Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man – and bird and four-footed animals and creeping things.
Romans 1, 22.23
Thoughts on the Epistle to the Romans (24)
When the heathen nations turned away from God the Creator, they did not totally abandon the thought of deity. But they would not acknowledge God, as He had revealed Himself and as they knew Him through His dealings in past history. They therefore created gods after their own imagination.
They professed to be wise. Indeed, turning away from the living God today frequently derives from a claim to be intelligent and is supported by argumentation that sounds logical. In fact, the folly of people who think in this way becomes only too evident. Human wisdom can never find the way to God and ultimate truth. We are dependent on the revelation that God has given of Himself.
Such folly is especially clear with pagans. They invented an alternative; knowledge of the one God who rules over creation and is not subject to transience was given up. They renounced all the glorious characteristics of the eternal, omnipotent God. Instead they began to revere images of men and animals. They not only deified men or extolled creatures, they made idols of them and worshiped such lifeless beings.
Will God accept such disregard of the revelation He has given of Himself as the one true God?