Romans 1:18-32
God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for imagesmade to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
When my brother was 10 years old he had an addiction to chocolate. He would eat and eat and eat, sneaking chocolate bars when no one was looking, hiding them in his bed, spending all his pocket money on sugary goodness. One day my parents decided that enough was enough. They told him that they would buy him as much chocolate as he wanted but on the condition that he ate it all. My brother smiled, what an amazing punishment - this was the best day of his life. He bought all the chocolate his little heart could desire. However, after a while he felt like he had had enough. The chocolate kept coming though. He ate and ate and ate until he was sick. That experience put him off chocolate for life.
We all have appetites and desires that are unhealthy or unwholesome. In this passage, Paul explains that God has revealed Himself to all humanity through creation itself—His eternal power and divine nature are visible in what He has made. Yet this knowledge of God gets in the way of our desires and autonomy. He is like the parent telling a child to eat healthy food. So, Paul argues, we choose a different God, one who allows us to have what we want and we exchange the worship of our Creator for a lesser object of devotion.
Paul reveals three critical truths:
First, sin follows a predictable path: rejection of God → enslaved desires → corrupted thinking → comprehensive wickedness. We don’t just commit isolated sins; we become shaped by our rebellion. One step at a time, we choose desires over devotion and find ourselves far from the Kingdom.
Second, God’s wrath often manifests not as immediate destruction but as allowing us the consequences of our choices. Three times Paul says God “gave them over”—to impurity, to shameful lusts, to a depraved mind. This is terrifying: God’s judgment can mean giving us exactly what we demand. When we persistently reject His protection and wisdom, He may finally say, “Have it your way.”
Third, that a rebellious heart leads to a wicked society. Paul uses sexual sin as an illustration of this rebellion—people exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones—but then expands to how this pattern across every area of their lives has now led to envy, murder, strife, deceit, gossip, arrogance, disobedience to parents, and ruthlessness. We may choose to turn from God in one area of our lives but sin infects, overflows and multiplies.
The sobering reality is that the ultimate consequence of rebellion against God is getting what we want—and discovering it leads to death. But Romans doesn’t end here. This dark diagnosis prepares us for the glorious remedy: the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Where have you seen that a small compromise has turned into lifestyle?
How have you experienced the innate cost of sin in your life?
How does worshipping God affect the way that you live?
In Christ’s name, Amen.
