When God gives us what we want.

Tim Keller, Romans For You, on 1.18-32:

God’s judgment on godlessness and wickedness is to give us what we want. He “gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts.” The things we serve will not free us; rather, they control us. We have to have them. And, since our hearts were made to be centered on God, since he is the only true provider of satisfaction and significance, they do not satisfy— we always feel we need more, or something else. The tragedy of humanity is that we strive for and fail to find what we could simply receive and enjoy. We suppress the truth which would free and satisfy us.

 The word that the NIV translates “sinful desires” and the ESV renders “lusts” is epithumia. Literally, it means “over-desire,” an all-controlling drive and longing. This is revealing. The main problem of our heart is not so much desires for bad things, but our over-desires for good things, our turning of created, good things into gods, objects of our worship and service. And the worst thing that can happen to us is that we are given what our hearts over-desire.

Oscar Wilde summed it up well: “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” This is the wrath of God: to give us what we want too much, to give us over to the pursuit of the things we have put in place of him. The worst thing God can do to human beings in the present is to let them reach their idolatrous goals.