Romans
2
There’s an old song entitled, “Love and Marriage”. One verse says, “Try to separate them, it’s an illusion; try, and you will only come to this conclusion. Love and marriage – they go together like a horse and carriage”. The song ends “you can’t have one without the other.”
In Romans I there are two phrases that go together like two sides of the same coin and you can’t have one without the other. The phrases are ‘the righteousness of God’ (Romans 1:17) and ‘the wrath of God’ (Romans 1:18).
‘The wrath of God’ implies the inevitable punishment of sin. This is built into the very structure of the universe. It’s a spiritual law that consequences follow disobedience. ‘The wrath of God’ doesn’t mean that God is easily upset or flies off in a tantrum, whenever the mood takes Him. Rather God is holy, a God of law and order and He cannot ignore sin. One expression of the wrath of God is His abandonment of the wicked to their sins.
In Romans 1:18-32 we have the divine explanation for the mess we’re in. Paul spells out God’s diagnosis of the very problem we face. It’s the sin problem. Man’s declaration of independence from God. Man’s rejection of God and deliberate suppression of the truth.
Romans 1:18 reads, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men.” Paul skilfully sets out to prove the utter ungodliness of the Gentile world. We are, as it were, led into God’s courtroom. Paul argues that the Gentile world is guilty. Men are without excuse. Human history began with a man knowing God. If people are ignorant, it’s because they choose to be ignorant. God has made Himself known from the beginning of creation in two ways. First, He has revealed Himself in nature. As Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declares the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” Secondly, God has revealed Himself in our conscience. As John 1:9 shows God is ‘the true light that gives light to every man.’
Romans 1:21 says, “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.” Here is a vital truth. The consequences of disobedience or rebellion are intellectual darkness. God is light and if a man rejects light, he is condemned to darkness by choice. Intellectual revolt against what a man knows to be right is always attended by the darkening of the whole understanding. If we suppress the truth, we end up believing a lie.
Man is incurably religious – he must have some kind of God. Fancy exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. But that’s what happened. Man worshipped dumb idols that could never challenge his behaviour. Romans 1:25 puts it this way: “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is for ever praised.”
There are consequences to abandoning the truth. Man deceives himself into believing he is his own god. He becomes like a beast in his thinking and in his living. “The result of self-deification,” says Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe “is self indulgence.” God, in effect, says, “You’ve made your choice to ignore My voice” and He gives up. It’s in Romans 1:24 “God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity.” Romans 1:26 says, “God gave them over to shameful lusts.” Lesbianism and homosexuality were widely practised. In fact fourteen of the first fifteen Roman Emperors were homosexuals. Romans 1:28 says, “God gave them over to a depraved mind – (that’s a mind that can’t form right judgements) – to do what ought not to be done.”
When the Bible says, “God gave them over“, it means he allowed sin to run its course as an act of judgement. Reluctantly God does this, if man insists on his own way. To swap God for a fake god leads inevitably to a downward spiral.
The end of chapter 1 spells out most clearly how degenerate and depraved men can become when God, as it were, gives up seeking to woo them and impact their lives. Men’s minds become so reprobate that they actually take pleasure in viewing perversion in others. Even their idea of entertainment is obscene. The Living Bible puts verse 30 as “They were back biters, haters of God, insolent, proud braggarts, always thinking of new ways of sinning and continually being disobedient to their parents.”
Some commentators suggest that the decaying city of Rome itself has been perfectly described in Romans 1. The brutal city that persecuted Christians, killed slaves with impunity and threw out to die unwanted newborn babies.
Romans 1:18 had declared, “The wrath of God is being revealed”. It is seen in man left to himself with no restraints and no inhibitions. Lost man living in hell on earth. Underneath human nature is all alike. The same heart is in the Gentile as is in the Jew.
In Romans 2 God’s courtroom scene continues, but now it is the Jew who is in the dock and Paul will argue that the Jewish world is equally guilty. They had the advantage of possessing the Law of God, but they failed to practice it.
As it says in Romans 2:1 “You, therefore, have no excuse.” You judge and condemn others for the very offences you yourself practise. Do you remember the parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector in Luke 18 that was told by Jesus to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else?
Paul says this won’t do. He outlines four principles of divine judgement.
Firstly “We know that God’s judgement --- is based on truth” (Romans 2:2)
Secondly “God will give to each person according to what he has done.” (Romans 2:6) This is the doctrine of recompense. What you sow, you reap.
Thirdly “God does not show favouritism (Romans 2:11). He is no respecter of persons. He is an impartial Judge.
Fourthly “God will judge men’s secrets” (Romans 2:16).
If the Jews thought God was on their side and would let them off because of the special relationship He had with them, they had seriously misjudged their righteous and Holy Creator.