ROMANS 1: 18-23
THE UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
God’s Imprint On Mankind
[Acts 17: 23-28]
God has placed knowledge of Himself within every person that has ever been formed in a womb. Knowledge of God is also plainly evident in His creation. So God has made every person responsible for responding to the knowledge of Him within every person and within creation (CIT). If any person would respond to this knowledge God would lead him until Gospel salvation would be his also. But man has chosen to ignore and blatantly suppress this knowledge of God.
Thus every person is justly chargeable with rejecting God, for every person has inner revelation and the opportunity for outer realization of God but have chosen to follow their own desires and thoughts. The righteous wrath of God abides on all who reject the knowledge of God.
I. The Righteous Wrath of God, 18.
II. The Inter-Evidence of God, 19.
III. The External Evidence of God, 20.
[IV. The Vain Speculations of Man (21-23).]
The Bible has revealed to us the Gospel of Salvation by faith in Jesus alone. That’s the good news, now we have the bad news, or why man so desperately needs to be saved. [So the objective is to prove, the doctrine of the preceding verse which is, that the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel and that righteousness is only obtainable by faith.] The Bible proves this need by showing that men are in themselves destitute of any righteousness that will satisfy God’s just standard and are under just condemnation. The argument will be: God is just, He must punish sin, all men are sinners, therefore, all are under judgment. Until a person is persuaded that their condition is one of the total lostness, they are not likely to be concerned about deliverance. [Everett Harrison. Expositor’s Bible Com. Zondervan. p 21. ]
This section on God’s assessment of the human condition will continue until 3:21. It begins in verse 18 which discloses another revelation from God, the revelation of the coming wrath of God against the wick rebellion of man. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,"
As the Gospel reveals God’s righteousness, it also reveals God’s wrath. God’s saving power will only be properly appreciated against the dark background of His opposition to evil. [The NT uses two words for wrath: thumos (rage- emotional) & org . The word use here is org . It expresses God’s abiding, opposition to evil.] The wrath of God is the determined purpose of His reason and law against sin. It is the justice of God punishing sin and those who participate in it. It is the calm undeviating purpose of the divine mind which makes sure of the connection between sin and punishment. His moral laws are as predetermined as His physical laws. This wrath is presently operational but culminates in judgment on the last day.
So wrath is God’s relentless opposition to all that would distort and destroy His will. It is His firm stand against all sin and rebellion. He seeks to dissuade individuals and societies from their sins by handing them over to the consequences of their sins.
This wrath of God is revealed ( ) or "uncovered, brought to light," or made known by direct communication or in some other way. The wrath of God is revealed by divine law, in actual punishment in life, in peoples’ consciences, etc. The world is built on a moral foundation so that over the long run life is better with the good and ill for the wicked. God makes it known that those who commit sin deserve death and punishment.
The greatest display and revelation of the wrath of God is seen in Jesus’ vicarious substitutionary death for mankind’s sin. At the Cross God poured out His judgment upon Christ for man’s sin and Christ cried out "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?"
God hates sin so deeply and requires its penalty met so that He allows His perfect, beloved Son to be put to death as the only means by which fallen mankind might be redeemed from sin’s curse.
John the Baptist said, "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Mt. 3:7). If you wanted to escape the fierily wrath of a prairie fire where should you flee? To a place where it has already burned. Where can you go to escape God’s wrath? To the Cross of Calvary where God has already poured out His wrath for sin upon His Son, our Substitute.
This wrath of God "is revealed against all ungodliness." Ungodliness is lack of reverence or obedience to God. God’s wrath is universal against "all" who deserve it. Unrighteousness men are people who do not give God His proper place in their life. They are rebellious toward God. Those who do not reverence God naturally will be lacking in just conduct toward one another (Rom. 9:14; Luke 18).
A group of GODLY FARMERS in a Midwest community were being irritated one Sunday morning by a neighbor’s plowing his field across from their church. Noise from his tractor interrupted the worship service, and, as it turned out, the man had purposely chosen to plow that particular field on Sunday morning in order to make a point. He wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, asserting that, although he did not respect the Lord or honor the Lord’s Day, he had the highest yield per acre of any farm in the county. He asked the editor how Christians could explain that. With considerable insight and wisdom, the editor printed that letter and followed it with the simple comment, "God does not settle [all] His accounts in the month of October."
These individual facing God’s wrath are further defined as those, "Who suppress the truth in (by) unrighteousness" or injustice-wickedness. ["Truth" is : - primitive + to conceal, or to unconceal.] Whenever the truth about God and man starts to exert itself it makes people uneasy in their moral nature, so they hold it down, suppress it. First and foremost they suppress the truth God is revealing within themselves.
Men have made a prior decision within themselves to live for themselves and not for God. Thus when any truth that challenges their self-centered life reveals itself, they deliberately stifle it [by self arguments, denial or rushing into the detractions of sin.]
The truth about God is evident or out in the open, but wicked people devise ways to hide it, to keep it not only from themselves but from each other. Though people possess the truth they are unrighteous and their great unrighteousness is seen in their suppression of the truth. To suppress the truth means they have knowledge of the truth. Yet as long as people hide from the truth they are hiding from themselves because they possess truth within themselves as is seen in the next verses.
II. THE INTER-EVIDENCE OF GOD, 1:19.
Verses 19-20 assert that human guilt is not because of the argued hiddenness of God but rather because of God’s self-disclosure and humankind’s rejection of it. Verse 19 affirms that all people have internal, God given evidence of God’s existence and nature. "Because the knowledge of God is evident (revealed) in them; for God made it evident (revealed it) to them."
This suppression of the truth is wicked because mankind does not do it in ignorance, for in their hearts and consciences God created the knowledge of Him, who He is, what He is like, what He is about, and how He is about it. Within every person is the witness of and to God so that reasoning beings are bound to acknowledge and worship Him as the only and true God.
The way that this knowledge [ ] comes to man is not externally, or by external revelation, it is inner revelation. Every person has intertwined in his own nature or being the natural and moral revelation of God and each person also has the inherent enabling to comprehend manifestations or revelations of God.
A tiny bird, the WHITETHROAT WARBLER, summers in Germany and winters in Africa. As the days grow short, the adult birds head south, leaving their little ones behind. Several weeks later, the young fly across thousands of miles of unfamiliar land and sea to join their parents. How do they find a place totally unknown to them? Experiments have shown that they have an instinctive knowledge of longitude, latitude, and an ability to tell direction by the stars. God has given them a calendar, a clock, and all the navigational data they need to fly those thousands of uncharted miles to their parents’ side. The God who did all that in a bird’s brain, did so much more in us.
The evolutionist says that our amazing and complex world developed by chance. But is this easier to accept than to believe that God created this amazing warbler, and thousands of other such creatures? To me, ascribing this to chance is absurd.
The Lord testifies through Paul that His outward visible manifestation of Himself is universally known by man. It is evident within them as well as without them. All men have evidence of God and their physical senses can perceive Him and their inner senses can understand Him to some extent. God has inlaid the fundamental truth of Himself in the very nature of man.
III. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE OF GOD, 20.
The knowledge every man possesses is not simply that there is a God, but as verse 20 says, a knowledge that understands His eternal power, His divine nature and His attributes. "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."
Not only does each individual person inherently have the knowledge of God but created within them is the ability to comprehend from God’s created order His invisible attributes - or what He is like by looking at His created order. God’s revelation of Himself through creation can be clearly seen by everyone, being understood through what has been made.
What kind of God does nature reveal? Nature shows us a God of might, intelligence, and intricate detail. Creation reveals a God of order and beauty; a God who controls powerful forces. That is general revelation. Through special revelation (the Bible and the coming of Jesus and the Holy Spirit), we learn about God’s love and forgiveness, and the promise of eternal life. God has graciously given us both sources that we might fully believe in him.
"Some "scientist" say, ‘THERE IS NO GOD.’ All the wonders around you are accidental. No Almighty hand made a thousand billion stars and hundreds of million of galaxies. They made themselves. The surface of our land just happened to have topsoil, without which we would have no vegetables to eat, and no grass for the animals whose meat is our food.
The inexhaustible envelope of air, only 50 miles deep and of exactly the right density to support human life, is just another accident. We have day and night because the earth spins at a given speed without slowing down. Who made this arrangement? Who tilts the earth so that we get seasons? The sun’s fire does not generate too much heat so that we fry, but just enough so that we do not freeze. Who keeps its fire constant?
The human heart will beat for 70 or 80 years without faltering. How does it get sufficient rest between beats? Who gave the human tongue flexibility to form words, and who made a brain to understand them? Is all this complexity and exactness accidental? ‘There is no God? That’s what some people say.
The Bible says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1) & that the fool says there is no God" (Ps. 14:1).The greatness of our God is seen
In sky and sea and forest green,
And living creatures great and small
Reveal the God who made them all. [Our Daily Bread]
The design of creation points to the master designer. For God’s wisdom is plainly observable in the works of His creation. God’s handiwork in nature speaks so strongly for His existence and power that it is a most powerful argument in establishing man’s guilt and condemnation. Paul wrote that man is without excuse if he does not respond in faith to the God who made it all.
Only those who are spiritually deaf and blind cannot hear the voice of God or see His hand in nature. The fashioning and function of the earth and sky, sun, moon, and stars speak of God. Creation cannot deny His workmanship. God’s fingerprints are everywhere visible. Our Creator God deserves our recognition! Moreover, He is worthy of our praise!
Even in ancient of times, long before the telescope and microscope were invented, the greatness of God was evident both in the vastness and in the tiny intricacies of nature. Men could look at the stars and discover the fixed order of their orbits. They could observe a small seed reproduce itself into a giant tree, exactly like the one from which it came. They could see the marvelous cycles of the seasons, God’s created water works of evaporation, cloud formation, distillation, & pool formation. They witnessed the marvel of human birth and the glory of the sunrise and sunset. Even without the special revelation David had, they could see that "the heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands" (Ps. 19:1).
Some birds are able to navigate by stars. Even if hatched and raised in a windowless building, if shown an artificial sky, they immediately are able to orient themselves to the proper place to which to migrate. The archerfish is able to fire drops of water with amazing force and accuracy, knocking insects out of the air. The bombardier beetle separately produces two different chemicals, which, when released and combined, explode in the face of an enemy. Yet the explosion never occurs prematurely and never harms the beetle itself. No wonder David declared that "power belongs to God" (Ps. 62:11) [and that Asaph (Ps. 79:11) and Nahum (1:3) spoke of the greatness of His power].
Robert Jastrow, an astrophysicist who worked as director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has said:
"Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world .... The essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same. Consider the enormousness of the problem: Science has proved that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks what cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe? And science cannot answer these questions....
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of natural reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been there for centuries. [Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers. New York: Norton, 1978, pp. 14, 114, 116.]
CONCLUSIONS
In these verses, Paul answers a common objection: How could a loving God send anyone to hell, especially someone who has never heard about Christ? The Bible bears witness that God has revealed Himself plainly in the creation to all people. The problem is with people who reject even this basic knowledge of God. Also, everyone has an inner sense of what God requires, but they choose not to live up to it. [Put another way, people’s moral standards are always better than their behavior.] If people suppress God’s truth in order to live their own way, they have no excuse. They know the truth, and they will have to endure the consequences of ignoring it.
Does anyone have an excuse for not believing in God? The Bible answers an emphatic no. God has revealed what He is like in and through His creation. Every person, therefore, consciously either accepts or rejects God. Don’t be fooled. When the day comes for God to judge your response to Him, no excuses will be accepted for neglect of God. Begin today to give your devotion and worship to Him.
[IV. THE VAIN SPECULATIONS OF MAN (21-23).]
Verse 21 answer the question of why men are without excuse. "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened."
Each and every person originally possesses some knowledge of God but they rebel against this knowledge. God therefore is justified in His wrath and judgment because of man’s willful rejection of Him.
God cannot ignore or condone such willful rebellion. God wants to forgive the sin and restore the sinner, and He is willing to, as long as the sinner does not in rebellion distort or reject God’s truth.
