“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. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – nave been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.“1
Theologians more erudite than I have been writing on this passage for two thousand years. Nothing I say here is going to add anything to the discussion. My goal is simply to review the basics so that my readers have a handle on the “obviousness” of Christianity.
Paul is saying that Christianity is important because it describes an obvious reality, but a reality that is so painful for people to admit is there, they suppress it by willfully ignoring, denying and obfuscating it.
What is that reality? Simply put, it’s that God exists and that he is personal and holy. Paul says everyone knows this: it’s “plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” How? Through the creation of the world. Or, in theology-speak, through “natural revelation.”
Paul says that when people look at the visible world, we should deduce something invisible: that a personal creator who is all powerful and who is also holy exists. But here’s the question: one can see that created things need a creator, but how does one deduce from the physical world that the creator is also moral?
The answer is us. We also are a part of God’s creation, a part of God’s natural revelation. Everyone knows from their own subjective experience that good and evil exist. We cannot live our lives for one minute without acknowledging this. Thus, natural revelation has revealed to everyone who has ever lived that an all powerful creator exists (by us looking outward) and that this creator is personal and holy (by us looking inward). Both our physical world and our interior selves are inescapable realities for us.
And yet, Paul says that everyone suppresses this reality by turning away from God and indulging instead in evil and destructive behaviors. Why? Because we know that God is personal and holy, but that we are personal and unholy. We are, so to speak, sideways with God. And we know this but actively try to deny it.
It’s this refusal to acknowledge the obvious truth of our circumstances that makes God so angry. God’s wrath is constantly being revealed from heaven, for example quite literally in natural disasters, accidents, and other horrible events. These tragedies are God’s warning shots across our bow, precursors to our coming judgment.2
Paul goes on in the book of Romans to give God’s solution to this sad situation humanity find itself in: faith in Jesus Christ as God’s provision for our sin. But our message begins with first helping obscurantists acknowledge the obvious: that God exists and is holy, and we are not.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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