The Righteousness and Wrath of God in Romans 1
My own juxtaposition of “righteousness” and “wrath” is drawn from Rom. 1:17-18, where the Apostle Paul juxtaposes the two words in a surprising parallel.
Romans 1:16-20
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse ….
Romans 1:16-17 is Paul’s thesis statement for the letter to the Romans. A brief summary could be: “In the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed …” The similarity of this thesis statement with the next verse is striking: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven …” I contend this is not an accident. If we consider the conventions of Hebrew poetry (something Paul would be acquainted with and accustomed to using, because he was a Jewish Rabbi before his conversion), it would be normal to assume that he is repeating the same idea with slightly different terminology. This sort of repetition is common in the Psalms. But this particular contrast is striking because Paul seems to be saying precisely opposite things in vv. 17 and 18.
But if we look deeper at what Paul is saying, we discover he is indeed offering us a poetic parallel which helps us understand the concept of divine wrath. When vv 18-20 are considered as a whole, the context of “the wrath of God” is not how God up in heaven is feeling about things, but rather how humans are responding to God’s revelation down on earth. God’s revelation is clear within creation itself, both “his eternal power and divine nature.” Paul makes it clear that this natural revelation is not as complete as the Gospel, but it is divine revelation nonetheless. But humans have “suppressed” this truth.
This suppression of the truth grows out of a fundamental attitude toward God. “Though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom 1:21). In other words, they didn’t like God as God. They didn’t want to be responsible to their Creator and Lord. They wanted a god, but on their own terms, not on God’s terms. “They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles” (Rom. 1:23). But Paul doesn’t say God was angry with them. God didn’t take it out on them as if his honor demanded it. Instead, he gave them precisely and specifically what they desired. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Rom. 1:24-25). Twice more (vv. 26, 28) the text says that God gave them up. Given their attitude, there was nothing more he could do with them.
This relationship, where the human is at enmity with God, and not the other way around, is the key to understanding divine wrath. Even though these people create gods they are comfortable with and seek satisfaction and fulfillment from their passions rather than their Creator, taking them far from the will of God, God is still present. “His eternal power and divine nature” (Rom. 1:20) are present and that presence stands in contradiction to what they have created to suit their own desires. This life opposed to God lived in the presence of God (for God is always present everywhere) is the essence of wrath. It is not an attitude of God toward them, but rather their experience of the same divine activity that believers experience as righteousness (v. 17) and love.
Wrath as an experience of life (in contrast to a supposed attitude of God) has roots in the Old Testament as well.
13 Hear, you who are far away, what I have done; and you who are near, acknowledge my might. 14 The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can live with the devouring fire? Who among us can live with everlasting flames?” 15 Those who walk righteously and speak uprightly, who despise the gain of oppression, who wave away a bribe instead of accepting it, who stop their ears from hearing of bloodshed and shut their eyes from looking on evil, 16 they will live on the heights; their refuge will be the fortresses of rocks; their food will be supplied, their water assured. [Isaiah 33:13-16]
This passage asks who can live with “the devouring fire” and the “everlasting flames.” (Both are a reference to the presence of God.) The answer is not that one has to flee the flames but rather those that “walk righteously and speak uprightly” will not be destroyed. (A similar image is found later in the book of Daniel where Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael walked in flaming furnace along with a fourth man who had “an appearance as a god”, according the king. Dan. 3:25.)
The post-apostolic fathers observe that all of us experience the judgment of fire. It's our choice as to whether we experience now or later. If we choose to enter into God’s “everlasting flame” (v. 14 above) while we are still living, we must let go of all impurities so the Everlasting Flame can burn them up and remove them from our soul. If, on the other hand, we choose to avoid the hot intimacy of God’s presence and hold tightly to our sin, that sin will be cast into the eternal flame at the final judgment. And, because we have refused to let go and continue to hold tightly to our sin, our grasping heart will pull us into the eternal flame along with our sin. So the choice is ours: willingly begin the process of purification by fire now, or suffer that same process eternally then.
And one final note which is more of an aside than an exegesis of wrath: In populist American Evangelicalism, our path to holiness is often viewed as a transformation, as we give up things, learn to do things differently, learn new disciplines, and in the process allow our hearts and wills to be shaped by the Holy Spirit. (Such a gentle picture!) This vision of holiness presented here is rather different. It is owning up to everything I am, the good, the okay, the not so good, the willfulness, the outright evil, etc. (This is the process of confessing our sins.) And once we know who we actually are, opening up our hands, so that we grasp nothing of ourselves. That means that we don’t hold on to our favorite sins, but it also means we don’t hold on to our best personality traits and disciplines – who are we to assume that God actually thinks our personal virtues are so wonderful the kingdom simply can’t live without them? – and boldy walk right into the very presence of God, his “everlasting flame” of holiness, fully aware of everything that is evil within us and everything that is good within us. And since our hands are open and grasping nothing that we have, both good and bad, the Holy Spirit is free to surround us with his loving fire, which will burn away everything God doesn’t want while leaving behind the perfect being he created in the first place, which is now ready to be transformed from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18).
It also needs to be said that this happens in stages, in bits and pieces, and not in one cataclysmic event. Oh, I suppose it could happen in one event if God so chose and we were so prepared, but such an instantaneous transformation by the Everlasting Flame would probably be as horrific an experience as it was glorious. Nor is it something that is completed in this life. Rather, this flaming judgment in bits and pieces teaches us to live always with hands open rather than clinched shut. Once that lesson is learned, the final judgment, when every last bit of sin and self-will are burned away, is a piece of cake, because of a lifetime of practice.
And one final caveat: This is not a literal description of how it (including the final judgment) all works, it’s rather a poetic image rooted in Old Testament descriptions of judgment and New Testament descriptions of holiness.
