Romans: An Exposition of the Gospel
Time spent in the book of Romans is never wasted!
This epistle is the clearest exposition of the Gospel in the Bible. For that
reason, it has always been regarded as one of the most important books in the
Bible. From one perspective, Paul is giving an exposition in Romans of the
message of the entire Bible. So, this epistle is crucial if we want to
understand what God is saying to us in Scripture.
But Romans is not a light-weight book! Paul is reasoning
in this book and it is important for us to follow his layers of logic as he
develops his thoughts. It is crucial that we understand Paul’s flow of thought
and not take any verse or phrase out of the context of the entire argument.
Our text is the beginning of the first major section
of Romans, which ends in 3.20. In other words, 1.18-3.20 is a single argument
and thought. The thesis of the book is stated in 1.16-17. Paul then immediately
writes “for” or “therefore” and we need to understand what the therefore is
there for! Paul is setting the stage for his exposition of the Gospel. And this
means that he must first prove man’s need for what God offers in Christ. Unless
we understand the need, we will not be ready to accept the provision in the
Gospel.
So, Paul states his thesis (1.16-17), proves the
universal need of mankind for the Gospel (1.18-3.20) and then returns to
expound his major theme in 3.21 and following. These whole theme of Romans is
the good news of God’s imputed righteousness which is available to all men
through faith in Jesus Christ. But before we can accept that all men can be
made righteous we must first understand that all men are not righteous in and
of themselves.
Our Need for the Gospel
In this section, Paul begins to build an argument
about the sinfulness of mankind and the wrath of God against sin. Paul
addresses two groups of people: Gentiles and Jews. First Paul deals with the
Gentile world. He then turns and addresses the sin of the Jewish people.
Jew and Gentile are the only two groups of people in
the world from a purely human or fleshly perspective. Paul anticipates that
both groups might try to wiggle out from under his indictments. In other words,
each group might want to point out the sins of the other group while finding
reasons to justify themselves. This is a favorite activity of human beings when
confronted with their faults. But there is no escape from the guilt of sin and
the righteous wrath of God. There is nowhere to hide. Not only are human beings
sinful, we are also dishonest about our sin and we avoid the truth. But it is
necessary for us to face the truth about our true condition or we will never be
prepared to receive God’s remedy in the Gospel.
One of the key ideas in this section is that men are
without excuse for their sin. Now this indictment even includes Gentiles who
unlike the Jews had never received any direct or special revelation from God.
How can God hold the Gentiles responsible for their sins if He never spoke
anything like the 10 commandments to them? Paul will answer that question here.
The fact is that God HAS revealed something to the Gentiles about Himself, and
yet they have rejected Him anyway. The interesting thing is that included in
Paul’s indictment of the Gentile world is all the great, ancient civilizations
that we still admire and study today: Babylon, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
With all the great philosophy, literature, art, and architecture, these ancient
people rejected the knowledge of the one, true God and suffered the
consequences of their sin. Perhaps we can also see principles here that apply
to our own culture.
The Wrath of God Revealed
The wrath of God is a consistent Biblical doctrine
and revelation. We cannot prove the wrath of God scientifically any more than
we can prove the existence of God. We come to know about God’s wrath through
the revelation of Scripture. And God’s wrath is something that is taught in
almost every chapter of the Bible: from His expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden,
to the Flood, the plagues on Egypt at the Exodus, the Babylonian Captivity of
Israel, and then all the way through the New Testament to the apocalyptic
judgments depicted at the end of the world in the book of Revelation. There is
no need to prove this point. Anyone who reads the Bible is confronted with the
reality of God’s wrath. There can be no disputing this truth.
But what caused some confusion in the minds of
people is equating the wrath of God with the anger of men. Some people think of
God as a man who gets angry and loses his temper. Perhaps we remember our
earthly fathers getting angry with us for something rather petty and we carry
this idea forward and transfer it to God’s wrath. But God is not a man. Men get
angry because they are selfish and sinful. The anger of man does not work the
righteousness of God. We must not see God’s wrath as that of a man.
We are talking here about the nature of God. God is
perfectly righteous and holy. Wrath is an expression of His nature. If God is good,
then He must be opposed to what is evil. If God were not opposed to evil, then
He would not be good and that is unthinkable!
We read in Scripture about a final Day of Wrath when
God will judge the world and every person who has ever lived. But Paul is not
talking about that here in Romans. Paul says here that God’s wrath is a
present, active reality in the world of men. God is revealing or expressing His
wrath in the world even now. This has been the very thing shaping the history
of mankind. God is not absent from the world but is actively involved, though
men do not see it that way. The wrath of God that is being revealed in the
world is not a fiery cataclysm like Sodom and Gomorrah, though God is certainly
capable of that. Paul is writing here of God’s judicial wrath.
Remember that in the preceding verses Paul said that
the righteousness of God is being revealed. Then he says that the wrath of God
is being revealed. And both revelations are true. The good news of God’s
imputed righteousness that comes through faith in Christ must be seen against
the dark backdrop of God’s wrath against sin. In fact, this is what makes the
Gospel good news! We cannot accept the first revelation of God’s imputed
righteous and then reject the second revelation about His wrath. It is the
revelation of God’s wrath that makes the revelation of His righteousness
necessary. One of the reasons the Gospel is often not understood or accepted
today is because this revelation of the righteousness of God has not been
clearly communicated by the Church. People do not feel the need for the imputed
righteousness because they do not know about the wrath of God.
The Gospel declares that God has provided a way for
us to be saved from His wrath. The Gospel offers salvation. But from what are
we being saved? Perhaps some people think we are being saved from the Devil.
But ultimately it is God who is our judge, not the Devil. The Gospel provides a
way for us to be righteous in God’s sight so that He is pleased and satisfied
with us. God is both savior and judge. He is saving us from Himself! Someday
each of us will face God either as our judge or our justifier.
In Romans Paul speaks of two revelations of God’s
righteousness: there is the revelation of God’s imputed righteousness and there
is the revelation of God’s righteous wrath. We will experience one or the
other. In some sense, we get to choose which aspect of God’s nature we will
experience. If we are not right with God we will experience His wrath. But the
Gospel promises a way for us to be made right with God and escape His wrath.
The very God who is our judge has also provided the only way for us to be
saved. Instead of running away from God in fear we are to run to God for His
gracious provision in the Gospel.
The Reason for God’s Wrath
As I have said, God is not a man. His wrath is not
capricious or arbitrary. There is always a just cause for God’s wrath. In the
broadest possible definition, God is opposed to all sin and that is wrath. But
Paul has in mind a very particular sin and God’s response to it. What has
mankind done that has brought down the wrath of God? Paul’s whole point in this
section is that the Gentile world has rejected the knowledge of God. But since
God never spoke directly to the Gentiles as He did to the Jews, what knowledge
of God did they reject?
God has revealed Himself to every man in what He has
made. The creation itself reveals a little of the glory of God. This natural or
general revelation of God is available to every man, even the most primitive
tribes in the deepest, darkest jungles can still see this revelation of God.
Nature does not reveal everything about God. But it does reveal that God
exists, that He is powerful, and that He is certainly not a part of the natural
order but is separate from it and over it.
Deep down every man knows there is a God. But
instead of worshiping and acknowledging God, man instead worships the creation.
This is the great sin of idolatry: worshiping creation rather than Creator. In
the ancient world, they did this quite literally, and we have all seen the
various images of pagan deities. Mankind wanted to create his own gods rather
than worship the true God. In so doing, man wanted to be his own god rather
than submitting to the true God. Idolatry, in whatever form it takes, is
nothing more than an attempt to escape our responsibility to our Creator.
This rejection of the Creator was not at all an
innocent thing. It is not that man did not know about God. They knew and they
intentionally suppressed that knowledge. They exchanged the glory, or the
knowledge of God, for something else. In other words, they did not think the
glory of God was worth retaining. They did not see the value in thinking about
God! This is like a prospector who throws away a gold nugget and picks up a
piece of quartz instead! Foolish! But think of how common this sin really is.
Every day men choose to think of and pursue other things instead of the glory
of God. And they consider the glory of God to be a waste of their time and
effort. That is surely the great sin of humanity.
Objections to this Doctrine of the Wrath of God
As you might have known, there are many objections
to the doctrine of the wrath of God. And we should be aware of what people
today are thinking and how we might answer these arguments. We do not simply
want to win arguments, we want to be good witnesses to the truth of the Gospel
and we also want to care about people’s souls.
Secular Objections to the Wrath of God
First, there are secular objections to the wrath of
God. If there is a God, they will say, we reject the idea of a judgmental,
angry God. That is too exclusive, narrow, and intolerant. Furthermore, they
say, in teaching people that God is angry you are manipulating their fears. We
must point out to people who say that Christians are intolerant that they
themselves are also being narrow and intolerant. They are saying that there is
no absolute except for their belief that there are no absolutes.
The idea that we are manipulating people’s fears is
based on the presupposition that what we are saying about God is not true.
Otherwise, if it is true, the wrath of God is something to be feared and we are
doing people a great service in warning them about it so they can avoid it,
just as a good physician warns the patient about a serious disease.
Religious Objections to the Wrath of God
Secondly, there are religious objections to the
wrath of God. Some people say that the idea of an angry God is just a
primitive, pagan view of God. The pagan deities were always angry and had to be
feared and placated. But we have more advanced, sophisticated views of God
today. An angry God is an Old Testament, tribal deity, not the loving God of
Jesus in the New Testament. Well, here is Paul in the New Testament saying the
same thing about the wrath of God that the Old Testament prophets said about
God’s wrath! And Jesus Himself warned people about Hell and the wrath of God
more than any other New Testament preacher. But some Christians will say that
they believe in the wrath of God, but that we must win people with love. So,
they simply do not talk about it. But when we present the Gospel we must
present the whole message, or we are not really presenting the truth of Gospel.
In fact, we cannot really understand the love of God fully without
understanding the doctrine of God’s wrath. The Gospel tells us that Jesus died
to deliver us from the wrath of God and the Cross makes no sense unless we
understand this doctrine of wrath.
God’s Wrath Revealed in His Abandonment of the Wicked
What Paul is really talking about here in this text
in connection to the wrath of God is God’s judicial wrath. Paul is not talking
about the final wrath of God on the Day of Judgment and he is not referring to
come kind of cataclysmic wrath. God’s judicial wrath is expressed in the fact
that God abandoned these people. This may be a new thought for some people. In
fact, the very idea that God would abandon people does not fit with the popular
conception of God. The popular idea about God is that He never abandons anyone
but is infinitely patient and always gives everyone another chance to make
things right. But that popular notion that God is infinitely patient is not
taught in Scripture. God is long-suffering. God does not have a short fuse. But
neither is God always tolerant of people’s sin and rebellion. God’s grace and
patience should never be interpreted as tolerance or used as a license.
Consider the fact that the people Paul is speaking
about were abandoned by God because they had abandoned God! These were not
people seeking God, as if God were pushing them away. They had pushed God away
and so God let them alone. God let them go their own way, which is an
expression of His wrath. C.S. Lewis said that there are two kinds of people:
those who say to God “Thy will be done” and those to whom God says “thy will be
done.” In the end, Hell is God giving people what they want and leaving them
alone forever. Everyone will get what they want in the end. Paul says as much
right here in the next chapter of Romans: “He will render to each one according
to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor
and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking
and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and
fury” (Romans 2.6-8). Whoever seeks finds. But to him who does not seek God,
there comes a time when God will turn away and let him go his own way.
Paul’s words in this text seem to have been written
only yesterday. People who say that the Bible is irrelevant to modern man are
simply shallow in their views of man. The reason why these words seem so modern
is because the moral and spiritual condition of man has not changed. The Bible
operates on a deeper level than the shifting sands of culture. Cultures shift
and change. Each generation looks back with disdain on the views of the
previous generation and how they saw the world and lived their lives. In 50 years,
the views of the most progressive people today will be laughed at as absurd by
the next generation. But the problem in every generation is the same. Modern
man has not progressed beyond the paganism and idolatry of his ancient
ancestors. We are pagan once more, though we do not see it that way. But idolatry
is a modern problem, not an ancient one. Sure, you will probably not see the
old, graven images and people bowing down to them, not in Western civilization
at least. But the idols are everywhere, if you know how to see them. Idolatry
is just worshiping a created thing rather than the Creator. And everyone
worships; even the most secular persons have something that gets them out of
bed each morning. Idolatry is making anything the absolute thing, other than
God. For some people this is money and everything that can be obtained with
money. For some it is their career. Some worship art and all aesthetic
pleasures. For others, their adoration is for other people and relationships.
Idolatry takes many forms and is still the main
issue with mankind. Behind all idolatry is the lust of the flesh, the lust of
the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2.15-17). We recognize the idolatry of
various illicit lusts or desires for worldly things. But the thing that really
drives the world and all its idolatry is the sin of pride. Paul says that
mankind rejected God while at the same time professing to be wise. People think
that they are too smart to need God. Pride is a wicked, rebellious
self-sufficiency and is the greatest sin of all.
The True Nature and Consequences of Sin
Many Christians have a simple understanding of the
nature of sin. We think of sin only as transgressions, or breaking the
commandments of God. And sin is certainly that. But it is much more than that
and goes much deeper than the things we do. The sinful behavior is only the tip
of the iceberg. Paul hints at this when he uses two, not one word, to describe
sin in this text: ungodliness and unrighteousness. There you have this two-fold
distinction of sin. The root and true nature of sin is ungodliness. This is our
attitude toward God or our relationship to Him. Ungodliness is the root of sin
and unrighteousness is the fruit of sin. Unrighteousness are those things
people do BECAUSE they are ungodly.
Men want to be independent and to feel that they are
the masters of their own fates. People want to call the shots and make their
own decisions without any interference from God. We often hear people say “this
is my life.” They want to not only decide what they will do, they also want to
be able to make their own moral decisions as well. Rather than obeying God they
want to be able to make their own rules and decide for themselves what is right
and what is wrong for them. There is always a moral element in man’s rejection
of God, not simply an intellectual problem. Men become atheists to maintain
their moral freedom, not because they have heard some crushing argument against
God’s existence.
The problem of sin is not just that we do sinful
things but that we are by nature rebels who hate God. There is enmity between
God and man. Men have made themselves enemies of God. Most people would never
admit this. Most people say they believe in God. But when it comes to the true
God they are hostile toward Him. For example, everyone wants to believe in a
God of love. But if you mention the wrath of God, which is the Biblical
revelation of the true God, they reject that and become hostile. They hate the
true God and have invented idols in their minds.
Sin means
that we fail to acknowledge or glorify God. People simply ignore God. This can
be seen in a simple thing, as Paul mentions, like failing to give thanks to
God. Now all of us are guilty of this. God gives us many good things, but we
fail to acknowledge that these things come from God. We complain about our
difficulties and we fail to thank God for His goodness and mercy toward us.
That is surely the essence of sin yet it often escapes our notice completely,
even with Christian people. Ingratitude is latent hostility to God. And nothing
is more pagan than failing to be thankful to God for His good gifts.
When people reject God, He will let them go and
allow them to suffer the inevitable consequences of their sin. We live in a
moral universe. We cannot reject God and escape the consequences, any more than
we can escape the consequences of the natural laws of the universe. Paul
describes here the downward, degenerative spiral that happened because of the
wrath of God. Increasing wickedness in society is a sign of the wrath of God as
He pulls away and lets people go. We are seeing this everywhere in Western
culture. We are in a more serious situation than the people Paul was
describing. They pagan Gentiles sinned against natural revelation. The Jews
sinned against the revelation given under the Law. Our civilization has sinned
in the full, blazing light of Gospel truth.
The darkness of the mind
When people reject the truth of God, they become
spiritual fools who will believe all manner of falsehoods, errors, and outright
lies. People refuse to believe in a sovereign, creator God, yet they will
believe in astrology and that their fates are governed by the movement of the
planets and stars. People will refuse to believe in a creator God, yet they
will believe that the whole universe, with all its wonders, came about by a
chance explosion. They will not believe the Scripture, but they will believe in
black magic, ghosts, UFOs, and elaborate conspiracy theories. They refuse to
listen to the preaching of the Gospel, but will listen to the ignorant
ramblings of entertainers, academics, politicians, and talk-show hosts. In this
state of darkness men will tolerate nearly anything except for the truth.
The loss of conscience
They no longer feel ashamed of their sin but are proud
and boastful. They don’t try to hide it but take great pleasure in putting
their sin on parade. They congratulate themselves and each other on their
ability to be wicked.
The loss of moral discernment
They can no longer tell right from wrong. There is complete
moral confusion. The ultimate example of this inability to tell what is right
is the example Paul gives of the sin of homosexuality. Even a fool should be
able to see that a man goes with a woman. But in this state, they cannot even
recognize this perversion.
The loss of community
But to be fair, sexual sin is not the only thing
Paul mentions in this litany of wickedness. What this long list of sin
illustrates is the fact that when we are alienated from God we also become
alienated from each other. Human community breaks down and we can no longer
live together without hurting one another and making each other miserable. The
word “civilization” comes from the word “civil.” But men in this state of
wickedness are anything but civil toward each other. One of the greatest
miscalculations of modern thinking is that we can learn to live together in
peace without being at peace with our Creator.
Are you any better?
It is very easy for Christians to read a list of
sins like this and then immediately make the application to our own culture. We
see these things everywhere. And so, we are quick to identify and then sit in
judgment of all the dirty pagans around us. Before we go there, let’s remember
what Paul is doing this this section of Romans. Paul is addressing both Jews
and Gentiles. He is addressing the pagans AND the religious people of his time.
And Paul’s main point is that the pagan Gentiles and the religious Jews are all
in the same state! Everyone is equally guilty before God. In the next chapter,
Paul will then turn to the Jews, whom he imagines are probably saying “Amen!”
to everything he has been saying about the pagan Gentiles, and then writes:
“Therefore you have no
excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another
you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.We know that the judgment of
God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you
who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will
escape the judgment of God” (Rom. 2.1-3)?
And then at the end of this argument Paul concludes
by writing:
“Now we know that whatever
the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may
be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (Rom. 3.19).
The pagan Gentiles ignored natural revelation. The
religious Jews disobeyed special revelation. And that means everyone is guilty.
No one is righteous, no, not even you! In our natural state, we are all under
the wrath of God. Of course, one of our favorite pastimes is to condemn others
and justify ourselves. But that is exactly what Paul says we cannot do.
Religious people are especially prone to being self-righteous. We believe we
are safe from God’s wrath because we are religious. We are like the Jews in
Jeremiah’s day who said “The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord!” while
firmly believing they were safe from God’s wrath because they had the Temple.
We feel that we can safely cloister ourselves behind the walls of our Temple
and lob grenades out at the wicked world around us. There are many ways to hide
from God, and some of those ways involve religion. But it won’t work. God sees
us as we are and we cannot hide from His righteous gaze. No amount of
self-righteous moralism or religious activity can make up for our lack of
righteousness before God.
Conclusion
If the religious person can’t be saved by his
morality, is there any hope for the immoral pagan described in this passage?
The only thing that can save an immoral, irreligious person is the power of the
Gospel. And the only thing that can save a self-righteous religious person is
the power of the Gospel. There is no one righteous. And that means that
everyone needs the righteousness that is offered through faith in the Gospel of
Christ.
In the next section of his letter Paul returns to
his original thesis, having established that no one is righteous:
“But now the righteousness
of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the
Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus
Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a
propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's
righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former
sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be
just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3.21-26).
How could a righteous God justify the guilty sinners
who deserve His wrath? That would make God unrighteous and the very foundations
of the universe would be shaken. But the Gospel is good news about God’s
righteous way of making the unrighteous righteous (John Stott). Christ’s death
on the cross was an act of Divine propitiation. Propitiation means that when
Jesus died He became a lightning rod for the wrath of God.
Jesus took the wrath that we deserved and made it
possible for God to be righteous while justifying the unrighteous. The God from
whose wrath we cannot hide is the only safe place where we can hide.
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which
flowed,
be of sin the double cure,
save from wrath and make me
pure.”
