The apostle Paul has begun his letter to the church in Rome by proclaiming to them the gospel. In the first six verses of Romans sets forward that the gospel is concerning the Son who descended from David and was declared to be the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead. Paul then puts forward that he is not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation for all who believe because the righteousness of God is revealed in it. But I want us to think about how the message of the gospel has an important implication. If the gospel is God’s power to save all who believe, then there is an important question that must be asked: Saved from what? Why do we need salvation? Why is God offering salvation through the gospel? What are we being saved from? The rest of Romans 1 tells us the truth about our situation before the Almighty God.
God’s Good Wrath (Romans 1:18)
You will notice that the first word of verse 18 is “For” because we are connecting back to this statement about God’s righteousness being revealed through the gospel which calls for the righteous to live by faith. Verse 18 proclaims that God’s wrath has been revealed from heaven. This might be a shocking truth. In our world today it is common to proclaim or suggest that God does not have wrath. They will say that God is love and that is the only stance God has toward this world. It is absolutely true that God is love. But it is also true that the wrath of God has been revealed. Now it is easy to have a problem with this idea. Many people have a problem with God’s wrath. They cannot reconcile how God can be love and have wrath. I suggest to you the answer is very easy. I want you to imagine a person that you love very much. Imagine a person who is very important to you in your life that you deeply care about. Now I want you to imagine someone you do not know doing some horrible, violent act toward that person. What you are feeling is wrath because that person has done something evil. They have done something horribly wrong that is worthy of justice and judgment. Why is everyone so angry about what we have learned about Jeffrey Epstein? Because what he did was vile and wicked and he hurt innocent children. We are right to be angry and must be angry at what he did.
You will notice that this is exactly what Paul says about God in verse 18. The wrath of God has been revealed against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness that people do. Friends, we should be completely onboard with the wrath of God. We should applaud the wrath of God. In fact, God cannot be good and God cannot love if he does not hate evil and does not do something about it. We want justice. We want evil to be punished. In verse 17 we read that the gospel shows God’s righteousness. But here is what that means. If God is righteous and always does what is right, then he must have wrath toward all that is evil and ungodly. Since God is right and defines what is good, then anything that is not living with a God orientation is ungodly and worthy of his wrath. Therefore, I want you to notice that I have summarized this verse as God’s good wrath. His wrath is not bad. His wrath is not wrong. His wrath is good because his wrath is not random or capricious. His wrath is directed toward all ungodliness and unrighteousness. This is why the gospel message is never one-sided. The gospel message always is a proclamation of salvation from the coming judgment. The good news is that you can be rescued from the coming wrath that stands against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.
Now I want us to focus on the rest of verse 18. Paul says that people by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. I want us to think about the word “suppress.” When you suppress something, you are holding it down or holding it back. Here is a critical truth that Paul puts forward that we may not realize. People suppress the truth about God, about wrath, about sin, and about judgment because they want to sin. We do not want to hear the truth of the gospel because we want to do what we want to do. Jesus said this on a number of occasions.
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19-20 ESV)
What a truthful statement! The light has come into the world but the reason because reject the light is because they love the darkness. This is what the apostle Paul is saying. People are suppressing the truth by their unrighteousness. We ignore the truth about God and the gospel because we want to sin. This is one reason why everyone is happy to talk about how God is love. They think this means they can keep on sinning. They can suppress the truth that God’s wrath has been revealed against all wickedness. Notice what is said a few sentence later in John 3.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:36 ESV)
Notice that John does not say that the wrath of God is coming. Rather, the wrath of God remains on that person if they do not believe in and obey the Son. The wrath of God is against all unrighteousness and there is no one who is righteous (cf. Romans 3:10). Our desire for sin suppresses this truth. The truth of God is not unknown nor is it unknowable. Rather, the truth of God is suppressed.
We Have No Excuse (Romans 1:19-20)
Now the apostle Paul wants to disarm us if we think that there are people who do not know the truth. Keep reading verses 19-20. What can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. Now we might wonder how God has shown himself to every person. How is the truth of God plain to all people? How has God shown his truth to all people? Look at verse 20. Since the creation of the world, God’s invisible attributes are clearly seen. You have to love proclamations like this. Paul just said that God’s invisible qualities can be clearly seen in the creation. What are all people supposed to see? They are to see his eternal power and his divine nature in the creation. God has plainly revealed himself in the creation. When you look at any aspect of the world, whatever it is, whether you are looking at the human body, plants and trees, sky, planets, animals, or anything else, you are supposed to see the truth of God. God’s invisible attributes are clearly seen through what has been made. God’s power and intelligence are on full display in the world. The creation tells you something every day. The creation tells you there is a God and he is alive! David states in Psalm 19 that heavens proclaim the glory of God and the skies display his craftsmanship. Every day and every night the voice of God’s creation goes through all the world.
No one in their right mind stands at the Grand Canyon and says, “Look at me!” No one goes to Niagara Falls and thinks that they are a god. No one stands at the Tunnel View of Yosemite and think they are great. There is so much of the creation that makes us feel small that is to cause us to consider that there must be something or someone greater than ourselves. There is something about us that looks at the vastness of creation and stands in awe of it all.
Notice the conclusion drawn at the end of verse 20. “So they are without excuse.” The creation takes away the excuse of every person in the world. We like to come up with hypothetical situations of a person living on an island and how is he supposed to know about God. Here is God’s answer: the creation is to cause everyone to see God’s invisible attributes and seek him. The creation does not teach you the gospel. The creation teaches you that there is a God and we need to find out what he wants from us. We like to think that we are so much smarter than those who lived in ancient days. But I think we could successfully argue that modern culture is dumber. At least the ancients looked around at the creation and attributed what they saw to something greater than themselves. So they created gods who they believed were in charge of the sun, the rain, the land, and so forth. But what we do today is look around at the creation and say that there is nothing greater than us. We are the fools who say that there is no God (cf. Psalm 14:1). We say that it all happened to chance, luck, and random actions over a long period of time. The complexity of our world argues otherwise. No one looks at a beautiful new car and believes that given enough time, chance, and energy, the car randomly came into existence. No one looks at that car and says that a junkyard exploded and a car came out. But we look at this amazing, beautiful, and complex world and suppress the knowledge of the Almighty God.
Therefore, there is not a single person who has an excuse. We want to make all kinds of excuses for people’s ungodliness and unrighteousness. But there is no excuse because God has plainly revealed himself through all that has been made. No plea for ignorance will be accepted before God because it is false. It is not hard to look around the world today and look at our culture today and see that a loving God must be very upset by what he sees going on. The faithfulness of God also means that he must act justly against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness.
A Failure To Respond (Romans 1:21)
So the gospel reveals the righteousness of God. God doing what is right and good means that God’s wrath must be revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. This truth is suppressed because we want to stay in the darkness because what is known about God is plain to everyone because God has revealed himself through all the things that have been made in the world. Therefore, no one has any excuse. So what is the problem? We will spend more time here next week, Lord willing. But I want us to see this concluding instruction. According to verse 21, the problem is that though God has made himself plain to all people through the creation, people have not honored him nor have been thankful to him.
Friends, what is supposed to happen is that all creation is to show honor and gratitude to God. When you understand that there is a God, and everyone is to understand that there is a God by looking at the creation, then the immediate response of every person is to glorify God and give him thanks. We are thankful to God that we took another breath. We are thankful to God because we exist. We are thankful to God when we look around and see who God is and what he has made for us. We glorify God that he is mindful of us and has made it possible for every person to avoid the coming wrath. We have no excuse for failing to glorify God and give gratitude to God. We need to think about this reality because these are two sins that we may not consider. We are not right for failing to glorify God and give him thanks. When we do not honor God or give him thanks then we are choosing to not see God’s hand in the world or in our lives. The wrath of God remains on us when we do not honor God and give him thanks because failure to do such is simply not right. He is the Creator and it is not right to not honor him, not praise him, not worship him, and not be grateful to him.
Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:6 ESV)
We exist because of the Lord and it is a failure on our part to not respond appropriately to him. We must respond with honor and gratitude. We must respond by living by faith (cf. Romans 1:17). The wrath of God has been revealed. There must be wrath and judgment because no one is righteous. There must be wrath and judgment because no one has honored the Creator in the way that is right for who God is. But the gospel is the power of God for salvation (cf. Romans 1:16). The good news is that God does not hide this information from us. The good news is that God has not only told us our sin problem but also made a way to avoid the wrath to come. Look around and look at creation and know that there is a God who wants you to seek him and know him. Look around so that you will look up. Satan wants us to keep looking down. But God’s invisible attributes are on full display in the world around you so that you will honor your Creator and give him thanks.