Romans 1:18-32 || Natural Revelation
Topic: Natural Revelation
Passage: Romans 1:18-32
Date: 02 August 2026
Preacher: Rev. David Browne
Introduction
“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16)
Last week Rev. Zoë ended her sermon revelling in the wonder of this verse and the depth of God’s love. These words come from a letter sent by the apostle Paul, a passionate man with good news (that’s what ‘gospel’ means), to share. He wants to visit the church in Rome and bring unity and gospel clarity, so that together Jewish and Gentile Christians might continue the mission of Jesus.
Now you might wonder why Paul would ever contemplate being ashamed of the gospel. Up to this point it’s been all good. There’s grace, peace, and power to save lives in this good news, and yet Paul’s not finished because his tone changes dramatically in v.18:
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,” (Romans 1:18)
It seems there’s bad news as well as good news. And yet today we're going to see that to understand the fullness of the gospel; to really grasp the good news of Jesus, we need to hear the bad news as well. In this sense the bad news is also good news when viewed as a whole.
Today Paul’s letter will outline the cause and the consequences of the bad news. Our worship of creation rather that our Creator is our undoing, and yet in understanding the problem we can begin see the solution.
The Cause
So let’s think about the cause.
In May this year a teacher by the name of Matt Dobson published an article under the headline “Gen Z isn’t asking why bad things happen to good people”. As a teacher working with ‘zoomers’ (people born between 1997-2012) Matt Dobson has seen a surprising change in questions this age bracket asks about God.
Instead of asking “If God is good, why do bad things happen to good people?”, young people exploring religion today are asking “Why don't bad things happen to bad people?”
For a generation that has seen cycles of war, poverty, and corruption spiral out of control, people in their teens and twenties don’t have a problem with acknowledging evil is real; they want to know whether God is going to do anything about it.
It’s likely the first Christians in Rome had similar questions. Abuse, violence, and suffering was part of life for the first Romans to put their trust in Jesus. While Christian Jews had brought the news about Jesus to Rome, all Jews were expelled from the city soon after, and the new non-Jewish converts had to cope without them, facing plenty of persecution themselves.
Paul shows us that the cause of suffering is not that God’s asleep at the wheel. Instead, it’s our suppression of the truth that gets us in this mess.
He writes in v.20:
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
This is what is sometimes called natural revelation. It’s an understanding that God reveals himself through creation.
Before I became a minister, I worked in outdoor education. Through the year we would get groups of teens from inner city Brisbane for 5-week camps in the bush. We’d go on hikes, climb mountains, and sleep under the stars.
What amazed me was how many kids, who claimed not to believe in God would begin to ask questions about God as they looked up at the night sky. They’d been raised to believe that all they were looking at was big balls of gas burning millions of miles away, but as they marvelled at creation, they began to ask who created it. The answer that everything came from nothing just didn’t work anymore and beautiful questions about God followed.
God is revealing himself through creation, and yet instead of reaching out to him we supress the truth. Look at v.21:
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”
(Romans 1:21-23)
According to Romans, we all deep down know there is a God. That’s why we pray and wonder about the afterlife. Sadly, over time we’ve tweaked our theology to suit our wants. We worship money, lust, and power, fashioning all sorts of statues and religions to suit our desires and fancies.
The Bible highlights a reality we often ignore to explain why our world is such a broken and hostile place. And this is why God’s wrath is clear to see. It’s not that God is passive and doing nothing about evil. God hates evil and his wrath is against it, and yet there’s evil inside us so to get rid of evil this instant God would have to get rid of us! Fortunately God has a more redemptive way.
And this is why it’s important to note that God’s wrath is revealed in a number of ways:
1. First there is eternal wrath. This is what we all will face at the end of time. One day we will die, or Jesus will return and we’ll meet our Maker. If we face God on our own terms, without the forgiveness that Jesus’ death brings, we’ll face the just consequences of our sins and be punished justly. This is good news because it means Adolf Hitler will face God’s wrath, the secret child abuser who dies safe in their bed will face God’s wrath, and the people who wrong us in this life without consequence will face God’s just wrath.
2. A second type of wrath is sowing and reaping wrath. This is where we face the consequences of our actions in this life. It’s when a drunk driver injures themselves, or a criminal gets caught and faces judgement.
3. A third type of wrath is cataclysmic wrath. This is where evil and injustice bring about natural disasters. We see this in Noah’s flood, in the plagues of Egypt, or the droughts in the Old Testament. Now we need to be very careful not to string lines between the things we don’t like and the natural disasters. Without special revelation from God, we can’t tell what’s caused what, and yet the Bible shows us that because our lives are out of step with our Creator, creation is disordered and wrathful.
4. A fourth type of wrath is handing over wrath which we see in v.24:
“Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” (Romans 1:24-25)
Friends this terrible fate. By giving us what we want, God reveals how much suffering comes when we put other things before Him. In exchanging the truth about God for a lie, we degrade our bodies by giving ourselves over to our lusts, and we become like what we worship: disordered, selfish, and arrogant caricatures of the people God created us to be.
C.S.Lewis:
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.” – C.S.Lewis
The cause of sadness, suffering, and the wrath of God is simple, we’ve worshipped our creation rather than our creator, this is why bad things happen to good people, and also why bad things don’t happen to bad people, God has given us over to our desires.
The consequence
So, if worship of creation rather than our Creator is the cause of God’s wrath against humanity, what are the consequences?
Well here in Romans we begin to see how Paul will use the gospel to heal the rifts among Christians in Rome. You see there were two main groups in the church: Jews and Gentiles (or Greeks). The first Christians had Jewish ancestry, and they’d put their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed Saviour and king of the Jews.
Non-Jews soon joined them and began to follow Jesus themselves but were culturally Greek.
Jews and Greeks had very different ways of looking at family and sexuality. Jewish Christians believed that adults could either be married and chaste or single and celibate. They believed that marriage was a gift from God and taught as Jesus taught that marriage involves a man and a woman, two different but complimentary people uniting in a one flesh union to procreate a new family.
On the other hand, they also knew that Jesus never got married or had sex. They passed on Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19 where he forbids divorce except for marital unfaithfulness, and the disciples respond:
“If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” (Matthew 19:10-12)
In other words, Jesus taught that men and women can either marry and start a family or remain single and forego sexual intimacy. This is the same deal I signed up to when I became an Anglican Priest. Our Code of Conduct Faithfulness in Service says:
“Sexuality is a gift from God and is integral to human nature. It is appropriate for clergy and church workers to value this gift, taking responsibility for their sexual conduct by maintaining chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage.” (FiS 7.2)
This is the heart of the Christian sexual ethic that has been changing the world for better for 2000 years.
And yet back in first century Rome, Greeks had a totally different attitude toward sex. It was all about domination and power. Rich and powerful men owned their wives, partners, and male and female subjects and did whatever they liked with them. Sexual dominance was a way of showing power. Sex wasn’t seen as a holy act, but a way of marking your territory and relieving yourself.
Paul sees this as a consequence of people worshipping creation rather than the creator and he uses it as an example:
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:26-27)
Homosexuality was common in Rome, and the Greeks had lesbian communities. Paul is not singling out homosexual sex because he believes it’s a worse sin than others. Instead, he uses it as an example of behaviour that Gentile Christians had abandoned because they wanted to be true to Christ.
Now I realise how controversial this passage is today. Same-sex marriage was legalised in 2017 and same sex relationships are common in Gladstone. Many of us have friends and family who are part of the LGBTQI+ community, and it’s good and right that we deplore intimidation and violence against people based on their sexuality.
It is sinful to treat someone created in God’s image as less than human because of who they love or because of the way they see the world. This passage perhaps more than any other in the Bible has been used by insecure Christians as a prooftext to hurt and emotionally manipulate people and that’s not Christlike. (really good and helpful)
However, that doesn’t mean that the Christian sexual ethic needs to change with the times. Some believe that Romans 1:26-27 only applies to adult relationships with minors and that Paul could never have envisioned modern faithful same-sex marriages.
This is where I’d rather be on the wrong side of history than on the wrong side of God. I believe that Paul here is using sexual sin as an example of worshipping creation rather than our Creator. Instead of looking to God to guide our desires and lead our lives, we’ve given into our lusts and tried to tell God to get with the program. While same-sex attraction is not sinful, sex outside of marriage is.
While homosexual acts are used as an example here, it’s important to remember we all have distorted desires. Pornography, marital unfaithfulness, and sex before marriage are temptations that affect us all. They’re all ways we worship creation rather than our Creator, and they attract the wrath of God.
Now while we could spend hours on this topic, there’s another section in this passage we need to cover which begins in v.28:
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. (Romans 1:28-29)
Here we see that all sin is a matter of worshipping creation rather than our Creator. Instead of holding onto the knowledge and love of God we’ve given ourselves over to all kinds of evil.
Here Paul lists at least 15 different consequences of sin. Look at v. 30:
They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.
(Romans 1:29-31)
As a parent, I’m very glad that disobeying your parents is on this list! It’s worth mentioning that this is quite a short list for it’s time. Anglican Theologian Mike Bird points out that lots of writers back then made lists of evils like this with other listing 147 different vices!
And yet Paul doesn’t have to go on-and-on. His point is simple. Because we’ve ignored God, supressed the truth of his existence, and gone our own way, we live in a broken and dangerous world. Because we’ve tried to enjoy creation without a thought for it’s Creator, we’ve made a mess.
This thought pattern concludes in v.32:
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:32)
Again Paul argues that God’s existence is clear to see, and deep down we know sin leads to death. Yet our minds are so warped that we not only do things we know are evil, but we encourage others to do the same. It’s a sad and sorry situation but if you’re sick of all the bad news, here’s some good news. By helping us diagnose the problem, God through Paul is showing us the solution.
We are under God’s wrath, so we need to be saved from that wrath, and this is where we come back to the gospel and see how good it truly is. Although humanity, and that includes all of us, is under God’s righteous wrath because our wrong worship, the way to salvation is found in right worship.
By turning our lives over to Jesus, worshipping him, we find salvation from God’s wrath. On the cross, Jesus takes our sin upon himself and absorbs the wrath of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21 says:
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Life is unfair, but it’s only unfair because it’s stacked in our favour. Jesus has absorbed the wrath for our sin by willingly dying for us on the cross. All of us everywhere, whatever you’ve done, and wherever you’ve been can call on Him and be saved.
In Jesus we are made right with God. The rest of the book of Romans will go on to tell us the wonder of how Jesus rescues us and restores us to right worship, but for now let’s see how black our sin is and how merciful and kind God is that even now he’s calling us back into his family.
You see even though you’ve wondered away from God, he’s calling you home today. That’s why I’m not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God to save.