Romans 1:18

“ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth captive unrighteously. ”

The transition from Romans 1:17 to Romans 1:18, indicated by for, can only be this: There is a revelation of righteousness by the gospel, because there is a revelation of wrath on the whole world. The former is necessary to save the world (comp. σωτηρία, salvation, Romans 1:16) from the consequences of the latter.

From the notion of wrath, when it is applied to God, we must of course remove all that pollutes human wrath, personal resentment, the moral perturbation which gives to the manifestations of indignation the character of revenge. In God, who is the living Good, wrath appears as the holy disapprobation of evil, and the firm resolve to destroy it. But it is false to say, as is often done, that this divine emotion applies only to the evil and not to the evil-doer. In measure as the latter ceases to oppose the evil and voluntarily identifies himself with it, he himself becomes the object of wrath and all its consequences. The absence of the article before the word ὀργή, wrath, brings into prominence the category rather than the thing itself: manifestation there is, whose character is that of wrath, not of love.

This manifestation proceeds from heaven. Heaven here does not denote the atmospheric or stellar heaven; the term is the emblematical expression for the invisible residence of God, the seat of perfect order, whence emanates every manifestation of righteousness on the earth, every victorious struggle of good against evil. The visible heavens, the regularity of the motion of the stars, the life-like and pure lustre of their fires, this whole great spectacle has always been to the consciousness of man the sensible representation of divine order. It is from this feeling that the prodigal son exclaims: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight.” Heaven in this sense is thus the avenger of all sacred feelings that are outraged; it is as such that it is mentioned here.

By ἀσέβεια, ungodliness, Paul denotes all failures in the religious sphere; and by ἀδικία, unrighteousness, all that belong to the moral domain Volkmar very well defines the two terms: “Every denial either of the essence or of the will of God.” We shall again find these two kinds of failures distinguished and developed in the sequel; the first, in the refusal of adoration and thanksgiving, Romans 1:21 et seq.; the second, in the refusal of the knowledge of moral good proceeding from God, Romans 1:28 a. ᾿Επί, upon, against, has here a very hostile sense.

The apostle does not say: of men, but literally: of men who repress. As Hofmann says: “The notion men is first presented indefinitely, then it is defined by the special characteristic: who repress ”...We may already conclude, from this absence of the article τῶν (the) before the substantive, that Paul is not here thinking of all humanity. And, indeed, he could not have charged the Jews with holding captive the truth which had been revealed to them, comp. Romans 2:19-21, while he proceeds to charge this sin directly on the Gentiles. We must therefore regard Romans 1:18 as the theme of chap. 1 only, not that of i. and ii. Besides, the wrath of God was not yet revealed against the Jewish world; it was only accumulating (Romans 2:5).

Certainly the apostle, in expressing himself as he does, does not overlook the varieties in the conduct of the Gentiles, as will appear in the sequel (Romans 2:14-15). He refers only to the general character of their life.

The truth held captive is, as Romans 1:19-20 prove, the knowledge of God as communicated to the human conscience. To hold it captive, is to prevent it from diffusing itself in the understanding as a light, and in the conduct as a holy authority and just rule. The verb κατέχειν, to hold back, detain, cannot here have the meaning which some interpreters would give it, to keep, possess, which the word sometimes has; for example, 1 Corinthians 15:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:21. In that case we should require to place the charge brought against the Gentiles not in this verb, but in the qualifying clause ἐν ἀδικίᾳ : “who possess the truth in unrighteousness ” (that is, while practising unrighteousness). But the sequel proves, on the contrary, that the Gentiles had not kept the deposit of truth which had been confided to them; and the simple clause: in unrighteousness, would not suffice to characterize the sin charged against them, and which is the reason of the divine wrath. We must therefore take the word κατέχειν, to detain, in the sense in which we find it 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7, and Luke 4:42: to keep from moving, to repress. Oltramare: “They hindered it from breaking forth. ”

Some translate the words ἐν ἀδικίᾳ : by unrighteousness; they paralyze the truth in them by the love and practice of evil. But why in this case not again add the notion of ungodliness to that of unrighteousness? The literal meaning is, not by unrighteousness, but by way of unrighteousness; this clause is therefore taken in the adverbial sense: unrighteously, ill and wickedly. In reality, is there not perversity in paralyzing the influence of the truth on one's heart and life?

To what manifestations does the apostle allude when he says that wrath is revealed from heaven? Does he mean simply the judgment of conscience, as Ambrose and others, with Hodge most recently, think? But here there would be no patent fact which could be taken as a parallel to the preaching of the gospel (Romans 1:17). Bellarmine, Grotius, etc., think that Paul means this preaching itself, and that the words from heaven are synonymous with the ἐν αὐτῷ, in it (the gospel), Romans 1:17. But there is, on the contrary, an obvious antithesis between these two clauses, and consequently a contrast between the revelation of righteousness and that of wrath.

The Greek Fathers, as also Philippi, Ewald, and Ritschl in our own day, regard this manifestation as that which shall take place at the last judgment. This meaning is incompatible with the verb in the present: is revealed; not that a present may not, in certain cases, denote the idea of the action, independently of the time of its realization; so the very verb which Paul here uses is employed by him 1 Corinthians 3:13. But there the future (or ideal) sense of the present is plainly enough shown by all the futures surrounding the verb (γενήσεται, δηλώσει, δοκιμάσει), and the context makes it sufficiently clear. But in our passage the present is revealed, Romans 1:18, corresponds to the similar present of Romans 1:17, which is incontrovertibly the actual present. It is not possible, in such a context, to apply the present of Romans 1:18 otherwise than to a present fact. Hofmann takes the word is revealed as referring to that whole multitude of ills which constantly oppress sinful humanity; and Pelagius, taking the word from heaven literally, found here a special indication of the storms and tempests which desolate nature. But what is there in the developments which follow fitted to establish this explanation? The word is revealed, placed emphatically at the head of the piece, should propound the theme; and its meaning is therefore determined by the whole explanation which follows.

We are thus brought to the natural explanation. At Romans 1:24 mention is made of a divine chastisement, that by which men have been given over to the power of their impure lusts. This idea is repeated in Romans 1:26, and a third time in Romans 1:28: “God gave them over to a reprobate mind.” Each time this chastisement, a terrible manifestation of God's wrath, is explained by a corresponding sin committed by the Gentiles. How can we help seeing here, with Meyer, the explanation, given by Paul himself, of his meaning in our verse? Thereby the purport of the following description and its relation to Romans 1:18 become perfectly clear; the truth is explained in Romans 1:19-20; it is God's revelation to the conscience of the Gentiles, the notion: to repress the truth, is explained in Romans 1:21-23 (and 25); these are the voluntary errors of paganism; finally, the idea of the revelation of divine wrath is developed in Romans 1:24-27; these are the unnatural enormities to which God has given the Gentiles up, and by which He has avenged His outraged honor. All the notions of Romans 1:18 are thus resumed and developed in their logical order, Romans 1:19-27: such is the first cycle (the ἀσέβεια, ungodliness). They are resumed and developed a second time in the same order, but under another aspect (the ἀδικία, unrighteousness), Romans 1:28-32. The meaning of the words is revealed from heaven, is not therefore doubtful. It has been objected that the term to reveal always refers to a supernatural manifestation. We do not deny it; and we think that Paul regards the monstrous degradation of pagan populations, which he is about to describe (Romans 1:24-27; Romans 1:29-32), not as a purely natural consequence of their sin, but as a solemn intervention of God's justice in the history of mankind, an intervention which he designates by the term παραδιδόναι, to give over.

If Romans 1:18 contains, as we have said, three principal ideas: 1. The Gentiles knew the truth; 2. They repelled it; 3. For this sin the wrath of God is displayed against them, the first of these ideas is manifestly that which will form the subject of Romans 1:19-20.

The Wrath of God, according to Ritschl.

In this work, Die Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (II.123-138) (The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation), Ritschl ascribes to Pharisaism the invention of the idea of retributive justice, and denies its existence in Holy Scripture. Thus obliged to seek a new meaning for the notion of the wrath of God, he finds the following: In the Old Testament the wrath of God has only one aim: to preserve the divine covenant; the wrath of God therefore only denotes the sudden and violent chastisements with which God smites either the enemies of the covenant, or those of its members who openly violate its fundamental conditions, in both cases not with the view of punishing, but of maintaining here below His work of grace. In the New Testament the idea is substantially the same, but modified in its application. The wrath of God cannot have any other than an eschatological application; it refers to the last judgment, in which God will cut off the enemies of salvation (not to punish them) but to prevent them from hindering the realization of His kingdom (1 Thessalonians 1:10; Romans 5:9). As to our passage, which seems irreconcilable with this notion, this critic deals with it as follows:

We must wait till Romans 2:4-5, to find the development of the idea of the wrath of God, enunciated in Romans 1:18. The whole passage, ver. Romans 1:19 to Romans 2:3, is devoted to setting forth the sin of the Gentiles, the fact of their κατέχειν τὴν ἀλήθειαν, holding the truth captive. The description of chastisement (the revelation of wrath) is not developed till after Romans 2:5; now this passage evidently refers to the last judgment. Thus it is that the ingenious theologian succeeds in harmonizing our passage with his system. But I am afraid there is more ability than truth in the mode he follows:

1. Ritschl will not recognize an inward feeling in the wrath of God, but merely an outward act, a judgment. But why in this case does Paul use the word wrath, to which he even adds, Romans 2:8, the term θυμός, indignation, which denotes the feeling at its deepest?

2. We have seen that the present is revealed, forming an antithesis to the tense of Romans 1:17, and giving the reason of it (γάρ, for), can only denote a time actually present.

3. Is it not obvious at a glance that the phrase thrice repeated: wherefore He gave them over (Romans 1:24; Romans 1:26; Romans 1:28), describes not the sin of the Gentiles, but their chastisement? That appears from the term give over: to give over is the act of the judge; to be given over, the punishment of the culprit. The same follows also from the wherefores; by this word Paul evidently passes each time from the description of the sin to that of the punishment, that is to say, to the revelation of wrath.

4. As to Romans 2:4-5, these verses do not begin with a wherefore, as would be necessary if the apostle were passing at this part of the text from the description of sin to that of chastisement. These verses, on the contrary, are strictly connected with Romans 1:3, as continuing the refutation of Jewish security in relation to the last judgment, a refutation begun at Romans 1:3 with the words: “ Thinkest thou...? ” and carried on to Romans 1:4 with these: “ Or [indeed] despisest thou...? ” How can we regard this as the beginning of a new idea, that of chastisement succeeding that of sin? For the examination of the explanation of Romans 1:32 given by Ritschl, by which he seeks to justify all the violence he does to the text of the apostle, we refer to the verse itself.

With the term ὀργή, wrath, before us, applied to the Gentiles first, Romans 1:18, and afterwards to the Jews, Romans 2:5, we are justified in holding to the notion of that divine feeling as explained by us, pp. 164, 165.