← Contents Romans 1:18–3:20 ←→

Romans 1:18–3:20

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,1 in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

2 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. 2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 3 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? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

6 He will render to each one according to his works: 7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 but for those who are self-seeking2 and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. 9 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 11 For God shows no partiality.

12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; 19 and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

25 For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. 26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded3 as circumcision? 27 Then he who is physically4 uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code5 and circumcision but break the law. 28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

3 Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 2 Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. 3 What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 4 By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,

       “That you may be justified in your words,

       and prevail when you are judged.”

5 But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) 6 By no means! For then how could God judge the world? 7 But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? 8 And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

9 What then? Are we Jews6 any better off?7 No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written:

       “None is righteous, no, not one;

11     no one understands;

       no one seeks for God.

12     All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

       no one does good,

       not even one.”

13     “Their throat is an open grave;

       they use their tongues to deceive.”

       “The venom of asps is under their lips.”

14     “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”

15     “Their feet are swift to shed blood;

16     in their paths are ruin and misery,

17     and the way of peace they have not known.”

18     “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

19 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. 20 For by works of the law no human being8 will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Section Overview

It is important to observe that this section is a parenthesis—note how Romans 1:17 speaks of the “righteousness of God,” how 1:18 switches to the “wrath of God,” and how 3:21 returns to the “righteousness of God.” This section, then, serves to explain why the saving righteousness of God is so essential: the alternative is his wrath. This is a universal wrath, for the “whole world” is accountable to God (3:19) and fails to measure up to his righteous character as revealed in the OT (3:20). Moreover, God is not merely the creator of the world (1:25) but its judge (3:6; 2 Tim. 4:1, 8).

The subsections in the Section Outline below show the breadth and the depth of human sinfulness. They teach total depravity, the conviction that “every element of human nature is thoroughly infected with sin.”20 The section unfolds in four movements:

(1) Romans 1:18–32 gives a broad description of humanity’s suppression of God’s truth and idolizing of its own moral folly. The result is seen in dishonorable passions expressed in same-sex lustfulness and hookups. Paul goes on to detail nearly two dozen fruits of the “debased mind” (1:28) that arise because humans forsake the true God (and his righteousness) for their own (im)moral preferences.

(2) Once 1:18–32 paints a dramatic and vivid portrait of people wallowing in self-willed degradation, 2:1–16 turns on the reader with the accusation that “you condemn yourself” (2:1) because all people are guilty of the vices just described. People have a sense of what is right and wrong, but they do not live up to their own standards, let alone God’s holy and righteous character as reflected in “the law,” by which Paul most often means the OT.

(3) As a Jew, and as a man formerly convinced that he was “blameless” regarding “righteousness under the law” (Phil. 3:6), Paul has a keen sense of how people can condemn others but be at least as bad themselves. Thus Romans 2:17–29 debunks the illusory religiosity Paul once championed. “A Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart” (2:29). Without inner transformation through faith in Christ, the most stringent moral standards and religious traditions fall short.

(4) The final section (3:1–20), drawing on various OT passages, broadens Paul’s depiction of the human spiritual plight. Despite the undoubted advantage and privilege of possessing God’s prophetic word in their Scriptures, the Jews are judged unfaithful by those very writings. In fact, “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (3:9). The section concludes with God’s universal negative verdict on the “whole world” (3:19). Knowledge of sin is evident through conscience for Gentiles (2:15) and through the law for Jews (3:20). But man in himself has no remedy for this problem.

Section Outline

  III.  God’s Universal Revelation: Man’s Universal Unrighteousness (1:18–3:20)

A.  Unrighteousness That Deserves God’s Wrath (1:18–32)

B.  Self-Righteousness That Results in God’s Judgment (2:1–16)

C.  Religious Hypocrisy That Confuses Ethnicity with Acceptance by God (2:17–29)

D.  Divine Righteousness That Justly Condemns Every Human Being (3:1–20)

Response

(1) The world’s major problem is that people “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (1:18). Truth is the friend of goodness and hope; deception and lies undermine individual happiness and the good of all. Most of us have been betrayed by someone who covered up or even denied his wrongdoing. Whole nations have suffered calamity under lying political officials, unchecked military powers, corrupt business interests, or other manifestations of evil. Often, in the end people blame God, if there is a God, or deny God, since they assume the evil they see is incompatible with God’s existence.

A better alternative is to realize that the world’s chief problem lies not with God but with people—and not people in the abstract but persons starting with ourselves. To build a better world, we have to have better people. Any prescription for improving the world that cannot reshape and reform individuals is doomed to frustration and finally failure, as many social experiments in modern times attest. Anyone seeking a better world but unwilling to undergo radical personal change beginning with repentance is dodging God’s diagnosis of where the problem lies.

(2) Versions of Christianity that deny God’s wrath are false. Since the European Enlightenment (eighteenth century) an understanding of Christianity often called “liberal” has gained traction. A former liberal summed up the mentality like this: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”43 That outlook is embedded in many organizations that carry the name “Christian.” Romans 1–3 affirms that the world, and especially those in the world that deny a wrathful God, is on a collision course with that very God.

(3) God has created individuals with a sexuality to be affirmed and rendered back to God for his glory. Genesis 1–2 describes man and woman made for complementary harmonious coexistence. In the longer run they were to “be fruitful and multiply” as they by their worshipful labors tended and enhanced the world in which God placed them. They marred that world by their sin. But redemption is not found in denial of our created sexuality or by affirming same-sex alternatives. That is the way of self- and social destruction. Hope is found in accepting our born sexuality and discovering God’s pleasure in the gift of sexual identity he has assigned to each of us.

(4) Religion can serve to justify self-righteousness and so separate people from God. “Liberal” religion was mentioned in Response 2 above. But “conservative” religion can function just as harmfully. Paul addressed pagans who sought to conserve their polytheism and moral decadence; he addressed Jews content that their traditions elevated them above other peoples. The gospel calls for change in God’s direction, not retreat into human self-confidence. There is no good future in a religious self-righteousness that takes pride in identifying the inferiority of others.

(5) What matters is God’s verdict, not what people think. Surveying the list of sins in Romans 1:28–32, it is easy to spot our own weaknesses. It is even easier to see the sins of others. But just as striking is the extent to which many of these ills and evils are defended by rationalization and truth-twisting. “Covetousness” (1:29) is normalized as the materialistic greed that drives consumerist economies. “Malice” is justified by the notion of fighting fire with fire. “Envy” is viewed as inevitable because others have what the envier lacks. Is life not about striving to get more of one’s share? “Gossips” view themselves as truth purveyors, not character assassins; “haters of God” (1:30) are just being intellectually honest; the “insolent” and “haughty” are just following the social mandate to “resist authority.” Most of all, giving “approval to those who practice” (1:32) vice and corruption can give us a sense of involvement in cutting-edge social innovation without risking the moral or even criminal risks such behavior may entail.

What people may widely affirm and applaud can be attitudes and actions God abominates.

(6) God’s written Word is his greatest gift. The authority of God’s oracles (3:2), a foundational element in Paul’s sense of the truth of the gospel message, is widely disparaged today. Some view all religions as equivalent, demoting the Scriptures to just another human religious reflection. Others promote parts of the Bible they like but reject what they find out of step with current social conviction. Many reduce the Bible to a few pet verses (like John 3:16) or concepts (like God is love) and view most of the rest of it with the bliss of their ignorance. Others draw a distinction between God or Jesus (both good) and written Scripture (not to be regarded with the reverence of God or his triune being).

Paul, like his Lord and Master Jesus, was a student, theologian, and proclaimer of the gospel message he found embedded in Scripture and therefore inseparable from it. Far from hinting at a distance between God and his Word written, Paul models a method of religious reasoning that hallows what the Scriptures affirm as God’s very words (Gk. logia, “oracles”). Christianity is flourishing worldwide where Scripture is read with the seriousness Paul approaches it; it is languishing where its truth and message are supplanted by lesser authorities. In the latter case it is not only the Scriptures that are being lost; God himself fades from view when we wrongly privilege rival sources of authority over his revealed Word.

(7) God cares enough to confront persons and peoples. For many this section of Romans may seem like a self-righteous rant on Paul’s part. Who does he think he is? But for those who have been called to repentance by Jesus and God’s Holy Spirit, Paul is simply a confirming mouthpiece conveying a message that wounds in order that it may heal. God speaks savingly in what Paul writes. The righteousness of God in the gospel message has no rivals in the resources of humans. The gospel call is radical in its denunciation of human pretensions to self-sufficiency, that it may be revelatory in its gracious offering of an adequate antidote and superior option.

This antidote and offer are precisely what following sections of Romans present.