Tag Archives: wrath

God is letting us know we matter to him (Rom. 1:18-32)

In this brief look at Romans, we’ve already seen Paul’s delight in and focus on God’s good news. God is showing us his righteousness. And he’s revealing it by declaring that those who trust him are also right—in his eyes. Given our constant desire to be ‘right’, it’s hard to imagine any news that could be better—but more about this later.

In the mean-time, there’s something else to say. Paul doesn’t forget his theme. He returns to it, in almost identical words, as soon as he can[i]. But he knows that we need to discover something else first.

Another revelation is happening at the same time. It’s God’s wrath. Our Creator is not content to let us go our own way. He’s not happy with us. And he wants us to know that we matter to him.

Now it may seem to be contradictory for God to reveal that he has a gift for us, but at the same time, to reveal that we are in trouble. But then, it makes perfect sense. You can’t give anyone something they don’t want. And they won’t want it if they think they already have it. And they may be offended if you offer them what they think they have.

So, if it’s good that God is revealing his righteousness, it’s also good that he is revealing his wrath. We need to know what we need.

Paul talks about Gentiles first—people who haven’t grown up knowing about God’s revelations in the Bible. Then he speaks to Jews who, for ages, have had the benefit of hearing what God has to say. 

So, to the first group—to the world in general, here’s what Paul says[ii].

First, God is always revealing himself—to everyone. This is not offered as a proof. It’s a personal communication.

Everything we can see, including ourselves, is evidence—a never ending supply of it—that God is real and present and engaged. So, if we say he isn’t real, it’s because we’re choosing not to know him.

Second, those who reject God must elevate something else to take his place. We can’t exist without someone or something to look up to. So, we worship what is made, or something we make—anything but God himself. And something we can attempt to control.

Third, because we are disconnected from what is real, our thinking and affections become—over time—pointless and dark. God gives us up to the results of our choices [iii].

Paul lists a number of things that would have been clearly visible in the first century Roman world. He mentions impurity, passion and sexual license. Community life is rife with everything that makes it hard to live together—envy, deceit, malice, slander and boasting, for example.

Here’s where we need to read what Paul says carefully. What is provoking God to wrath is not, first of all, what people are doing but what they are believing. They’re living as though he doesn’t exist. Their behaviour is a consequence. It’s what God has given them up to—to awaken them to where their choice leads.

They think they have dismissed God, but what they are doing is happening because God has given them over to their own choices.

And of course, what Paul says about the first century world is happening in our communities as well. The evidence for God is abundant. And so is the evidence of what happens when we dismiss him as irrelevant.

Disbelief in the true God is a majority position in much or our world. So is the idea that we should be free to follow our own passions. And so is the belief that prosperity and happiness follow when we remove restraints.

But the generations that are abandoning faith in God in our communities are not growing richer, stronger or happier. And if we can see that this is happening, we are watching God revealing his wrath.

And, interestingly, if we choose to live without God, we have to congratulate each other for choosing our own life-style. Everyone has an inbuilt need to be acknowledged as right. So, because we don’t know the righteousness of God, we have to create an approval of our own. Only this can explain the constant stream of ‘virtue signaling’ that we are hearing.

We’ve come to the end of this first section. But next, there’s a section, three times as long, to show that we are all in the same predicament. Paul talks to those who believe in God.

For Paul’s first century world, this is Jews. For us, it is ourselves who go to churches, read Bibles and say prayers. I hope you stay with this! Paul will show that God’s wrath, rather than being ‘revealed’, is being ‘stored up’[iv].

If we don’t understand ourselves or our predicament, we may not understand the message God wants us to understand—that real righteousness always comes to us as a gift.

I hope you are encouraged by all this. God is not content to stand by and see what happens. He’s revealing himself—to everybody.

[i] Rom. 1:17; 3:21

[ii] Rom. 1:18-32

[iii] Vv. 24, 26, 28

[iv] Rom. 2:5

God is everyone’s Judge (Romans 2:1—3:20)

We’re taking a quick overview of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Here’s the third in the series—looking at Romans 2:1—3:20.

Paul has shown us that those who reject any knowledge of God, are under his wrath.

But Paul now speaks to people who do believe in God—in his case, Jews. They also need a Saviour.  They have the same problem as those who don’t believe in God. In this case, God’s wrath may not be immediately evident, but it is being ‘stored up’ against them[i].

Paul loves these fellow Jews[ii]. And when he finally gets to Rome, he wastes no time in going to speak to them[iii]. He writes this letter to prepare the way for his visit. Many Jews at this time imagine they are living under God’s blessing, but, in fact, if they don’t know Jesus Christ as Saviour, they are living under the threat of God’s wrath.

We may be asking ourselves if we really need to be concerned with a problem that belongs in the first century. Perhaps we should skip this section and go straight to chapter 3 verse 21 where Paul picks up his theme again.

But this is to misunderstand out situation. Paul spends three times as long to show that Jews need a new righteousness as he does in making the same point about Gentiles. Believers in God take more persuading than pagans!

Jews are the people who have been given God’s revelation—the law[iv]. They know ‘the riches of God’s kindness’[v]. They have been circumcised, the sign that they belong to God by covenant[vi]. They are very different to Gentiles because they have the benefit of God’s word. And, because of the restraining effect of what they know, they are not being given up to their sins in the same way that Gentiles are—not yet.

But Paul is saying that Jews do the same things as Gentiles—a point that Gentiles have been noticing[vii]. So, Jews will be judged, just as Gentiles are being judged[viii].

If people say they believe in God, their faith is meant to be something real, not a performance. But, in fact, these first century Jews are ‘under sin’[ix]. They have become slaves of what they do—as Jesus has already taught[x]. They have put to one side his call for them to respond to God’s kindness and live as his people. They feel free to live as they please.

In the midst of all this, these Jews are proud of their faith and their heritage. They boast about belonging to God and boast about having God’s law[xi]. Here’s the problem. They are proud. They are the centre of their own religion. They are trying to produce a righteousness of their own. God knows this is impossible and is offering a better way, but the Jews are too concentrated on themselves to give up what they see as their right.

They are like the Gentiles they look down on, and so, are subject to the same wrath. The wrath may not yet be evident, but it is being ‘stored up’[xii]. This is no idle threat. The judgement that is going to fall on Jerusalem has already been enough to bring Jesus to tears as he looked over the city[xiii].

So, what about us? Are there similarities between us and the Jews of Paul’s time? Do we have God’s revelation—the gospel? Have we been baptized and recognised as a member of God’s people? Do we know God is kind and forgiving? Do we know how to be good and to keep ourselves out of trouble?

This may look good, but if this is all we have, it is not a righteousness made in heaven. Our faith is meant to be an inward work of God, produced by the Holy Spirit[xiv]. It is meant to be life-changing. Is this what God has done in our lives? I hope it is.

But then, if we are, in fact, living to please our idols, secretly immoral or harbouring hatred against our neighbors, ought we not to fear God’s wrath?

Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, does the same as Paul does here. He shows that his fellow Jews are far from keeping God’s commands and are in danger of hell fire[xv].

In the same way that Gentiles can see through the hypocrisy of Jews in the first century[xvi], our neighbours and family can see through our hypocrisy. They know when we love the same things that they love and fear the same things that they fear.

And, in the same way that unbelievers resist what they know about God, it can also be true that we who are identified as God’s people, in fact, live with ‘no fear of God before our eyes’[xvii].

Paul is not trying to be nasty. He’s not merely trying to get our attention with accusations. He’s telling us the sober truth. Everyone has a problem with sin. Everyone. So, everyone has a problem with God’s wrath[xviii].

We may not be feeling this uncertainty, but if we are not sharing with Paul in the relief and joy of God’s gift of righteousness, it can only mean that we are trying to process our moral uncertainty without the benefit of his gift.

We live in a deeply moralistic society. Our tendency is to believe that the good we do should be noticed and rewarded. This can affect us so that we get huffy if our good works are not noticed or appreciated. Why this insecurity? It’s because we are still relying on a righteousness we perform rather than a righteousness God gives.

We need to bring this insecurity out into the open. God is angry with acts of sin, and with sinners who do these things. Believing that we are keeping ahead of our bad deeds with our good deeds is not covering our wound.

It’s not just our sin that’s giving us problems. It’s not just our conscience.  It’s what God plans to do about our sin that makes us uneasy.

Paul has pulled the cover off the problem we have so that we can appreciate why the gospel is so necessary and so good. We are being offered a righteousness we can never produce. But it is only useful if we cease boasting about ourselves and come to God in humility and thankful faith.

David is a good example of where we need to be as those who believe in God. He commits a nasty sin. He knows he has no excuse for what he has done. He’s in trouble. But he knows that God is gracious and may be approached for mercy.

So, David asks God to forgive him. But here’s why he confesses his sin. ‘…so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgement’[xix]. He’s saying that God is right to be angry with him.

Everything we do matters to God. That’s why sin is serious. And that’s why there needs to be righteousness that God gives. Apart from that we won’t be able to ‘stand in the judgement’[xx].

What follows now in this letter of Romans is how God equips us to stand in his presence, humbled, justified, and unashamed.

[i] Rom. 2:5

[ii] Rom. 9:1-3

[iii] Acts 28:16-17

[iv] Rom. 3:2

[v] Rom. 2:4; Exod. 34:6

[vi] Rom. 2:25

[vii] Rom. 2:1, 21-24

[viii] Rom. 2:5-11

[ix] Rom. 3:9

[x] John 8:33-37

[xi] Rom. 2:17, 23

[xii] Rom. 2:5

[xiii] Luke 19:41-44

[xiv] Rom. 2:28-29

[xv] Matt. 5:21-26

[xvi] Rom. 2:24

[xvii] Rom. 3:18

[xviii] Rom. 3:9, 19

[xix] Psa. 51:4; quoted by Paul in his argument in Rom. 3:4

[xx] Psa. 1:5

How Good it is that God is Judge (3)

This is the third article in a series about God as Judge. I have hoped to show why Christians can savour this truth and in what way. The other two articles are further down in the blog.

What does it mean that God is Judge of the whole world? It’s easy to dismiss this because he doesn’t seem to do anything, and the powers we answer to are more likely to wear wigs, or blue uniforms, and our brush with them has probably been minimal. Then again, our popular teachers say we are our own masters and that the idea of any external arbiter should be dismissed.

I am unlikely to persuade someone that God is Judge if they don’t already believe that Jesus is the world’s Saviour. Our persuading begins with him. He is the way God has explained himself. He explains what he means by judgement by sending his Son in the likeness of our sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin (Romans 8:3). What happens to him and how he receives what happens to him is what God means by judgement. Jesus said, ‘Now is the judgement of this world,’ and he was speaking about his own death (John 12:31). It is this event that gives all that we are saying its moral credibility.

The Apostle Paul had a conversation with a Roman governor, Felix, about faith in Jesus Christ. That was his starting point, but his conversation included, necessarily, ‘righteousness, self-control and judgment to come’, which left Felix frightened, and the discussion ended (Acts 24:24-27). The same thing would probably happen today. But I’m not primarily interested in what modern people are likely to believe but rather, what is true. At the end of the day, that is what is going to matter.

In fact, God is always doing what he needs to do to tell us that this world is his. When the gospel is being preached, he is revealing his righteousness—the true way of being right before God. Paul puts this in the present tense because God is revealing himself, and revealing how to relate to him, by having his servants preach the gospel. At the same time Paul says God is revealing his wrath (Romans 1:16-18). How this happens may seem surprising, and, I suspect, is often misunderstood.

Paul lists a number of things that are going wrong with his first century world, a list not too different from one we may compile for our own century. But he is not telling us that these things are wrong. He assumes we know that. He is saying that when people do these things, God is revealing his wrath—to them and to the world at large. The sin in this passage is not bad behaviour but repressing what God is revealing about himself. So when people do whatever they like, give way to lusts, degrading passions including homosexuality, depraved minds, wickedness, greed, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, insolence, boasting, untrustworthiness, lack of mercy, and pride in doing these things, God is revealing his wrath. People don’t just do these things, they can’t help doing them because God has given them up to them. This means that the very people who think there is no God to assess or reward their actions are actually in the hands of God.

Contrary to popular belief, God is not naturally angry but is provoked to anger by those who live their life as though he were not around. He is jealous for the affection and obedience of the creatures he has formed. He wants to give himself to them and to give them a full life. When he gives us up to our own choices, it is as though Christ himself is saying, as he said to Paul earlier, ‘It is hard for you to kick against the goads’ (Acts 26:14).

Paul’s letter is written to Christians and it is we who need to know how God acts as Judge. If we take judgement into our hands, we get it wrong. Wrath is God’s affair, not ours, but he is doing what is right in regard to people who ignore him. Our task is to be witnesses to Jesus Christ, and, in the context of that revelation of love, to tell people about judgement.

If we know God is gracious, we can see these things. We can see how God gives people over to their sins and to the social consequences of them. The world can’t see its own dilemma. Nor can it see the way God is caring for those who trust him.

The prophet Isaiah refers to this phenomenon (Isa. 26:1-12). He describes God caring for those who honour him and his law and who long for him to intervene in their world. They may be afflicted and helpless (v. 6) but know that God’s hand is ‘lifted up’ (v. 11) to save them. Their path is ‘smooth’ and ‘level’ (v. 7). They have ‘perfect peace’ (v. 3). On the other hand, God’s hand is ‘lifted up’, not only to bless his people but also to be angry with those who ignore him; his judgements are in the land (v. 9). As a result of this, things go wrong, terribly wrong (vv. 5-6). Still, says Isaiah, they can’t see it (vv. 10-11).

I wonder if we can see the parallels to this in our situation. God’s judgements are being revealed in our land. This can be tricky because there is often no direct correlation between evil and suffering. Many people get away with evil for many years and others seem to suffer innocently. But then, there are social consequences of some actions that ought to register as a moral result of actions.Here are some examples.

  • When people give free reign to their passions, they release a euphoria that can’t be sustained. Freedom and good will are eroded by permissiveness because demands for selfish pleasure increase. Peter Lowman has some articles that show Western secular writers over recent centuries confessing that without God, we have no substantial basis for purpose, meaning, ethics or love. You can read them at http://www.bethinking.org/atheism/after-god.
  • In economic terms, we are trying to build a generous economy out of selfish people and it’s not working. Our politicians try their best and speak to us warmly about how we should be able to live but they can’t produce it. And the pie we are trying to share is shrinking. We think capitalism will spread the wealth but it was not designed for that. It was put forward as the best was to generated wealth, not spread it. Only generous people can make a generous economy.
  • Then again, we are trying to make happy families by changing partners, and that’s not working either. Just ask the children affected by this. On a wider scale, we want the nations to behave like a family and be reasonable, but we have no Father God to call us to account and demonstrate tender strength.
  • And again, we are trying to define goodness by majority decisions and are becoming more polarized than united. Is this just because other people are unreasonable? Or is it saying that goodness must be defined by someone greater than us all of us put together?

In many respects, our postulating in the West about knowing what is good for the world sounds to me like the Emperor who paraded naked because he had been persuaded that his invisible ‘clothes’ were beautiful. A young boy in the crowd said, ‘The Emperor’s got no clothes’, not realising he was supposed to make out that the Emperor did have clothes on. The fact is, we are not doing well. This may sound like the naïve cry of someone uninformed about public affairs, but it should be obvious.

These dysfunctional aspects of our way of life are God’s judgement. He loves us too much to let us indulge our fantasies and is speaking to us by being what he is — our Judge. The world may not be willing to acknowledge this. Rather, as someone quipped, we look for ‘a breakthrough a day to keep the crisis at bay’. Something else must be the problem, not us.

It is important for Christians to know these things because they are the background for our announcing the good news of Jesus Christ. Somewhere, there will be people who can no longer be sated with the goodies of this world and who know life cannot proceed without righteousness, not in this life or the next, and they will hear our good news with different ears.

It is important for us Christians to know, also, that God’s hand has been, and is being, ‘lifted up’ in our favour. Have we seen the enormity of Christ rising from the dead to abolish death? Do we know how amazing it is to be forgiven for all our sins and to stand righteous before God, forever? It is easy, when things are going well, to ‘not need’ the favour of God because the world already favours us enough. We slip into thinking God is only interested in the present world and that he doesn’t want to give us any more. Let us remember that his hand is ‘lifted up’, as Judge, in our favour, and nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39). That is what we need to know.

We have stood where judgement fell on this world because God sees us as united to Christ in his crucifixion. Judgement fell on us well and truly. We know the fervour of his wrath and the heat of his holiness. Jesus Christ endured its pain, but we know it as a moral power (Rom. 6:4-6; Gal. 2:20; 5:24; 6:14; Col. 3:3-6). We love God for his holiness and for his love in reaching out to us in this way. We see the need for people to know this gracious God and cannot think God unkind when his wrath is revealed. God gives us confidence to stand before him, even when things are tough, and this is evidence, at least to us, that we are being saved. It may also be evidence to some that they are not (Phil. 1:28; 2 Thes. 1:5).

The world’s Saviour is still our Judge. We call on him as Father but should fear him as one who judges impartially (1 Peter. 1:17). Then again, Peter tells us, ‘It is time for judgement to begin with the household of God’ (1 Peter 4:17). He then talks about judgement coming to those who reject the gospel. We have to get the balance right because we will not be convincing to the world about God being Judge if we do not live before him ourselves. All the letters Christ sends to the churches in the book of Revelation (chapters 2 and 3) talk about Christ standing, effectively, as Judge among his people. He speaks about what he has for and against them, what they should do to remedy defects and what he promises to those who hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He does this, not to throw doubt on the salvation of his people but to ensure that the light from his churches burns brightly.

Picking up the exhortations Christ gives in these letters, let us ask ourselves these questions. Do we love Christ fervently, endure under trial, hate what he hates and love what he loves, live by his word and trust in his righteousness alone? These are the things Christ watches over us to produce in his church. Those Christ loves he rebukes and chastens.

If we know God is our Judge and that this judging has been entrusted to Christ, we have the proper sense of how our gospel must come to those who don’t know Christ. Paul said, ‘Knowing the fear of God, we persuade others’ (2 Corinthians 5:11-21). Through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we have a proper understanding of our responsibility to God, a deep gratefulness for the love of Christ, a due sense of its cost and a hearty enjoyment of our new place in God’s favour. As such, we can say to others, with moral earnestness, ‘Be reconciled to God’. The stakes are high, and the rewards real. It is no fiction to say, ‘How good it is that God is Judge!’

I wrote the following poem some years back and I hope it captures some of what I have been saying in these articles.

§§§§§§§§§§§§

Sovereign Lord your hand is guiding

All the destinies of man.

Nations, families, cultures, kingdoms,

Flow as water through your hand.

Yet your rule is kind and good, Strong and wise and gentle;

Leaving none who seek you crushed

But calmed and gladly humbled.

 

Sovereign Judge the world is aching

Through its shame and wrongful ways.

You are showing your displeasure

In the tumults of our age

Yet your wrath is righteousness,

Purging our pollution;

Wishing not we be condemned,

But that we be chastened.

 

Sovereign Father, all your actions

Lead us to your own dear Son,

By whose death all failure’s terrors

Are absolved, forever shunned.

By your unexpected love You have won us Father.

Let us do what pleases you,

Be your new creation.

 

Sovereign Lord and Judge and Father,

Hallowed by your holy name.

May your kingdom come in glory,

May your gracious will be done.