Romans 1:18—3:20 – “I have a problem – and so do you!”
There’s an old Sufi story that people often tell to illustrate those times when what seems bad at first actually turns out to be good.
One day a farmer finds and captures a beautiful white stallion. All the neighbours gather to congratulate him: “How fortunate you are. God has blessed you.” The next day, his son attempts to ride the horse, falls off, and breaks his leg. All the neighbours gather to commiserate with the farmer: “What a shame. God must be displeased.” The next day the solders come to take every able-bodied man into the army. Because the son has a broken leg, the soldiers leave him alone. The neighbours gather to congratulate the farmer: “How fortunate you are. God has blessed you.”
Paul has been talking about the gospel, this message of good news –
- it’s God’s (1:1), not Paul’s own ideas;
- it’s not a new thing (1:2)– it was announced long ago (Paul’s just repeating it);
- it’s about Jesus the Lord (1:2,4),
- who is not only a Jewish phenomenon, as a descendant of King David (1:3),
- but is also the Son of God (1:3,4)
- and was publicly declared as such when he walked out of his grave on Easter Sunday (1:4).
- So Jesus’ significance extends beyond Jewish boundaries –because Jesus defeated death. Death is something we all face, and so all of humanity everywhere needs to reckon with Jesus who rose from the dead to start a new kind of life.
- Paul has been commissioned by this living Jesus to take this gospel to anyone and everyone in the whole world, so that this message will transform their lives (1:5,6).
He’s not ashamed of this message. He has no hesitation at all about going into the heart of the Roman Empire, facing all their sophistication and barbarity. He’s provided two reasons already.
Firstly, because every possible human division – no matter how entrenched, no matter how hostile – is overcome by the gospel. This news about Jesus is powerful enough to bring liberation from humanity’s deepest problem – all that oppresses and enslaves anyone and everyone – regardless of background, religious belief, or ethnicity. Even Jew and Gentile!
Jews heard it first, and now it’s going out to the whole world. And even today, around the world, in war zones where there are ancient hatreds, there are local Christian churches where people from both sides meet as brother and sister in Christ.
Secondly, because in the gospel God’s righteousness, his life, goodness, and faithfulness, is revealed to and shared with anyone who trusts in Jesus!In the gospel message we learn that God, in complete faithfulness to what he’d been saying for thousands of years, will give us righteousness instead of condemning us for being unrighteous.
Now these are bold claims … but you can see why Paul is excited and not embarrassed by the message he is announcing everywhere he goes. It’s good news, not dreary news or bad news.
Now, from verse 18, Paul gives a third reason – and here we might just wonder if we heard him correctly. The church in Rome might just ask Phoebe to repeat that bit.
Paul’s not ashamed of the gospel because in the gospel God’s wrath is revealed against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.
God’s wrath against ungodliness? And that’s good news, Paul?
For us, to speak of God’s wrath against sin is uncommon and uncomfortable. It’ssomething that we might prefer to downplay in favour of a nicer God who doesn’t express so much hostility in the face of human sin. It’s something that previous generations of Christians would have more readily emphasised – but not us, not so much these days. We might associate such talk more withparticular strains of Christianity – “fire and brimstone” street preachers, perhaps. But surely such things belong more in the more primitive days of the Old Testament – we’re a bit more sophisticated these days.
And yet, for Paul, it’s a key part of his message of good news. The gospel reveals the wrath of God against all that is wrong with humanity. He opens up this point straight away.
Since the beginning of the world, the living God has repeatedly made it clear that he is angry about sin, and that he was going to allow the full force of his anger against sin to be unleashed in judgment.
And yet … Humanity had continued to live on in its rebellion. Where was this wrath that the LORD spoke of?
In fact, God was being gracious and merciful towards sinful people!Maybe he didn’t really mean what he said – he wasn’t really that bothered by sin. Maybe it was just empty threats.It could be that reports of his terrible anger against sin were overstated, or the invention of bitter humans who were angrier about wickedness than God is?
All around us, and down through history, there seems to be no justice. There are so many wicked people who get away with it, who don’t bear the consequences of their sin. Surely, if God really is angry about sin, wouldn’t he do something about it?
Well, this is another reason why Paul has so much confidence in the gospel. In the death of Jesus, we see the uncompromising hostility of God towards sin.Sin is so serious that in order for it to be dealt with, it requires the death of God the Son.
Paul will come back to this in chapter 3 – the cross of Jesus alone demonstrates that God hasn’t been acting unjustly –acquittingthe guilty! Without the cross, God seems to have been acting illegally, letting the guilty off! Yet the cross is where he has dealt with sin – so he is justified when he forgives sinners and calls them saints!
The gospel of Jesus Christ makes it clear that God’s anger against sin is deeper and more severe than we ever imagined, because only the blood of God himself can satisfy the divine anger. When the crucifixion of Jesus is proclaimed, then we see, finally and definitively, not only how loving God is towards us, but also how terribly seriously he takes our unbelief and sin. By the gospel, both God’s grace and his wrath are revealed.
This is why Paul focuses in on the reality of human sin here in these opening sections. He’s not stepping back from the gospel and becoming a social commentator, using another set of criteria other than the gospel to express his own set of opinions on the human condition – like a TV chef appearing on Question Time to talk about political issues.
No – the gospel itself reveals God’s verdict on humanity.The situation Paul describes is not just that there are some bad people out there and we need to avoid doing what they do, by investing in better education or more robust political structures. It’s not just that the majority of people are nice and we just need to become nicer.
Paul is going to announce the most terrible verdict on humanity that has ever been pronounced. As far as God’s concerned we’re all filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.
We’re going to hear that we’re all estranged from God – we are godless, because we have rejected him; that we’re all in the same boat; that our condition is deathly serious; that no one is in a special category; that we are all part of the same problem with the same consequences; and there’s nothing we can do about it … unless the living God intervenes.
And he has – and Paul will show how as he moves on in the letter. But part of realising the significance of the good news is to recognise where we would be left without that good news.Always judgment and salvation go together.
And that truth is seen throughout the whole Bible. When God rescued his people from Egypt in the book of Exodus, his rescue comes with a terrible judgment.
This needs to be kept in mind as we proceed. We need to hear the correct diagnosis if we’re going to accept the only solution.
An Israelite family in Egypt could have responded to God’s command to kill an innocent lamb and place its blood on the doorframes to escape the divine judgment – or they could have theorised that all this talk of judgment was a bit depressing and what we really need is a family holiday to boost our spirits!
Wrong diagnosis – wrong solution.
The gospel reveals the problem – we are estranged from God and under his wrath.
God’s wrath – his holy disposition against our wickedness – is not an uncontrolled, irrational fury. The very fact that the wrath of God has been kept under control for so long until the proper time demonstrates that. Even the way in which a deeply wronged and offended God reacts to our arrogant rebellion shows that he is good and patient – he doesn’t fly off into a rage and irreversibly destroy everything, even though he’d be perfectly in the right to do so.
But how is that fair? What about those people who have never heard this message? Why should those who live in ignorance of this reality be judged on the same basis as everybody who has been made aware of this verdict? Isn’t that unjust and unfair?
Can God really be angry with people for rejecting Jesus, if he is unknown to them? Surely, God is only angry with those who have rejected his written word, his preached gospel. Surely he’s only really going to be angry with those who come to church, heard what he’s got to say, and then even still reject him?
Paul makes the remarkable claim that what is known about God is obvious to everybody. God has made himself known in the creation around us – he has put on display his eternal power and divine nature – so that everybody is without excuse.
God has put the very deepest and hardest truths about himself on display in creation. His invisible qualities are clearly seen!
It is precisely because the Revelation of God is shouted in our ears and confronts us in every detail of reality – that is why we are so justly condemned and have no excuse.
But how is it that we have become so deaf to such a loud shout? Why is the human race so wilfully deaf to the reality of God in the world around us?
1:21 – humanity did know God and enjoyed communion with God at the beginning.
It’s been downhill from there – rather than know the LORD, we exchanged that relationship in favour of grasping at knowledge of good and evil for ourselves. In doing so, in turning away from truth, we became fools – our minds became darkened, our thinking became confused.As a race we became intellectually vain, futile, blind, foolish.
Rather than desiring the Creator, we settled for the creation itself – fashioning gods in our minds and with our hands, gods made in the image of sinful humanity and even animals.
What would fill our hearts and minds if we could do our own thing? Left to ourselves, can any of us really say that our greatest desire above all else is to know Jesus – to know the Living God? Is that our first and last thought on our best and worst days? Is that what drives us each day?
This turning away from God has consequences. We cannot become ignorant with impunity. Whenever we turn away from the truth, we are turning towards evil.
Three times Paul says that “God gave humanity over” to what they had chosen so that they would become moredeeply entrenched in sin and wickedness. Turning away from the living God has consequences that lead to further consequences.
And we see that the focus of our rebellion is not just in our hearts and minds – it’s also found in the way we relate to one another. Humanity was created to mirror God – to display God to the world. We were made in his image.
Rather than reflecting what God is like in the way that we relate to the creation around us, and to one another, the mirror has become shattered, the image has become distorted. Now, rather than the pinnacle of our glory, even the use of the human body has become the centre of our rebellion. It has now become dishonoured through lust.
In our alienation from God, our sexuality has become such a difficult and confused matter. For so many, it is a curse rather than a blessing, full of trouble and pain.
Sin has spread and infected every aspect of our being, every area of life – our minds, emotions, desires, bodies, behaviour, relationships. The human race is filled with every kind of wickedness and depravity (verse 29).
We might be inclined to think that this is quite a broad-brush generalisation. Surely this verdict does not hold true for every single person in the world?
The murderer, the liar, the rapist, the thief, the war criminal, the child molester – these are not a different species. They are sinful humans like the rest of us. The same root of sin is in us all.
Paul’s argument in chapter 1 reaches a kind of crescendo, with a deadly rhythm – “foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless”.
Even if we can look down Paul’s list of sins and say, “Well that one doesn’t apply to me!” yet there will be another that does.
We know the jealousy that bubbles up inside us when we see our rivals do well. We know what it is to want something that belongs to someone else and doesn’t belong to us. We know those moments when we twist the truth, those moments when we shirk from our responsibilities, those moments when we feel spite.
In our moments of anger and frustration, in our moments of desperation, in our idle moments when we daydream, those times when we think no one is watching …
We’ve seen it in microcosm in our children – in our own childhoods – I never needed to be taught how to be naughty and disobedient. It came quite naturally to me.
The diagnosis couldn't be more terrible. And this is not simply the cynical philosophy of an ancient thinker. This is nothing less than God’s verdict. We cannot hide from this terrible diagnosis.
And yet Paul turns to confront someone – a representative person – in chapter 2, who thinks that he is exempt from God’s verdict on the whole world!
This chapter is about the Jewish person who is trying to hide from God’s judgment behind the Law of God.
Aren’t the Jews in a special category when it comes to God’s judgment?
We can’t escape God’s judgment simply by trying to join in with God’s condemnation. We’re not fellow judges along with God. We’re all in the dock like everybody else.
We all stand together under the same judgment.
2:4 – Israel had enjoyed God’s blessings for over 1,500 years. The final judgment of God had not fallen on them and they’d experienced God’s sovereign protection. Surely this proves that Israel can’t be condemned along with the Gentiles?
The purpose behind God’s kindness is not to make Israel complacent and self-satisfied. God’s kindness leads to repentance. His favour to Israel should have led them to believe the gospel and to be a blessing to the surrounding nations, not to think they were chosen because they were better than everyone else.
Paul goes on to show that the Divine Judge isn’t interested in anyone's genetic pedigree or social standing or family connections but on the basis of what we've done with the good news about Jesus.
We will all stand together under the same judgment.
Even just having the Law – God’s revelation of his righteous character – doesn’t make any difference to God’s judgment.
Those without the Law – the Gentiles – will be condemned for their sin without reference to the Law.
Those with the Law – the Jewish people – will be condemned more acutely because the Law will add its own judgement to their condemnation.
Having or not having the law provides no protection before the Divine Judge. Everyone of us will stand together under the same judgement.
There are Gentiles who do what the Law requires even though they’ve never heard of the Law. They trust in Jesus without the prompting of the Law. They show the reality of what the Law requires even without the Law (2:14,15).
Now this begs the question of 3:1. What advantage was having the Law in that case? Do the Jewish people have any advantage at all? Do the Law and the ceremonial rituals of Israel count for anything?
Of course they do, Paul says.
The very words of God had been proclaimed to the Jews for centuries – if that’s not an advantage, nothing is! They have a 1,500 year head start on the rest of the world!
The problem was that the Jews had not taken advantage of their advantage.The Law and these ancient rituals were an invitation to faith. They were given to the Israelites to prompt them, encourage them – “Trust the Lord! Trust the God who justifies the wicked.”