As I was about to write my message this past week, I read an unusual editorial on the Orange County Editorial page. It was congratulating a politician on being boring. Actually, it was congratulating a California state office holder for being scandal-free in the midst of a sea of scandals rocking governing officials in California—all the way from governor Gavin Newsome’s now infamous and almost proverbial meal without masks and social distancing at the elite French Laundry restaurant to the lieutenant governor establishing a charity so she could decorate her office for $300,000 to the State Superintendent of Education turning his office into his campaign headquarters for his next election.
Of course the news wherever we hear it or read it or see it is not boring, for precisely these kinds of reasons. It’s dominated by bad news, and we really have to work to find a feel-good story to be happy about on any news channel.
Imagine me asking any of you this question: Have you ever gotten the feeling that something is really wrong with this life? That something is really wrong with this world?
We would all regard that as a dumb question. The answer is so obvious, that we don’t even need to pose the question.
But what really is the problem? Why is the world such a mess? And what is the solution to it?
Those are much more difficult issues. And today we come to a profound passage which defines the problem and provides a divine diagnosis. Part of resolving a problem, as any medical doctor can tell you, is the ability to appropriately diagnose precisely what is wrong before you’re able to prescribe a solution. And the book of Romans more thoroughly than any other book of the Bible diagnoses the problem with the world and issues a solution.
The message in verses 18-20 this morning is this: We desperately need God’s righteousness—via the Gospel—because our unrighteousness provokes God’s worth.
Now the verses we’re covering this morning are absolutely profound. In the course of diagnosing the world’s problems, this passage also addresses just a few other major questions which we have all asked. Among them, for instance, is how can we know that God exists. Paul provides an incredibly cogent answer to this question in the course of diagnosing the world’s ills. Another question often asked goes something like this, “What about the heathen in Africa.” Truth told that question is now outdated, as Africa as of 2019 has more Christians, 631 million, than any other continent on earth. But the question, “what about those who have never heard” is still one that is often asked and that this passage answers.
We have just finished examining the introduction to Paul’s letter to the Romans. And in verses 15-17 he has defined what his subject for the letter will be. It is the Gospel of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News that Jesus Christ the God-man came and died for our sins and rose again so that by faith, and by faith alone, and not by works, man could gain a right-standing with God.
Beginning in verse 18, for the next two chapters Paul will be devoted to proving that all mankind, both Jews and Greeks, desperately need this righteousness from God. Because all of them are unrighteous and ungodly, according to their works, and thus they need this free gift of righteousness which is now available to them through faith in Jesus Christ.
And He boldly states his theme for the next couple chapters in verse 18: He in effect says, “You need God’s righteousness because your righteousness provokes God’s wrath.”
Now as we read verse 18, you might wonder exactly where Paul makes this point, and the truth is, that the point is made from the context of verse 18. He writes, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.”
Now this is one of those occasions when we need to pay attention to that little word “for” at the beginning of the sentence. We need to ask how verse 18 is related to the statements that came before it. Paul here is explaining why He is not ashamed to proclaim the Gospel. He has already given several reasons in verses 16 and 17 which we reviewed last week. They were that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and that the Gospel is also the means to a right-standing with God or a righteousness from God that comes by faith, and faith alone. Now these are incredibly persuasive reasons as to why no one should be ashamed of the Good News of Jesus Christ. It’s life or death for eternity, and it provides the only way a man can be regarded as righteous in God’s sight—through faith in Jesus. Now we have a third reason why Paul refuses to be ashamed of the Good News of Christ. It is because it provides the very thing men do not have, and desperately need, righteousness, a right-standing before God. In fact, he says what men possess instead of righteousness is its exact opposite—unrighteousness. And that unrighteous is and will provoke God’s wrath, his settled and expressed anger and judgment against unrighteous mankind. In other words, because God is holy, we as men in our unrighteous state, are presently experiencing some level of hell because of our unrighteous and ungodly behavior.
Now when I ask the question, what’s not right with the world. What in the world has gone on in the world, the answer that Paul gives is that men are unright. We are the problem. We are unrighteous and ungodly. Why is the world such a complete mess, with wars, mass shootings, hundreds of thousands of children molested by priests in France, suicide bombings, derision and division and corruption in our government, I could go on and on. Well, the Bible is saying this: we have seen the enemy and he is us. And it is saying here in this verse that we are reaping the hell that we deserve.
Now this verse is worth analyzing. First, it tells us that our unrighteousness has a cost. It is God’s wrath. Now I know many people don’t like the concept of a wrathful God. The problem is that if you have a completely good God, He must not only love what is good, but he must hate evil, and he must, by his just and righteous nature do something about evil. That’s where is wrath, or his settled anger, comes in. His wrath is his expression of a just anger and vengeance upon those who because of their unrighteousness must receive justice. And justice in the case of evil requires punishment, a punishment to eradicate the evils of unrighteousness, to isolate it and terminate and even pay back with what the Bible calls retribution the evils which sinful men have perpetrated against mankind and God.
Most of us are unhappy with a human judge who refuses to enforce the law—who excuses murderers, rapists and robbers and sends them back into public so they can perpetrate their crimes on others once again. How would you feel if a judge completed excused a murderer or a rapist whose crime of murder and rape had been committed against a beloved child of yours? You would be outraged. And people actually are. In the last decade, a judge in the bay area was recalled because he gave a mild sentence to a student athlete at Stanford because he had raped a coed who was unconscious and left her for dead. So if we’re unhappy with unjust human judges who let people off easy who have committed great evils, how can we be happy with a God who is not just, and who does not act with outrage, even wrath, against the evils of mankind?
Now the interesting thing about this verse is that the verb is in the present tense. Now I would have expected that the Apostle Paul would say “For the wrath of God will be revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” But instead it literally says that the Wrath of God is presently, currently, being revealed from heaven. The big question is how is the wrath of God currently being revealed from heaven against our ungodliness? Some claim it’s in the preaching of the Gospel. And although that certainly is a factor in the Gospel, the truth is that the overall force and intention of the Gospel is to express God’s grace and save us from God’s wrath. I, instead, believe that the answer to this question is found later in the passage. It’s found in verses 26, 27 and 28. Verse 26 talks about man’s devolution into sin and says “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions, a reference to homosexuality as an example of men being given over to their sin by God. Verse 27 goes on to say that those who are given over to this and other sins receive in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And then verse 28 repeats the original assertion again, “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind.” Then there is a list of all kinds of sins and evils men participate in and are proud of! In other words, the way that God’s wrath is currently being demonstrated in the world is that He gives men over, He delivers them over unto the natural consequences for their sins. He finally says to unrepentant and wicked men, “Okay, have it your way and see how you like it.” The judgment of God’s wrath upon our world today is largely this, this loving God allows us to live in the squalor produced by our wicked and godless behavior. And boy, what a mess the world is in as a result.
Now the verse also tries to be somewhat explicit with regard to the nature of our sin. It is first godlessness. Our sins are first and foremost against a Holy God, stemming from our refusal to acknowledge Him and submit to His plan. This is evident from the Fall of Man in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve expressly disobey God with regard to partaking of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil with huge consequences—death comes upon the human race. So it is first a disobedience and a disconnection from God. And it results in unrighteousness, unrightness, in relationship to God and man. Not surprisingly, in the very next chapter of Genesis, in Genesis 4, we see the obtuse perversion of man’s sin when Cain murders his brother and answers God’s inquiry about his brother’s whereabouts with the smart-aleck remark, “Am I my brother’s keeper.” Whoa, how quickly things have deteriorated with devastating tragedies following. No wonder we have hell to pay, both now, and of course, we know in the future, without a way of obtaining God’s righteousness. And the incredible news that makes the Gospel so important is that a righteousness, a right standing with God by faith as a gift, is available to such an unrighteous generation as us. Why is it so incredibly important? Because apart from it we are and will experience the wrath, the just and furious judgment of the Almighty God, and we will absolutely deserve it.
And so the verdict is this. It’s horrific and frightening. The problem is us. The problem is our own nature and our actions that bring hell upon this earth for ourselves and others. The problem is not merely a pandemic. It is endemic. Every single person on the face of the earth is infected with sin and the sin nature. And it is not sometimes deadly, not 1 percent or 50 percent of the time like the coronavirus. But it is 100% deadly, with a death justly enforce by a righteous God who is justly furious about our sin. However, in his incredible grace, He has offered a way of escape, a righteousness that comes apart from our evil works, and comes through faith in His son Jesus who died to take the punishment for the sins that we have committed. Wow, what a God, to look upon the great evil of our sin, and offer such a magnanimous gift of right-standing with Him which cannot be obtain in any other way!
Now our tendency at this point is often going to be to try to find some other way out. Instead of having our sins forgiven, we want them excused. Isn’t that our tendency all the time? There’s a good reason for our sin. Yes, we admit we have sinned, but we have justification in having sinned. We have an excuse. And the excuse we want to give often first and foremost is that we just simply didn’t know better. We sinned in ignorance. We sinned without knowing it was so bad. If only we had known, we certainly wouldn’t have sinned!
Paul is going to relentlessly answer these excuses in everything that follows. And he does so beginning even at the end of verse 18. He knows these objections are arising in our minds and so he reminds us of how our supposed ignorance of God and what is right has come about. And so he says, in effect, we are without excuse, because in our unrighteousness we deliberately suppress the truth about God. In other words, our ignorance of truth, righteousness and God is not accidental. It is deliberate! Our unrighteousness is not an accidental unrighteousness. And our ignorance is not an accidental ignorance. Our unrighteousness is aggressively unrighteous in this respect, we deliberately suppress the truth about God and righteousness so that we can continue in our unrighteousness. If there is ignorance of God and His righteousness, it comes because we cover our ears and refuse to hear. It’s what the Jews did at the martyrdom of Stephen. It’s what Paul experienced repeatedly wherever he went with the Gospel. It is why 70 million Christians have been martyred since the time of Christ, and it’s why some report 100,000 Christians die each other. Men suppress, or hold down, the truth in unrighteousness. As Jesus put it in John 3:19-20: “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”
So, we/you are without excuse, because we have deliberately suppressed the truth about God in our unrighteousness.
And we are also without excuse because all men know about God’s power and nature through creation. We are also without excuse, because all men, even those who have never heard the Gospel, are without excuse because Creation reveals God’s power and nature.
This is the point of verses 19 and 20: How is it that men suppress the truth of God in their unrighteousness. What truth did they have to suppress? The truth that is apparent about God from the things that have been made.
Verse 19: “Because that which is known about God is evident with then, for God made it evident to them.”
Thus, even apart from God’s Word and the Gospel, the Apostle Paul is making this point: All men know about God, because God, through nature, as we shall see, deliberately made it evident to them.
How? Verse 20; “For sine 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 they are without excuse.
And with that, we have just stepped into very deep waters. This is not only a proof that all men know about God and His nature, it is also a proof of God’s existence. I believe it is the most explicit and profound proof of God’s existence found in the Bible.
He is saying the invisible God and even His eternal power and divine nature can be seen through the things that have been made. The effect of God—the universe—says plenty about its cause, the eternal power and divine nature of the Creator.
Now how do we know God is eternal? By the simple fact that if nothing ever existed, nothing ever would exist. As the song in the Sound of Music put it, “Nothing comes from nothing, and nothing ever will.” Therefore, if anything currently exists, then something necessarily must have always existed. And that something which is the uncaused cause, the unmoved over, qualifies as the eternal Creator God. As Descartes put it. “I think, therefore I am.” And we can take it one more step: “I am; therefore, God exists.”
Now some would argue that it’s possible that the universe itself is eternal—an ancient argument. Thus no God is required because the universe has always existed. But there’s a problem with this argument. Can the universe and the natural laws that exist be the sufficient cause for all that exists in the universe? Can the universe account for life and especially human life in all of its awesome and incredible complexity and order? And the answer is a resounding no. Just look at this ticking watch. Would any of you in your right mind claim that nature—the wind, the rain, the elements, the mud, the fire, whatever, could be responsible for designing and putting into action just this ticking watch? Absolutely not. What we see is that nature results in randomness and disorder, not design and order. And so if that’s true with regard to this ticking watch, how much more so with our own human bodies, or any kind of life. Are we the result of accidental collocations of atoms? Impossible, as proven by mathematicians, mathematical improbabilities, and the second law of Thermodynamics. As the David the Psalmist said in Psalm 139:14 upon looking at himself, “I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” How did this incredible design come about, but by an intelligent Creator?
And then having concluded this, we look at Psalm 19, verse one, and the Psalmist says, “The heavens are declaring the glory of God.” Who hasn’t been on a camping trip or in some remote location and looked up to see the Milky Way in all it and been astounded that such a vast universe exists? We find ourselves in awe of it, and then when we remember, it is part of what has been made, we ought to then be in awe of and worship its Creator, who is far greater than anything He has created. Who is this with whom we have to do? We learn of His eternal power, and His divine nature, the wonder and precision and intelligence behind His creative works, and we realize we are dealing with not something, but someone far, far an away transcendent, beyond anything we can even imagine in His intelligence and His perfection. And when we add human conscience to the mix as Paul will in Romans 2, we recognize that this perfect likely extends to His moral character, His absolutely holy nature, and are breath is taken away, and our confidence in our own righteousness ought to flee at the same moment.
When we realize this from creation, we look around, and we do not see a cause sufficient for all that exists. We surmise then, based in part upon the invisibility of the human spirit, that there is great invisible Spirit, and invisible God who is responsible for all that we do see. And the response ought to be worship.
So indeed it is even true for the savage in Irian Jaya as well as the intellectual agnostic or atheist in the citadels of higher learning throughout the world that that 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.
This is the very truth that missionaries to the heathen the world over have discovered. That there is an innate knowledge of God among even the most primitive tribes, Leith Samuel writing many years ago in His magazine, stated, “Many missionaries point out that the heathen know more than we think. They know that there is a God. There are no atheists among heathen tribes. There has never been discovered upon earth a tribe of people, however small or depressed, which has not believed in some kind of god or has some system of worship. The heathen found in so-called primitive tribes know also that they have sinned. When a Christian comes to them and talks about sin, he often finds ready acknowledgment that this is true. The heathen seem to know that their sins must be punished. They seem afraid of death (as are most men everywhere). They know that sin must be atoned for, and they seek ways of appeasing their angry deities.
And the conclusion, that Paul is going to continue to drive home for the next two chapters, is that all men are therefore without excuse. All men whether they have heard the Gospel or not, are guilty, because what is known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them, and they suppress what they know.
What we’re all looking is for an excuse. When what we all need is simply forgiveness that comes through grace of God in Jesus Christ and is offered to us as a gift by faith.
A few years ago I remember witnessing to a fellow up in incline village. We had had some intimate talks. He read a tract I’d given him while in the hospital. I encouraged Him to trust Christ. And for some reason I specifically remember him assuring, that apart from trusting
Christ, He was okay.
Do you know what this passage is saying? It is screaming that apart from the free gift of righteousness that comes by faith, no man is okay. Every man is even now experiencing the wrath of God that is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and righteousness of men. And when they stand before God, and have rejected the only righteousness that God offers, they will be found without excuse.
For the wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth—the grace of God expressed through Christ our Lord—in their unrighteousness.
Let’s pray.
