? Say thanks. Think of the Thanksgiving holiday we celebrate every year. Or even think of the way we talk. People who do not actually believe in God still might say, ‘Thank God!’ if they hear good news and feel relieved. ‘Thank God!’ They don’t really mean that; it’s a hold-over from a time when people did. These acts of thankfulness are vestiges, remnants, of the world as it was designed to be lived in by God.
Gratitude has been studied by social scientists, who have argued that it has positive physical, social, and psychological effects. A 2008 study showed evidence that gratitude ‘can reduce the frequency and duration of episodes of depression.’ All of these findings should not surprise us. If God designed gratitude into this world, we should expect things to work better when we’re living along the grain of the universe.
But even though there are plenty of vestiges of this pattern of gratitude to God still available to see when we look around the world, we’re confronted with the fact that millions of people do not thank God for the good gifts from him that they enjoy. They take the gifts and forget the Giver. It’s a scandal. How has it come to be?
We get the answer to that question in Romans 1. In Romans 1, the Apostle Paul begins to lay out his case for the universal sinfulness of all people. He builds that case in Romans 1–3, and it climaxes in Romans 3.18-20, where Paul says that every mouth is stopped by God and the whole world is accountable to God. And then Paul, beginning in Romans 3.21 and continuing through Romans 8, proclaims the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the only answer to universal human sinfulness.
Here’s what Paul says in Romans 1.18-23: ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 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. 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.’
We learn two things in Romans 1.18-23 about thanklessness. We learn what it is, and we learn where it comes from.
First, this passage shows us that lack of thankfulness to God is sin. Paul says that every human being knows God through the things he has made. Verse 20: ‘For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.’ The problem of human beings is not that we don’t know God – it is that we suppress the truth we know (verse 18). And when Paul drills down in verse 21 into what that suppression of our knowledge of God looks like, here’s what he says: ‘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.’ The failure to give thanks to God is at the heart of sinful human rebellion against God. Lack of thankfulness to God is sin.
This is really important for us to see, because in our day and in our culture, we have trivialized thankfulness, or thanklessness, by placing it in the category of etiquette. Being thankful is mainly about having good manners. It’s a matter for Emily Post, for Miss Manners. Use your salad fork, say Mr. and Mrs., and say thank you.
But Romans 1 takes thanklessness toward God out of the ‘bad etiquette’ category and puts it in the ‘rebellion against God’ category. Being thankless is an act of rebellion against God himself. It is refusing to give him what he is due, what we know deep down he is due. It is therefore a serious sin, not just a matter of rudeness.
Second, this passage shows us that thanklessness stems from idolatry. Look at verses 22-23: ‘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 reptiles.’ Verse 25 goes on to say that they ‘…exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!’
Remember, God created the good things of the world in order that he might be thanked by those to whom he gives them. But human beings ruin that good plan through idolatry. Instead of thanking God, as we’re meant to do, we assign ultimate value to the things God has made; we make them into idols, and then we thank them instead of God. This is exactly what Israel did in Exodus 32, when they said that the golden calf was the one who brought them up out of Egypt, and gave thanks to it, a hunk of gold (32.4, 8).
Well, you might say: we don’t worship stone or gold idols, this isn’t a problem for us. But it actually is a huge problem in our world. Lack of thankfulness to God is one of the great scandals of our day, and it is still caused by idolatry:
When something good happens, the world often apportions praise and thanks only to the other people who made it happen. Those people are put in the place that God alone can occupy and given the thanks that God alone deserves.
Or, just as frequently, when we accomplish something significant, we silently take the credit for ourselves, thinking that it was something about us that allowed us to do that thing, forgetting that God was the one who gave us the abilities we have, and therefore deserves thanks.
It gets even more blantant than this. The world personifies nature as ‘Mother Nature’ and then thanks it, worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. I once saw a blog post with the title, ‘I’m thankful for what Mother Earth has given me.’ Another online comment said, ‘I am quite thankful for Mother Nature's strikingly dramatic and perfect design to give us all that we need to flourish and thrive…’
This is worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. It is (literally) damnable sin, a terrible scandal. Remember, the context of Romans 1.21 is Paul building a case that all people are sinful, so that every mouth is stopped, and the whole world is accountable to God. But remember also that Paul’s ultimate point in making his case for universal sin in Romans 1.18-3.20 is to take us to the gospel, the declaration that there is a righteousness that is received ‘through faith for all who believe’ (Romans 3.22).
Here’s the main point for today. Being thankful to God is not a little thing. It is not about good manners. It is what we were made for. It is living along the grain of the universe. Take thankfulness out of the ‘etiquette’ category in your mind and put it in the ‘central things in relationship with God’ category. If you see someone at an awards show giving thanks to everyone, including his producers and wife and friends and great-aunt and his dog, but failing to give thanks to God, grieve over that. It is unnatural. It is broken. It is sinful. Examine yourself, and if you see a pattern of thanklessness toward God, say sorry and ask him to help you become a deeply thankful person and to grow in relationship with him this way.
A few weeks ago, on our family day, Emma and I and the kids went walking in Beaver Brook State Park. It was a crisp, gorgeous, windy day, the sun was shining and we had a great time walking by the lake. As we came walking back along the lake, the five of us stopped, stood in a circle, and then went around the circle thanking God for something we heard or felt or saw: the birds twittering, the sun shining on our backs, the blue sky, the gorgeous lake, a beaver dam. Unless we’re that intentional about it, we’ll forget that the main point of all this beauty is the relationship we enjoy with God. God is inviting us into deeper relationship as we complete the circle of thanks he has designed for his glory and our good.
This resource is part of the series In All Circumstances – A Theology of Gratitude. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Stephen Witmer is the Lead Pastor at Pepperell Christian Fellowship in Pepperell, MA. He holds a PhD in New Testament from the University of Cambridge. Stephen is a member of the St. Anselm Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
