By Steven Newell
This section of Romans is a carry on of Romans 1:16-17. Romans 1:16-17 is the Gospel while Romans
1:18-23 is the Law. Normally, we start
with the Law and end with the Gospel.
This would be a correct flow for non-Christians. But for Christian in Rome,
Paul stated with the end of the story first, the Gospel. In order to understand the Gospel, we must
understand what we are being saved from.
Paul will use this part of his letter to begin the purpose and limitation
of the Law which will go through Romans 3:20.
In the Greek, there is no paragraph break between verses 17 and 18. This paragraph break is a function of the
English language.
Paul begins with a strong statement as God’s wrath is
currently being revealed against all godlessness and wickedness. God’s wrath is part of God’s holy judgment
against all sin. God’s wrath is always
targeted at rebellion against God. God’s
wrath targets all sin. We hear much
about a loving God and our salvation, while we hear very little about the God’s
wrath. If there is no judgment for our
sins, then we can sin without consequence.
Likewise, if there is no consequence for our sin, then Christ died in
vein.
There is both a present state and a future state to God’s
wrath. Throughout the Old Testament, the
prophets spoke a present and an eternal aspect to God’s wrath. Jeremiah wrote that Babylon would be destroyed for what they did to Israel
(Jeremiah 50), while Isaiah also states that Babylon
will also see God’s wrath on the Day of the Lord (Isaiah 13). In Peter’s second letter, Peter states that
God’s judgment is certain, but God is patient so that everyone can come to
repentance (2 Peter 3:8-9). In the
historic liturgy of the Church, we acknowledge our condition:
O Almighty God,
merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and
iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your
temporal and eternal punishment.
Sometimes, we experience God’s temporal punishment for our
sins. However, many of our sins may not
result temporal punishment from God.
However, everyone will be subject for God’s eternal judgment for our
sins. The God’s wrath is targeted at all
godlessness and wickedness.
Any sin is godlessness and wickedness. We tend to think of gross sins such as
murder, stealing, and sexual immorality as what godless people do. We say that “it’s what other people do since
I am a good person”. However, Jesus
tells us if we have hateful thought against another, it is the same as if we
had plunged a knife into that person’s heart (Matthew 5:21-22). If we
have lustful thoughts about another person, it is the same as if we had sex
with that person (Matthew 5:27-28). We are subject to God’s wrath since we are
all sinners, godless and wicked.
The second part of Paul’s description of the reason of God’s
wrath is who the object of His wrath is.
Paul states that those who suppress the truth with their own wickedness
is the object of God’s wrath. There is a
difference between being subject to God’s wrath and being the object of His
wrath. In Romans 1:16-17, Paul states
that who are believe and have faith will live and are not the objects of God’s
wrath. In the second part of our
confession of sin, we ask for mercy:
But I am heartily
sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and I pray You of Your boundless
mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of
Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor,
sinful being.
Our sins are still subject to God’s wrath, but it Christ who
bore God’s wrath on our behalf when he was on the cross.
The wicked man will not repent of their sin and ask for
mercy since they suppress the truth of our sinfulness and our need for God’s
mercy. In our natural state, we reject
the truth of God and we suppress God’s truth by our sinfulness. It is only after God has saved us do we have
the ability to accept God’s truth. Paul,
who was an expert of God’s law and tried to follow the Law, was godless and
wicked prior to his conversion. Paul
used his attempt of obedience to the Law as his way of suppressing the truth of
God. When Jesus appeared to Saul on the
road to Damascus, Jesus stated that
Saul was persecuting Him and that Saul was fighting against Christ and hurting
himself (Acts 26:14). Paul had heard the
Gospel since he was at Stephen’s trial and he still rejected the Gospel since
on his own he had no faith. In our
natural state, we reject the Gospel since we have no faith to believe the Gospel. It was Christ who gave Paul the ability to
believe as he does each one who is saved.
In verse 20, Paul uses the concept of “natural law” to show
that in creation we see the evidence of God’s existence and that God has
incredible power to create our world as well as the entire universe. While nature does not show us the Gospel, it
does testify the God exists. The term
“general revelation” is used to describe this way we see a universal aspect of
God. “Specific revelation” is God’s
specific showing himself through Christ and His Word. We see
many reject that God exists, through general revelation then they try to use
nature as a way to provide that God does not exist.
Paul writes, in verses 21 to 23, how the sinful mind rejects
God and confuses the worship of the creator with the created. We may acknowledge that there is a “god”, we
neither give God the glory that he deserves and we refuse to give God properly
thanks and praise for what God has given us.
In the 1700’s, many people were Deist such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin
Franklin. They viewed “god” as the
creator but “god” had no part of the human events. When there are a continual lack of
glorification and thanks given to God, the result is our hearts being darkened
and our thinking becomes futile. The
result of this darkened heart is that we confuse God and nature. Today, we worship man as the center
(“humanism”) or nature (“environmentalism”) to name just a few. This confusing creator and creation is as old
as man. Throughout the Old Testament, we
see worship of animals and birds being condemned by God. The early church had to confront the worship
of Caser and they responded by refusing to worship Caser and many dies
horrendous deaths at the hands of the Roman government. Another confuse that we see today is that many
have exchange the word “creation” for the word “nature”. The word nature does not point to a
creator.
Another confusion of man is that his view of his own wisdom
is misplaced. We confuse knowledge with
wisdom. We know more about our world
than any other time in history, but are we any wiser? In 1 Corinthians 1:18 to 2:5, Paul compares the wisdom of man to the
wisdom of God. The wisdom of God is
considered foolish to the “educated” mind and is a stumbling block to the
Gospel. The twentieth century has the
greatest leap forward in human knowledge as the same time the greatest number
of deaths due to war in human history.
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