Why is God’s wrath against the Gentiles? Paul tells us in this passage it is because people knew the truth about God, suppressed the truth about God, refused to honor God, and chose idols over God.
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The Reasons For God’s Wrath
Romans 1:18-23
A couple of Sundays ago, we discussed the wrath of God at length. When I was preaching that message, I felt so out of step with my culture. This is the one subject today that people just don’t want to tackle. Of course, they know it’s in the Bible, but they feel awkward and a little embarrassed to talk about it at length. However, even though I felt out of step with popular Christian culture, I felt very much in step with Scripture. There are more references to God’s wrath and judgment in Scripture than there are to His love, mercy and grace.
God is revealing two things simultaneously today – His gift of righteousness which is imputed through faith in Christ, and His wrath which is against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
Of course, there is a part of us that wonders why God would pour out His wrath on people. That’s what Paul is addressing here. Paul is telling us why God exercises His wrath.
Paul tells us here in Romans 1:18-23 four reasons why God’s wrath is against people:
- They knew the truth about God
- They suppressed the truth about God
- They refused to honor God
- They chose idols over God
Let’s take a look at each of those propositions.
1. They Knew The Truth About God
What group of people does Paul have in mind? Paul is not addressing the Jews. He will do that in chapter 2. Here in chapter 1, he is thinking of the Gentiles. How do we know that? We know that because the revelation which these people have in chapter 1 is not the Scriptures, but creation. Whoever Paul is talking about here in chapter one does not have special revelation. They only have natural revelation. The Jews had special revelation. They had the Old Testament Scriptures. But when Paul says that the people of chapter 1 knew about God, he says they know that, not by the Scriptures, but by God’s creation. So, Paul is saying that the Gentile world is under the wrath of God.
In verse 18, Paul says that they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Well, in order to suppress the truth, they must first have the truth. Well, what truth did they have? Verse 25 says it is the truth of God. In other words, these Gentiles, who didn’t have a Bible, somehow knew that God exists. How did they know that?
Verse 19 – “because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” Again we see what kind of truth Paul is talking about. It is “that which is known about God.” Paul is talking about the truth of philosophy, or mathematics or science. He’s talking about the truth about God. And Paul is telling these Gentiles who have never read any Scripture, that the truth about God is evident within them. How did the truth about God become evident with them? God made it evident to them! How did God make the truth about Himself evident to them?
Verse 20 – “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” There we have it! God made the truth about Himself evident to them through what has been made. In fact, he says the truth about God has been clearly seen. This truth is not dim, and hazy, and hard to make out. It is clearly seen.
Verse 21 – “For even though they knew God.” Paul, here, is not saying that the Gentiles knew God in a saving way. He’s saying that they knew there was a God, when they looked around at everything He had made.
Folks, the fact that there is a God who made all things is evident to everyone! Many people deny it. They call themselves “atheists”, but no one is born an atheist. How many 5 year old atheists have you ever met? People instinctively know there is a God. They have to suppress that truth in order to deny His existence. We all know the wonderful story of Helen Keller. She was deaf, blind, and mute. She was cut off from her world. No one could communicate her. No one could tell her about God. Then, Anne Sullivan spent hour after hour, day after day, month after month, seeking to find a way to communicate with her. When she finally was able to spell words into her hand, Anne Sullivan told Helen Keller about God. Helen Keller responded, “I already know about Him. I just don’t know His name.” How did Helen Keller know there was a God? God had somehow made it evident to her. She didn’t even have eyes and ears to see and hear God’s creation around her, and still God broke through revealing His existence to her.
When you think about it, it’s so simple. When you see a building, you know there had to be a builder. When you see a painting, you know there had to be a painter. And when you see the beauty, and order, and creativity, and splendor in the world around us, you know there must be a Creator.
And, what is it about God that creation teaches us? Paul says it is His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature. When you look around at nature, you see a world of incredible symmetry, and beauty, and order. And the only conclusion is that there must be a Creator who has a divine nature, and eternal power. We can know a lot about God simply by observing His creation. By observing the incredible beauty in the flowers, and plants, and animals, we know that He is a God who appreciates beauty. By observing the incredible diversity of animals, we know that He is a God of great creativity. By observing how each animal is equipped to live in its own environment, we know that He is a God of great wisdom.
Let me give you a few examples. I was just watching a video about Polar Bears. Polar bears are the largest land predators on earth. A polar bear can stand 11 feet tall on its hind legs, and weight 2,000 pounds! Polar bears must live in the most frigid places on the planet where it gets in excess of -40 degrees, and must endure 75 mile per hour winds. How can they possibly stay warm? Well, God has taken care of that! He is so well insulated that he emits almost no heat. He has 4 inches of insulating fat. The fat is encased in a thick hide. The skin is black so it absorbs sunlight, generating heat. Above that is a 2 inch thick layer of short, dense hair, like a thick sweater, that traps heat and keeps the bear warm. Then a coat of 5” outer fur that is completely water repellant.
There is a special fish that I’ve enjoyed reading about called the archerfish. It gets its food like all other fish. It just swims around, and opens its mouth, and takes its food. But they have the amazing ability to fire drops of water with great accuracy and knock insects out of the air.
And did you know that there is a little thing called the bombardier beetle who produces chemicals which mix perfectly and at the right moment explode in the face of his enemy, but the explosion never occurs prematurely and never blows him up?
The U.S. Natural Museum says insect species now number 10 million. And I know, and they were all at your last picnic, right? Do you realize there are 2,500 kinds of ants? And one colony alone can have 100 million ants. Do you know there are 5 billion birds in America? Some can fly 500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico. Did you know that mallards can fly 60 miles an hours, eagles 100 miles an hour and a falcon can dive at a 180? I know you didn’t know that codfish can lay 9 million eggs, but they can.
The arctic tern travels 42,000 miles a year! That adds up to 1.5 million miles during his lifetime! It flies from the Arctic to Antarctica. It only has a 26” wingspan. It’s a small bird!
Or take the leatherback turtle. These charismatic ocean wanderers make incredible migrations in the open sea. Some leatherback turtles have been recorded traveling across the Pacific Ocean between Indonesia and the U.S., an incredible distance of more than 12,000 miles in 647 days. One of their most impressive feats is the ability to navigate back the very beach where they were born to spawn.
How does viewing the natural world tell us that God must be a being of eternal power? Think about the hydrological cycle of water, which just absolutely staggers my mind. Water is lifted against gravity from the sea thousands of feet into the air, and there it is suspended, just suspended, collected in clouds, and then the clouds are floated over the land and they’re dropped.
A Canadian physicist wrote, “A rain of 4 inches over an area of 10,000 square miles would require the burning of 640 million tons of coal to evaporate enough water for such a rain. And to cool again the vapors thus produced, and collect them in clouds would take another 800 million horsepower of refrigeration working night and day for 100 days.”
A press bulletin from the University of Alberta in Canada said, “It may be surprising to people in a temperate climate to hear that there are on the average of 1,800 storms in operation at any time, and the energy expended in these storms amounts to the almost inconceivable figure of 1,300,000,000 horsepower. A large Caterpillar bulldozer has 420 horsepower requiring 100 gallons of fuel a day. How much fuel does God have to operate storms with a horsepower of one 1,300,000,000 every day?”
Consider the sun. The sun burns up 4 million tons of matter a second. If you could convert the energy the sun gives off to horsepower, you’d wind up with 500 million million billion horsepower. If that’s too big to handle, that’s the same as one and a half million million billion Corvettes.
Think of the distance from the sun. The distance from the earth to the sun is 93 million miles, as I said. It takes the light from the sun traveling at 186,000 miles a second, 8 and a half minutes to get here. The speed of light is 186,000 miles a second, and if you take that speed of 186,000 miles a second going 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, that light travels over 6 trillion miles in one year. And yet, if you were to go across our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, where our star system is, going at 186,000 per second, 6 trillion miles a year, it would take you 125,000 years to get across our galaxy, and ours is one of millions.
My friends, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands” (Ps. 19:1).
So, all men all over the world intuitively know that there is a God.
2. They Suppressed The Truth About God
Not only do all men know the truth of God’s existence, but they suppress that truth. They hold it down. They don’t like that truth, because it means that they now must acknowledge Him as their Creator, and He is due their obedience and worship. As long as they suppress the truth about Him, they can be their own god. They can call their own shots. They can pursue their own will. They can live independently of Him. But as soon as they own up to the fact that there is a God, that He made them, and they are accountable to Him.
Or consider verse 28: “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer [literally: they did not approve having God in their knowledge], God gave them over to a depraved mind.” Not approving to have God in their knowledge is the same as “suppressing the truth.” God is true, but we don’t want him in our knowledge, so we will suppress this truth. We will exchange it, distort it, hide it, run from it, and finally, become blind to it.
We see this blindness in verse 21, “but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” As a result of suppressing the truth, they end up with a darkened heart. In other words, one of God’s judgments on them for holding down the truth about Him is that they become spiritually blind. It is not just that people don’t like the truth about God, and so suppress it. Some suppress the truth because they can’t see it. People say, “I don’t suppress the truth about God. I don’t think that there even is truth about God.” I rest my case. Their heart has become darkened.
And you know, that is really the essence of sin. Sin is self-will, it is living independently of God, it is living for your own will and pleasure rather than His.
Notice that in verse 21-22 Paul says, “they became futile in their speculations…professing to be wise, they became fools.” Now, remember that the context has to do with knowing that God exists because of the beautiful, complex, ordered creation. So, what are these futile speculations? My guess is that they speculate that there is no God. I think verse 21 is probably referring to atheism. Remember that Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” That’s why Paul says, “Professing to be wise, they became fools.”
I’m always amused at the atheists explanation for the universe – The Big Bang. Does anyone else get a kick out of this theory? If there was nothing before, how could it bang? How could nothing explode into everything we see today? It doesn’t even make sense to me. It never has, and I don’t think it ever will. I find it much more plausible that an all powerful, self-existent Creator made everything that is, than that nothing exploded into everything!
3. They Refused To Honor God
This is the truth that we find in verse 21, “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks…” All men know there is a God, but will not honor Him as God or give thanks. And here we get to the root of our purpose for existence. Our purpose of existence is to glorify God. In fact this verse literally says, “they did not glorify Him as God.”
As John Piper has said, “That is the fundamental problem with the human race. We do not acknowledge, value, treasure, savor, honor, or make much of the greatest value in the universe: the glory of God. That is our wickedness and our disease and our great mutiny against God.”
The Westminster Catechism puts it very well – “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” And that’s why Paul sums up the Christian life in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
Verse 21 also says that they did not “give thanks.” All creatures have much to give their Creator thanks for, don’t they? For starters, why not thank Him for the life He gave you? Thank Him for your parents, your family, your health, your home, your job, your car, your eyesight, your hearing, your food, the rains, the sun, the sunsets, the sunrises, the beautiful sights around you, and the list could go on and on. But sinful man won’t thank God, because that would be to acknowledge Him, and that’s exactly what He doesn’t want to do. He wants to suppress the truth about God.
4. They Chose Idols Over God
Verse 23 says, “and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” That is very similar to what Paul also says in verse 25, “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”
Men exchange God for idols, the Creator for the creature. Now, if there is anything that is truly idiotic, it is to give up the most valuable and glorious Being in the universe, for that which is worthless! This is like the children of Bill Gates exchanging their inheritance, for a Big Mac! It’s worse than Esau exchanging his birthright for a bowl of lintel stew.
To see the depth of the idiocy, consider what man trades for what he gets. He trades God! He gives up the most beautiful, magnificent, good, Being in all the universe. What does he get? Not just man, who is not God, but the image of God. But corruptible man. This is not like the incorruptible, immaculate, perfect God. It is a corrupt man. But not even that. It an image of this corruptible man! We giving up the Real McCoy for an image of an image of an image. We are giving away the billion dollar masterpiece, for a copy of a copy of a copy. If you and I value other things more than God, it’s like trading a 100 pound bar of gold, for a rusty bolt.
What about you? Have you chosen idols over God? What is it that you value more than all else? If the answer is not God, you have done what God is accusing the heathen of doing. What’s more important – God or your TV shows? God or your food? God or your work? God or your family? You fill in the blank. Nothing we can try fill our hearts with can ever come close to the value of our glorious Creator.
So, what’s the conclusion of all of this? The end of verse 20 – “so that they are without excuse.” The heathen are without excuse. Those without the Scriptures are without excuse before God.
Conclusion
There are several implications we need to draw from this passage.
- Natural revelation is not enough to save people. I remember having a conversation with a woman from our church in Sonora. We were talking about Romans 1, and she was insisting that this passage taught that there were people throughout the world who had never heard of Jesus that were saved because they knew God from creation. Now, let’s think about that for a minute. Does Paul anywhere in this passage say that any of these heathen are saved? No, he says they are without excuse. You see, the sober truth is that natural revelation is sufficient to condemn people, but it is not sufficient to save them. In order for anyone to be saved, they must have the gospel. They must learn about Christ and His saving work. Creation does not teach man that. It teaches him that there is a God and he is accountable to him, but men suppress that truth, and refuse to honor God. So, natural revelation, in the end, brings man into condemnation.
If it were true, that natural revelation could bring people to salvation, there would have been no need for Jesus Christ to come into the world, suffer and die. If natural revelation is sufficient, there is no need for us to send missionaries at great financial cost, and personal expense into all the world. But natural revelation is not sufficient.
- People who have never heard the gospel will die in their sins. Many people say that God is going to have mercy on those who have never heard the gospel, because they never had a chance to be saved. However, I want you to consider Romans 1. Does it teach that? Where in this passage does God say He is going to save the heathen because they never knew the truth of the gospel? Rather, it says they are without excuse. I really think that is a lie from the devil, because he would like us to believe that the heathen will go to heaven, while we sit on our hands and do nothing. He doesn’t want us sending missionaries to every nation in the world.
- God is just to damn those who have never heard the gospel. That’s Paul’s whole point in Romans 1:18-23. Paul is building a case. It goes like this: All men know there is a God – All men suppress that truth – All men refuse to glorify God – All men substitute other things for God. Therefore, they are without excuse and His wrath is upon them. What makes a man guilty before God is not rejecting the gospel. That’s only one way man becomes guilty. He is guilty by every sin he has ever committed. And the heathen have committed sins without number.
So, what does all this mean for you and me?
- Recommit yourself to praising God for His creation. One of the things I love to do is watch Youtube videos of God’s animal kingdom. God’s glory and wisdom is seen in the things He has made. Whenever you see a glorious sunrise, or a beautiful deafening waterfall, or a powerful wave off of the Pacific ocean, praise the Creator who has made all things well.
- Recommit yourself to reaching all the unreached peoples of the earth! They are guilty, and will die in their sins, unless we get the gospel to them. So, let’s give so others can go. Let’s pray for those in the work. Let’s go, if the Lord calls you. Let’s do everything we can to further the work of Bibles For Asia, and Heartcry.
- Recommit yourself to valuing and savoring and enjoying the glory of God over all things. Find Him to be your Treasure forever. Refuse to trade Him in for a cheap substitute.
- Recommit yourself to glorifying God and giving Him thanks. God is clearly provoked by sinners who will not thank Him for all the mercies that He has given them. Let’s not take our cue from the heathen who will not honor God.
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