The Wrath of God

Rom 1:18-25

 

1. God loves the world and sent His beloved Son to die for the sins of the human race. Therefore, God is love. However, this love of God should not be misunderstood and misused. God rules and operates this universe with definite order and justice. If not, God would not let His Son suffer and die for our sins. Like an arbitrary tyrant, He might have forgiven us without any satisfaction of justice. No, He punished even His beloved Son to pay the full price of our sins to forgive us. God is just! So, God is not only the Savior but also the Judge. Even in this age of balance lost, we need the balanced understanding of God. God loves and hates, saves and punishes, blesses and condemns. God made not only heaven but also hell. Whether we like it or not, both are true. Even we Christians should both love and fear Him. Even in this age of discipline lost, we need a decent and orderly life before God.

2. Here in Romans 1, Paul talks about “the wrath of God” before the love of God. God is longsuffering, but it does not mean that He cannot be angry. He is not a paper tiger: ”But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath.”(Jer 10.10) “As men gather silver, copper, iron, lead and tin into a furnace to melt it with a fiery blast, so will I gather you in my anger and my wrath and put you… and melt you.”(Jer 22.20) “Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before him.”(Nah 1.6) God is the Ruler of universe with the wrath of justice: “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I will rule over you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath.”(Ezk 20.33) God uses His innumerable agents to express His wrath (Rom 13.4) everyday: “God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day.”(Ps 7.11) But God is patient and holding much of His wrath for voluntary repentance until the fearful day of wrath: “the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”(Rev 6.17)

3. Jesus came to the world to save us from the wrath of God: “…how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!”(Rom 5.9); “…Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.”(1Thess 1.10) This is the time of salvation! But it will not last forever. When the Lord comes back, the Final Judgment will start. Even before, when one dies suddenly or not, his or her opportunity of salvation from the wrath of God will end. Jesus said with warning: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.”(Jn 3.36); “But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.”(Rom 2.8) Who heard the Gospel but is unrepentant and stubborn that he or she does not believe in Jesus Christ who suffered because of his or her sins and even ridicule Him are in great danger of God’s wrath: “Because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.”(Rom 2.5) Who did not hear the Gospel would be sympathetically considered because they had no opportunity to believe and they did not despise Jesus the Son of God. Somebody talks out of ignorance that God is love and therefore He will not punish anybody. Wrong! The Bible does not say that. God does not say that! Paul gives warning: “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient.”(Eph 5.6) Hell of eternal fire is waiting for them! They laugh at it. Let them experience the lake of burning sulfur: “They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”(Rev 20.10)

4. Why should they suffer such dreadful wrath of God? It is because they suppress the Gospel: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”(18) What is their wickedness? Wickedness is a strange way of evildoing, playfully malicious and highly offensive. It is first of all that they know God, but they totally ignore God in their deeds and thoughts: “although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”(21) They insist that they don’t know God and even there is no God. But it is “plain” and “clear” to them: “since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”(19-20) I will show three evidences that they know God but they behave wickedly. (1) They know that there is nothing without a cause and insist that God did not create the universe but it is naturally without any cause. How wicked they are! (2) They know that there is truth, true and false, right and wrong and insist that there is no foundation for truth. It is truth only because they say it. How wicked they are! (3) They know that human life is meaningful and insist that there is no objective and eternal meaning in this universe. They teach their children not to live like an animal but to live a meaningful and worthy life but they deny the existence of eternal meaning itself. How wicked they are! So, the Bible says: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.”(22) Moreover, they commit serious wicked behaviors of exchange such as worshipping images of “mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles”(23), following human lies with rejecting the truth of God(25), and supporting immoralities with knowing their criminality(32): “Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” No doubt, “they are senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless.”(31) They are humans, but they lost humanity.

5. So, God pours out His wrath to these wicked human beings by withdrawing His protective grace. God gave them over to “sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another”(24), “shameful lusts” of unnatural inflammation like homosexuality(26-27), and “depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done”(28), “filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity… full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents.”(29-30)

6. The Proverb teaches us that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.”(1.7) We need to fear the Lord and His wrath. God loves us, but we need to respect Him. His love may not be misunderstood as the excuse for our godless and fearless behaviors. And let us pray for those who are storing up the wrath of God and help them to be saved from His fearful punishments.