Romans 1:18 “And So It Begins”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁸for [the] wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven upon all [the] irreverence and unrighteousness of men, ones suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

And so it begins.

In verses 16 & 17 Paul referred to the hope of the Gospel which tells us of a way of salvation, a way of deliverance from whatever it is that’s wrong with us and the whole human race. He said that this deliverance is a “righteousness of God” which is revealed in that Gospel and something gained by faith. These words are the Gospel in a nutshell – but since it is the most important nutshell in all the universe, it calls for a LOT of explanation. Such is the book of Romans, and so that explanation begins.

First, we need to understand the problem. It is (obviously) serious and will take the better part of three chapters just to explain. And what is it? What is this problem we have that keeps one generation after another self-destructing? What is it that keeps you and me self-destructing? The Gospel would offer us a solution to this problem, but, once again, we first need to understand the problem.

“The wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven…” We’re in trouble. BIG trouble. God is angry. People wrestle endlessly with this idea – that God is angry, the idea of His “wrath,” but I suggest they do so needlessly. Of course He’s angry. How could He not be? Does anyone honestly not want Him to be angry? What would any of us make of a God who wasn’t? This world is filled with meanness and hatred, lying and cheating, abuse and cruelty in every possible form. Yes, people can (and do) do much good – and for that we can (and should) be thankful – but we’d have to be hopelessly delusive to deny the vast extent of evil in our world.

I learned long ago, as you drive down the street, you don’t want to know what is going on behind those closed doors. People’s cruelty to each other is almost unfathomable. Of course that is true in third world countries and amongst lower classes of people, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s going on in suburban homes and mansions and palaces too. What would you think of a God who wasn’t angry? What would you think of a king who knew of the evil going on throughout his kingdom and it didn’t bother him? What would you think of a parent who knew one of his children was cruelly mistreating the others but it didn’t bother him?

Yes, God is angry and He should be. Notice that His anger is being revealed “from Heaven.” In v17, the “righteousness of God,” the solution to our problem, was revealed “in the Gospel.” Now our problem is being revealed “from Heaven.” It isn’t just revealed in the Scriptures. God’s anger against our sinfulness is being broadcast straight from Heaven itself. All anyone has to do is stop being delusive and the signs of God’s anger are being broadcast everywhere we look – from the very fact that the entire Creation is crumbling before our eyes to all the miseries of disease and of a world bent on killing us.

And why specifically is He angry? It is because of “all the irreverence and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” “Irreverence and unrighteousness.” You could probably just translate this, “All the wickedness,” but the two words, in and of themselves, do express the two faces of our problem. Old commentators would have said it is the “two tablets of the Law,” where they used to see the two tables of the Ten Commandments as the first tablet having to do with our relationship with God and the second tablet our relationship with people.

The first word they would say represents the first tablet of the Law and particularly our problem with God. I’ve translated it “irreverence.”  He said, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” and yet, as Calvin said, “The human heart is a factory of idols.” Mankind will worship anything but God. Oh, they might get “religious” and invent some kind of god to worship, but if it isn’t the true and the living God, it only degrades them. Secular society spurns “religion” and then worships anything and everything they think gets them what they want.

This problem with God feeds the other problem, our issue with the Second Table of the Law. I’ve translated it “unrighteousness.” It could be translated “injustice” or “wickedness,” but it specifically refers to this problem of how we treat others, how we act in this world. In order to “get what they want” humans will resort to any and every sin in the book. They will even feign righteousness and religion to get what they want, or, if necessary they’ll lie and cheat and murder each other.

The rest of chapter one will rehearse the awful expressions of our irreverence and unrighteousness, but notice here in this verse where it all begins, the Lord describes us as people who “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Here is where the “irreverence and unrighteousness” from earlier do morph into a single word. As I said above they are kind of the two sides of the same problem. It is irreverence to break any of the Ten Commandments, just as it is unrighteousness. It’s all wickedness, or simply “unrighteousness.” And what do unrighteous people do? They “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

Of course they do. They are of their father the devil. He is a liar and the father of lies. He can only exist in his rebellion against God by living a lie and telling lies. He can only advance his kingdom by deceiving people. Jesus said, “I am the Truth.” Everything Jesus does, everything God is, everything He says is true because He is truth. The Bible is true because it is God’s Word, the Word of Christ, the Sword of the Spirit, and it cannot possibly be anything but truth.

In order to live in unrighteousness, people must, like Satan, live a lie, tell themselves lies, tell each other lies, believe their own lies. This is precisely why today we have the “fake news media.” In order to advance their causes, they must lie. Their causes are lies. They push God aside so they can live in their immorality and pride, then they have to lie to themselves and each other to make it okay, then they have to lie to everyone else – even if they are a journalist for a major national publication or the announcer for some syndicated talk show or “news” station, or a “famous” movie star or singer. And this is precisely why so many people believe their lies. Apart from Christ, all people are given to suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.  If you push God out of your mind, you are living a lie and lose the ability to even discern when someone is lying to you, when you’re lying to yourself.

If I may inject, this is precisely why it is so important to study the Bible, to read it often, to sit under the teaching of a godly pastor – so you are fed a steady stream of truth. Jesus said, “When you know the truth, the truth will make you free.” That is one of the reasons I have studied the Bible for myself these last 40 years. I want to be free. I want to know the truth. I know my head is full of untruth. I know my natural man loves to feed on lies and untruth. A person can only be certain to be freed from this world’s lies by first of all knowing Christ, then giving serious attention to the Word – the only source of absolute truth.

That’s why I “ponder” it. Do I really understand this? Is this really how I think? Is my life consistent with this? And for me, when the Lord does open my eyes, it’s not as if I make this valiant effort at change. To a huge extent, to “see” the truth is already to be changed. This is because, once again, at the root of our problem is this fact that we have suppressed the truth in our unrighteousness. We actually see our world through untruth and act accordingly. When we see the world through God’s eyes, through truth, we will more likely act according to that, and live rightly.

Can I also say this goes way beyond even Bible truth? This world’s affection for lies offends me spiritually but it also offends me as an engineer, as a scientist. We are fed an almost total diet of scientific lies as well. One week coffee causes cancer, the next week it cures it. We’re fed “poll” data that was deliberately manipulated. We’re suddenly told that the polio vaccine didn’t help at all, but actually made things worse (to which I say, “Excuse me – I was alive back then and I know you’re lying”), and the poor young parents are told not to have their children vaccinated. I won’t even get into the obvious charade of “global warming.” Ever wonder why they keep getting caught fudging the data? Why does anyone fudge data? Because the evidence doesn’t support their desired conclusion, so they need to lie – as usual.

Yes, God is angry. And He should be. This world of lies and meanness needs to end.

It will one day and the good news is that today this problem in your heart and mine can be ending. The answer is this Gospel Paul is talking about. “Gospel” of course means literally “good news.” There is good news! But before we are really ready to embrace this good news, we need to understand the bad news. That’s what this verse is about. This verse expresses in a sentence what Paul will explain for the first three chapters of this book. It is the bad news. If we want to understand the good news, we need the Lord to explain to us the bad news.

And so it begins.

Romans 1:16,17 “Jewel”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁶for I am not being ashamed of the Gospel, for it is [the] power of God into salvation to all the ones believing – to both Jew first and to Greek, ¹⁷for [the] righteousness of God is being revealed in it out of faith and into faith, just as it is written, “But the righteous will live out of faith.”

These two little verses are so profound, every time I come back to study them or even to ponder on them as I bustle about my day, I feel like Moses, that I “should take off my shoes, for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground.” These two verses are essentially the thesis statement for the entire book of Romans. And what is the book of Romans, but the grand summary of everything the Gospel means, from the awful fall of man and his total self-destruction, to the amazing Cross of Jesus who crushed the head of the serpent and won for us all that is love, and joy, and peace, and hope. These two little verses summarize for us the only true hope for us, our world, and all eternity.

Alexander McClaren said of these two verses: “Here is, in the briefest possible words, his summary-the universality of sin, the awful burden of guilt, the tremendous outlook of penalty, the impossibility of man rescuing himself or living righteously, the Incarnation, and Life, and Death of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, the hand of faith grasping the offered blessing, the indwelling in believing souls of the Divine Spirit, and the consequent admission of man into a life of sonship, power, peace, victory, glory, the child’s place in the love of the Father from which nothing can separate. These are the teachings which make the staple of this Epistle. These are the explanations of the weighty phrases of my text. These are at least the essential elements of the Gospel…”

The Gospel.  Could not those who truly know it speak of it and write for hours – of the miracle it has meant to us, of life from the dead, of peace in the present, of hope in the future, of the warm glow in our hearts of the love of our Savior God Jesus?

Entire libraries could probably be filled with the books which have been written on these two little verses. I could comment myself on its various phrases but my inclination is simply to marvel in the wonder of this Gospel of which they speak, summarizing as they do the entirety of this book of Romans, and of the Bible itself.

Where do we begin?

Paul says he’s not ashamed. As I’ve read those words over and over, of course I have to keep asking the Lord, “Am I?” Even as I ask that probing question, I feel an amazing metamorphosis well in my heart. As a younger man, enslaved in my awful legalism, I would have felt surely I need to run out and do something, to somehow “do better,” to somehow prove my mettle, that “not being ashamed” meant running out to some street corner and telling the world! That would make me “not ashamed.” But having cast aside that legalism and chosen rather to sit at His feet, to live all day every day basking the sunshine of His love, something wonderful has happened. I can honestly say, “I am not ashamed,” but it isn’t because I have somehow resolved to “do better,” but rather because the wonder of who Jesus is has filled my heart.

What do I mean? I mean that, as I live my life, I live in the wonder of how one day He opened my eyes, how He suddenly made me want to know Him, how He has carried me through it all, always giving me hope, how He takes the morass of my mixed up, confused mind and actually helps me to understand life, how He and He alone has enabled me to marry and stay happily married for almost 37 years, how He has given me everything my heart could have ever hoped for, and how at nearly 62, He causes me to live in hope. When I think of that, no, I’m not the least bit ashamed. I would happily tell anyone anywhere about this wonderful salvation that I enjoy. The nice thing for me is that it now isn’t a matter of “not being ashamed,” but simply of enjoying myself His amazing salvation. I of course am still the same bungling coward I ever was and there’s probably about a 99% chance I will fail completely at any opportunity He provides me to speak for Him, but, somehow that is okay. He knows me. He loves me. And that love makes me brave, makes me confident He can use me, that somehow He’ll carry me even then, just like He always has, that I could actually say the right things at the right time to the right person – but it won’t be because I was amazing. It will be because He is.

I want to say too, while I’m pondering these two verses, I love how it is “from faith to faith,” and “The just shall live by faith.” The “righteousness” God offers is of course His grace righteousness. It is what Paul speaks of in 3:21,22: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known…[one which] comes through faith…” It is the same righteousness Paul speaks of in 9:30-32: “What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not obtained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.”

What is righteousness but to be right? That is our problem. We aren’t. It’s like the doctor who asked the people in an asylum, “Do you all know why you’re here?” One patient replied, “Yes, doctor. We know why we’re here. It’s because we’re not all there.” The plain simple fact is we’re not all there. We’re not right. We don’t think right, don’t act right, don’t even want right, with the result that to live without God dooms us to what is in the end living death. As God warned Adam, “In dying you shall die.” But what could possibly save you and me from our awful living death? Surely the answer is to try harder. Right?

Wrong. “Trying harder” will never make you and me “right.” God alone has the power to fix us. And therein is the treasure of the Gospel, “because it is the power God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” “The power of God to save us!” The Gospel is the same power that created an entire universe! And Jesus said, “He who believes in Me has everlasting life” (John 6:47). It is for “everyone who believes.” It is by faith. And it is “from faith to faith.” The Gospel tells us of God’s amazing grace – faith is the hand of the heart that accepts that gift.

And, as our text says, “The just shall live by faith.” Our physical hearts keep our bodies alive. Faith is the heart that keeps our spirits alive. To truly know God and live with Him all day every day, is a business “from faith to faith.” Faith saves us to begin with, then faith enables us to live the life God gives us here on earth. It is faith that makes us “right,” not our efforts. It isn’t “trying to be right” that fixes us – it is climbing into the wonderful lap of our Savior God, nuzzling our faces into His big chest, looking up into His loving eyes, then without even knowing it, finding we did do something right after all – not because we were “trying” but because He carried us.

It is “from faith to faith,” and “The just shall live by faith.”

What an amazing jewel this Gospel Jesus purchased for us. What an amazing gift to actually be “right.” But what an amazing jewel to realize it all leads back to Him. “From faith to faith” – living a life of reckless confidence in this God who is there.

I could write on and on, but, once again, these two verses are, as it were, Paul’s thesis statement for the whole book of Romans. How much better to just study on and let him explain to us what it all means?

Romans 1:14,15 “Debtors”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁴I am a debtor to both Greeks and barbarians, to both wise and unwise ones; ¹⁵thus, for my part, I am ready also to preach the Gospel to you, those in Rome.

As I started studying these verses, Paul’s beginning words caught my eye. “I am a debtor.” I wondered, “Do I really understand what he is saying?” Of course we can all run ahead and say, “We are all debtors! Jesus died for us and now we live indebted to live for Him, etc., etc.” But does anyone really think those thoughts as they walk through their day? Does the word “debtor” keep coming to your mind? I doubt it. It doesn’t to mine either. So rather than run ahead with all the standard Christianese and clichés, I think there is value in just pausing and asking myself, “Do I really understand this?”

And so I ponder and study.

Debt is, in general, a bad thing of course. In Romans 13:8, Paul instructs us, “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another…” Proverbs warns us the borrower is servant to the lender. The wise man, in general, avoids situations where he would place himself into debt. On the other hand, there is a sense in which you cannot avoid it. Either the gas company provides me with gas all month and at the end, I owe them, or perhaps I could pay them up front, then they owe me. Either way, someone ends up owing someone else.

As human beings, we depend heavily on each other all day every day. When someone does me a service of any kind, I owe them something, if not simply gratitude – but even that is a “debt,” something I owe. How often do we say to one another, “Thanks! I owe you one for that.” There’s also the negative sense of how we may hurt each other and so we pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Then I noted from my studies throughout the Bible people owe debts to one another, then they owe debts to God; but God is never indebted. He is the great Giver. He owes us nothing. One may object that He owes us the fulfillment of His promises, but a moment’s thought will conclude that is another matter. Who obligated Him to keep His promises? He did. Once again, He owes us nothing. We owe Him everything.

That is why salvation has to be of grace. As Paul will go on to say in Romans 4:2-5, “If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.” Salvation cannot be by works for a number of reasons, but here is just one more – God is never and can be never a debtor. He is the great Giver. I cannot “earn” salvation, or I would put God in a position that He “owes” it to me. No, no, no. He gives. We receive. We are indebted to Him. We are in many ways indebted to each other. These debts to God and to each other are very real and call us to respond faithfully.

Now this is where my mind takes off. Let’s put it in terms we hear and think about all the time. We all know too many people whose whole life is lived imagining that everyone else owes them something. They basically see life as if everyone else is indebted to “me.” They can and will rehearse for you all the ways others have failed them, all the things others ought to do for them. That kind of people make lousy spouses and lousy bosses, lousy workers. What does Paul say? “I am a debtor.” Before we even dissect exactly what he means, stop and think about what he is saying. He’s saying, “I owe the world. The world doesn’t owe me.” “I’m the debtor.”

Here we go again with the Christian mind. What does the Christ-like person say? “Even the Son of man came not to be ministered to, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” A Christian could say, “I should be a servant. I should be like Jesus and put others first.” That is great, but have we ever really wrestled with this question of debts? Do I see myself first of all as truly and completed indebted to God? All that I am, all that I have, my very salvation itself, I owe to God; and then there is my life -- where would I be if I hadn’t had my wonderful loving parents? Along with them, I have received so much from teachers, coaches, bosses, friends. And there is my wife and my children. I am the undeserving recipient of blessings utterly beyond my wildest imagination. I think of the words, “How can I do less, than give Him my best, when He has done so much for me?”

As believers, this ought to be our very deliberate and practiced attitude toward life: “I am a debtor.” I can never, ever repay the debt I owe to God and so, so many people, but I can spend the rest of my life trying. In Paul’s case, the Lord called him to preach the Gospel, and he says, “I’m ready.” What has he called you and me to do? Has He called you to be a spouse? A parent? A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker? Whatever He’s called us to, we should work hard at it, always feeling underneath it all that we are the debtors.

We have met the debtor – and he is us!