One Nation, Under Wrath (Romans 1:18–23)
Does God judge whole nations, or only individuals? See how Romans 1:18–23 makes wrath a present reality, not just a future one: one nation, under wrath.
Introduction
According to Romans 1, the good news that Paul was so eager and unashamed to preach is that God reveals his gift of righteousness in the gospel. When we receive his gift by faith, we enter into a right relationship with the righteous God. The question is why do we need a gift of righteousness? Apart from Jesus Christ, we stand in a wrong relationship with God under his wrath. As Jesus said, if we don’t believe in him, we “stand[…] condemned already” (John 3:18) and “the wrath of God remains on” us (John 3:36). We now turn to Paul’s contrast between God’s righteousness in verse 17 with God’s wrath in verse 18.
From 1:18–3:20, Paul explains to us humanity’s need of the revelation of God’s righteousness in the gospel mentioned in 1:17 and again in 3:21–22: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law…the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” In between, he describes our sin, which is the reason it’s necessary to be justified by his gift of righteousness. We need God’s righteousness to save us from God’s wrath against our ungodliness and unrighteousness. We need saving righteousness (1:17) because of the condemning righteousness or wrath of God (1:18). We see ungodly idolatry in our relationship with God in verses 18–23 and then unrighteous immorality in our relationship with our neighbors in verses 24–32. Our ungodly idolatry leads to unrighteous immorality. As an ancient Jewish writing said, “the worshipping of idols not to be named is the beginning, the cause, and the end, of all evil.”[i]
Theme
God is revealing his wrath against human societies that suppress him in idolatry.
God is Revealing His Wrath
God is revealing his wrath. Look around you, brothers and sisters. What do you see? The beach. We’ll see a beautiful sunset tonight. We see smiles on people’s faces because “life’s rad in Carlsbad.” We’re all “shiny, happy people laughing.” Paul says we also need to see that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men (v. 18).
Objection: The mention of God’s “wrath” is so offensive. Sadly, because many of us didn’t have dads who acted worthy of the name, we say, “How can God be wrathful like my dad was?” But God’s wrath isn’t fly off the handle anger like many of our dads expressed. God’s wrath is “His holy displeasure with sin”[ii] and thus his “punitive justice.”[iii] Others find wrath offensive because they view God only as love. Don’t we hear this in pious sounding phrases? “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” “God loves you, and so do we.” Application: if there is no wrath, there can be no love of God. If your God is merely love, it’s not God you worship but an idol. One writer once described American Christianity like this: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”[iv]
Paul says this wrath is revealed, meaning, it’s a present reality. The present tense verb is revealed (apokaluptetai) is the same he used of God’s righteousness in 1:17. When he says from heaven, he means “from God.” This means God’s wrath is not only a future thing. Paul speaks of “the day of wrath” in the future in 2:5 and elsewhere of “the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10; cf. 2 Thess. 1:4–9). God’s wrath is also a present thing. Our Heidelberg Catechism summarizes these two revelations of God’s wrath saying, “As a just judge he punishes [our sin] now and in eternity” (Q&A 10). God is revealing his wrath.
Against Human Societies
God is revealing his wrath not merely against individual sinners, but against human societies. All ungodliness and unrighteousness of men is plural, meaning humanity that stands outside of Jesus Christ. It means entire societies like our own.[v] This is a very biblical idea, isn’t it? Where else in the Bible do you read of God’s wrath upon collective societies and nations? The Flood. Sodom and Gomorrah. Egypt. Israel itself! Nineveh, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, etc. Application: We have to hold two things together in tension. On the one hand, the absolute goodness of God for his blessing on our nation. We can sing, “America, America, God shed his grace on thee.” On the other hand, we are “one nation, under wrath.”
That Suppress Him in Idolatry
God is revealing his wrath against human societies that suppress him in idolatry. Paul explains something more active here when he says humanity and societies by their unrighteousness suppress the truth (v. 18). Children: the next time you go into a jacuzzi, try to keep the bubbles from coming up to the surface with your hands. Maybe you’ve already tried. Can you do it? No! It’s impossible. You can try all you want, but those bubbles are coming up. This is like what the unbeliever does with the knowledge of God. They try and try to keep it from coming up from their heart to their head, but eventually it will, and it will condemn them. The Psalms say the fool says, “there is no God” (Pss. 14:1; 53:1). He fools himself, asking about his unrighteous behavior, “How can God know?” (Ps. 73:11). But God knows. The unbeliever knows that God knows. Why would a person deny God’s existence? As Augustine said, “Nobody denies God save one whose interest it is that there be no God.”[vi] What truth does the unbeliever suppress?
…what can be known about God is plain…because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (vv. 19–20)
We call this “general revelation.” It reveals God’s existence and power. Note the oxymoron: his invisible attributes…have been clearly perceived (v. 20). His invisibility is visible! “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). Daily, creation preaches his existence (Ps. 19:2–4). Amos said, “He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name” (Amos 5:8). The Roman rhetorician, Cicero, said, “That the gods, then, do exist is so evident that I should scarcely regard the man who denied it as being of sound mind…Can any sane person think that all this grouping of the stars, and this vast ordering of the heavens, could have resulted from atoms coursing to and fro fortuitously and at random?”[vii] Note that the knowledge of God in creation is of him as Creator, not as Savior. It’s God as Judge, not Father. It’s Law, not Gospel. Its purpose is to leave humanity without excuse (1:20) when we die and stand before his tribunal. Contra pop evangelical books, there’s no “gospel in the stars” in the Zodiac. The special revelation of the grace of God is found only in Jesus Christ, whose righteousness becomes ours because our unrighteousness became his and he experienced God’s wrath on the cross! God is revealing his wrath against human societies that suppress him in idolatry.
Application: What are our biggest idols as Americans? Idolatry is whatever we serve alongside God or in his place (HC, Q&A 95). One of our great idols is pleasure: our culture defines our humanity as sex. Another is power: a Senator was asked what was more important: serving God or country. He said country.[viii] Another idol is possessions: I want it all and I want it now!
Why are we this way? Paul says idolatry is rooted in a lack of gratitude to God and in its place, we put our love of self.[ix] Self—that’s the greatest idol we worship! Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened (v. 21). God has enlightened the path to himself. But we’ve tried the shortcut and went off the path into darkness. Those whose thinking was futile and whose hearts were darkened also claim[ed] to be wise but instead became fools (v. 22). Claiming to be wise. This reminds us of Satan’s claim to our first parents if they would eat of the tree. The wise philosophers that we are, we exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things (v. 23). We’re religious by nature. God made us to worship. We’ve skewed that original purpose but it’s still there. We must worship something. We don’t worship the true God and so we worship ourselves in our “selfie” culture. Martin Luther said unbelievers don’t worship God’s divinity untouched but have “changed and adjusted it to their desires and needs. Everyone wanted to see the divinity in the one who appealed to him.”[x] I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Conclusion: Wrath; But God!
America? You are one nation, under wrath! God is revealing his wrath against human societies that suppress him in idolatry. He reveals his wrath against us by leaving us to ourselves in our ungodly idolatry of pleasure, power, and possessions. “You want to serve your Self? Have at it!”
Gospel: There’s only one way out from under his wrath and condemning righteousness: receiving his gift of the righteousness of Jesus Christ in the place of your unrighteousness. Receive his gift now! When you do, you’ll enter a new and transformative relationship with your Creator.
[i] Wisdom of Solomon 14:2
[ii] Nygren, 97.
[iii] Hodge, 35.
[iv] The Kingdom of God in America (1937; repr., New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 193.
[v] Luther, 155–156; Nygren, 99–100; Schreiner, 83–85.
[vi] Can’t find source.
[vii] Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.16; 2.44.
[viii] https://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/my-2-hour-flight-next-to-the-gop-senator-who-made-the-mistake-of-telling-me.
[ix] Luther, Works 159–160.
[x] Luther, Works 25:157.