Romans 1:18-23

God's Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 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.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles.


Dig Deeper
Young parents usually look forward, with great anticipation, to their first child being born, but there’s often something that they don’t know. It’s something that most of the older parents around them do know but it’s one of those things that has to be experienced to be fully understood. Parents love their children and there is nothing quite like watching new parents fall in love with their precious little bundle in ways that they could never even have imagined. Yet there is something that they will learn as the child gets older about discipline. It can be quite difficult for a new parent to imagine ever having to discipline their sweet little baby. They love them so much that all they can do is think about loving them and showering them with affection. We’ve all probably been around parents, though, who still act like that as their child nears 2 or 3 years old. Everyone around them can see a naughty little toddler that desperately needs discipline, except for the parents who refuse to see that and continue to treat their child like a perfect little angel. And in this lies the truth that each parent must come to learn at some point if they are to be a good parent. If a parent is really going to love their child, they must discipline them. They must stand in firm opposition to the sin and evil that manifests in their child’s life even at a young age. You cannot truly love a child with disciplining them in love as well. You just can’t.

Paul has begun to explain why he wants to come to the city of Rome and the church there to proclaim the gospel of the risen Messiah. He wants to come to build the church up and help them forge the genuine kind of unity between Jews and Gentiles that the gospel demands and that is only truly available in the kingdom life. In order to do that he is writing this letter to them to explain that aspect of the gospel and to explain the justice of God. Paul is going to explain to them how the resurrection of Christ and the gospel that proclaims that fact demonstrates the covenant faithfulness of God. It shows that God is just and explains what God has been up to all along. But a very real part of that justice, faithfulness, and love of God is his wrath. Centuries ago, Christians talked often about the wrath of God, sometimes too much perhaps. But these days, Christians seem hesitant to talk about God’s wrath at all. They want to only talk of his love, grace and kindness and think that any talk of wrath or justice doesn’t fit into that picture. Yet what we must realize is that the same principle that holds true for parents holds true with God. If God is good and if he is just, two things that we believe him to be, then he must stand opposed to evil. If God does not unleash his righteous wrath on evil, then he is not a good God at all.

The declaration of the gospel, the risen Messiah putting the broken pieces of the world back together, doesn’t make much sense unless we understand clearly that the world has rebelled against God without just cause. If the gospel is the announcement that, in Christ, God has shown himself to be faithful to his covenant in restoring his good creation and blessing the world then his opposition and wrath against evil is absolutely part of his justice. Paul is not just talking about the condemnation at the second coming and judgment of the world (which Paul will get to in the next chapter) but there is anticipatory judgment throughout history or to put it another way, the history of the world reveals the ongoing judgment of the world. The wrath to come and the wrath that is currently being revealed in history stand as twin testaments to the condemnation under which all those outside of Christ stand. The coming of the gospel doesn’t relieve this wrath for those outside of Christ but actually increases their guilt. The same life revealed in the gospel is also the very standard of judgment though whom the whole world will be brought to account. Whether the world embraces or suppresses the truth, the fact is that everyone will be judged either in the life of Christ or by the life of Christ. In verse 18, then, Paul sums up succinctly what he will describe in more detail in the rest of this passage. The gospel not only reveals God’s righteousness in salvation but also in wrath as human beings intentionally reject God and his plan and so stand rightly condemned in the present, a condemnation which, as Paul will show in chapter 2, will be confirmed at the final judgment.

In verses 19-20 Paul makes it clear that societies do suppress the truth but individuals are still responsible for their own situation. Simply because societies suppress the truth about God does not render its subjects guiltless before God (we would do well to remember here and throughout the letter of Romans that Paul is usually thinking in terms of societies and people rather than strictly individuals). The fact is that God has made certain things about his existence and our responsibility to carry out his will but humans have refused to honor God appropriately. God has revealed himself through his creation to all men, but we should be careful to note that this knowledge of God revealed in nature does not, in itself, have the power to save. This knowledge of God only renders humans more guilty and makes us more aware of the wrath that has been revealed against humans in opposition to God. The appropriate response to God’s revelation would have been unfettered worship and gratitude towards God (although that would not by itself save humans) but mankind has consistently refused.

Mankind was made in the image of God which means that man was designed by God to represent God to his creation and take dominion over that creation but man forfeited that image by engaging their own will rather than following God’s. As part of that original image God gave humans an instinct, a natural desire to worship, but rather than worshiping appropriately our creator, mankind turned that desire into idolatry and began to worship everything but the one, true God.

As Paul explains this human pattern he seems to be drawing upon echoes from Genesis 3 as well as the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Adam and Eve had been created in the image of God but rather than obeying God’s word and following his will they listened to the temptation to exalt their own will and seize upon fruit that would make them like God (Gen. 3:6). They went clutching after wisdom that was not theirs and got nothing but foolishness, destruction of their purpose, and God’s wrath instead. This disease of misplaced wisdom did not end with Adam and Eve nor did it merely extend to pagan nations while not touching Israel itself. No, Israel, from the very beginning, demonstrated the same problem. Immediately following God’s powerful and miraculous rescue from slavery, Israel responded with false wisdom as they “exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass” (Ps. 106:20) Just as Adam and Eve exchanged the image of the creator for the lie of gaining wisdom by doing their own will, all of mankind has exchanged the image of the creator for worthless idolatry and called it wisdom.

The beginning of all this is that humans suppress the truth about God which leads to futile thinking. It leads men to “call evil good and good evil” (Isa. 5:20) and to exalt that which is really foolish as though it were wise (see 1 Cor. 1-4). The rejection of God leads to distorted thinking and this distorted thinking leads to calling the rejection of God wisdom and rejecting God further. Thus it creates a vicious cycle from which there is no hope of escape if left to our own devices. This common plight of distorted thinking looks ahead to Romans 12:2 where Paul says that part of the solution of the gospel is that in Christ we are called to and given the ability to transform our minds and break the patterns that the rest of the world around us follows.

Futile thinking has a further ramification, though. It leads to a darkened heart. In biblical vernacular, one’s heart was the seat of the will or motivation. Paul’s line of argument is that mankind has rejected God, which leads to distorted thinking beyond the original distortion of rejecting God and that this grasp at wisdom that is not ours leads to a distortion of the will. The history of humankind is the long, sad history of humans listening to their own darkened wills rather than God’s. Our very hearts, the deepest part of our emotions, constantly bids us to rebel against God and seek our own satisfaction.

Paul has finished off his basic complaint against the Gentile nations (he will soon turn his eye toward the Jews as well), a charge that has been exacerbated by the revelation of the gospel. Humans were made in the image of God and called to represent him, do his will, and worship him have turned instead and rejected him, sought our own will, and turned our basic worship instinct into idolatry, claiming that to be wisdom rather than the true foolishness that it is. The charge has been set in this cosmic courtroom scene and the results of this rebellion are the topic of the remainder of this chapter.


Devotional Thought
Do you see the exercise of your own will as a freedom of yours, a good thing, or as the sign of rebellion against God that it is? Jesus’ model prayer in Matthew 6 calls for us to seek God’s will rather than our own. What does that mean for you on a daily basis?