Romans Chapter 1Why the Gospel is Needed - Part 2

The Reality of God’s Wrath - Part B





Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

To preach gentle Jesus, meek and mild, without preaching the Jesus who will tread out the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty – that self-same Jesus {#Re 19:15} – is not only foolhardy but blasphemous! Many in our day and age have succumbed to sentimentality and come to altogether ignore what is regarded as an unnecessarily harsh and unsavoury emphasis on hell and damnation in prior generations. The latter-day proclaimers of neo-evangelicalism may have good motives, but they have also gone way too far in redressing the situation.

This is truly the age of grace. God has sent His son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. But the moment for repentance is always now, for there will come a moment for everyone who does not believe when the time for repentance has passed. We must preach Christ but we must preach all of Him as He is found in scripture. We must not neglect to preach the 14% of His sayings that spoke of judgment and hell and damnation.

Is a servant greater than His Master? Are we morally superior to Christ because we are too dainty to speak boldly the facts of the gospel? We preach, "Repent and believe and you will be saved!" But men must know what it is they repent of and, in order for men to know what it is, it must be preached to them. The Holy Spirit will take it and do as He sees fit, but we are not to "hobble" the Spirit by curtailing the truth. To quote Dr. James White, "God has freed us to proclaim the gospel, not to edit it."

It is for the overarching sins of "ungodliness" and "unrighteousness" that men are condemned. "Ungodliness" is a lack of proper reverence for God, and "unrighteousness" is, in the final analysis, "a failure to conform in disposition and conduct to God's perfect standard of right and justice."

Paul will develop the argument more fully later, but it is noteworthy that ungodliness is the source, and that unrighteousness is the result. Ungodliness is a condition of the heart, or essence, manifested through acts of the will - whereas unrighteousness is the fruit of the heart's condition. Jesus said it perfectly:

"What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man." {Mark 7:20-23}

The thrust of Paul's statements, and of his subsequent arguments is that all men need a righteousness that comes from God, but that they first need a new essence, or heart, from which that righteousness can issue.

Now begins the long litany of the willful rebellion of man. It explains why the world of men is the way it is. We shall see a trinity of judgments from God upon mankind’s headlong slide into every sort of evil. “Therefore, God gave them up…” is the threefold cry of the remainder of Romans Chapter 1.