Romans 1:19-22

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 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 men are without excuse. 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. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools...

God has made it plain to see from creation that He exists, and also that He has invisible qualities: eternal power and divine nature. Paul says that God is known by all of mankind. God is evidenced by creation. Again, there is no excuse. No one on Judgment Day can say, “I didn’t know!” or “No one told me!” Everyone knows clearly Who God is. Unbelievers will stand defenseless before God.

So what about the person who has never heard the gospel? They still know. They understand; it’s just that they suppress the truth by impiety or irreverence and immorality or unrighteousness. So those who have not heard the gospel are still condemned—whether unbelieving scientists in university labs or tribal people groups unreached with the gospel. And rightly so, as we learn from Paul here. How do feel abou that? We’ve already seen that everyone intellectually knows God and about God. The reason we share the Gospel to the nations, is not because they don’t know, but because they do know; they suppressed that truth. And only the Gospel can savingly liberate them from that self-imposed bondage. If it was true that people are only condemned by hearing the gospel and rejecting it, then the best way to make sure that people got to heaven would be not to tell anybody the gospel. And that way, they couldn’t reject it; they could get to heaven by ignorance of God. But Paul says no; the problem is not that people don’t know. The problem is that they do know, and they still reject God. That is why we need the Gospel.

Paul here is not just saying that when you look at the universe, you will see a designer. He takes it farther. Paul says you see Who the Designer is. By the universe, you see that God is divine and eternal. You see His power, His wisdom, His goodness, and even His judgment. Paul says that God is not just seen, but clearly seen and even understood. We don’t just see His power and wisdom, as we might see a tree off in the distance; we understand it. We know the texture of the bark and see the veins on the leaves. We see Who God is, and we understand, just by our existence as God’s creatures in His creation. Do you agree?

They failed to glorify God as God and failed to thank Him. Their thinking became futile. Their hearts were darkened. They claimed wisdom, but were fools. Paul continues with the theme: When we know God and understand that He is God, and then fail to glorify Him as God, by worshipping Him and thanking Him for His kindness and loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we are suppressing the truth. Mankind fails to glorify Him and fails to thank Him. And there are consequences of suppressing the truth, in addition to the judgment day wrath of God. It is the Judgment Day wrath that should cause unbelievers to tremble, but as we will see in Romans 3:18, quoting Psalm 36:1, “there is no fear of God before their eyes.” How sad! Paul mentions 3 specific effects of suppressing the truth:

Thinking becomes futile; speculations become empty and vain. Generally speaking, the more intelligent a person, the less likely that they will embrace Christianity. 1 Corinthians 1:19-31 “For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. …Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus…’”

“Smart” people like to think of God as… you fill in the blank… something other than Who He really is. Where do you think other religions, besides Judaism and Christianity come from? It’s from smart people, as their thinking becomes futile. Their minds wonder away from the truth about God and into new realms of blasphemy against God, and they come up with totem poles, Karma, Scientology, Feng Shui, Bahai, etc.

Hearts are darkened. The truth is represented by light, and the more darkness there is, the farther from the light the heart is said to be. The heart is the deepest, most important part of a person. The heart is what controls us; decisions come from the heart of man. Proverbs 16:1, 9 “To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the reply of the tongue. …In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” Proverbs 27:19 “As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.” Matthew 15:18 “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’” Luke 6:45 “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” We make decisions from the heart. And the more we suppress the truth, the more evil, the more sinful our hearts gets.

Now, the Calvinist idea of Total Depravity is formed here at the heart, the core of a person’s being. Isaiah 6:10 (Matthew 13:15; Acts 28:27) “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” A Calvinist points out that man’s heart (and therefore his entire being) is totally depraved and both unwilling and unable to change, unwilling and unable to incline itself towards the things of God. The heart of man cannot incline itself, regardless of the amount of wooing, to spiritual good. It’s like trying to woo a thief into a police station, or like trying to woo water out of a well. This is laid out here in Romans, and elsewhere. We have seen that God’s righteousness is revealed in the Gospel and that God’s wrath is revealed against unrighteousness. Unrighteousness is simply, from the heart, loving sin more than God and His truth. We see the same thing in John 3:19-20 “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” We’ll discuss this idea more as we go. Do you agree?

Foolishness is displayed while professing wisdom. Have you ever heard on radio or television or read a headline about some hi-tech, in-depth study of something, and the conclusion is something a child would have known without even looking into it? How about this one: “Million-dollar study shows that fathers are important in the lives of children.” Do you ever watch Leno on The Late Show with his stupid newspaper headlines? This is the type of thing Paul is talking about here. Proclaiming wisdom, they show their foolishness. Proclaiming a vast intellect, these suppressors of the truth show how truly ridiculous and worthless their knowledge has become. How foolish is it to declare Darwinian evolution a proven fact? Psalm 14:1; 53:1 “The fool (one who is morally deficient [because he says it in his heart]) says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Knowledge comes from God, and when it is not used to glorify Him and thank Him, it is utterly worthless. Romans 14:23 “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Go even farther here—back to the garden before there was sin. What did the serpent say in the garden to get Eve to eat the fruit? Genesis 3:5-6 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” Here the quest for wisdom apart from God is where idolatry begins…

Romans 1:18

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness...

Paul acknowledges that God has wrath. Webster says wrath is “retributory punishment for an offense or crime; divine chastisement.” Simply put, wrath is righteous judgment, retribution, giving sinners what they deserve. Without wrath, the Gospel is meaningless. Likewise, without sin there is no need for the Gospel. Why would we need salvation if there is no such thing as God’s wrath or our sin? To be technically correct, when we are saved, we are not only saved from sin, but from the wrath of God against our sin. Paul begins here to introduce the bad news, and he takes it seriously. He will take from Romans 1:18 all the way to Romans 3:20 talking about nothing but the bad news—that we are sinners and that God has wrath that’s being revealed; there is a consequence to sin.

Men are godless and wicked. Paul says that all of mankind, who all suppress the truth, are godless and wicked—impious and immoral. There is rebellion against both God Himself and His Word. There is no respect for Him as Who He is, as to His character, nor is there reverence for His Law, the decrees He has revealed. The wrath of God is against this irreverence. Nothing is worse than irreverence toward God.

Now we as Christians are not subject to this wrath. Paul here is describing the situation for mankind before anyone has been reconciled. He is telling the believers in Rome about the wrath of God against pagans, against those who profess no faith in the True God. Throughout the New Testament Epistles, written to believers, there is acknowledgement that “once you were not a believer.” Ephesians 2:3 “All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature [or our flesh] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” Colossians 1:21 “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of [or as shown by] your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” 1 Peter 2:10 “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Thus we can say that everyone has a conversion from false faith or non-faith to true Christian faith. We have gone from objects of wrath to objects of grace; from objects of justice to objects of mercy. But Paul is taking the time to explain that once we were not believers, and even now there are many who are not believers. And that being the case, God’s wrath is upon unbelievers, and it was upon us. Paul is explaining that here.

Men suppress the truth by their wickedness. There is no such person has an atheist or agnostic. All of mankind knows the truth. We just suppress it. There was a time when we suppressed it. Indeed, we may still do so today. We might think, “Did God really say…?” There will be people who cry out “Lord, Lord!” who suppress the truth, the reality of Who God is and what He has done. They cry out to a false god, one who did not create the world and does not sustain it, one who is merciful and loving but not just, one who cannot save, or maybe one who is certain to save but will not punish or be wrathful. Thus Christ will say to them at the end, “Depart from Me. I never knew you.”

There are a lot of people who think they will argue with God on the last day. They’re thinking that they’ll give Him a piece of their mind. Paul says that every mouth will be shut on that day, because there is no defense. We are created in the image of God, yet we were ungodly. We had the law of God written on our heart, yet we were unrighteous. We are in rebellion against God, everybody in the world, unless they’re in Christ Jesus. And even those in Christ were once not. Whether you like it not, that is the situation. We stand before Him without an excuse. We have nothing to say for ourselves. If you deny the bad news, the good news ceases to be good. And what’s worse, God ceases to be God. God’s justice is part of Who He is. We must worship all of God! When you pick and choose which attributes of God to cherish, you begin to cherish a false god. But although the bad news is true, we can be certain that the good news is true; God is faithful. The bad news can obviously be proven in this life; everyone knows they are imperfect. We are imperfect, and God requires perfection. That’s bad news! It’s suppressing the truth when we fail to acknowledge how bad our sin is. It’s suppressing the truth when we fail to acknowledge God’s Holiness.

The problem for the suppressors of the truth of God is not an intellectual problem, as many would claim. The problem is a moral problem. Why not murder? Because men know it’s wrong. Why not steal? Because men know it’s wrong. Morality exists, because men know the truth. Moral questions exist, because men suppress the truth. It is wickedness that causes men to suppress the truth. It is the sin nature inherited from Adam that causes people to deny the whole of truth. Some may acknowledge and even respect some aspects of the truth, but the totality of truth, the magnitude and fullness of God Himself in His glory, men deny. And the reason is a moral one—not an intellectual one.

Romans 1:17

For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

Righteousness from God is revealed in the gospel. I would have written that God’s mercy, love, and salvation were revealed in the gospel. And those are correct. But Paul writes that God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel. It is the very righteousness of God that has us in dire straits! The righteousness of God is what should cause us to fear Him. So what does Paul mean here? He means that God has saved us without compromising His justice. God has saved us by grace so that He has been perfectly righteous. God has not swept our sins under the rug. He has actually dealt with them. He has not just cancelled them. He’s liquidated them.

Now the wrath of God is a scary thing. Wrath is righteous judgment, or justice. And this is what we deserve. So it would be perfectly righteous of God to give us hell. Yet it is also perfectly righteous of God to save us by punishing someone else for our sins. And this is what gives Paul assurance. Paul says that God’s righteousness is the thing that gets him so excited about the gospel. God has righteously saved us by grace! He has caused the penalty for our sin to fall on His Son so that justice is served. And because justice is served, we can be absolutely assured. Because if God has put the penalty for our sin on the head of His Son, God cannot righteously require the penalty from us. The reason we’re secure from the wrath of God is because God would be unrighteous to punish us if He punished His Son for our sins. God, in His own design, has saved us by grace, by the work of His Son, by the righteousness of His Son, by the righteousness of His plan, and Paul was excited about that. And that’s what we’re going to be studying by God’s grace over the weeks to come.

Righteousness and faith: Paul tells us that in grace, God gives to us what He demands from us. God demands righteousness, and we don’t have it. Thus He gives it to us. He takes from us our unrighteousness; He gives us the righteousness of Christ. A channel or connector is needed to enact this transaction, this debit of sin and credit of righteousness. That channel is faith. The righteousness is by faith from first to last. The righteousness is from faith to faith. What God demands from us (righteousness / faith), He gives to us (righteousness / faith). Thus God’s righteousness is by faith from first to last (or from faith to faith). It begins with faith and continues to faith. This is perseverance! The gospel is that God removes His own wrath from us and gives us His own righteousness, all by the work of Christ on the cross through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the meaning of SALVATION BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH. It is by grace that God has done this; His channel to accomplish it is faith. Faith is the glorious, gracious means by which God accomplishes His salvation among men. Why did He choose to conduct this transaction by faith? So that no one could boast. So that no one could take from God the glory that is all His in salvation.

The righteous will live by faith. The unrighteous become righteous through faith and maintain their righteousness by faith. Through faith, by the righteousness of God, we are justified, made legally righteous in the sight of God. This is justification—the act of declaring sinners righteous through faith in Jesus, a major theme throughout the next few chapters of Romans. The death of Jesus purchased not only a declaration of our right standing before God, but also a development of our right living before God, thus “the righteous will live by faith.”

By persevering faith, and by persevering faith only, we will be saved from judgment, from the wrath of God. God reveals righteousness for us that is first perceived and embraced by faith, and then has the effect of preserving the faith needed to be saved. The gospel saves believers, because the gospel keeps believers believing.

Finally, consider that justification (God’s righteousness completely imputed to us, credited to us legally though we are not really righteous) by faith is the foundation of glorification (God’s righteousness completely imparted to us; we really are righteous now!), which we will experience. Again, revisiting the Golden Chain of Salvation found in Romans 8:29-31: “Those God foreknew, He also predestined…Those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Who can separate us from His love?

Romans 1:16

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

Paul is NOT ashamed of the gospel. Paul is certain of its truth. Paul is eager to share it, because he is loyal to it and confident in it. And why shouldn’t he be? See 2 Corinthians 11:23-26. He was convicted like no other, literally blinded by Christ’s light and softly spoken to by Christ Himself. Rome may have thought the believers within its limits were shameful, pathetic, pitiable fools, and if the resurrection of Christ did not happen, then they were right. But Paul, along with hundreds of other eye-witnesses, knew that Christ was resurrected, so the contrary was true. It is the unbelievers who are fools; it is the unbelievers who should be pitied. But believers are not to be ashamed. There is no shame in the gospel, no matter how foolish it may be in the eyes of the world.

Sometimes Christians are ashamed of the gospel because they want things that are different than the things that God wants for them. I often think myself ashamed of the gospel. At work, I struggle to speak it. I’m just afraid to let co-workers know how much the Lord Jesus and the gospel means to me, because I might be rejected. Not that I act like a pagan, but why can’t I be bold, unashamed, like Paul? I always justify my lack of boldness by turning to 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” One of the early church fathers, Apollinaris of Laodicea, said, “The Son of God bore the shame of the cross on our behalf. It could not be but out of place for us to be ashamed of His suffering for us.” If I really believe that God’s Son died for me, bore my shame, how could I possibly be ashamed of Him around anyone for any reason? While Polycarp, an early church bishop, was being roped to the stake to be burned at age 86, they gave him one last chance to renounce his faith in Christ. He said, “Eighty-six years I have served Jesus Christ, and He has never done me wrong. How could I do Him wrong now?” Lord, make me unashamed of your power for salvation. Make me like Christ, who despised the shame of the cross (Hebrews 12:2).

The gospel is the power of God. The gospel, according to 1 Corinthians 1:18, “is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” What is the gospel? It starts first of all with understanding the bad news. Mankind was created by God and in a covenant with Him; we owe loyalty to Him, but we rebelled against Him. As we rebelled against Him, we were plunged into a state of sin and misery.
There’s nothing we could do to help ourselves in that state. Thus, God in His providence from the very time of Genesis 3:15 set a plan in motion to redeem His people. He promised in the old covenant that He was going to send a redeemer. Jesus is that redeemer. Jesus is the incarnate Son of God who lived and died in our place that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus not only lived and died; He was raised again from the dead as a pledge of our hope and resurrection and redemption. Jesus is now exalted, and He will come again to judge. So the gospel is all about what God has done for our predicament. But, in all the presentations of the gospel in the New Testament, it doesn’t stop there. Repentance and faith are demanded. What’s the response to the gospel? Believe, trust in Christ, and repent of your sins. This is the power of God revealed in Scripture, and however it’s presented, this gospel, the power of God, is very offensive to people in our culture today.

What is it about the gospel that is offensive? (1) The claim to absolute Truth, with a capital T. Today’s culture doesn’t mind if everybody has their own truth with a little t, but a capital T is dangerous, scary. (2) The claim that Christ is the only way to God. We want to believe that Christ is just one of the spokes on the wheel of faith that leads to the hub, where God is seated. Today’s culture thinks Christianity is arrogant, biased, narrow-minded, and even bigoted. They think it leads to persecution, intolerance, etc.

The gospel saves. The gospel message is the God-appointed means for salvation. It’s the instrument that God chose to save people from sin. What is salvation? By salvation, Paul means at least two things. Negatively, Paul means that salvation is God’s rescue of us from guilt, slavery to sin, the penalty of sin, alienation and eternal separation from God, and the wrath of God. Positively, the gospel is a bringing of us into a new relationship, a righteous relationship with God, whereby when we stand before God, we can be confident before Him. We’re accepted! But the gospel not only brings us into acceptance by God, it brings us into a state in which we are actually made holy. The Holy Spirit begins to work in us the life of heaven, so that we love the things that God loves, we hate the things that He hates, and we begin to even live like the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel brings freedom. Though we may have thought we were free when we were doing what we wanted to, we’re really not free until we’re doing what God wants us to do. In salvation, He brings us into an experience of true freedom, not freedom from obedience, but freedom to obedience. Salvation brings us to fellowship with God, into the presence of God.

The gospel saves all kinds of people. It is regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or cultural background. There is one way to be saved for all people. The Jews are the historic chosen people of God. They are the guardians of God’s special revelation, the Old Testament Scriptures. The Messiah and Savior, Jesus, came to the world as a Jew to Jews. Salvation is from the Jews, since everyone who is saved is saved by being connected to the covenant with Abraham by faith. The Jews were evangelized first when the gospel penetrated a new region. Regardless of Old Testament or New Testament, Jews could be saved only by grace through faith in the promised redeemer. Now, just because the Jews have first access to the gospel does not mean they deserve it more. On the contrary, neither Jew nor gentile deserves the gospel. It is a gospel of grace! And praise God that it truly is for ALL who believe; literally, this phrase would read, “everyone who continues to believe.” And who is it that believes? Why does one person believe and not another. If the difference is anything in man, then there is a problem.