“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” Romans 1:18
If there’s a less favorite topic than the wrath of God, I’m unaware of it. And it’s not just the unbelieving world…even the church of Christ is uncomfortable with it. Talk of judgment and God’s holy anger against sin simply isn’t something we wish to contemplate. We talk about “acts of God” when it comes to natural disasters but this is merely a figure of speech. Mankind is, for all intents and purposes, dedicated to the dual suppression of knowledge of God and, significantly, recognition of His wrath.
The reason for this is simple: we love our sin (the root of which is our alleged/fake autonomy) and hate His righteousness. We must say again that all attempts to understand our lives and the world without reference to sin and its impact is intellectually futile, spiritually harmful, and untrue. The root of every single problem in life is, indeed, sin. Though we must be careful to not make the mistake that the apostles did when asking Jesus about who sinned, the blind man or his parents, to cause his blindness (John 9:2), we do know that behind every grief and misery is our rebellion. The subject is too vast for us to comprehend and, again, some Christians err on the other side by ascribing every little detail of life (like having a bad cold or getting stuck in traffic) as punishment for a specific sin. This isn’t the point of our text. Christians should know that the Lord disciplines those that He loves and there’s no condemnation for us because of Christ’s atoning death. Wrath in this regard is the warning against the great judgment to come.
In Ecclesiastes (8:11) we read that because the judgment against evil isn’t executed right away we convince ourselves that it will never come. That’s the state of mankind. We think, “so far, so good.” Talk of God’s fury against sin is seen as archaic, pre-modern nonsense. Also, it strikes even some Christians as maybe a little unfair. The reason for this is that we’re far more comfortable with our sin than we are with God’s holiness.
What does it mean to say that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven?
First, it’s clear that wrath is not our original state! God’s anger at sin is not the way life ought to be. We were created in innocence (not perfection) in the Garden and in fellowship/harmony with both our Creator and each other. Adam and Eve had no history of conflict or abuse until that fateful moment when they disobeyed God and plunged themselves and their posterity into sinful rebellion. The history of mankind has become, since that pivotal moment, a history of sordidness, hatred, war, economic struggles, poverty, greed and envy. We have no peace because we cling to sin.
In the “revealed” wrath we understand something interesting. God’s judgment against sin is the logical outworking of His holy nature and love for His creation – us included. To fracture ourselves from fellowship with the life-giving God will, logically, cast us immediately into death in the same way a man who steps off a cliff will immediately plummet. God is self-consistent, which is why all sin is in some way a contradiction of both logic and morality. The law of God, the moral law, is eternal because God is eternal. We would never think of breaking the law of gravity but everyday convince ourselves that moral laws don’t exist – or that they will bend to our will.
In this way, all sin is moral insanity. Created to be in harmony with Him and each other, we instead have mistrust, feuds, governments, lawyers, police, military, insurance and so on. Sin has brought us down – what Cornelius Van Til called integration downward into the void. Adam was created sinless but not perfect or mature. He was created to obey God and subdue the earth. This meant focused work in the Lord. The notion that man will sit around in heaven on a cloud or in some state of inactivity is a false one based on the immaturity at the heart of sin. To understand this is to see that sin always involves the desire to escape responsibility, work, and maturity. It’s the demand for wealth and leisure without work, risk, or accountability.
What this tells us about sin is that man hates the responsibilities of life and wants to escape them. He hates being man and wants to be god. Like all immature people, therefore, he refuses to accept the consequences of his actions. Proverbs 19:3 states it well: “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord.” Like a child sent to his/her room for misbehavior who in turn blames the punishment on the parent, man refuses to see his moral rebellion as the cause of the sufferings in life he blames on God.
This is also why non-christians are political and revolutionary. They’re always demanding reform of the culture around them rather than face the reality of their own fallenness. Death, sickness, war, catastrophes, economic problems…you name it, they’re all revealed from heaven to warn man. These are, in that way, a mercy. It’s all a mercy in that God has given sinners the chance to repent. The wrath of God is seen by all. Everyone knows that something is terribly wrong with this world but they won’t admit that it’s them and their rejection of God that’s caused/causing it.
This suppression is a constant process of denying the obvious. Why is that? Well, because in our every action on this earth we confront our limits and we see wrath on the horizon. The wrath of God is that all of us will die. We might die today, tomorrow or decades from now but we will die. We might die quietly in our sleep, in a horrible accident, or slowly with some disease. But we will die. Death is the greatest apologetic/evangelical tool in the world insofar as the gospel is concerned but Christians are reluctant to use it as our text does here. The soul that sins will die. That makes sense of why there’s death. Every other philosophy and worldview skips right over this all-important aspect of life: death.
In doing this (ignoring wrath and death) we also omit another pertinent fact from consideration. In our obstinate refusal to consider the truth about God’s wrath we simultaneously suppress the all-encompassing reality of His mercy. Yes, that’s right. The wrath of God is the warning that judgment is coming – the Big One. We are born literally to a world of death but this fact, once properly understood as the logical result/reaction to sin, brings us to the twin reality of God’s grace.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “ You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:43-45).” The truth and implications of this are literally staggering.
One thing to know is that the Jews had added “and hate your enemy.” That wasn’t, by the way, in the Old Testament but was a sinful and false teaching drawn from a too narrow interpretation of who one’s neighbor was. The Jews twisted the commandment to mean only a select few and then added, without Scriptural support, that this somehow meant, also, to hate one’s enemy. Neighbor was narrowly defined; enemy, though, was broadly applied to any non-Jew.
Anyway, this is the amazing thing. God sends His blessings upon the unjust. Right now. Yes, even now. He endures with much patience those who soak up the richness of His kindness – health, good food, success, leisure, love, arts, entertainment, the beauties of nature, etc. – without ever thanking Him. Indeed, they not only spend the capital of His grace every day but they do so arrogantly. An unrepentant sinner who stands along a beach somewhere, not thanking God, is the most unnatural thing in the world. The wrath of God is natural because sin logically demands it. The creature turning against his/her creator should immediately die as a result since they’ve cut themselves off from the source of life.
Instead, judgment is delayed.
But not only this, mercies and blessings flow upon us.
In all, to hold God’s wrath in disdain is only possible when we suppress the truth about His existence in the first place. And to suppress the truth about His wrath and existence, we must convince ourselves that we deserve only good things. This is how and why the whole (so-called) problem of evil arises. It is, in fact, no problem at all. The real problem, if we were honest, is the “problem of mercy.” The real question shouldn’t be, “why do bad things happen?” Instead we must ask why judgment hasn’t already come against sin? Why has so much joy and goodness come into my life? You see, in a sin-sick world, death is both the normal state of mankind and the proof of the Bible’s veracity.
So, the key to understanding this section of Romans, specifically verse eighteen through the end of chapter one, is by knowing that the wrath of God is clearly seen in the graveyard. Nature reveals His divinity and power; death reveals His hatred of sin. We live and move in a world of death because of our sin and this also means that now, today, is a day of salvation. If you haven’t already, you must because these days are so fleeting and man knows not his time. Go to Him who saves us from the judgment to come.
Go.
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