Romans 1:18-32 - Part 2
Knowing God
Last Sunday we began looking at this passage, which lays out a very important attribute of God: His wrath. If God is holy then He must maintain that holiness so that He cannot even look upon sin and must distance Himself from any and all violations of His holiness.
Therefore, the essence of God's wrath is His distancing Himself from the sinner until the final judgment when He fully casts all sinners from His presence. In the end, He gives the sinner exactly what the sinner wants most: a life without God.
In order for us to fully appreciate God's grace in the gift of Jesus Christ we must fully grasp the seriousness of our fallen condition -- that we offended the holy God and are therefore under His wrath.
This morning we want to unfold this attribute of God's wrath in greater detail so that we might better understand the condition of all humans outside of Christ and to better understand how truly amazing God's grace is to us who are now in union with Christ through faith alone.
Paul tells us in v. 18 that God's wrath is revealed "from heaven," which roots God's wrath in His majesty and sovereignty over all creation. Everything under heaven -- all of creation -- is under God's absolute providential control and therefore, all that has fallen and rebelled under His sovereignty is equally under His condemnation. Nothing is able to flee from His omniscient presence.
Now Paul is primarily speaking here of humanity -- all humans are under God's wrath. In vv. 18-32 Paul includes all people, both Jews and Gentiles. While he will specifically focus his attention in chap. 2 on how the Jews who have rejected the special knowledge of God revealed through the law of Moses, Paul still includes within his purview in chap. 1 all people, both Jews and Gentiles who have rejected the knowledge of God revealed in creation.
Paul's main point in the following passage is that all people -- both Jews and Gentiles -- have turned away from God and that they did so clearly knowing who they were turning from (revealed through general revelation to all people) so that they are all without any excuse and therefore as a consequence they are under the wrath of God.
All people are the objects of God's wrath and are described in v. 18 as "un-godly" and "un-righteous." In other words, we are the objects of God's wrath because we are not like Him in that we are sinners and therefore, as we have been saying, God must distance Himself from us to display that He alone is the Holy One.
Now in what way are we UN-godly and UN-righteous? This will explain why we are under God's wrath.
First, in v. 19 we are told that ALL people have been given the knowledge of God and we have that knowledge for only one reason: because He has made Himself known to us.
For the Jews, Paul will latter describe the special knowledge God gave to His chosen people through the law of Moses, but as we will see in following verses, Paul is speaking here about that general knowledge that God has given to all people through His creation -- through nature -- which is available to all people, Jews and Gentiles.
Think of the many times you constantly touch other things within a day. Every time you simply touch something you leave a little bit of yourself on it, an imprint, a fingerprint which is unique only to you in all of history, in all of creation.
In the same way, in and on everything that is, God has left His fingerprints. There is in everything that is created a shadow of God's image, which of course is most fully seen in humanity.
In v. 20 Paul further describes what God reveals about Himself: His invisible attributes. How ironic that what is invisible has been clearly seen! How has God's invisible attributes been clearly seen? Through the things He has made! We are able to look at all the delicate and complex parts of this creation and see in them God's invisible attributes from the tiniest speck of dust to the complexity of the human brain.
The invisible attributes of God's power and deity are clearly revealed in every inch of creation. We know God is there (v. 19), we see His eternal power (v. 20), and we see His divine nature (v. 20) through all that He has made. And not only do all people see these things, but Paul says even further that they understand who God is by looking at them.
Now why is this so important to Paul that we know that God has clearly revealed himself to all humanity through what He has made?
As Paul says in v. 20 -- "so that we are all without excuse." What does Paul mean? At life's most basic level of nature we have everything we need to know God is there and what He is like. In other words, there is no one on earth who has every lived who does not have enough of God's revelation of Himself in the things they see and touch, in fact in their own bodies, that they can have any excuse that they did not know of God's existence and presence in their lives.
So what's the problem? What does all this have to do with the attribute of God's wrath being revealed from heaven? Because in v. 18 we see what all humanity has done with this knowledge -- we have all suppressed it in unrighteousness. "To suppress" is to put or push down by force. You remember the "jack-in-the-box" toys we all played with as children and how each time as we would turn the handle a few times how the toy would jump up out of the box. What would we then do? We would push the "jack" toy back down or suppress it into the box.
That is what each of us have done with the revelation of God's knowledge. Though we know God through everything He has made and we have clearly seen who He is and what He is like we have suppressed or pushed that knowledge of God down each time it "pops-up" or is revealed before our eyes.
But how have we suppressed that knowledge of God? Paul says we have suppressed it in our unrighteousness. What does he mean by this?
Well, we have spoken about how God made each of us to find our sense of well-being and happiness only in God's presence. But in a fallen world, that sense of joy, peace, happiness, security, etc. is often only a small taste of what we will know only in eternity. But rather than fill those deep longings only in the true fountain of living waters, as Jeremiah warned, we have chosen to hewn out for ourselves broken cisterns in life that hold no water (Jer. 2:13). Paul will develop this further below in how we have done this, but we can say here that it is through the satisfying of those deep longings in the things of this creation that we end up suppressing the knowledge of God.
We want or lust after the immediate knowledge of good and evil so we disobey God and take and eat the forbidden fruit. John describes this in his first epistle:
Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:15-17).
This is the very essence of sin: we want to fulfill our God-given desires and longings the way we want without any regard for what God says about it. And that's the danger of trying to live by our own understanding in life and not from every word that comes from God. Those things in life that promise happiness, joy, pleasure that are not from God always come with a hook that ends in death, as James describes:
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. 15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death (James 1:13-15).
So because we are not willing to have these deep longings in our lives fulfilled only by the true eternal fountain of living waters, we have forsaken God and in our "unrighteousness" we continually suppress the truth, the knowledge of God clearly seen in everything we see, touch, feel, smell, and hear. God's fingerprints are literally among us everywhere we look that to deny Him is to deny the very existence of our own being. That is what Calvin meant when he opened the first chapter of the Institutes with these words:
Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves . . . no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he “lives and moves." . . . It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself (Inst. 1.1.1, 2).
Now, since "all" people see, understand, and know who God is, so that they are without any excuse, and these same "all" people suppress this truth, or knowledge of God in unrighteousness we are "all" therefore, the objects of God's wrath.
Just an aside, note that this revelation of God in creation, as we will also see in chap. 2 with the law of Moses, does not and cannot lead the sinner into God's holy presence in salvation. Because we are sinners and we suppress any and all the truth of God's knowledge, whether in nature or written on tablets of stone, then we will always remain under God's wrath. That is why in vv. 16-17 Paul says that God's power and righteousness must be revealed through the good news of Jesus Christ. Unless God sovereignly births faith into our hearts through the gospel so that we might believe in Jesus Christ all other revelation leaves us in our sin and rebellion and therefore under God's condemnation. Now, "why" we are so bound to our sin that we continually suppress all knowledge of God until he acts sovereignly by His grace will be explained in Rom. 5:12-21 in what we call the doctrine of "original sin."
God's revelation of Himself, whether through creation or through the law of Moses, does not lead us to salvation but to demonstrate that God is righteous or just in condemning all people because all are without excuse. That is why Paul was so eager to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In v. 21 Paul develops further how we respond to God's revelation apart from the gospel. Even though we clearly know who God is, understanding His power and divine nature through what He has made, we did not honor or glorify Him and give thanks or show gratitude for Him and for what He has made. While this knowledge is not enough to bring the sinner into a salvific or redemptive relationship with God, as Paul says, it is enough for us to "reverence" or declare the worth and reflect the glory of God and to be grateful to God for His blessings in creation.
But rather than glorifying and thanking God, Paul says that we have suppressed and perverted the knowledge of God we possess and have sank into idolatry (v. 23) so that we have become futile in our speculations and our foolish hearts have been darkened (v. 21). In our suppressing the existence of the true God our speculations have become "futile" or "serving no useful purpose" or "completely ineffective." Our ability to reason about life, to explain the big questions of "who we are" and "why we are here" and "where we are ultimately going in life" simply ends in futility because we have denied the very source of life itself.
When we sever our lives from the true fountain of life, though we may still have the ability to reason about many things in life and know much truth, we no longer are able to know "why" or "how" we know what we know. As Van Till has often said, "the unbeliever can count, but he cannot account." The problem with the unbeliever is not his lack of ability to reason and know truth, the problem is his sinful rebellion in suppressing the truth that he already knows. He constantly works with the context or environment of God's presence (even as a fish is constantly swimming in the context of water) and yet the unbeliever continually denies the very source of the air he breathes. An unbeliever is able to function, and many times function very well, within the context of God's existence, but while the evidence of God's presence is constantly surrounding him wherever he turns, he has chosen in his rebellion to suppress that knowledge and deny God's penetrating light. The unbeliever only sees truth by God's light while continually in sin and rebellion denies the very source of that light.
That's why in v. 21 Paul says that the unbeliever's "foolish heart is darkened." The Psalmist defines the foolish heart as:
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good. 2 The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. But they have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one (Ps. 14:1-3).
Because we have turned away from the living and true God, who alone is the source of all truth, the very center of our being has been blanketed in darkness which only the penetrating light of the gospel can penetrate.
What is the result then of our turning away from God? In v. 22 Paul says that "professing to be wise, we became fools." What does he mean? Just what we said before -- when we suppress the clear knowledge of God's presence in life by our unrighteousness we act as if we are wiser than those who have to believe in a god or higher power than ourselves. We think we are actually wiser than others because we don't believe in God, which is the psalmists very definition of a fool. We profess that we are wise, living a life without God, which is the most foolish possible way to live.
In essence we have simply exchanged the "glory of the incorruptible God" for a mere image or shadow in the form of "corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures," which is simply a summary of this creation (v. 23; cf. Ps. 106:20). In refusing to worship and glorify God, all people claim to be acquiring great wisdom, when in reality they have become foolish. Why? Because they have set their hearts affections on being satisfied by the illusion and not the reality. What could possibly be more foolish that to substitute the direct presence of God (true and blessed life) for the indirect, shadowy picture in the things of this creation?
Again this is the essence of what Jeremiah said to Israel in forsaking God, the fountain of living waters in exchange for our own broken cisterns in life which can hold no water (Jer. 2:13). Think about what we are doing when we so easily satisfy the deep longings in our hearts with the things of this creation. Everything in this world, including all of us, is only a creation -- a mere image of the Creator. But not only that, we are a fallen image at that. So in the one hand, we have the true Creator, the source of all life, including our own and everything we hold dear. In the other hand, we have a mere shadow -- a picture of the true God, a picture that is fallen and distorted and broken, which though it may promise life, it only ends in death. Now which one will we choose? Where will we turn for true happiness, love, and peace?
The answer is simple: we always turn to the broken image that has no real life. This is what Paul is describing in our fallen condition before God and what the Bible always calls idolatry. In rejecting the knowledge of the true God, we constantly make our own gods, what Calvin referred to as "idol factories." We are god-makers. Sure, we no longer make our idols out of stone or wood, but we continually seek the gods of happiness, pleasure, prosperity, and security by trying to fulfill those deep longings in life by the things of this creation and it is in this fertile soil of idolatry that our whole lives of sin, sin which Paul describes below, flourishes.
Beloved, that is why Jesus coming as our substitute is good news. Jesus enters into our broken lives and the deep muck-and-mire of our sin and completes, finishes our salvation. He lives the life that we should have lived by perfecting glorifying and thanking God in every area of His life, fully obeying God's law in our place and He took our place under the wrath of God and shed His blood in our stead so that through Him we might draw near to God in Him with a new heart which rests in Christ:
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; 24 and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, 25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near (Heb. 10:19-25).
Amen!
-SDG-
