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– 1 Timothy 3:15

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3. THE POWER AND THE WRATH OF GOD

One of the most noted verses in the entire epistle of Romans is 1:16:
     I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of
     everyone who believes: first, for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

As defined by the apostle Paul himself in another epistle, the gospel is: ‘that Christ died for our sins’, ‘that he was buried’, and ‘that he was raised on the third day’ (see 1 Cor. 15:1-4). This gospel is ‘the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes’ because it is the will and the work of God to save a fallen world through this avenue. Many may see this as foolishness: in particular, the dying of Jesus on the cross (1 Cor. 1:18); but as Paul has insisted twice over, it is ‘the power of God’ (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:18).

Yet, this ‘power of God’ will most likely be nullified if we try to engage it through the human intellect; if we view the cross as shameful; if we ask ‘why this and why not that’; if we think that one man alone is not enough to save the whole world. But it will, indeed, be ‘the power of God’ if we let it be; if we suppress our human proneness (and fondness) to use our intellect to save ourselves; if we let go and we ask God to take over. After all, it is not just a man saving the whole world; but God in the shape of a man, who despite his wrath against a sinful world, decides to let his love to take over and give the world a second chance. Surely, if God can create the whole world single-handedly, he too can save the whole world single-handedly. If only we will receive and believe in the gospel: that, it is, ‘the power of God’.

Yet, before this ‘power of God’ is revealed and made available to us, we were under ‘the wrath of God’. In our cleverness, we made for ourselves ‘gods’ that were not gods (see 1 Cor. 8), but ‘images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles’ (Rom. 1:23). Blinded by this self-cleverness, we failed to see what had been plain to us - the ‘eternal power’ and the ‘divine nature’ of God - his two invisible qualities made known in and that which can be understood from the created world. Instead, we worshipped the very objects we created and not the God who created us. Because we so failed to see and worship God, we were without excuse (Rom. 1:18-25). We came under ‘the wrath of God’.

In the creativity of our own cleverness (but what Paul calls ‘a depraved mind’) we devised all sorts of ways and do all kinds of things which were contrary to nature and the natural order of goodness. Because we did not have God in our lives or we did not ‘retain the knowledge of God’ in our minds we were ‘filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity’. Hence we committed all kinds of acts which ‘ought not to be done’. We gossiped and slandered against innocent ones because of our envy and the malice that arose from it. We fought and kill to get what was not rightfully ours. In our God-hating ways, we were arrogant: dismissive of others as being inferior; we boasted of our own strengths to do evil and to invent new ways to do evil. We disobeyed our parents. We were insolent. We became ‘senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless’ (Rom. 1:28-32) Men abandoned ‘natural relations’ with women and were ‘inflamed with lust’ for and ‘committed indecent acts with other men’. Similarly, women ‘exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones’ (Rom. 1:26-27). Because of all these, we were under ‘the wrath of God’.

The later two acts mentioned above are called homosexuality and lesbianism in our language today. Yet even as Scripture calls them sin and perversion, there are some within the ranks of Christianity itself who are denying such acts as being depraved and are using their ‘scholarship’ of the scriptures to justify them. They declare that homosexuals and lesbians have every right under the sun to do what they are doing. Theirs is an alternative to heterosexuality. Within the ambit of a committed relationship, homosexuality is as wholesome as heterosexuality (so say these scholars). Certainly, if Paul (and the other inspired writers) be right, these so-called ‘Christian scholars’ will have their place under ‘the wrath of God’ too.

Yet the very God who has every right and power to exercise his wrath against us has chosen not to do so. Instead, he chooses to reveal his righteousness and make it available to us through the gospel. Thus, in place of wrath and anger, he reveals his love and grace; in place of judgement, he gives mercy and kindness; in place of condemnation, he offers salvation and justification. This is God’s righteousness.

And to those of us who will believe in the gospel of Christ, we will attain the same righteousness; a righteousness that is not ours, but God’s; a righteousness that comes not through any deed of merit, but through faith. As Paul quotes Habakkuk: ‘The righteous will live by faith’ (Rom. 1:17; see Hab. 2:4). So we who are dead in sin (Rom. 6:23) will rise to live through faith. This is the power of God.

Archive
The Romans Series
1. Being the Community of God’s People
2. Ethno-Religious Tensions
3. The Power and the Wrath of God
4. Justification by Faith
5. Justification Brings Blessings
6. While We Were Still Sinners
7. Died to Sin
8. Slaves to Righteousness
9. The Difference of the Spirit
10. The Israel Problem
11. The Gentile Problem
12. Community Living
13. Community Unity
14. Community Ethics
15. Loving the Enemy Ethic
16. Extra-Community Ethics
17. The Weak and the Strong
18. Community Formation
19. Paul, the Minister
20. Gems in Greetings

Articles on The Da Vinci Code, Gnosticism and
the Gospel of Judas
1. The Da Vinci Code: A Christian Response
2. The Nag Hammadi Documents and Gnosticism
3. The Gospel of Judas
4. The Gospel of Judas - A Retake
5. Teachings in the Gospel of Judas Compared (Part 1)
6. Teachings in the Gospel of Judas Compared (Part 2)
7. Teachings in the Gospel of Judas Compared (Part 3)
8. Canonicity and the Gospel of Judas

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