Romans 1:18-32
Later in his letter the apostle Paul diagnoses humanity with “incurable sin” (Romans 3:9,23), but he begins by taking down its case history. A case history — in Greek, an “anamnesis” — is the medical term for the detailed, step-by-step gathering of information from a patient or his relatives about the character and causes of the illness that has developed in him. When you go to the doctor, he usually listens to you first and asks questions that help him understand how you arrived at the condition you are in. So what we find in Romans 1:18-32 is the story of the human illness called “incurable sin.” This illness is caused by the rupture in the relationship between God and man. And it happens like this. God creates man and reveals Himself as his God in order to have fellowship with him and to lead him toward what is good. But in his pride and folly man rejects God, and with some inexplicable, senseless stubbornness he chooses to be a god to himself. Man’s choice angers God, and He simply withdraws from man and hands him over into slavery to his own sin. Handed over into this terrible slavery, man is condemned to death. Man lacks God, but he has already lost the innocence with which he might draw near to God. He also lacks the ability to produce any righteousness of his own. So man finds himself in a dead end because of his own choice. But this is no ordinary dead end. It is a dead end in which he is dying and out of which he has no strength to climb. He is like a man in a swamp, where every attempt to get out only sinks him deeper toward the bottom. This is his condition — a condition he has placed himself in — incurable sin from which he cannot heal himself. This is precisely why he needs salvation. And the power for salvation is the gospel of Christ.
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness. (Romans 1:18)
This verse answers the question: “Why do we need the gospel?” And the answer is that without it we are lost. In our relationship toward God, we human beings act utterly dishonestly. What we do is unrighteous and unjust. Why? Because God reveals His truth to us, but we place an obstacle in front of it so that it will not shine out. God gives us the warm sunlight of His truth to illuminate us and to warm us, and we build ourselves a protective shield of lies to guard ourselves against it and to stay in the cold, the frost, and the darkness. And even when rays of truth break through the protective shield we have built out of lies, we reject them. We reject not only them, but their source as well — God Himself, our Creator. Naturally, such an attitude angers God.
But isn’t God love… Can He be angry? Some people think that God is almost behaving improperly and rudely when He is angry. The reason the idea of God’s wrath is not understood by many people is that, for us human beings, anger is ethically unacceptable. And yet, even among ourselves we speak of “righteous anger.” So, is God’s wrath righteous? Of course. God is the Creator of all things visible and invisible. And His wrath is His personal response against those things in creation that contradict His holiness. God’s wrath is holy. It is His constant attitude against sin and evil. God’s wrath is not a matter of whim, nor does it flare up in fits like human anger. It is consistent. Why does sin provoke God? Because it dishonors Him and contradicts His holy, moral character.
THE CAUSE OF GOD’S WRATH
In this passage we see the causes of God’s wrath and how its outpouring upon people expresses itself. Why is God angry with people? Because of the opportunities they have rejected. Even though they have the opportunity to know God and to live a godly life, they choose to rebel against their Creator and to be gods to themselves.
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. (Romans 1:19-20)
We acquire our knowledge from various sources. One such source is our own personal experience. I know the road from our house to the church in Dolno Ezerovo. Not everyone knows it, but I know it. Why? Because I have walked it hundreds of times. I have experience walking it. I even know several different roads to get there.
We also get information from various books. Contrary to some opinions, I was not present at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. It was convened because of the problems with Arius. The council condemned Arius as a heretic. I was not there, but I can learn the history from books.
I can also arrive at certain conclusions by using my own mental and analytical abilities. In the first half of the seventeenth century there lived a philosopher and mathematician named René Descartes. He proved that neither minds nor bodies exist. Then he asked himself the question: “Does it follow from this that I too do not exist?” And he answered: “No. If I am persuading myself of something, then I exist.” He went through a long process of reasoning to reach this conclusion.
I say all this to show you that there are various sources of knowledge. But one of them is especially special. And that is God’s revelation. Through it God discloses things we could never understand on our own, truths we could never learn by any other means. God reveals Himself to us through His creation. Looking at it, we cannot suppose that it became what it is all by itself. Everything is organized and ordered. Everything is made according to its purpose and design. And everything reveals a Creator who is almighty and all-knowing, holy and glorious. In Psalm 19:1-4 we read:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. 3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. 4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)
Creation gives us information about the Creator. It reveals God to everyone. Everyone ought to know that God is mighty and divine, and that we, His creatures, ought to worship Him. And does anyone have an excuse for his unbelief? No one has any excuse, because these truths of God have been made known to all by God’s silent messengers. Man’s problem is not that he cannot know God. His problem is that, having come to know Him, he does not receive Him but rejects Him. He refuses to be taught by God and by His general revelation. People ought to respond to God’s revelation of Himself, but they “neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.”
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. (Romans 1:21)
Even though they had the opportunity to have a good and glorious God, people chose to exchange Him for dead idols. This rejection of the light brought an even greater darkness. Why, after coming to know God, did people refuse to receive Him? Because they know that if they worship and serve God, then they must answer to Him for their deeds and their morals.
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 a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. (Romans 1:22-23)
Even though they could have worshiped and served the true God, people chose to worship not the Creator but the creation. They exchanged God’s glory for idols they could manipulate.
The ancient peoples were not human beings who had evolved from less developed organisms; they were people of high morality. By refusing to acknowledge the true, infinite, and almighty God, man has moved backward in his development — from truth to deception, from the genuine to the false, from wisdom and purity to the folly and corruption that go hand in hand with idolatry.
You see, man is religious by instinct. People everywhere in the world need someone to worship. God placed this instinct in us so that we would have the capacity to worship Him. So man will always have a need to worship. But by refusing to bow before the living God, man makes his own gods out of wood, gold, and stone — “images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.” Moreover, we must know that a man becomes like the thing he worships. We worship Christ and we want to be transformed into His image — to be like Him. But if a man’s “god” is an adulterer and a murderer, then he too begins to live and act like him. The more a man’s idea of God degenerates, the more his morality degenerates as well.
We must also not forget that in worshiping idols, man is actually worshiping demons. In 1 Corinthians 10:20 the apostle Paul says very clearly that the sacrifices of the pagans “are offered to demons, not to God.”
THE CONSEQUENCES OF MAN’S CHOICE
People rejected God and preferred to worship everything else but Him. But this was an enormous mistake. For in His wrath God withdrew from them and handed them over to sin. As a result, we people became slaves of sin. In 2 Peter 2:19 the apostle says that “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” In fact, this is precisely how God’s wrath expresses itself — that, by withdrawing from us and handing us over into slavery to sin, we are punished doubly. First, our punishment comes from the very nature of a life lived in sin — it is a life of excess, of perversion, of dishonor, of wounds and pain. One expression is repeated three times in this text and rings in our ears — “God gave them over.” To what has God handed us over because we rejected Him? To “impurity,” to “shameful lusts,” and to “a depraved mind.” As William MacDonald says: “Life for these people becomes one continuous carousel of sexual orgies in which they dishonor their bodies among themselves.” All of this is terrible, because by its very nature it is a punishment.
Do not misunderstand me. It is not that God makes people sinful. He simply leaves them in the sin that they have voluntarily and consciously chosen.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator — who is forever praised. Amen. (Romans 1:24-25)
Idolatry offends and demeans God. The one who worships an idol worships an image, a created thing. This is an insult to the Creator, who alone is worthy of glory and worship. The punishment for this insult is being handed over into slavery to impurity and shameful lusts.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:26-27)
If a man is not faithful to God, then he will not be faithful to his marriage partner either. But here it is a matter not only of infidelity, but also of shameless homosexuality and lesbianism. Before the first century, in Rome homosexuality was despised as a perversion that had arisen in Greece. But by New Testament times this depraved practice had already been carried over from Greece to Rome. Yet the apostle wants his hearers to know that this sin is offensive to God, that it is “unnatural.” In the Old Testament this sin was punished by death (Leviticus 18:22,29). Moreover, God has already shown His attitude toward it in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah — cities known for their moral corruption and for all kinds of sexual perversions (Genesis 19:4-25).
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. (Romans 1:28-29)
Notice that it does not say here that people commit sin only from time to time or now and then. No, they are “filled” with every kind of wickedness and vice; they are “full” of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice — things unbecoming of creatures made in the image of God.
30 They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:30-32)
Notice that those who commit all these evils not only know that they are sinning, but they also know the sentence for their sins. Yet this does not stop them from continuing to give themselves over more and more to their godless deeds — and not only to commit them, but also to encourage those who live in sin.
In listing all these sins, the apostle Paul shows the regression of sin. As a result of rejecting God and handing themselves over to sin as its slaves, people give themselves over to all manner of evils and wicked practices. The pagans of the first century greatly resemble the pagans of the twenty-first century. And this is one more proof that God continues to hand humanity over to a depraved mind.
But God hands people over to sin and wickedness not in order to turn them to repentance. No, this handing over of people to sin and wickedness is not for the sake of turning them to repentance, but is itself an even harsher punishment. God punishes us not only by handing us over to sin, so that we commit lawlessness which brings still more lawlessness (Romans 6:19), but also by then condemning us for the very sin to which He Himself handed us over. So there is no escape. Handed over to sin, we are doomed to live in sin without being able to escape it, and then to be condemned and handed over to death and to eternal separation from God for all the sins we have committed in our dishonor. In Jude 1:14 the apostle quotes Enoch, who says:
14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15 to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 1:14-15)
Notice how many times the words connected with ungodliness and sin are repeated here — “all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him” — for all of this the Lord will execute judgment upon them; they will be punished and will bear “the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:27).
This is why we need the gospel. This is why we need salvation.
- Because we are sick with “incurable sin.”
- Because we are in a dead end from which we can find no way out.
- Because we are sinking in the swamp of sin and cannot pull ourselves out.
- Because, having rejected the one and true God, we are doomed to sin and to heap up condemnation upon ourselves for the day of wrath, when God will judge the world according to the gospel.
Therefore, glory to God for the gospel! Glory to God for the sacrifice! Glory to God for the blood shed at Golgotha! Glory to God for His mercy! Glory to God for His grace! Glory to our Savior! He alone is worthy of glory!