Romans 1:18-32 Senior Pastor Alex Kennedy A God of love must hate anything that harms those He loves. Paul spends Romans 1:18-3:20 showing us why we need God to give us righteousness, and why we cannot earn, deserve, or attain it ourselves. God’s wrath is a righteous and holy response to humanity’s sinful, rebellious nature. Ultimately, Paul is showing us that the gospel is necessary because there is such a thing as “the wrath of God”. Verse 18 tells of a vertical brokenness (ungodliness) and a horizontal brokenness (unrighteousness of men). Another term for this is sin. When we choose to sin, we express contempt for God’s character, calling bad things good. The verse ends with the phrase “suppress the truth”. In other words, a choice is made to sin. The natural world bears witness to God through its beauty, complexity, and design. Creation testifies to the existence, greatness, power, and glory of God. God, who is invisible and unknowable, has made Himself both visible and knowable through what He has made (Psalm 19). So, verses 19-20 show us that it is against this deliberate human rebellion that God’s wrath is revealed. It is His righteous opposition to evil, and is directed against people who have a knowledge of God’s truth through creation, but deliberately suppress it in order to pursue their own way. Verse 22 it says, “claiming to be wise, they become fools”. In Greek societies, someone who was a “moros” deserved to be silenced because the Greeks despised volitional stupidity. Paul is saying that man chooses to be stupid in his disobedience to a good and loving God. The heart of Paul’s message is idolatry. An idol is any person, place, thing, or thought that you look to in order to get your needs met apart from God. Today’s idols are more “mental than metal”. In verse 23, Paul is saying that this is the worst possible exchange. Man turns his back from the Creator to the created. In other words, “those made in the image of God start making God in the image of man.” Even when people refuse to acknowledge and depend on God, they do not stop worshipping. We always worship someone or something. It is how we are created. The consequence of idolatry is the moral disintegration of human society (v 24-32). We have a habit of looking to the gift rather than the Giver (Jer 2:11-13). Verse 24 says, “therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.” His anger goes quietly and invisibly to work in handing sinners over to themselves. Idolatry leads to immorality. The vertical disobedience leads to horizontal disobedience (v 26-28). The men and women of Rome practiced homosexuality, which Paul calls out as “unnatural”. Whether it is homosexual sin or heterosexual sin, it is all sin and is not a part of God’s plan for His creation. Sex is to be between one man and one woman who are married as a part of a covenant relationship. That is God’s way. Paul ends this portion by saying, “as a society, you asked to be free from God. This is what you get.” Then he lists 21 qualities that defined the culture (v29-31). Not only do the ungodly: know God exists and that what they are doing is morally wrong but they also go further to approve of it, meaning they consent to doing evil and even praise their debauchery. (Prov 28:4) The wrath of God is all about His love. Questions to consider: Which “over-desires” (idols) do you most struggle with yourself? Do any of the sins Paul mentions in verses 26-27 and 29-31 describe you? Which ones? What will you do about that? How can you ensure that the sinfulness of the world drives you not to self-righteousness, but to the gospel message of mercy? Is there anywhere in your life where you don’t personally engage in sin, but approve of it through your actions or words? What are those things, and how did the culture lead you to that place of approval?