Rom 1:18  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness; ASV

Rom 1:18  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; KJV

Rom 1:18  For God's wrath is revealed from Heaven on all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, holding the truth in unrighteousness, LITV

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                             COMMENTARY

We see in this vs the underlying theme of natural revelation;

The Wrath of God.

  God’s eternal power and Godhead (vs 20) comes through to mankind by way of His Holy Wrath and Anger against sin. It is in this sense that "all men know God" by way of His judgment on sin in this life. This is very different from saying that all men know God innately or that all men by nature know God. Innate knowledge is subjective or inward and is not taught in this or any other passage of Scripture. See 1Thes 4:5 & 2Thes 1:8 e.g.
 
  Here Paul is talking about objective, or outward knowledge which comes not from within a person’s heart/mind but outwardly, from the works of God in His creation! When unsaved men see His works, especially in His judgment upon sin, this is a clear testimony as to His Being and Power and they are thereby rendered excuseless! Thus, they hold the truth of God in unrighteousness by denying that which is revealed of Him in the creation and as a result God gives them up. A very good example of this is seen in the person of Pharaoh, who actually saw the power of God in action. God revealed His eternal power and Godhead to Pharaoh through the very medium of His wrath upon sin and what did Pharaoh do? Why, he held the truth of God in unrighteousness. Pharaoh himself admitted "I know not the Lord." Ex 5:2. Natural revelation is limited in that it cannot tell us of the moral nature of God nor of the moral requirement of man!

  Anything that is found outside of the boundary of the Gospel is under the canopy of the wrath of God.

  Outside of the protective circle of the gospel of salvation that God has provided for his people there is nothing but wrath! Not Love... Wrath! This is so because it is only within the confines of the gospel that truth is found and apart from that gospel there is no reception of or agreement with the truth. Rather, as we are told here, men hold down...or supress the truth in their unrighteousness and the result is the invokation of nothing else but the wrath of Almighty God! Therefore, to stand up before a group of people who know not God nor His gospel and  carelessly tell them that God loves them  is to set forth false doctrine! God loves only the elect and no one knows who the elect are.

 What about...God sends His rain on the just & unjust...isn’t that love to the reprobate? No! Ps 73:12...these are the wicked. Blessings in this life are not necessarily an evidence of Divine love.

  As the gospel is the revelation of the righteousness of God and is the one and only place in the entire universe of God where righteousness is revealed, so too all sinners who are outside the pale of the gospel come under the wrath of God. God’s wrath is revealed against *all* ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, as the verse so clearly states. Therefore any person who is engaged in the activity of holding the truth in unrighteousness is under the wrath of God, not his love. Such people cannot be said to be saved. This includes all religious people who, according to verse 25 change the truth of God into a lie. This is directly applicable to those who traffic in the religion of the Bible and claim to be Christians while holding to false doctrine and a false gospel. Arminians are well within the indicting pressure of this passage as they do indeed hold the truth of God in unrighteousness. God’s truth teaches that men are depraved and wicked by nature and in their natural state they hate God and want nothing to do with Him. In such a condition they are completely unable to do anything pleasing to God which includes believing the gospel savingly. Man in his natural state of unregeneracy is a slave to his sin. Rom 6:17. Arminians deny this with their pelagian false doctrine of free will. They say man does have the ability apart from the powerful working of God in them, to either ‘accept’ or reject the gospel. By this blasphemy they hold the truth of God in unrighteousness and show that they are still under the wrath of God.

 God’s truth further teaches that God has from all eternity chosen all the elect whom He has ordained to eternal salvation and that choice is based upon absolutely nothing found in the sinner. Again Arminians deny this truth by telling us that God has ‘looked ahead in time’. Why would God have to ‘look ahead in time’ to find something out? Is He not omniscient? This notion alone holds the truth of an omniscient God in unrighteousness and teaches a ‘god’ who has to ‘look down the corridors of time’ in order to *learn* something. Such blasphemy is not the God of the Bible but an idol and those who hold this doctrine are idolaters. Moreover what is it that these idolaters say God looks for when He looks ahead in time. Maybe He has a crystal ball in which He can see the future. But that would mean that God is ignorant of something which is a denial of His omniscience. That's not the God of the Bible; that's an idol and people who worship such a god are idolaters.

Romans

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