Romans - Lesson 7

Romans 1:18-28 NIV

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, 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 people 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 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 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. 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.

We need to push on, I’m afraid.  Some of these ideas we will come back to if you still have some questions about them.

I want to note how important the idea of the Gospel is to Paul in this little chart that you have here, and in the PowerPoint also, to illustrate the point that it is really a key idea, particularly in the noun form, as you can see. (referring to PowerPoint slide, The “Good News” in the NT.)

A. All People are Accountable to God

Let’s move now to the first part of Paul’s argument And of course, it is well known that Paul he delays the discussion of the righteousness of God until chapter 3 verse 21 and following. After introducing the idea here in 1:17, Paul, as it were, puts it on the back burner for a bit and develops another argument before he talks about this righteous of God. To give us a sense of the progression, in this part of the letter in which Paul sort of narrows his focus, moving from all humanity until he focuses on Jews in particular.

Rhetorically, this is very effective; Paul begins by talking about “all people” in 1:18-19, then “people apart from special revelation.” This is a complicated phrase here, but if you have read the commentary, you know that I am concerned to be faithful to how Paul is putting the matter. We often think that Paul is thinking about Gentiles here and in a sense that is true, but as I argue in the commentary, Jews are included here as well. This is because Jews have natural revelation as well as the Gentiles. That is why Paul doesn’t talk about Jew and Gentile yet. So, he is talking about people in general, but focusing on their accountability to God by virtue of God’s creation and natural revelation.

Then in the beginning of chapter 2, he begins to narrow his focus but still is not directly talking about Jews but now he is getting closer as we will see. Until finally y beginning in 2:17 this becomes his clear focus.

Obviously, this is one of the most important passages in the Bible on the matter of sin and human accountability. We will see again and again in Romans what Paul says opens up a Pandora’s Box of issues. Sometimes we just need to let the box fly open and let the devils fly out; sometimes we’re going to need to try to get the lid shut because we can’t go on forever talking about each of these issues. So, we’re going to do a little bit of both here as we move through these texts.  Let’s see how the evidence moves along.

B. The Wrath of God is being Revealed

This is in the present tense and so somehow there is a current manifestation of God’s wrath against sin. We will see how that works out in a moment. Let me just give an overview of the passage first. Paul talks about this wrath of God being manifest. It is manifest because people are suppressing the truth, verse 18. Now, people cannot suppress truth unless they have access to truth. So that is why Paul next goes on to say, that people do have access to it. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

But then he concludes the passage by talking in a structural way where you have this three-fold statement about how human beings made an exchange to which God responded by giving them over. Verse 23 says that people exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images and therefore, verse 24, God gave them over to sexual impurity. Again verse 25, people exchanged the truth of God for a lie and because of this -verse 26- God gave them over to shameful lusts. Again, the third time, people exchanged natural relationships for unnatural ones, therefore, verse 28, God gave them over.

In each case, what we have here is a pattern in which Paul is looking at the history of humanity and saying that history is characterized by humanity exchanging God for something else. They made the choice to follow their own gods, their own desires, and going their own way, sexually and otherwise, making an exchange to which God responds by handing them over to the decisions they have made. In a sense, God says alright, you want to go that way, then go that way. I am going to let you go that way, and He gives them over into what human beings themselves have chosen.

C. There is Special and Natural Revelation

I want to go back to verses 1:19-22, these verses are some of the most important passages in Scripture about what we call "natural revelation.”

God gives us “special revelation.”  He sends prophets who utter the Word of God. He sends apostles to write Scripture, so we now, as His people, have in our hands “special revelation,”:  the Word of God.

In addition to that, there is also “natural revelation,” namely the knowledge of God available universally in the creation He has made. This is what Paul is talking about in these verses.

Three points stand out here: Paul implies that this knowledge is universal. He talks about people in verse 18 who are characterized by ungodliness and wickedness. He talks about “they” and “them” in a very general way here. All human beings have access to, and some exposure to, God’s natural revelation.

The second point, that knowledge is limited as seen in verse 20. Paul says: “since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen.” Paul is not talking about the way of salvation, and he is not talking about the Gospel. He is talking in a limited way about certain basic attributes of God. Then he comes back to a similar idea in verse 32 where he says that people in general know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death. So, there is both knowledge of God and some sense of right and wrong that God has put into every human being.

Third, Paul is very clear in the context that this knowledge of God by itself is condemning knowledge. Look at how he concludes verse 20, he says: “since the creation of the God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse.”  The knowledge that God gives to all humans in a world He has made is not knowledge that enables them to be saved; it is knowledge from which they consistently turn and therefore are accountable for and condemned by.

D. No One is Without Excuse

So, bottom line in terms of natural revelation, we often hear the question asked when we’re talking about Christianity, particularly in its worldwide extension: how about those who have never heard the Gospel? Paul hasn’t given us a final answer to that issue, an initial answer he provides here is that in fact, all people have heard. That is one of the points Paul is making here: all people have heard. They have not heard the Gospel, that is not what Paul is saying. All people have been given some understanding of the reality of a creator God, and some sense of right and wrong.

People universally, turned from that knowledge and are therefore rightly condemned. God doesn’t condemn people for something they had no knowledge of. God condemns people because they turned from the evidence of His reality which they did have access to. I am not saying that this answers all the questions that arise when we ask what about people who have never heard. But from a biblical standpoint, we have to back that question up and emphasize the point Paul is making here that people in a sense have heard.

One of the questions that also arises when we read this part of Romans is why do people do this? Why do they turn from God? Why do they make this exchange? There we’re going to have to wait until Romans 5 and the discussion about Adam comes along to explain why that might be the case. 

I put it this way then, to summarize:

• every person is being judged by God’s wrath;  
• every person knows about God;
• every person turns away from God;  
• every person is without excuse;
• God is fair to judge that person with His wrath.