The Revealed Wrath Of God

Chapter 1 verse 18 onwards. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

“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. Verse 24. Rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. 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.

“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. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 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.”

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Father, this morning we come to your throne of grace and ask you to give us understanding in this text. Show us what you want us to know. That we may, Lord, yield to your knowledge.

That we may, Lord, obey your word. That we may, Lord, alter our ways. Father, give us grace to grasp your word. Name I pray. Amen. So last week, we saw from the previous passage how we all are obligated to be grateful to God for other Christians, obligated to fellowship with other Christians, and obligated to share the gospel with others. Both Christians and non-Christians.

From this passage we will see how God revealed himself through nature and reasoning to mankind, but they rejected him, rebelled against him and dishonored him. So God revealed his wrath from heaven and gave them up to their own sins to dishonor themselves in all unrighteousness. So this is a theme of today.

God revealed himself through nature and reasoning to mankind, but they rejected him, rebelled against him and dishonored him. So God revealed his wrath from heaven and gave them up to their own sins to dishonor themselves in all unrighteousness. So what does it mean when parents give up the rebellious child? What does it mean for a doctor to give up on a patient who refuses to get treated for a serious illness?

Suppose there is a teenager who got involved in all kinds of illegal activities like drugs, gambling, robbery, prostitution and so on. His parents kept telling him that it is not right to live in such a way, kept pleading with him to change. However, to their disappointment, he turned out against them and started abusing them. It came to a peak point where the parents thought it was enough and gave up on him. They stopped telling him to and pleading with him and left him to his own choices. What does that mean to the teenager? It is certainly not a good thing, right?

That means the teenager is left to his own hurt. Now, the hope of someone caring for him is gone. He is headed to his own downfall to end up in a miserable state. Isn’t it? But as long as he’s alive, there is a chance to turn around from his wicked deeds and pursue what is good. It is—they say it is the same with the patient as well. When doctors give up, he has no hope to survive. But as long as he’s alive, he can turn to the doctors for treatment and be cured for of his illness. All he to do is give himself to the doctors before they completely give up on him.

We see something of this sort happening universally. Paul, after greeting the believers, sharing his thoughts of visiting them and showing that in the gospel God has revealed his righteousness which he gives to those in him or faith in Jesus. Now Paul turns to the other side of God's grace and shows how God revealed his wrath towards those who have no faith in God but deliberately live in sin.

Chapter 1 verse 18 starts a new section in Romans which ends at chapter 3 verse 20. Paul shows that both Gentiles and Jews are guilty of rebelling against God and His law. Our passage today mainly talks about the condemnation of the Gentile world. In chapter 2 Paul talks about the condemnation of the Jews and at the beginning of chapter 3 he concludes that all mankind have sinned, both Jews and Gentiles. Then from chapter 3 verse 21 onwards to chapter 5, he explains and gives examples on how God justifies those who trust him through Jesus who died on the cross for the sins of his people.

So let us look at verse 18. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” This verse is like a summary of this section from verse 18 through 32. It’s more like a summary, and the later, in the later verses we see Paul expanding on this to show how God revealed his wrath in response to people’s rejection of God’s truth. So the dictionary defines wrath as an extreme or strong vengeful anger or fury or indignation.

Paul here shows us that this wrath is of God, something that is coming from God Himself. We need to understand that wrath is not an attribute of God like love or righteousness or holiness. Wrath is just a reflection of His love and righteousness and holiness and justice. God loves holiness and righteousness and justice. So He hates the opposite of them.

That is, anything that is not holy, not righteous, not just, He hates it. He hates them with an intense hatred and his anger burns against it. That’s his wrath. Again, it is not an uncontrolled emotion in God like we see in man. God is in perfect control of it. His nature demands him to show wrath in all holiness and righteousness and do justice by punishing the wicked. His nature demands that. So it is perfect for God to act according to his wrath, but not so for man has no authority to take the law into his hands and punish people for

their sins unless God commands or permits them to do so. However, only God has the final and full authority to punish those who live in wickedness. He will punish them in eternal hell. Now let us look at why in the first place God has to reveal his wrath, towards whom he reveals it. In verse 18, Paul shows that it is against all the ungodly and unrighteous actions of men who rejected the truth. What truth are they suppressing or restraining here? That leads us to the first point, the revelation of God.

Look at verse 19 and 20. It says, “What can be known about God is plain to them.” Why? “Because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.” Paul is very clear with his language here. He is not saying that God gave some clues to man and let man figure out if there is God or not. He says that whatever God puts before man as an evidence for his existence is very plain to them. It is open before them, and it is not hard to comprehend

but easy to understand. It is God Himself who put it there. What are they? How can man understand? First, if we look at this passage, see, it is through nature. God revealed Himself in the things that have been made. Since when? Ever since the creation of this world. From day one of man’s existence, he has evidence of God.

Second is through reasoning. Paul says that God’s eternal power and Godheadness are clearly perceived. It can be understood through thinking about creation and reason behind it. A simple question, who caused everything that I see, can answer that there is a creator behind the creation. Again, look at what Paul is saying here — “have been perceived.” He’s not saying they can be perceived, but they have been perceived. That means that everyone already understood that there is a God behind this creation.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11. In other words, there is a default knowledge of God within every human being. Everyone knows that there is a God. It is precisely for this reason Paul says that they are without excuse.

One day, everyone has to stand before God and give an account of how he or she lived in this world. That day, no one can say, “You have not given us enough evidence to believe in you.” Or, “I did not know that you were out there somewhere.” Just imagine how it would be if a cricket player makes a mistake in a national level game and says, “I am sorry, I do not know that rule.” What would that be? Acceptable? They cannot be there in that field without knowing the rules. They all know it who are in the field

So now it is either they follow it or break it, but they cannot plead ignorance. It is the same here. Everyone knows that there is God because God gave them the knowledge of his existence. They know it deep down in the hearts that there is God. And what about atheists who say that there is no God, or agnostics who say they are not clear about God’s existence? What does the Bible say about them in this passage? They all know for sure that there is a God. They deny that they know it because they do not want God to be ruling them. That’s it. They convince

themselves of their own lies and believe it, that there is no God. That’s the wisdom of this world, which is foolish indeed. If you look at the first pages of the Bible, we see God revealing himself to Adam and Eve personally, right? He was walking with them in the garden.

Yet they have rebelled against God and rejected his authority over them by doing what God told them not to do. God cursed them and send them out of the garden. Then they had two sons, Cain and Abel. We know what happened. They both bring off their offerings to God, and God accepts whose was offering?

Abel’s offering and rejects Cain’s offering. As a result of that, what would Cain do? First, he rejects God and then he murders his brother Abel. Cain knew God in person. Cain knew God in person, yet he rejected God who made him. Genesis 4:16 says, “Cain went away from the presence of the Lord.” It’s his choice that he made, knowing that there is a God for sure.

Then in the Bible we see all those who came from Cain’s lineage started to make idols and worship them. Also they fill the earth with violence. But the time — sorry, by the time we get to chapter 6 of Genesis, God is so displeased with all the wickedness of men on earth and chooses to destroy them all, saving Noah’s family alone. But that same pattern continues with Noah’s son Ham’s lineage. Out of Ham comes nations like Canaan, Egypt, Babel, Nineveh, Sodom, Gomorrah and others, which rejected God of the heavens and the earth and worshiped the created things on this earth.

I am sure the knowledge about God might have passed from Cain to others in that lineage. They chose to reject him willingly. Everybody has a concept of God built within themselves. There is none who can say there is no God. Only fools say that and that’s a lie. And just a note here, the revelation of God in nature and through reasoning, this is called general revelation.

And it is by grace towards us. God in his grace is revealing himself to people through nature and through reasoning. Otherwise it would be impossible for us to know his existence. Now the question is, how did they respond to the knowledge of God that God inherently put within mankind, within the hearts of mankind? How did man choose to respond to this knowledge of God? Remember, this is a general revelation again of God, not special as it is in the written word. So with that question we come to our second point, which is the response of mankind, which is the response of mankind. Man rejects that knowledge of God. We see here in verse 18, “For the wrath

of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” So the word that Paul uses is suppress here. The suppressor truth, that is man pushes it back, they restrain it. So he is fighting against this knowledge that God exists.

It is his sinful nature that does that. As a result of that rejection we see two things happening in his life. As a result of the rejection of the knowledge of God there are two things that are happening in life. Two things here. Verse 18. One is ungodliness and the second one is unrighteousness. Ungodliness and unrighteousness. One is he dishonors God. That's ungodliness. And the other is he dishonors mankind. That's unrighteousness.

He dishonors mankind, including himself. One shows his impiety, and the other shows his immorality. He does not love God, and he does not love his fellow beings or neighbors. You see what’s happening? It’s impiety. Dishonors God. Sins against God. Look at verse 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.” Verse 22. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” Verse 23. “And exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling man and birds and animals.” Verse 25, “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.” And verse 28, “and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God.” What do we see in all these verses?

Man replaced God with something else in his life. They replaced God’s truth with lies. Not honor God, they did not thank him, they did not worship him, they did not serve him, they did not give him the proper credit for who he is and what he has done.

Their minds got rusted out and their reasoning abilities became useless. Their hearts became pitch black with their own foolishness. They lived and behaved as if they were wise and were making all wise choices, but the fact is they became fools. That is a state of mankind over all the earth, especially among the Gentile nations, that do not have the true and living God in their lives, but a substituted one, shaped according to their sinful needs.

That’s why Psalm 14 verse 1 says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good.” Later Paul uses that in chapter 3. So to be ungodly means to live or act in a way that is contrary to the nature of God. Hating whatever God loves and loving whatever God hates is ungodliness. Hating whatever God loves and loving whatever God hates is ungodliness. God created us to reflect his image in this world. We are made to be image bearers. So not to bear or reflect his image is ungodliness whose nature is opposite to God’s

nature. Satan’s nature, right? Satan’s nature. So bearing Satan’s image and acting and living like him is ungodliness. Dear brothers and sisters, isn’t that true of us once? We all have rejected God in our foolishness and sinfulness in the past. Yet God had mercy on us and showed us his grace through Jesus. This God wants us to grow in the knowledge of him. That is why he graciously gave us his word in a language that we can read and understand, be it English, Telugu or Hindi or some of the language, the truth about hands in our Bibles.

What are we doing about it? What are we doing with it? Are we still suppressing our Bibles? Pushing them away from us? Are we growing in the knowledge of God on a daily basis by spending time in the Word? Or are we growing in the foolishness of this world by daily spending time on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram unnecessarily?

You and I have to give an account to God one day about this. Are you ready for it? Dear dads and moms, what knowledge do you want your children to possess? We want them to go to the best schools of this world to become engineers, doctors, scientists or scholars, right?

But what about the knowledge of God in their lives? Are you making sure that your children are knowing the Lord and drawing closer to Him? If not, they will naturally reject Him and go away from His ways. Later, even if you weep and plead with them, they will not listen to you.

So train your children from their childhood. So the second thing that we’ll see in this point is immorality. That is unrighteousness that people do. So immorality, people dishonour themselves, or sins against fellow human beings. Coming back to our text, we see that man not only dishonours God, but dishonors fellow human beings including himself. He sins against himself and others. He fails as a moral being. So his life is full of unrighteousness or wickedness that is wrong done towards others. He has a wrong perception of others. He has wrong thoughts on others. His motivations are wrong. He deceives others. He cheats or robs, threatens, hurts, more murders, because he has no regard for other human beings. That is a state of man in his foolishness. He does things to his own hurt as well. That is a state of fallen humans. And that is man’s choice, that

is what Paul calls here unrighteousness, or in other word wickedness. He goes into more details in the following verses though. But what we see here is first man chooses. Man chooses to reject the knowledge of God. Then he chose to dishonor God and acted and acted ungodly. He chose to dishonor his fellow human beings and acted wickedly towards them. Do you see the link between them? Rejection of knowledge leads to dishonoring of God and dishonoring of your fellow human beings.

Looking at all that, how did God respond? God is a God of justice and he acts according to his holy and righteous nature. So in this case, what did God do to this ungodly and wicked man? See, though I use third person singular masculine noun or pronoun, that is man or he, I mean all of mankind. When I say man, it is mankind. So bear with me. So we come to the third point, the revelation of God’s wrath, the revelation of God’s wrath. We see first the revelation of God, the response of mankind. Now we see the revelation of God’s wrath, so we come to this third point. Look at verses 24: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.” Again, verse 26: “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” Again,

verse 28: “And to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” Paul uses this phrase, “God gave them up,” three times here. Since mankind chose to continue in sin and not regard God and his decrees, God let them have their own way. God let them have their own way.

He gave up because he failed or that he could not do anything about it, but he is giving up on sinful humans is an act of judgment. Men and women continuing in sin is actually a way of experiencing God’s wrath on them now. And here Paul, when talking about the wrath of God here, is not saying that one day in the future, God will pour out his wrath.

Even though that is true. He says that in chapter 2 verse 5. His point is that God is already showing his wrath. On all ungodly and wicked people. By letting them continue in their sins. Paul shows here in verse 32. That they knew God’s righteous decrees.

And they knew that those who sin deserve to die. Yet they chose to sin against God and man. As a result of that they are experiencing and accumulating God’s wrath on them. Death is already at work within them. So in chapter 2 verse 5 Paul says, “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up a wrath for yourself on that day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” So you see what’s happening here. Men who live in wickedness are already experiencing God’s wrath, storing up God’s wrath, and will experience one day God’s wrath in a full measure if they continue to live in their sin.

God by letting sin takes its course in this world is revealing his wrath. That is God’s revelation or knowledge of God’s wrath. Every time you hear about sin or see people acting wickedly, know that God’s wrath is working in them and one day will be shown in a greater later measure.

Dear ones, sin draws God’s wrath. It is not a light thing for us to dismiss it. We who call ourselves Christians should not participate in any form of sin. From lying to cheating, from deceiving to stealing, from watching porn to committing adultery, from expressing our anger to making others look bad by gossiping. God hates all these things. So it should not even be named among us at all, as Paul says in other places. Remember, God graciously revealed His holy wrath to us that we might repent of our sins and turn away from it.

May this knowledge bring us to our knees and to our senses. Let us fight hard against all forms of ungodliness and unrighteousness. Live our lives in all godliness and righteousness as it pleases the Lord our God. God will give us grace to do so, and we will have no compromise on that.

Finally, let us look at the implication of God’s giving them up. He gave them up to what? So that leads us to the fourth point, the wrath of God on mankind, the wrath of God on mankind. So there are three things that we can see here that God gives them up to. One is to impurity, the other is to dishonorable passions and the third one is to a debased mind.

So first one is to impurity, to dishonoring their bodies. Look at verse 24. We see there, “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of themselves.” Dishonor means to treat shamefully, to hold in no honor or to esteem things lightly. Make no mistake, God is not causing them to sin. God is not causing them to sin, but leaving them to their own sin. God never tempts anyone or leads anyone into sin. The Bible is so clear about it. It is man who holds full responsibility for all his sins. Here God is withdrawing his grace slowly and giving up, giving them up to the hardness of their own hearts, and they having full

full of lust in their hearts, chose uncleanness over godliness. They chose uncleanness over godliness. They defiled their bodies by committing shameless sexual acts with one another, which are beyond marital boundaries that God had put. God designed sexual activity to be within its marital boundaries, between one man and one woman. Anything that does not conform to this design is sin in God’s holy sight that draws God’s wrath upon it. Number two is to dishonorable passions. Paul goes on to show that they have crossed their boundaries too far. Look at verse 26: “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions; for their

women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to the nature, 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.” In our days we see a lot of people coming out, or we saw a lot of people coming out, maybe from Me Too movement, and confessing that they are gays or lesbians, that they have feelings towards their own gender.

Now, in almost all countries, they are fighting for their rights. There are even the so-called churches, false churches, that defend and conduct homosexual marriages. People are showing a soft side towards them saying that they have been victims so far and now it is their time to rise up and speak up to gain their rights to be homosexuals.

The world might accept them but will God accept them? This is not something new in the Bible. What we are seeing something new. All these sins are sins of old. We see instances of that in the Old Testament and how God responded to that.

Sodom and Gomorrah still stand today as a wasteland with sulfur balls. God’s wrath was poured out them on Sodom and Gomorrah for their sinful homosexual lifestyle. In Israel, some people of Gibeah were homosexuals. The Old Testament, when Israelites asked the tribe of Benjamin to give up those homosexuals so that they can destroy them, so these homosexuals from the town of Gibeah, so Benjaminites, they not only refused to give them up, but came to war with Israel for them. To protect them. So God destroyed the whole city of Gibeah through Israel.

In 1 Kings 14, we see Rehoboam, son of Solomon, led the people of Judah into idolatry. And had male prostitutes serve in the land. That’s in Israel. God sent Shishak, the king of Egypt, against them as a judgment on them. Every time we see such instance in the Bible, we see God’s judgment coming on people.

God hates distorted versions of sexual activity. So let us be careful with what we see or imagine or get into. Let us stay away from all forms of sexual sins. Let us guard our hearts, which are by default deceitful and desperately wicked as the Bible says. And let us keep, let us keep the restricted mode on our phones always on so that you won’t slip into dirty videos. May I repeat that again? Let us keep the restricted mode on our phones always on so that you won’t slip into dirty videos. So third point is God gave them up to debased mind to do evil. So this is the final thing the apostle says. Verse 28, look at verse 28: “And since they did not see fit

to acknowledge God, gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” So what are they doing? What are they like? The rest of the verses explains that. Verse 29: “They are filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness; they’re gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

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.” Do you see the moral degradation of mankind here? How wicked they have become. Sometimes, you know, when we look at some of the sins mentioned here, we think that they’re not just a big deal, right?

And some people call them as respectable sins. White lies versus black lies. It’s okay to do something as long as someone is benefiting from it. Consequentialism. You keep in mind the result and then do whatever you want to do in the middle. Look at these words.

that Paul uses here and all evil nature are attributes of mankind: unrighteousness, against God’s righteous nature, things that we do against God’s right in it, evil or wickedness or bad things, covetousness, that is greediness or exploitation, malice, ill will or a desire to harm someone, envy or jealousy, murder, strife, that is quarreling, deceit, that is cunning nature, having a cunning nature, maliciousness, bad manners, gossips, talking about someone to make them look bad or defamation, slanders, slanderers, making false or damaging statements on others, haters of God, insolent or violent or insulted, haughty, arrogant, boastful, bragging about, bragging about themselves, exalted, exalting themselves, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, that is lacking sense, faithless, not keeping agreement, heartless, without love, without mercy.

Can we identify ourselves with some of these things? We still struggle with them, right? What are we doing about that? This is the state of the person who rejects the knowledge of God and God himself. This is the common state of mankind as Paul says here. God hates all those things listed above.

No one can change this attitude by having resolutions every year. Or by emptying their minds through meditation. You cannot just go sit under a neem tree thinking nothing. You always think something. You always think something, right? You cannot empty your mind. You cannot change these attitudes by going to a psychiatrist.

No one can help. Our hearts are full of these voices. No doctor in this world can do a heart transplant to change our nature, our hearts. Only God can change our state and can give us a clean slate. And He is willing to do so.

If we of our sins and put our trust in Jesus. That is why he sent Jesus into this world. Do you remember all those sins that we have talked about so far? Those horrible abominations that God hates with a vehement hatred. All the sins that we have committed with our minds, in our thoughts and imaginations. All lust of eyes that we enjoyed in our life, all the desires of a flesh, all that boasting in our sins, and all our shameful acts that dishonored God and dishonored others, all these sins, all this wickedness, all these abominations, Jesus took it on his shoulders, the wrath that

we were supposed to experience, Jesus took it on himself and died on that cross. The most godly and righteous one died for the ungodly and unrighteous ones. Our sins, our wickedness, our abominations nailed him to the cross. Do you feel the weight of that? Do you feel the weight of that? We are the reason that Jesus is on the cross. God revealed and released his wrath fully upon Jesus on that cross.

God revealed through the cross but God released his wrath fully upon Jesus on that cross. Jesus took our full punishment on that cross. He died under that punishment, but God raised Him up again and made Him Lord of all. That means that God accepted that sacrifice of Jesus on that cross for our sins.

And that’s good news. You know what that means? That means that now God is ready to forgive us of our sins fully and finally. That knowledge of Jesus and what he has done should bring us to our knees and make us repent of our sins and look to him alone for the forgiveness of our sins and for eternal life in him. This knowledge of Jesus should to drive us to unease.

Is that true of you today? Is that true of you today? Have you repented of your sins and put your trust in Jesus? Do you understand that you know you deserve the wrath of God? But Jesus took it on him. Do you acknowledge that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness from God? If you are here today and do not know what that means, please talk to the pastor. Or someone who can help you understand the sacrifice of Jesus for you.

And if you are a Christian, please keep looking to Jesus and walk in his light. And live a life that is pleasing to him. Walk in godliness and righteousness. Hating what God hates and loving what God loves. Grow into the likeness of Jesus day by day by putting off your old self and by putting on your new self. That is, by leaving those attitudes that dishonor God and dishonor others. And by cultivating attitudes that honor God and honor others.

So may this be true in our lives, dear Christians. More increasingly in the coming days and years. May God help us to be so and do so.