That was the headline on the BBC News website this week, after it came to light that one of the world’s biggest carmakers Volkswagen has admitted to using software to provide false emission test results for its diesel cars in the US, affecting 500,000 vehicles in the US alone and up to 11 million worldwide.
It is worth considering what had to happen for this to have occurred. Someone had to have the idea of how to do it technically, and someone had to give permission for it to be done – or it could have been several people in each case – and either the know-how or the go-ahead could have come first. Did nobody think this was wrong and try to stop it? Not just risky, in case they got caught, but plain wrong and shouldn’t be done? They have been found deceiving not only the regulators, but also their own customers.
Are these actions not what Romans 1 speaks of: “what ought not to be done … wickedness … greed … deceit” (verses 28-29)? What we may be less aware of is what lies behind these sinful acts: “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.” These sins are evidence that we live in a world already under God’s wrath, and with “the day of God’s wrath” (2:6) still to come. And that is why we need the gospel of the sin-bearing, wrath-assuaging, judgment-facing death of our Lord Jesus Christ.