Perhaps Paul began by showing all people's need for God's righteousness first because he was the apostle to the Gentiles and his Roman readers were primarily Gentiles. His argument in 1:18-3:20 moves inward through a series of concentric circles of humanity.
In this verse Paul explained why Gentiles need to hear the gospel and experience salvation.
God has revealed His wrath as well as His righteousness (v. 17) from heaven in the gospel.39As Paul would explain, the unfolding of history also reveals God's hatred toward sin and His judgment of sin. The moral devolution of mankind is not just a natural consequence of man's sinning but also a result of God's judgment of sinners. The final judgment of sin will occur in the eschaton (end times), but already God is pouring out His wrath against sin to a lesser degree (cf. Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6). Paul described wrath as revealed from heaven because it comes from God who is in heaven.40
"God's wrath is his divine displeasure with sin. We call it wrath' because it shares certain basic characteristics of human wrath. But because it is God's wrath it can have none of the sinful qualities of its analogical counterpart."41
"Ungodliness"means lack of reverence for God. Man's neglect of God and rebellion against God are evidences of ungodliness. "Unrighteousness"or "wickedness"(NIV) means injustice toward other human beings. We see it in any attitude or action that is unloving. Together these two words show humankind's failure to love God and other people as we should (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:37-39). Verses 19-27 demonstrate man's ungodliness, and verses 28-32 show his wickedness.
The "truth"refers to truth that people know about God (cf. v. 25). They suppress this truth by their wickedness.
". . . whenever the truth starts to exert itself and makes them feel uneasy in their moral nature, they hold it down, suppress it. Some drown its voice by rushing on into their immoralities; others strangle the disturbing voice by argument and by denial."42
1:19-20 These verses begin a discussion of "natural revelation."Natural revelation describes what everyone knows about God because of what God has revealed concerning Himself in nature. What He has revealed about Himself in Scripture is "special revelation."The creation bears testimony to its Maker, and every human being "hears"this witness (cf. Ps. 19).43
"Napoleon, on a warship in the Mediterranean on a star-lit night, passed a group of his officers who were mocking at the idea of a God. He stopped, and sweeping his hand toward the stars, said, Gentlemen, you must get rid of those first!'"44
Four things characterize this revelation. First, it is a clear testimony; everyone is aware of it ("it is evident [plain]"). Second, everyone can understand it. We can draw conclusions about the Creator from His creation.45Third, it has gone out since the creation of the world in every generation. Fourth, it is a limited revelation in that it does not reveal everything about God (e.g., His love and grace) but only some things (i.e., His power and deity). Natural revelation makes man responsible to respond to his Creator in worship and submission. However it does not give sufficient information for him to experience salvation. That is why everyone needs to hear the gospel.
"Utter uncompromising, abandonment of hope in manis the first preliminary to understanding or preaching the gospel."46
1:21-23 Honoring God as God and giving Him thanks (v. 21) are our primary duties to God in view of who He is. Mythology and idolatry have resulted from man's need to identify some power greater than himself and his refusal to acknowledge God as that power. Men and women have elevated themselves to God's position (cf. Dan. 2:38; 3:1; 5:23). In our day, humanism has replaced the worship of individual human leaders in most western countries. Man has descended to the worship of animals as well (cf. Ps. 106:20). This is perhaps more characteristic of third world countries.
"This tragic process of human god-making' continues apace in our own day, and Paul's words have as much relevance for people who have made money or sex or fame their gods as for those who carved idols out of wood and stone."47
Note the allusions to the creation story in the threefold division of the animal kingdom in verse 23.
1:24-25 The false religions that man has devised and to which Paul just referred constitute some of God's judgment on mankind for turning from Him. False religion is not in any sense good for mankind. It is a judgment from God, and it tends to keep people so distracted that they rarely deal with the true God.
"God's wrath mentioned in Romans 1 is not an active outpouring of divine displeasure but the removal of restraint that allows sinners to reap the just fruits of their rebellion."48
It is active in another sense, however. God gave man over (v. 24; cf. vv. 26, 28) by turning him over to the punishment his crime earned, as a judge does a prisoner. The third characteristic of man in rebellion against God that Paul identified after ignorance (v. 21) and idolatry (v. 23) is impurity (v. 24). Here Paul evidently had natural forms of moral uncleanness in view such as adultery and harlotry. He went on in verses 26-27 to describe even worse immorality, namely unnatural acts such as homosexuality.49
Mankind exchanged the truth of God (v. 25; cf. v. 18) for "the lie"(literally). The lie in view is the contention that we should venerate someone or something in place of the true God (cf. Gen. 3:1-5; Matt. 4:3-10). Paul's concluding doxology underlined this folly.
1:26-27 Because mankind "exchanged"the truth for the lie God allowed him to degrade himself through his passions. The result was that he "exchanged"natural human functions for what is unnatural. In the Greek text the words translated "women"(thelus; v. 26) and "men"(arsen, v. 27) mean "females"and "males."Ironically the homosexuality described in these verses does not characterize females and males of other animal species, only human beings. Homosexuality is a perversion because it uses sex for a purpose contrary to those for which God created and intended it (Gen. 1:28).
"This need not demand the conclusion that every homosexual follows the practice in deliberate rebellion against God's prescribed order. What is true historically and theologically is in measure true, however, experientially."50
AIDS, for example, is probably the consequence of man's rebellion against God rather than a special judgment from God. The "due penalty"is what man experiences as a result of God giving him over and letting him indulge his sinful desires (cf. 6:23).51
"Sin comes from the mind, which perverts the judgment. The effect of retribution is to abandon the mind to that depravity."52
"A contextual and exegetical examination of Romans 1:26-27 reveals that attempts by some contemporary writers to do away with Paul's prohibitions against present-day same-sex relations are false Paul did not impose Jewish customs and rules on his readers; instead he addressed same-sex relations from the trans-cultural perspective of God's created order. God's punishment for sin is rooted in a sinful reversal of the created order. Nor was homosexuality simply a sin practiced by idolaters in Paul's day; it was a distorting consequence of the fall of the human race in the Garden of Eden. Neither did Paul describe homosexual acts by heterosexuals. Instead he wrote that homosexual activity was an exchange of the created order (heterosexuality) for a talionic perversion (homosexuality), which is never presented in Scripture as an acceptable norm for sexuality. Also Hellenistic pederasty does not fully account for the terms and logic of Romans 1:26-27 which refers to adult-adult mutuality. Therefore it is clear that in Romans 1:26-27 Paul condemned homosexuality as a perversion of God's design for human sexual relations."53
The second key word in verse 18, "unrighteousness"(v. 29), reappears at the head of this list of man's sinful practices. It is a general word describing the evil effects in human relations that man's suppressing the knowledge of God produces. In the Greek text there is a word play that highlights God's just retribution. As people disapproved of the idea of retaining God in their thinking, so God gave them over to a disapproved mind (v. 28). This letting loose has led to all kinds of illogical and irrational behavior.
"People who have refused to acknowledge God end up with minds that are disqualified' from being able to understand and acknowledge the will of God. The result, of course, is that they do things that are not proper.' As in 1:21, Paul stresses that people who have turned from God are fundamentally unable to think and decide correctly about God and his will. This tragic incapacity is the explanation for the apparently inexplicable failure of people to comprehend, let alone practice, biblical ethical principles. Only the work of the Spirit in renewing the mind [nous]' (Rom. 12:2) can overcome this deep-seated blindness and perversity."54
Unrighteousness (v. 29; wickedness, NIV) is what is contrary to what is right or just. Wickedness (v. 29; evil, NIV) is what is vile and sinister. Greed (v. 29) is the drive to obtain more. Malice (depravity, NIV) describes resident moral evil. "Insolent"focuses on activities, "arrogant"on thoughts, and "boastful"on words.55The rest of these characteristics are self-evident.
The final step down in man's degradation is his promotion of wickedness (v. 32).56It is bad to practice these things, but it is worse to encourage others to practice them.
"Granted that commending evil is not, in the ultimate sense, worse than doing it, it is also true that in a certain respect the person who commits a sin under the influence of strong temptation is less reprehensible than the one who dispassionately agrees with and encourages a sin for which he or she feels no strong attraction him- or herself."57
Paul's use of the past tense in verses 18-32 suggests that he was viewing humanity historically. Nevertheless his occasional use of the present tense shows that he observed many of these conditions in his own day. He was viewing mankind as a whole, not that every individual has followed this general pattern of departure from God.58One expositor labeled the four stages in man's tragic devolution that Paul explained as follows: intelligence (vv. 18-20), ignorance (vv. 21-23), indulgence (vv. 24-27), and impenitence (vv. 28-32).59
