“I am eager to preach the gospel to you also… I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…
Paul, to the saints (believers, mostly former pagans now Christians) in Rome.
God’s Wrath on Unrighteousness
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.
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Are you an unrighteous fool?
Paul calls those of false religions, ‘fools.’ They worship cows and cats, ancestors departed and places on earth destined to destruction. They seek bearded sages or force upon the downtrodden ideology of glorious conquest.
Consider the glory of the LORD, the heavens and the earth. NO big bang nor pain-stakingly slow sequence of unlikely perfect events could have created the earth upon which we walk or this miraculously intricate body which walks upon it.
The vastness and perfection of the heavens is immeasurably beyond the comprehension of created man (adam).
Think about those who are unrighteous. Think about the sins these inflict on you. Consider their sins against many, these sins of the ungodly, who will be called to account at the Judgment seat by the LORD who they refuse to worship. Paul describes these. You can likely put many faces to Paul’s long descriptive list of unrighteousness.
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.
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We see the faces of those who deserve God’s wrath. In all fairness, when will the LORD finally destroy the evil of the unrighteous?
How long, O Lord, until Your Holy wrath consumes the evil which plagues us?
A fair question. How long will God contend with their evil? … their evil … evil?
Have I forgotten anything I should ask of God?
To be continued…
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