Wrath - Romans 1:18-25

Again, for me, I struggle with what Paul is trying to say and honestly, why he’s even saying it in the first place. I guess I just look at his epistle to the Romans and wonder why he dove in so quickly to God’s judgment, sexual sin, etc. I just can’t seem to follow the concepts in logical progression, which makes it just like a bunch of unrelated issues. So I struggle with that, and we’ll see how this goes.

Continuing on from verse 17, “the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” I feel like this escalated quickly between “God gives salvation if you believe on him,” to “God gives wrath if you believe on him, but don’t obey him.” Well I guess that makes sense, that is a logical progression, and I didn’t realize that until I wrote it out.
The “wrath of God” has always been a difficult concept for me to understand, I guess because it is so prevalent in the Old Testament and there is a disconnect for me between the “wrath of God” and that “God loves everyone.” Those two ideas seem to contradict each other, and because the “angry” God is so emphasized in the Bible, it took me a long time to understand exactly what that meant as far as the rest of us normal people go. I really like the IM’s explanation of “wrath of God” saying, “the ‘wrath’ of God is not hostility towards mankind; rather, it is rejection of sin. Because God is perfectly righteous, He cannot condone sin in any degree.” Ok, but if we all sin, then how does he love us but reject the sins we commit?
To answer that, the IM quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie as saying, “Deity manifests wrath as one of his attributes… Inherent in it is the purpose and intent of meting out a just punishment upon those whose acts have caused it to be aroused.” What does it take to arouse God’s wrath? First, the word “arouse” makes it seem like the wrath is sleeping, dormant, or otherwise unengaged. And really, we must consider that along with “wrath” another of God’s attributes is “meek,” which has been defined to me as “not easily irritated.” So God is not easily irritated, which means that he’s slow to anger, and by extension, slow to wrath. To me, wrath is an action word, it’s negative feelings manifested as action.
At first, I wrote the word “anger” but when people act out because of anger, the general purpose is destruction, expression, but I don’t feel that this explains “wrath.” What I imagine “wrath” to be is a conclusive, event-ending reaction to a slow, steady, unyielding course of irritation that has reached a breaking point. It is not unrestrained rage, it is controlled obliteration of the offensive source. In our case, we absolutely make mistakes, but we don’t do it knowingly, or we at least attempt to keep our mistakes to a minimum. Our infinitesimal efforts at perfection, or at least obedience, grants us God’s empowering grace, whereas one’s gross or intentional disobedience might eventually warrant wrath. Elder McConkie ends the quote saying, “The wrath of God does not fall upon the righteous, but upon the wicked.” Not on those who are trying, but those who are unrepentant.
We also have to consider how “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” How is the “wrath of God” revealed? I imagine that there are some fire and brimstone examples in there, but how does it happen in our day? There are many natural disasters, and even though many evangelical preachers want to attribute them to God’s wrath, I really don’t think that that’s the case. Sure Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire from heaven, but we know that angels when in to get the last remaining righteous people out of there, so I don’t think that natural disasters today are God’s punishment.
I think what makes the most sense to me, knowing what I do about God now, is that the wrath of God is simply when he stops protecting us from ourselves. When we consider the last wars between the Nephites and the Lamanites at the end of the Book of Mormon, we know that God wasn’t with either side because both parties had given up on Him, even though both sides knew the gospel, they had rejected it. In their case, after repeatedly asking God to leave them alone by their behaviors, God respected their wishes and left them up to their own devices, and destruction ensued.
It’s always very telling to me that Satan’s goal wasn’t to destroy the gospel out of the people, because if it was, once that happened, the violence would have ended. Satan goal was to destroy everyone, to kill everything, even though both sides followed him in wickedness, he felt no loyalty to either side, and he wanted them all to suffer, that’s his agenda.
Paul notes, like Alma the Younger in the Book of Mormon, that God is obvious through his creations. I really like the New Living Translation of the Bible for these verses because I can understand it better. It says, “They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.”
The natural world is one of my main reasons for believing in a God, a supreme, all-mighty being, because it doesn’t make sense for us to be here otherwise. Another article I read speculates that these verses refer to our individual right to personal revelation. It said something to the effect of “God reveals his words through his Son Jesus Christ during his lifetime and the scriptures, but each of us also retains a portion of the divine and therefore are entitled to receive God’s messages for ourselves.” I thought that that was an interesting conclusion to draw. I love when non-members find truth in the scriptures that we believe in as well, it just shows me that it’s all in there if we look for it.
The people who “knew God” but did not obey him, “became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” The IM says, “In the Greco-Roman world in which Paul ministered, idol worship and its accompanying mythologies formed an integral part of ancient religion and culture. Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained: ‘Man once knew God by revelation; but this knowledge was lost because of disobedience. Then man, by foolish reason, created his own gods.’”