God's Ear

Romans Bible Study #2

1:16-2:10

THE WRATH OF GOD AGAINST ALL HUMANKIND—1:16-3:20

Nobody can plead innocence, because nobody can plead ignorance

1:18-32 → Depraved Gentile society. Idolatrous, immoral, and antisocial.

2:1-16 → Critical moralizers. Profess high ethical standards, applying them to everyone but themselves.

2:17-3:8 → Self-confident Jews. Have knowledge of God's law, but don't obey it.

3:9-20 → The whole human race. All guilty and without excuse before God (Stott; 68).

In Aramaic, the word for life and salvation are the same. In this sense, salvation is not something one looks forward to at the end of life, but now too (Bruce).

Q #1: Does that fact change your perception of salvation? How?

Q #2: Respond to the following statement: Man's greatest obstacle was extinguished in Christ's work on the cross. The shackles of sin and death were destroyed, and man is free to follow after God.

READ: Romans 1:16-23 - ¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Stott on wrath of God – “Does not mean that God loses His temper...The alternative to wrath is not 'love' but 'neutrality' in the moral conflict. And God is not neutral. On the contrary, His wrath is His holy hostility to evil, His refusal to condone it or come to terms with it, His just judgement upon it” (72).

Hodge's explanations: Ungodliness and unrighteousness are not synonyms. The former means impiety and the latter immorality. They are distinct types of general sinning, not a crescendo of evil behavior.

Verse 19– What can be known about God is plain to them → An internal witness to the reality of God.

Q #3: Respond to Romans 1:19, 20.

Q #4: Why do you think that man is consumed with idolatry?

READ: Romans 1:24-32 ²⁴ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; ²⁷ and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
²⁸ And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, ³¹ foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³² Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Barth describes man's desire to create both false gods and perception of Yahwey as the 'No-God'

Barclay reminds us that what Paul had to say about Roman society was no different than what Roman philosophers and historians said about Romans:

Virgil: Right and wrong are confounded.

Tacitus: I am entering upon the history of a period, rich in disasters, gloom with wars, rent with sedition, savage in its very hours of peace.

Suetonius: No day passed but someone was executed.

Propertius: I see Rome, proud Rome, perishing, the victim of her own prosperity.

Seneca: Stricken with the agitation of a soul no longer master of itself.
Clement of Alexandria: Speaking of a typical Roman society lady as girt like Venus with a golden girdle of vice.

Q #5: Reading through this list of sins God gives unrepentant sinners over to, do you think the list is archaic or helpful for today's society? Why is recognizing sin as sin always liberating?

TIME FOR PRAYER: All of us can pick a sin, or sins, from this list of sins in these verses and identify with them or feel the chagrin of participating in them. I want to remind you of 1 Jn 1:9, and tell you that God honors our prayers for forgiveness.

-As we read these verses, get ready to be put in your place if you start thinking “those miserable malcontents; someday they will receive their just reward when God judges them!” When I worked through these verses almost two years ago, I found myself pricked to the core of my conscience, at times, fearing for my own salvation.