Romans 1:18-20 - The Revelation of Wrath - by Scott Sperling

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, 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 1:18-20

The Tremendous Transition

The Apostle Paul, that vessel of election and master-builder of the Church, having first saluted the saints at Rome with words of grace and peace, now girds his loins for a task of more somber and majestic gravity. There is a transition in this first chapter, moving from the seventeenth to the eighteenth verse, as profound as the shift from the brightness of a noon-day sun to the gathering gloom of a tempestuous night. In the preceding verses, the Apostle had unfurled the celestial banner of the Gospel, declaring that the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; but now, with a sudden and sacred vehemence, he turns his pen to the revelation of a different order. He moves from the introductory remarks, which were as a pleasant porch to a temple, into the systematic exposition of Christian doctrine that shall occupy the heart of this epistle until the eleventh chapter.

This transition is not a departure from the logic of salvation but is the very foundation upon which the edifice of grace must be constructed. It is an architectural necessity of the Spirit that the ruin of the house be surveyed before the restoration is commenced. The Apostle understands that the sweetness of the good news remains a distant and unintelligible melody until the bad news of human depravity has been sounded with the clarity of a trumpet. No man seeks a physician until the malady is felt; no soul cries for the harbor until the shipwreck is imminent; no heart desires the balm of Gilead until the wounds of sin are laid bare, bleeding, and rankling with the venom of the serpent.

Paul's systematic take-through of the major doctrines begins here in verse eighteen, first leading the reader through the dark valleys of the sins of the Gentiles, next through the Jews' particular transgressions, until he reaches that grand expression of justification by grace through faith at the end of the third chapter. Yet, before the height of that mountain can be scaled, the depths of the abyss must be plumbed. Until the sinner is persuaded of the peril of his state, he remains indifferent to the promise of deliverance. To understand the greatness of the sacrifice, the magnificent gift of the cross, and the superabundant mercy of the Father, the soul must first be confronted with the perfect righteousness of God and the utter hatred that He bears toward sin. Thus, the Apostle begins his doctrinal labor with the most daunting reality of the human condition: the universal presence of sin and the consequent necessity of divine judgment.

Table: Outline of Chapters 1 through 3

The Doctrinal Progression of Romans 1 to 3	Theological Focus	Purpose of the Argument
Romans 1:1-17	Introduction and the Power of the Gospel	Establishing the Apostle's authority and the theme of righteousness.
Romans 1:18-32	The Sin of the Gentiles and General Humanity	Demonstrating the universal suppression of truth and the descent into impiety.
Romans 2:1-29	The Particular Sin of the Jewish People	Proving that possession of the Law does not exempt one from the judgment of the Law.
Romans 3:1-20	The Universal Depravity of All Mankind	Concluding that " there is none righteous, no, not one, and every mouth is stopped ."
Romans 3:21-31	The Grand Statement of Justification	Revealing the "good news" as the only remedy for the preceding "bad news."

Divine Wrath and the Nature of Sin (vs. 18)

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.

The Apostle opens this section with a declaration that strikes terror into the heart of the unregenerate: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people" (vs. 18). In this modern and (shall we say) sensitive age, the term "wrath" is often diluted, softened, or discarded as a relic of a primitive and unenlightened theology. Many people prefer a deity of indulgent sentimentality, a God who overlooks the rebellion of the creature with the indifference of a weary parent. Yet, the Apostle permits no such evasion. The wrath of God is a reality as certain as His love, as enduring as His power, and as necessary as His holiness. It is not to be understood as a fitful passion, a sudden outburst of celestial temper, or a capricious irritation, but as the settled and immutable response of a Holy Being to the presence of evil.

What is this "wrath" that the Apostle so boldly proclaims? It is, as the nineteenth-century theologian Charles Hodge has defined it, the out-workings of God's anger against sin; it is His punitive justice , brought about by His holy determination to punish all that contradicts His nature. This wrath is the direct and unavoidable result of God's perfect righteousness. Because God is perfectly holy, He must of necessity have a perfect hatred for that which is unholy. If God were to react to sin with tolerance, or a shrug of indifference, His own righteousness would be called into question, and the moral order of the universe would be dissolved into a chaotic sea of impiety.

The hatred God bears toward sin is not an accidental attribute but an essential manifestation of His being. He is the Light in whom there is no darkness at all, and therefore, the darkness must be repelled by the very presence of the Light. The wrath of God is the reaction of the Divine Nature to the intrusion of evil; it is the "no" of the Creator to the "yes" of the rebel. For churches and clergy to ignore the wrath of God is to present an incomplete and hollow gospel, for the sacrifice of Christ is only understood in its true magnificence when it is seen as the shield that intercepts the arrows of this very wrath. Churches that never speak of this wrath do their congregations a profound disservice, teaching a gospel that is as salt without savor and light without heat.

The Apostle employs the present tense to signify that this wrath " is being revealed" (vs. 18) even now. It is a constant aspect of the human experience, a persistent reality that permeates the past history of the world, the present state of the soul, and the certain expectations of the future. This revelation is not confined to a single moment of judgment but is promulgated throughout the ages in three distinct movements: the past , the present , and the future .

In the past , the wrath of God has been revealed through the monumental judgments recorded in the sacred scriptures. One may look to the waters of the Deluge that cleansed a world of its antediluvian impiety, or to the fire and brimstone that consumed the cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, for their unnatural lusts. One may behold the hand of God working through the Israelite armies to punish the wicked cultures of Canaan, or the divine scourge brought upon Israel herself through the misery of the Egyptian bondage, the wandering in the wilderness, and the bitter grief of the Babylonian exile. Yet, the ultimate and most harrowing expression of God's wrath in the past was seen upon the Hill of the Skull. At the Cross, the wrath of God against sin was poured out upon the Sinless Substitute. The suffering of Christ -- the darkness, the cry of dereliction, the agony of the soul -- was the outworking of punitive justice in its most concentrated and awful form, where the Son of God was made sin for us.

In the present , the wrath of God is being revealed through the very miseries that afflict this fallen world, as a consequence of the very first transgression. The slithering of the snake upon the dust, the pain of the woman in childbirth, and the painful toil of the man throughout history are all out-workings of that primal wrath that continue even today. Furthermore, we see the present revelation of wrath in the psychological and physical misery of those who are deep in sin. There is misery meted out by the criminal justice system, by warring armies, and by the internal rot of a conscience that has no peace. In an even more general way, all disease, sickness, strife, and the general groaning of creation are revelations of God's wrath due to the fall. The sin nature itself is promulgated from generation to generation as a standing testimony to the divine displeasure.

In the future , the wrath of God shall be revealed with a finality that will brook no appeal. At Christ's return, the heavens will depart as a scroll and the hidden wrath that is now tempered by patience will be fully unveiled. On that great judgment day, each and every soul will stand before the bar of God and account for their sins. For those who are not found in Christ, the wrath shall be an eternal and unquenchable fire; but for those who are in Christ Jesus, they will be shielded from the punishment they deserve by the grace of God and the gift of the Savior.

The Apostle, with the precision of a master anatomist, divides the sins of mankind into two categories: "all the godlessness and wickedness of people" (vs. 12). These two words categorize the totality of human transgression, representing the breach of the two tables of the Divine Law.

"Godlessness," or ungodliness, speaks of personal misconduct against the Majesty of God. It is the sin of impiety, a lack of faith, the neglect of the Creator, and a rebellion of the will against Divine Authority. It is the state of the soul that acts as if God does not exist, or as if His commands were of no more consequence than the whistling of the wind. This is the root of all human misery. When the vertical relationship between man and his Maker is severed, the soul is left without an anchor, drifting into the dark waters of autonomy and pride.

"Wickedness," or unrighteousness, speaks of those sins that directly harm other people. It encompasses the horizontal sphere of human relationships -- envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, insolence, and arrogance. While the world may distinguish between the religious sin of godlessness and the social sin of wickedness, the Apostle Paul reveals a profound and causal relationship between the two.

Paul, as we go on in the chapter, will lay out how "godlessness" leads inevitably to "wickedness;" how our impiety and our turning our backs upon God leads to our bad behavior against others. In other words, all our other sins are based on a lack of reverence toward God. The beginning of all evil is the turning of the back on God: on His Word, on His commands, on His way of life. When the light of God's presence is pushed out of the mind, the darkness of human passion rushes in to fill the void. He who does not fear the God of heaven will eventually cease to respect the humans of earth. All the horrors of history -- the wars, the oppressions, the cruelties of the strong against the weak -- can be traced back to this primary rebellion against the First Table of the Law. Impious hearts produce injurious hands.

The Apostle further charges that these individuals "suppress the truth by their wickedness" (vs. 18). This is a dynamic of the soul wherein the sinner, desiring to continue in his iniquity, finds the truth of God to be an insufferable hindrance. Therefore, he actively pushes down the truth, burying it beneath the weight of his desires. Those who say they do not believe in God are, according to the Apostle, not suffering from a lack of evidence, but are engaged in the active suppression of the truth they already possess. They push God out of their lives because they do not want to be accountable to Him, because they want to go their own way without any hindrance by the divine law.

The Shining Testimony (vss. 19-20)

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.

Lest anyone should plead ignorance at the bar of judgment, the Apostle declares that the knowledge of God is "plain to them, because God has made it plain to them" (vs. 19). This is a doctrinal statement of vast and terrifying proportions. There is no tribe so remote, no intellect so dull, and no soul so buried in superstition that it does not possess an inherent, God-given awareness of its Creator.

The Greek word translated as "made plain" in verse 19 is derived from a root meaning "shining." In other words, God has made the knowledge of Himself glaringly apparent to all of us, shining right before our eyes. It is not a vague feeling, a flickering intuition, nor a doubtful rumor; it is a clear testimony, a brilliant light that permeates the intellect. This is what theologians call general revelation, and it is so clear that the suppression of this truth is worthy of the very wrath of which we have spoken.

This revelation has been made known "since the creation of the world" (vs. 20). No person has ever existed on earth without this knowledge, so that people are "without excuse" (vs. 20). No one can stand before the throne and say, "Oh, I did not know there was a God." The Holy Spirit, through the pen of Paul, cries out, "That is no excuse! You should have known!" How should they have known? By the simple act of looking around at the creation around them.

Paul writes that God's invisible qualities -- "his eternal power and divine nature" (vs. 20) -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. We, as reasoning humans, are given the unique capability to see invisible qualities by inferring them from the visible creation. Human beings are unique among the created beings on earth in that we are given reasoning capabilities so as to be able to perceive the invisible.

The phrase "being understood from what has been made" (vs. 20) implies that this revelation does not stop with just perception, but it requires reflection and meditation. We must use the brains God has given us to contemplate the works of His hands. As Thomas Robinson, a scholar of the mid-nineteenth century, so aptly wrote: "From actions we infer attributes; from attributes a subject to which they belong... From things clearly indicating a design we infer a Designer. From evidences of wisdom, power, and goodness, visible in creation, we infer a wise, powerful, and benevolent Creator." Contemplation of God and His works is the noblest employment of the intellect, and to fail in this is to neglect the very purpose for which our reasoning capabilities were given us.

Excursus: The Logic of Design and a Mathematical Refutation of Chance

In this present age, a worldview has been promulgated that would have us believe that the more scientific one becomes, the less likely one is to believe in God. This worldview suggests that the creation is explainable by the mere chance concurrence of atoms and the blind drifting of matter through the corridors of time. Yet the Apostle Paul and the great scientists of old, such as Kepler and Newton, understood that the more one studies the creation, the more complex one finds it to be, and the more likely it is that a Creator resides behind it. It is exactly as the great scientist Johannes Kepler has described it: " The undevout astronomer is mad! "

Let us apply the reasoning capabilities that God has given us to the claim that life occurred by chance . If someone says that something occurred by chance, then such a theory must be studied in probabilistic terms, using the mathematics of probability and statistics to analyze the possibility of the event. Let us look at a relatively simple act: the assembly of a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle. A child could do this in a day through the exercise of intelligence. But what if we had a machine that chose the pieces at random and placed them on a grid?

The probability that such a machine would correctly construct the puzzle by chance is (1/100!). The number in the denominator of this (100!, or 100 factorial), is approximately (1 x 10 ¹⁵⁷ ), which is a one followed by one hundred and fifty-seven zeros. Thus, (1/100!) is an absurdly small probability. To provide perspective, if one were to play a lottery picking six numbers from forty-nine, the chance of winning is about (1/1.3 ⁷ ) or (1/(13 million)). To match the jigsaw puzzle odds, one would have to win that lottery twenty-two times in a row. Furthermore, there are only roughly (10 ⁶⁷ ) atoms in our entire galaxy. To put the low probability of constructing the puzzle by chance into perspective, you would have a better chance of winning a lottery which picks a correct atom in the galaxy twice in a row. The point of all this is to say that, even to do a fairly simple activity, such as constructing a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle, chance would never succeed, even given billions of years to work with, and having the jigsaw pieces in hand. The conclusion we can draw from this is: Chance cannot perform complex tasks, even given billions of years.

The materialist scientist often retreats to the claim that given billions of years, anything is possible. They say that given enough time, the primordial muck will eventually produce a man. But mathematics remains a stern witness against that. Let us take the scientific estimate of the age of the earth as 4.5 billion years. In that time, there are approximately (1.4 x 10 ¹⁷ ) seconds. If our puzzle machine operated one thousand times every second for the entire history of the earth, it would have performed (1.4 x 10 ²⁰ ) attempts. When we calculate the chance of success after all those billions of years, we find it to be: the number of attempts (1.4 x 10 ²⁰ ) divided by the chance of success for a single attempt (1 x 10 ¹⁵⁷ ). This leaves us with a probability of less than (1/10 ¹³⁶ ). We are not even remotely close to the (1/10 ⁵⁰ ) threshold that mathematicians consider to be the boundary of the possible. Even given the entire age of the earth, 4.5 billion years, and allowing for 1000 attempts per second (over that time) to assemble a simple 100-piece jigsaw puzzle by random selection, the chance of success is still 1000 times worse than winning the aforementioned "pick-an-atom in the galaxy" lottery twice in a row. If a machine cannot assemble a child's toy in over four billion years, how can we say that the vast and glorious complexity of the universe, including the fearfully and wonderfully made human body, occurred by chance?

If the jigsaw puzzle demonstrates the impossibility of chance, the DNA molecule provides positive proof of intelligence behind the creation. In the 1950s and 60s, biologists discovered that the DNA molecule was not merely matter, but a code that determined the biological traits of an organism. A code (as the name suggests) is an encoded representation. To create a code requires intelligence; to understand a code requires intelligence. A code requires two independent entities: the symbol and the referent. For a human to invent the word car , there must already be a car sitting in a parking lot somewhere, to which the word refers. One cannot create a code unless one has already invented or identified the thing that the code represents. Therefore, the existence of the DNA code screams that intelligence is behind it.

Fred Hoyle, the self-described atheist astronomer from Cambridge who coined the term "Big Bang," calculated the odds of a DNA molecule being constructed by chance to be (1/10 ^40,000 ). This is a number so miniscule that the human tongue fails to describe it. It is like winning the "pick-an-atom in the galaxy" lottery five hundred times in a row. It is absurdly improbable. Yet, did Fred Hoyle start believing in God after realizing this? No! He continued to "suppress the truth" (as Paul describes), proving Paul's point that the problem is not a lack of evidence, but a rebellion of the will.

As the 20 ^th -century Christian scholar Robert Mounce has noted, "Seeing the beauty and complexity of creation carries with it the responsibility of acknowledging the Creator, both as powerful and as living above the natural order. Disbelief requires an act of rebellion against common sense." It requires a much greater leap of faith to believe that there is not a God than to believe that there is. The undevout astronomer is indeed mad , for he looks upon a universe of order, beauty, and excellent contrivance, and claims it is the work of nothingness.

The workman is known by his work. The variety, multitude, and harmony of the parts to the good of the whole, abundantly prove a Creator and His eternal power. To deny this is not to be scientific ; it is to be willfully blind. It is to change the glory of the incorruptible God into the image of a blind and drifting atom.

One may ask: If the evidence is so glaringly apparent, why does the modern scientific community persist in its impiety? It is because they have rigged the game. In modern times, the only method of scientific inquiry accepted by the community is that which makes the assumption that only matter exists. By assumption, there is no room for God in their inquiry. They take as an axiom that the universe is a closed system and that nothing -- no power, no energy, no intelligence -- can enter it from the outside. This assumption rigs the scientific "game," such that any conclusion that points to the existence of a Creator is rejected out of hand, without even assessing the solidity of the evidence. If a scientist gathered evidence that overwhelmingly pointed to a Designer, that conclusion would be shot down because it violates a basic axiom of their materialistic philosophy.

Modern science has been redefined according to a materialistic philosophy, on the basis on an axiom that only matter exists. In other words, they have built a wall to shut out the light of the sun and then they complain that they cannot see the light. This scientific method would be absurd to the great scientists of the past, like Kepler, Newton, and Galileo, who saw their role as trying to understand how God created this magnificent universe. The complexity and gorgeous design of the universe scream for a Designer, but the modern scientific community has put its fingers in its ears and its hands over its eyes.

The Conclusion of the Matter: Without Excuse (vs. 20)

²⁰ ... being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

The Apostle's argument leads to a final and devastating conclusion: "so that people are without excuse" (vs. 20). There is no person who has ever existed who can stand before God and say they did not know. The revelation is shining right before them; the logic is written in the stars; the mathematics are encoded in their very cells.

I appeal to your reasoning capabilities and your common sense . Can you look at the 100-piece puzzle and see that it cannot be done by chance in four billion years, and yet believe that your own eye, your own brain, and your own soul are the products of an accident? Can you look at the DNA code and deny the Intelligence that wrote it? To do so is not a mark of intellect, but a mark of rebellion. It is to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The wrath of God is being revealed against this suppression. It is a punitive justice that is the only proper response to such high-handed impiety.

When we see that we are "without excuse" (vs. 20), when we see that our own reason condemns us, then and only then will we look to the end of Romans chapter three and find the grand expression of the Gospel: that we are justified by the grace of God through faith in Christ Jesus. The vast gulf between blind chance and divine intelligence is the same gulf between the misery of sin and the glory of salvation. Do not be deceived by a culture that calls believers idiots . It is the undevout astronomer who is mad; it is the materialist who is unreasonable; it is the sinner who is without excuse. Bow before the Creator whose eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen, and find in Him the righteousness that is revealed from faith to faith.