Sermon

[Romans 1:18-32] The Righteous God Who Reveals and Justifies

I'll be honest with you — this passage isn't exactly cheerful reading.

But stay with me, because it lays the foundation for the gospel truths Paul builds on for the rest of the letter.

God’s wrath is a righteous and necessary response toward those who sin against Him.

And I truly believe we’ll be blessed, if we read, digest and believe this passage in the Bible.

Because it’s only when we understand the biblical teaching on God’s wrath that we’re able to see how breathtaking God’s grace in the gospel really is.

Our attitude on this passage, where Paul presents as wrong in the sight of God, will surely shape our viewpoint on many other biblical doctrines as well.

And so before we begin, let’s pray for God’s help.

“Father, by your Holy Spirit, please shape our hearts and our minds as we come before your words. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.”

Open your Bible to Romans 1:18

“For God’s wrath  is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth”

This section of Romans addresses humanity's depravity and the subsequent penalty for those who have been given over to a depraved mind.

Verse 18 begins with the word “For.”

What this one word does for us is connect us with what Paul just said previously.

Paul is about to give a reason for the tremendous statements that he just made; Paul is about to start his argument to prove the two points made previously in Romans 1:17.

He does this through the famous statement he quotes from Habakkuk 2:4, Look back with me to Romans 1:17, "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.”

So, the two points Paul tells us here are these: In verse 17, God’s plan of justification is revealed in the gospel, and from verse 18 onwards, we see that God reveals Himself to human beings.

Let’s look at the first one.

I. God’s Plan of Justification is Revealed in the Gospel

In 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, Paul tells us exactly what the Gospel is: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.”

So, the three central historical facts of the Gospel are: (1) Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, (2) He was buried, and (3) He rose again.

And through these three historical facts, God’s plan for our justification is revealed in the Gospel.

Christ died for our sins, and it is God’s plan that whoever has faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ will have His righteousness imputed to them, and they’ll have eternal life with God.

To be imputed be means to be recognised for something.

In this context, the righteousness of God in Christ is imputed to all who believe, so that they may stand before God in all perfection of Christ.

That is our justification.

You might have heard, or you yourself may have said, that justification means “just as if you have never sinned.”

However, while to be justified means we’re declared righteous before God’s eyes, it’s not the same thing as saying that it’s just as if you have never sinned.

Justification means that God now has a right and just reason to let you into heaven.

Think of a judge who doesn't just let a guilty person off with a warning, but declares them not guilty — case closed, no appeal, ever.

By putting our faith in Jesus, we are rightly justified in God’s mind, and we will be allowed into His family.

We’re still sinners, but we’ve just been covered with the blood of Jesus; that’s the reason.

Christ took on our sins and died for us.

In the New Testament, the words “Righteousness” and “Justify,” in many cases, are from the same root word.

God declares the one justified forever whom He sees in Christ.

So, justification is not an emotion on your part; it’s not a state of feeling; it is rather an unchanging reckoning in the mind of God, and it rests only on the merit of the eternal Son of God.

In those two verses, 16 and 17, we can see God’s plan of justification revealed in the Gospel.

Now, from Romans 1:18 onwards, Paul tells us that we’ll see some awful things that happening around the world.

In contrast with the righteousness of God, we see the godlessness and unrighteousness of people.

On the news, you can see: There are parents who should’ve been loving their children but have harmed them instead. Children who should’ve been honouring their parents are causing them grievous harm instead. Not only the adults but even children are hurting and viciously harming one another in the streets and at school.

Sexual relationships condemned by the Bible are celebrated by the community.

The world is an awful place.

Sadly, you see more of this as you see more of the world.

As Christians saved by faith, we know why the world is an awful place; it’s because of sin.

Men and women cannot save themselves or make things better through any personal efforts, plans, or social reforms.

Why?

Verses 19 and 20 give us part of the reason.

These verses teach us that there’s really no such thing as a true atheist.

“For God’s wrath  is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth,” 1:19-20

True atheists don’t exist.

Some people may call themselves atheists and may have trained themselves into thinking in a generally atheistic way, but in their heart of hearts, they know all too well that God exists.

And God’s done that through the created order.

Creation itself serves as undeniable evidence that God exists.

Objectively, a rational person should be able to look creation and say, “There is a God.”

How can you not see the power and the beauty of God in creation?

But they suppress that truth.

That means people have the truth, but they will not look at it; instead, they suppress it.

If you want proof of that, just take a look at ourselves.

Is it not true that we always push the things we don’t like down into the dark recesses of our minds?

We don’t like to think about them.

This is why so many of us keep ourselves so busy — scrolling, streaming, working, filling every quiet moment — never wanting to be alone with our thoughts, never wanting to stop long enough to really look at our lives.

Suppression of the truth — that is the central problem.

You must have heard of evolution: You’re a monkey that came from an amoeba, that came from a cosmic accident.

And you need to know this to pass an exam, or you’re not going to graduate from high school or college.

So, all this stuff begins with a society that says, “Don’t talk about God, or Jesus, or all this sin stuff.”

“Keep it to yourself. Worship Jesus in your own time.”

But all this is against the direct command of Jesus when He gave the Great Commission to us.

It’s no way to preach the Gospel to others when I’m ‘keeping it to myself.’

And if we're honest with ourselves, that's something we're all guilty of.

Even if we don’t call ourselves atheists, who among us hasn’t pushed out of our minds a consciousness of God in order to live the way we want to live?

So, in one sense, you might say that, while nobody’s a true atheist, everybody’s a functional atheist.

In various ways and at various times, we’ve all decided to live as if God doesn’t exist.

So, as fallen, sinful human beings, we were all there in varying degrees; some may have been kinder or nicer than others, but that did not bring us any closer to God than the next sinner.

We are all children of wrath and deserve nothing less than death from a just and righteous God.

Therefore, the wrath of God is revealed because God is a just God.

He’s not just taking revenge; He’s taking His required course of action.

Yet, because we put our faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ, who went to the Cross as our Substitute for our penalty of death, we are justified in standing before God.

That’s what this same Gospel tells us.

So, God’s plan of justification is revealed in the Gospel, and…

II. God Reveals Himself to Human Beings

God has revealed Himself to all people — and He hasn't stopped.

How has God revealed Himself to human beings?

We are living under God’s law, and that applies to every creature of God.

The Bible is clearly telling us that every person has within them the ‘God-installed’ program of knowing the difference between right and wrong.

In chapter one of the book, Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, the author summarises the chapter with two points: “First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, they do not, in fact, behave in that way. …these two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves, and the universe we live in.”

This is what Paul says in Romans 1:18-21.

“For God’s wrath  is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth,  19 since what can be known  about God is evident among them,  because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world,  being understood through what he has made.  As a result, people are without excuse. 21 For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened.”

Paul very plainly tells us that the wrath of God is revealed.

And that what may be known about God is plain and clear to everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, because He made it plain to us.

So, every human being knew God, and they all knew that what they were doing was wrong, because God had, throughout the ages, revealed Himself to man, plainly.

Additionally, He chose the perfect time to reveal His plan of justification.

Think about the timing: Paul is writing up to that time in history about the most educated, sophisticated societies the world had ever seen — Rome and Greece.

The Romans were at the height of their power, intelligence and magnificence, and they were still accused by the apostle of depravity.

The Greek builders and philosophers were more refined and more civilised than those who came before them, and yet, they still failed to reform mankind.

The timing was perfect: for thousands of years, humanity had been running its own experiment to fix itself — and it had failed every time.

And it was into that failure, right in the middle of our best attempts to save ourselves, that the gospel was preached.

That’s why Jesus is our only hope.

Then, we’ll know that unless the sinner is born again, there can be no entrance for them into the kingdom of God.

Friends, you have the moral sense given to you, you have the creation around you, and you have the Spirit witnessing within you; so, it’s up to you to determine how you are going to respond to God’s Will for your life.

Often, we might have all kinds of ideas about the wrath of God and what it would look like.

Some people think that every natural disaster that takes place is the wrath of God being displayed; some people think that tragedies like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or COVID were the wrath of God… And I’m not saying that those things are not a type of God’s wrath, but what Paul was talking about here in Romans is something different.

What Paul is talking about here, when he says that the wrath of God is being revealed, is what I would call the “wrath of abandonment.”

In Romans 1:24, 26, and 28, three times we see the statement “God gave/delivered them over...”

And this is NOT just God giving them over to their sins, but to the consequences those sins bring.

In other words, there comes a time when God steps back and lets them take the consequences of their own choices.

He lets them go their own way and face the consequences of their own sinful choices.

People won’t listen to God’s Word, they won’t obey Him, they won’t repent of their sin, so God pulls away from them.

In Matthew 15:14, Jesus was speaking about the Pharisees, and He said, “Leave them alone! They are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

And usually when God says something like this, He’s saying it about a people, like the Pharisees, or the nation of Israel, or other groups or nations.

And it’s very relevant for us to talk about this, because we can see from our text in Romans that we as a nation are right there.

And why do I say this?

Because that’s what we will see in the following verses.

Notice the progression here.

First of all, in verse 24, we read: “Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.”

That’s sexual immorality.

So, the first indication of a society that’s been abandoned by God is sexual immorality.

When a society or a culture becomes depraved and immoral, it’s a sign of God’s wrath upon them.

It says that God gives them over to the lusts of their hearts.

And don’t forget, human beings’ hearts are deceitful and wicked above all else.

James 1:13-14 clearly says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.”

So, when you or I am tempted to sin, the devil isn’t necesarily putting an evil desire in us because evil desire is already there.

The devil puts what we desire in front of us, but the evil desire is already there, in the human heart.

And God, by His restraining grace, keeps that desire in check.

However, as people reject God, God pulls back, and His restraining grace is no longer keeping that evil desire in check, and it begins manifesting more and more.

So, the first step mentioned here is sexual immorality.

The sexual revolution began in the 1960s, but what's going on today can make that seem pretty tame.

Pornography is an $85 billion a year industry.

Immorality and perversion fill so many TV shows, and not only the shows, but the commercials as well.

A lot of the songs on the air today are lewd, crude and immoral.

A good friend of mine, Dr Marshall Ballantyne-Jones, is a strong Christian advocate against pornography.

And he has a programme called Resist to help  parents and teenagers resist the dangers of pornography.

I highly commend this.

And we see how one thing leads to another.

That is the consequence.

We see the next step in verses 26 and 27, where the Apostle Paul, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is saying here that homosexuality is one of the signs of God’s wrath being revealed against a society, against humanity.

Verse 28 mentions “A corrupt mind.”

The Greek literally means a mind that has been disqualified for its intended purpose — a mind whose reasoning has been so corrupted that it can no longer function correctly.

That’s why, if you take a stand and say, "This is wrong!" some people look at you like you’re the most intolerant person who ever walked the face of the earth.

Their conscience, their ability to reason, to think logically and correctly, is gone; they’ve been turned over to a depraved mind.

And like the last part of verse 28 says, this results in people doing what is not right.

Therefore, immorality goes in every direction. Human depravity that comes out of a corrupted mind is not limited to sexual sins.

You can see a list of the sinful behaviours that verses 29–31 are dealing with.

Listen and see whether any of these is hard for to you to listen to because it’s one that you’re struggling with.

They are filled with all unrighteousness,  evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips,  30 slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful,  inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,  31 senseless, untrustworthy, unloving,    and unmerciful.

Even if you’re not personally guilty of every sin on this list, since the list is written about humanity in general, you’re still guilty of more than a few of these things.

And I am as well.

There’s no shortage of sins in our lives.

The old Puritan theologian John Owen put it memorably: “The reason that the natural man [the unsaved person] does not always pursue a single lust night and day is because he has so many different lusts to serve. Each one is crying out to be satisfied.”

In other words, the only reason we’re not chasing after one sin is that we’re too busy chasing after another.

Yes, it’s that bad.

In telling you this, I feel kind of like a doctor trying to convince his patient that the patient’s health is so poor that he’s going to die if he doesn’t make some radical changes to his lifestyle.

And the patient might ask the doctor, “Doctor , is it really that bad?”

And the doctor says, “Yes, it’s terminal. And I’m speaking to you as both the doctor and a fellow patient. The diagnosis for both of us are one and the same. We’re going to die.”

That’s what I’m doing this morning.

It’s not just that you’ve made a few mistakes in your life; it’s not just that “nobody’s perfect.”

You and I have rebelled against the God of the universe.

As Romans 1 describes, we’ve rejected God’s revelation, and we’ve rejected God’s rule.

When a person, or a society, no longer thinks properly about God and about what’s right and wrong, the result is evil today.

Many people want nothing to do with God; they don’t want to follow Him; they don’t want to obey His commands; they are saying they want freedom from God, and as they continue to demand that, eventually, there comes a time when God pulls away from them.

But in doing that, God’s restraining grace is also removed.

And there is no longer anything restraining people from being totally controlled by their sinful nature.

And so, what happens is that they sin more and more, and as they sin more and more, society and culture become more and more sinful, and all of us see the consequences of this.

Friends, being given to doing exactly what our sinful hearts want is not freedom; it is the wrath of God.

In other words, a form of God’s wrath, a form of his punishment, is to let sinful people to what their hearts want to do. It’s to let them be more and more controlled by their sin, and because they are controlled by their sin and sinning more, that means that more wickedness is perpetrated upon society.

This warning about the judgement of God seen in God giving them up is not done flippantly, but lovingly.

God wants people to see their own foolishness and the consequences of an ungodly and unrighteous society.

He wants them to see how miserable life without God is, hoping they will turn away from their ungodly behaviour.

It is a merciful warning, telling people that things won't get better by rebelling against God.

You see, the ultimate salvation for everyone who believes a lie is to understand the truth.

They must see the truth, love the truth, submit to the truth, and never let it go again!

God is gracious enough to not only let that happen but also to help it happen.

This is the power of the gospel.

And so, to conclude, as we see our culture and our nation, and the world degenerate in front of us, I believe that we are getting a glimpse of what Jesus describes in Matthew 24:37 when He said, “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

And how was it in the “days of Noah”?

The wickedness of humanity was great upon the earth, and every intent of the thoughts of people’s hearts was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).

Dear brothers and sisters, we live in a day and age that is very much like the days of Noah; the hearts and minds of people are continually wicked.

We live in a day and age when people call good evil and evil good.

We live in a day and age when people look at their Creator and say to Him, “I will not obey!”

And it’s because people love darkness rather than light, so they will not come to the Light.

We also live in a day and age when people would rather see their kids participate in sporting clubs on Sunday than go to church because it’s more important that they play the game than have a deep relationship with Jesus Christ!

So, it’s very much like the days of Noah, and God’s Word tells us that judgment is coming.

And like in the days of Noah, people don’t really believe that; they don’t really think that it’s coming.

That's exactly where we're headed — unless something changes.

And thank God, as in the days of Noah, God provides the rescue.

God had promised Noah that though the judgement is coming, God himself will also provide the rescue.

Noah believed God and he did something about it. He obeyed God and built an ark for himself and his family.

The same goes for us.

God has told us about his judgement and he also has provided the rescue in the Person of the Lord Jesus.

He invites us to come and believe in Him.

To believe in him is not just saying it with your mouth but doing it in your life as you live out your faith by your works.

So here are a few questions worth sitting with:

• Do you truly believe in God?

• Do you believe that people without Christ are going to spend eternity in hell?

• Do you believe that the only way for them to be saved is to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ and receive Him by faith?

• Do you believe that Jesus gave us the Great Commission? Or was that just the “great suggestion”?

• Does your faith show itself to be true by your living?

Friends, please hear me: the society and culture around us is, of course, going to deny God and reject Christ.

A dog acts like a dog because it is a dog.

A cat acts like a cat because it is a cat.

And a sinner acts like, thinks like, behaves like, and lives like a sinner because he is a sinner.

And the only answer to a sinner’s problem is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The answer is NOT in politics; it's NOT in education; it’s NOT in legislation.

It’s Jesus!

Jesus is the answer.

And it’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is the power of God unto salvation; it’s the Gospel that will transform the heart and mind and behaviours of a sinner, and make him or her a new creation in Christ.

Today is like in the days of Noah, but you know what?

Just like Noah, we have an Ark.

His Name is Jesus Christ.

He is our Ark of salvation.

And God’s Word gives us this promise: if you are in Him, then no matter how high the flood rises, you will be saved; if you are in Him, then no matter how bad the storm rages, you will be secure.

The wrath of God is being revealed, but there is an even greater wrath to come.

But we have the promise of God’s Word that we have not been appointed unto His wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Three Questions:

1. How have you seen yourself suppressing or ignoring God’s truth in your daily life?

2. What does this passage teach you about the seriousness of sin and your need for God’s grace?

3. If Jesus is the only hope for salvation, how should that shape the way you live and share the gospel with others?

Let’s pray, “Father, you are glorious and you are righteous. Father, you see the corruption of our hearts and the depravity of our lives. You see how dark we are on the inside, and yet, you still love us. Father, be merciful and turn our hearts back to you. Please forgive us for the times when we follow the sinfulness of our hearts and thought that our life would be better if we leave you, if we abandon you. Father, don’t let us go, don’t give up on us, but bring us back to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord, in whose name we pray, Amen.

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