Romans 1:18-19
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
When we look at Romans 1:18-23 we can see two equally confusing things, God’s wrath and his truth, and our human foolishness that leads to our incomplete conception of God, so to understand we need to delve into these verses more deeply.
In our understanding of God we conceive him to be loving, forgiving, and kind (just to state the bare minimum of his vast number of qualities). While that is all true, we can then find the problem to our confusion of God’s wrath to be us. We all know that our God is a God of justice so it can be inferred that he would carry out his justice to even the most extremist measures, but we are also faced with his qualities of unending love and constant forgiveness. So then we say God can’t do that? That’s not fair? Or why would a good God do that to me? The answer to that is simple; we think of God in human terms while his qualities transcends what we know because God is faithful we are not, God executes justice we prevent it, God is fair because he has kept every promise he has ever promised but we don’t. So no matter how much forgiveness and love he showers on us he must be faithful to his word and save the righteous but also punish the unrighteous. While we may see that as harsh, in reality it is not even close because time and time again God has given us chance over chance to ask for forgiveness and repent; the choice is all ours since God gave us the key to open the door to salvation. It is our choice whether we open it or not.
In the later verses of this passage we can also see how the unrighteous “suppress the truth” in this case “suppressing the truth” would mean not accepting God for everything he is. In verse 19 it says “since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” From that we can see that God has revealed himself to us and we know that God is the truth, yet when we perceive God incorrectly we surprise part of his truth. It goes into talk about more of his qualities that have been here from the beginning of creation. At this point God had done everything possible to reveal himself to us; he is everlasting and has been here from the beginning of time as well as never changing through it all and is in everything and everywhere all around us; yet we still seem to say that we don’t know him. That answer is pretty much inexcusable since God has done about everything yet we can’t seem to find it in us to acknowledge what all he is to us.
The rest of this passage talks about how even if we know God, we avoid worshiping, glorifying, or thanking him at all, but instead our mind and hearts have strayed to the foolish ways of the world rather than God’s righteousness. This (denying God of what he deserves) is sin and sin is the rejection of God as God. Sin is the transgression of God’s law. It also says how we substitute God for perishable materials. Can’t we see the foolishness? We are exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images that resemble humans and animals. How can we possibly think this is a good exchange? We have traded away worship to the Creator of all things for the worship of created things. We worship our jobs rather than God. We worship our friends and families rather than God. We worship our possessions rather than God. We worship our bank accounts rather than God. We worship our bodies and its desires rather than God. We worship ourselves rather than God. How is this a smart exchange? Why are we worshiping ourselves and the things we own? We can’t control anything and the things we are worshiping break and fade.
To conclude we have to remember to spend time getting to know God and ALL his qualities and to put him first in our lives above everything else so he can fill us with the qualities it take to be his light.
Prayer-Thank you Holy father for sending your son Jesus.Thank you that he came from his home in heaven and set aside his glory to live a perfect life and die as a substitution for me on the cross.He rose again on third day ,so that we may believe in him and help us to remain obedient to the word of God.In Jesus name,we pray,AMEN.
MTCFB Youth 