Page 19 - Romans Student Textbook.doc

God’s wrathful judgment rightly falls on those you reject His revelation of Himself and worship what He
created instead of Him. (1:18-23)

That emotional response is wrath. With that first phase Paul established the personality of God and set
man’s rebellion in the context of a personal violation of relationship. His point in his first paragraph is
simply that God’s wrathful judgment on those who willfully reject His revelation of Himself and choose to
worship what he made over Him is a right and righteous response. Paul’s point was simply that it was
right and proper for God to be angry at mankind’s pursuit of his own path.

Paul’s assertion was that God had openly and
obviously shown Himself, His power and His
glory in the very things He has made and the
proper response to such mercy and grace was
to worship Him as righteous, holy and true. To
not see this in and through God’s created
order was to purposefully and willfully
suppress God’s intentional revelation of
Himself. Doing that made mankind culpable
before God for their foolishness in forsaking
the worship of God for images made in the
form of things that God had created.

God’s means of judgment on those who have willfully rejected Him has been to allow them to be
captured by and enslaved to their own unrighteous desires. (1:24-32)

Next, Paul pointed out just how it was that God has expressed His just wrath against mankind’s sin. What
God did was allow people to become so enamored by their desires that they have willingly and
purposefully become slaves to those desires. God’s means of judgment on those who have willfully
rejected Him has been to allow them to be captured by and enslaved to their own unrighteous desires.

Paul’s description in this paragraph of the nature of those desires and the ways that they displayed
themselves in the societies of this world is graphic. He did not pull any punches. His terminology was
pointed and vulgar. He did not waste time trying to rationalize their sin. He described it in all of its
offensive ugliness. His conclusion was that the reason the cultures of the world are in the state that he
described them as being in is that God has chosen to vent His anger and wrath at their sin by giving up on
them. In three places Paul described this activity of God as “gave them up to” (1:24, 26, 28). In other
words, he let them go their own way and doomed them to live with the dire consequences of their own
choices. He did not intervene to keep them from being as bad as they could be. Paul summarized the full
expression of their rebellion this way, “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice
such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them.”23
In other words, not only did they personally rebel against God even though they knew of Him, they also
encouraged everyone else to follow their lead.

God’s impartial judgment will fall on all people over whether or not they do His will. (2:1-16)

Therefore, you are without excuse, O man, everyone who judges, for in that which you judge
the other person, yourself you are condemning, for the same things you who are judging do.
Now we know that the judgment of God is according to truth upon the ones who are
practicing such things. Now do you consider this thing, O man who judges the ones practicing
such things and are doing the same things, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or of
the riches of His kindness and tolerance and long suffering are you despising, failing to comprehend that

23 Romans 1:32, ESV.
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