Romans: God's Wrath Against Our Unrighteousness / God's Grace for Our Righteousness

Well, good morning.

We are continuing our study through the book of Romans.

This is Paul's theological masterpiece, a letter that he wrote to a church in Rome.

I thought we'd first begin with getting a definition of the gospel.

What is the gospel?

What does that mean when we say gospel-centered or the gospel, the goodness of the gospel?

Martin Luther in the 1500s, he said this: Through faith in Christ, therefore, Christ's righteousness becomes our righteousness, and all that he has becomes ours.

John Calvin, another reformer during that Protestant Reformation, he said this: A man will be justified by faith when, excluded from righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, enclothed in it, appears in the sight of God, not as a sinner, but as righteous.

So the gospel is being right with God, accepted, forgiven, righteous, eternity is sealed, being right with God by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

It is a one-way gift, the one-way love of God to us.

He gives, we receive.

So to summarize, we can say it this way.

We have said it this way, we say it often.

The way of religion is obey, and then you're accepted.

The way of the world is perform, earn, look, achieve, have, gather, accumulate, and then you are accepted.

The way of the gospel is you are already accepted in Jesus.

Therefore, obey.

See, we are rescued by Jesus from our sin of self-justification, that we are gonna justify ourselves in this world to be important.

We're gonna justify ourselves in the church by our good deeds.

And we're rescued from this.

Three years ago, my neighbor Katie next door gave me about five clumps of elephant's ear.

I don't know if you know that plant.

It's a it has like a fuzzy texture to it.

It's it's right there, a little drainage area of my backyard.

I planted it, didn't look impressive three years ago.

It was just like five different clumps.

In year two, it looked okay.

And this is, I took this picture this week because I was looking, I was like, this is finally looking good.

I was like, I was kind of liking it.

I was like, this is looking nice.

Third year, it just needed to receive, it just needed some time.

My point is this the earth does not produce the sun and the rain that it needs, it has to receive it.

And it is exactly how we don't produce the righteousness we need.

We have to receive it.

But we really like trying to produce our righteousness.

Author and Pastor Tim Keller, he writes this, describing how we like to prove our righteousness.

It's a long quote, but bear with me, it's pretty good.

There's another, a far better righteousness, which Paul calls the righteousness of faith, Christian righteousness.

This one must be distinguished from the rest because it works in a completely different way from the others.

There are other kinds of righteousness we can work at ourselves by our own strength, but this righteousness, this Christian righteousness, is the greatest of all.

God puts it on us without our lifting a finger.

It has nothing to do with obeying God's law.

It has nothing to do with what we do or how hard we work, but it is given to us and we do nothing for it.

It is a passive righteousness.

While the others we have to work for, it is a perfect righteousness, because it is the perfect record of all Christ did in the living and in the dying, while the other kinds are partial and imperfect.

It is a free righteousness, for we don't do anything or give anything to God to get it, but we receive it, because someone else has done all the work for it in our place.

Therefore, it is passive righteousness.

See, peace comes when we begin to believe that and live out of that, that it doesn't matter how beautiful or how achieving I become, and go for it.

Be beautiful and be achieving people.

You just can't use it to justify yourself, to be worthy or righteous.

Keller goes on.

This passive righteousness is a mystery that someone who doesn't know Jesus can't understand.

As a matter of fact, Christians never completely understand it themselves and do not take advantage of it when they are tried and tempted.

So we have to constantly teach it to others over and over.

We must repeat it to ourselves.

For anyone who does not understand this righteousness fails to cherish it in the heart and will continually be buffeted by fears and depression.

Nothing gives peace like this passive righteousness.

The point is this in Jesus, we get the blessing that we get to cast away our trust in anything other than Jesus to make us righteous.

That pursuit, that pressure can just go away.

All right, now our text.

Let's talk about God's wrath.

That's why you came here this morning as you're like, I'm really hoping this is the Sunday.

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.

Point number one is this God has wrath toward our ungodliness and unrighteousness.

Now, this morning I went on a walk and I listened to the worships on the blessing.

You know the worships, I mean the whole world knows this from like, may his favor be upon you and a thousand generations, and your children, and their children, your children, truth.

He's for you, he's for you, is that for me, he's for me, he's for me.

Like you're like, yes, yes, like what I want it, I want all the blessing, I want all the favor, right?

You know what?

I never once thought about God's wrath.

Not at all this morning, and then I was like, what am I preaching on?

It's like, oh, God's wrath, that's right.

In fact, I almost never think about God's wrath.

Ever.

Until like maybe I read it in a book or read it in the Bible.

So the question is, does that mean God's wrath does not exist?

Or is God's grace so astonishing?

And his love for me is so amazing, and Jesus is so sufficient that I have the blessing that I don't have to think about God's wrath.

So let's talk about God's wrath as to increase our joy in God's love for us.

Because that's what Paul is doing.

All of Paul's confidence and joy is coming from its rest upon the assumption that all human beings, you and I and him, apart from God's love, are under God's wrath.

So, what is God's wrath?

Well, God's wrath is not uncontrolled anger, it's not emotional volatility, it's not unstable.

God's wrath is God's holy opposition to sin, God's righteous response to evil, God's refusal to treat rebellion against him as morally insignificant, God's judgment against everything contrary to his righteous character.

So this all-loving, radically gracious, he is for us, he is for us.

That radically gracious God is wrathful.

And that may be hard to swallow.

This quote by Rebecca Peppert from Hope has its reason, has helped me.

I've read it several times over the years.

I keep coming back to it.

We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry.

How can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?

See, we take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others.

So what is God's problem?

But love detests what destroys the beloved.

Real love stands against the deception, the lie, and the sin that destroys.

Nearly a century ago, theologian E.

H.

Gifford wrote, Human love here offers a true analogy.

The more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, and the traitor.

Anger is not the opposite of love.

Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.

How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself?

Does he just play fast and loose with the facts?

Oh, never mind, boys will be boys.

Try telling that to a survivor of a Cambodian killing field or to someone who has lost entire family to the Holocaust.

No, to be truly good, one has to be outraged by evil and the implacably hostile to justice.

So God is holy, so our sins must be punished.

He is wrathful to them, and Jesus is so sufficient that our experience of God inside of Jesus is none of the wrath and all of the love and the grace.

So what's left for us in Jesus is one-way love, even while wrath exists, but we don't have to walk around thinking about this wrath or scared that he's gonna zap us, because in Jesus, what we have, as the New Testament says, is we have a loving Papa.

That if you want to think about what is God like to me in Jesus, we can think about him as a loving dad.

Point number two, our problem is we suppress truth.

We actively resist God's truth.

That's in verse 18.

We who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

That word suppress means to hold down.

Figure it's time for a Brock the Puppy update.

Here's my puppy.

He's eight months old now.

I think last report, we were like 50% teddy bear, 50% wolf.

We're now like 75% teddy bear, 25% wolf, somewhere in there.

So we're we're getting there, but every once in a while he just turns into a monster.

This week, it was one night this week, don't remember which one, and maybe multiple nights, to tell you the truth.

Uh he's been walked for like an hour in the heat of the day.

He's been walked, he's been played with, he's been fed, he's going down for his little evening nap.

After his nap, I go and get him, and I think take him out, let him go TT.

We're gonna snuggle and watch a show.

I let him out of his crate where he attacks me, draws blood.

So now I got him leashed to take him out to go TT.

I'm bleeding, and this dog is beginning to attack my legs.

Finally, I just have to suppress.

I hold him down to the ground.

Loving parental authority.

I just hold him down to the ground.

I suppress him.

Hold him down and do not let him up.

That's what this word is.

To hold down and do not let up.

Humanity doesn't eliminate wickedness and the suppression.

We just push it down so we don't have to deal with what's true.

Because if we have to deal with truth, we probably are gonna have to deal with stuff like our greed and our selfishness and our self-centeredness and our pride and our lust.

Paul's on a mission in these verses to help us see our need.

So let's read through it again, verse 18.

He's building a logical progression of thought.

We'll add in verses 19 and 20.

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

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.

Point number three is this God has made himself known to us through creation itself, to all of humanity through creation itself.

God reveals himself through creation, through the created order.

We call this general revelation.

It doesn't tell us about Jesus, but it speaks about all the beauty and the intricacy of creation itself.

It speaks to a creator.

Who created all of this?

Who created these processes that create all this?

Who created all these processes that hold firm and steady and run the universe?

I love nothing more than to see God in creation.

I mean, I like walking into a church, but I really love stepping into a river.

And I'll just be honest about it.

I mean, that's where I experience God the most.

It's like if I can be out in the mountains in a river for my birthday, my wife gave me this piece of artwork.

Many times in the running of a river, I have found the stillness of God.

And I'm like, amen.

I know it.

Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Some of you are like, not me.

Like I love a church or a museum or something.

Like, but that's me.

I love the creation.

Love it.

Never feel closer to God.

But as much as I love that creation, the river exists to send me onward to a creator.

See, Paul's saying something profound.

God is the initiator, even in creation itself, to be known.

God moves toward us always, right?

The passage, God has made it plain.

Christian theology begins with God revealing himself.

God makes himself known.

In the creation, we have a creator, and the visible is meant to send us to the invisible, the created order.

Oh, there's got to be a divine author.

Point number four is this God is invisible, yet God wants to be known relationally.

Two important theological ideas.

The first, general revelation.

Creation speaks of the creator God.

Special revelation is that in God's word, in real history, speaks of Jesus.

That in Jesus, the teaching and the life, the death and resurrection, we have a special revelation.

So general revelation tells us that God exists and we're accountable to him.

Special revelation tells us how God saves sinners who suppress truth and he moves toward us anyways.

1 John 2, 12 through 14.

I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.

I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I'm writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

I'm writing to you, children, because you know the Father.

I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

So that word no three times, the word no is the word gnosko, meaning perceive and understand.

Perceive and understand, to know him, to perceive God, to understand God.

This knowing the word, though the Jewish origin is the idiom speaking about sex.

I mean, this isn't just like an intellectual understanding or some religious observance.

It's not transactional.

I mean, this is speaking to know God in the most intimate way you could in the core of who you are, to know the core of who he is.

That's what John's saying.

That you could know God like that.

John's saying you can know him, you can know his goodness.

And he doesn't count any of your sin or that suppression of truth or all your unrighteousness against you.

He's not an angry God.

In Jesus, our experience of God is all the grace and all the love, even while he still hates sin.

Because it destroys people and families and people and societies.

And he holds no condemnation to me or no condemnation on you.

There was an amazing missionary that lived in the 1700s.

He lived for just 29 years, David Bernard, best looking missionary you will ever see.

He died when he was 29 years old.

He was a missionary to Native Americans.

Here's a journal entry he wrote.

I'm going to summarize it.

It's his description of him coming to know Jesus, this righteousness given to him.

When I was about 20, I gave myself more than ever to the duties of religion, watchful over my thoughts, words, and actions, reading my Bible, praying, attending closely to sermons.

Though I confessed to God that I deserve nothing, I still harbored a secret hope of recommending myself to him by all this duty and morality.

I mean, look how wholeheartedly I seek God.

But the more I tried to love God with all my soul, the more I saw how little I loved him.

The more I sought a soft heart, the more I felt how hard it was.

One night, walking alone, such a view of my sin opened before me that I feared the ground would become my grave.

It was impossible, after the utmost pains, to answer the demands of God's law.

Then one morning I saw that all my attempts to procure my own salvation were utterly in vain.

Totally impossible.

And my mind quieted.

My prayers, repentance, and obedience had not laid the least obligation on God to save me.

All my fasting and praying I had thought aimed at God's glory, but it was all for my own to feel myself worthy.

I was not worshiping him.

I was using him, trying to be my own savior.

Then the true way of salvation opened to my mind and heart, not by my own merit, but entirely by the righteousness of Christ.

I wondered how I had never seen it before.

How had I been blind to it?

And I felt myself in a new world.

Everything about me wore a different aspect than before.

Church, I'm hoping you see that.

I want to see it more.

To live in it, to rest in it, to grow in it.

A righteousness given to you that you're fully one way loved by God.

And all of your goodness and merit and achieving all of that is great as a response that you are already righteous and already accepted by God and Jesus alone.

Church, you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

If you have any questions about the sermon or need prayer, a pastor will be down front afterwards.

Let's pray together.

God, we are so thankful that you are not indifferent to our sin or the sins of the world.

You care enough to name it, and you care enough that you are angry toward it.

God, thank you that that anger does not transfer to us.

But you have put all your wrath in Jesus, who paid the price of our sin, so that we can know your grace.

That our experience of you is a relationship and the chorus of our souls of love and acceptance, of a righteousness given to us, a position and a status of your sons and daughters, saints, even while we're imperfect and broken and messy.

Help us to see Jesus all the clearer, to behold him.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.