Romans 1:18-25 – “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.  For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.  Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” 

Today we’re moving beyond Paul’s introduction to his letter to the church at Rome.  He is now going to begin to explain the gospel in 4 parts; man’s accountability in unrighteousness before God (Rom 1:18-3), man’s justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone (Rom 4-8), the sovereignty of God in salvation (Rom 9-11), and applications of the gospel of Jesus (Rom 12-15).  Romans 16 is Paul’s closing personal remarks to the church at Rome.  So today we pick up with the beginning of Paul’s argument for man’s accountability in unrighteousness before God.

Today’s title may seem a bit harsh to some; that’s good.  I’ve taken the title from a sermon from Jonathan Edwards, and I’ve also pulled some material from there (slightly adjusted for modern reading).  Ultimately, many people want to sit in judgment of God.  They want to take issue with the fact that he saves some and does not choose to save others.  They believe that’s not fair, or not in keeping with the love/justice of God.  They would like to take the words of God, and make his salvation obligatory based on their actions rather than a gift.  The problem with that thinking is two-fold; one is that it reeks of pride, seeking to turn God into a puppet and second is that salvation based on obligation under any circumstances ceases to be a gift, it would be a wage due.  Ultimately people want to treat a hand raised, a prayer spoken, an action taken, as a work that obligates God to give them salvation as a wage.  Yet we know from Ephesians 2:8-9 – “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  So today I want to use Romans 1:18-25 as my focus text, and lay out for you the many reasons that despite whatever your claims to a merited salvation, God owes you nothing, and would be just if he were to judge you in your sin, damning you to hell.  I fully expect some unsubscribe requests after this… this message is about as close to a “congregation clearing” message as I can get through email.  That’s ok.  Soft preaching makes for hard hearts and hard preaching makes soft hearts.  My goal is your enlightenment in Truth.  My hope is that you would stop leaning on your own “decision” for Christ, or your current works, but that you would plead with the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, for mercy as the tax collector in Luke 18:13.  My hope is that you would learn what it means to plead for and rest in each day; in the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.  He must increase, and I must decrease.  All that said, I want you to finish this message challenged, but encouraged.  This message will take around 30 minutes to read.  Do NOT start to read this message if you cannot spend the time to finish it.  That will make more sense later.

There are two reasons above that are given about man’s accountability in unrighteousness before God.  The eternal power of God and His divine nature (read as the characteristics of God, ie. His perfection, His goodness, His justice, His wrath, His being orderly, His relational being, etc.) have been clearly perceived in creation for all time.  CLEARLY perceived.  One might have an argument before God to say that they did not know him if He hid Himself in some way, and therefore should not be accountable before Him for their sin against their Creator.  This argument falls flat, however, because God tells us that everyone knows God, clearly through His creation.  There has never been a point in time where this has not been the case.  Side note – this is immensely important to evangelism.  While this verse shuts up all men under just accountability to God, it also tells us that there is no such thing as an atheist… everyone knows that there is a God and further, they actually know a great deal about Him.  This is helpful to be bold in your evangelism, even to professing atheists.

So everyone knows God, they understand that they were created by Him and they understand much about His character.  What do men do with this truth?  They suppress it in unrighteousness.  They choose not to worship and enjoy the glory of God, and instead ignore God.  By willfully acting against the nature of God, through sinning in unrighteousness, man’s desire is to forsake God and worship a God of their own making.  What about the person in Africa who never hears the gospel?  They knew God through creation, and willfully chose to forsake Him and worship a God of their own making.  There is no distinction here; everyone rejects God.  Here are some excerpts from Edwards that I would call you to consider:

If God should for ever cast you off, it would be exactly agreeable to your treatment of him.

You never so much as stirred one step, sincerely making the glory of God your end, or acting from real respect to him: and why then is it hard if God doth not do such great things for you, as the changing of your nature, raising you from spiritual death to life, conquering the powers of darkness for you, translating you out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son, delivering you from eternal misery, and bestowing upon you eternal glory? You were not willing to deny yourself for God; you never cared to put yourself out of your way for Christ; whenever any thing cross or difficult came in your way, that the glory of God was concerned in, it has been your manner to shun it, and excuse yourself from it. You did not care to hurt yourself for Christ, whom you did not see worthy of it; and why then must it be looked upon as a hard and cruel thing, if Christ has not been pleased to spill his blood and be tormented to death for such a sinner.

You have slighted God; and why then may not God justly slight you? Are you more honourable than God, that he must be obliged to make much of you, how light soever you make of him and his glory?  And you have not only slighted God in time past, but you slight him still. You indeed now make a pretence and show of honouring him in your prayers, and attendance on other external duties, and by sober countenance, and seeming devoutness in your words and behaviour; but it if all mere dissembling. That downcast look and seeming reverence, is not from any honour you have to God in your heart, though you would have God take it so.

Why should God be looked upon as obliged to bestow salvation upon you, when you have been so ungrateful for the mercies he has bestowed upon you already?  God has watched over you, and preserved you, and provided for you, and followed you with mercy all your days; and yet you have continued sinning against him. He has given you food and raiment, but you have improved both in the service of sin. He has preserved you while you slept; but when you arose, it was to return to the old trade of sinning.

Consider how often you have refused to hear God’s calls to you, and how just it would therefore be, if he should refuse to hear you when you call upon him. You are ready, it may be, to complain that you have often prayed, and earnestly begged of God to show you mercy, and yet have no answer of prayer: One says, I have been constant in prayer for so many years, and God has not heard me. Another says, I have done what I can; I have prayed as earnestly as I am able; I do not see how I can do more; and it will seem hard if after all I am denied. But do you consider how often God has called, and you have denied him? God has called earnestly, and for a long time; he has called and called again in his word, and in his providence, and you have refused. It has been easy for you to show no regard to his calls. You let him call as loud and as long as he would; for your part, you had no desire to attend to what he said; you had other business to mind; you had these and those lusts to gratify and please, and worldly concerns to attend to; you could not afford to stand considering of what God had to say to you.

If you should for ever be cast off by God, it would be agreeable to your treatment of Jesus Christ.

It would have been just with God if he had cast you off for ever, without ever making you the offer of a Saviour. But God hath not done that; he has provided a Saviour for sinners, and offered him to you, even his own Son Jesus Christ, who is the only Saviour of men. All that are not for ever cast off are saved by him.

If God offers you a Saviour from deserved punishment, and you will not receive him, then surely it is just that you should go without a Saviour. Or is God obliged, because you do not like this Saviour, to provide you another? Is he obliged to save you in a way of your own choosing, because you do not like the way of his choosing? (Herein I would ask you to consider that if salvation belongs to the Lord, as it is His pleasure to be merciful upon whom he will have mercy, would you reject a Christ who saves to the uttermost, to ask God to provide a Christ who makes all men savable and the option to believe their own? – Adam)

I am sensible that by this time many persons are ready to object against this.  If all should speak what they now think, we should hear a murmuring all over the meeting-house, and one and another would say, “I cannot see how this can be, that I am not willing that Christ should be my Saviour, when I would give all the world that he was my Saviour: how is it possible that I should not be willing to have Christ for my Saviour when this is what I am seeking after, and praying for, and striving for, as for my life?”  Here therefore I would endeavour to convince you, that you are under a gross mistake in this matter.  Consider:

There is a great deal of difference between a willingness not to be damned, and a being willing to receive Christ for your Savior. You have the former; there is no doubt of that: nobody supposes that you love misery so as to choose an eternity of it; and so doubtless you are willing to be saved from eternal misery. But that is a very different thing from being willing to come to Christ: persons very commonly mistake the one for the other, but they are quite two things. You may love the deliverance, but hate the deliverer.

It is evident that you are not willing to accept of Christ as your Saviour; because you have never had a true sense of your own sinfulness, and accompanying conviction of your great guilt in God ‘s sight, as to be truly convinced that you lay justly condemned to the punishment of hell.  You have never been convinced that you had forfeited all favour, and are in God’s hands, and at his sovereign and arbitrary disposal, to be either destroyed or saved, just as he pleased. You never yet have been convinced of the sovereignty of God. Hence are there so many objections arising against the justice of your punishment from original sin, and from God’s decree, from mercy shown to others, and the like.

You are not sincerely willing to accept of Christ as your Saviour, appears by this, That you never have been convinced that he is sufficient for the work of your salvation. You never had a sight or sense of any such excellency or worthiness in Christ, as should give such great value to his blood and his mediation with God, as that it was sufficient to be accepted for such exceeding guilty creatures, who have so provoked God, and exposed themselves to such amazing wrath. Saying it is so and allowing it be as others say, is a very different thing from being really convinced of it, and a being made sensible of it in your own heart. The sufficiency of Christ depends upon, or rather consists in his excellency.

You are not convinced of Christ’s faithfulness; as is evident, because at such times as when you are in a considerable measure sensible of your guilt and God’s anger, you cannot be convinced that Christ is willing to accept of you, or that he stands ready to receive you, if you should come to him, though Christ so much invites you to come to him, and has so fully declared that he will not reject you, if you do come; as particularly, John 6:37. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

You are not willing to be saved wholly by Christ, as is evident, because you are not willing that your own goodness should seen to be nothing.  In the way of salvation by Christ men’s own goodness is wholly set at nothing; there is no account at all made of it.  You make much of your own efforts in prayer and study, that you believe God in some way should manifest salvation to you.

Seeing therefore it is so evident, that you refuse to accept of Christ as your Saviour, why is Christ to be blamed that he does not save you?

Here some would come with the objection:  If I am not willing to have Christ for my Saviour, I cannot make myself willing.

It is no excuse, that you cannot receive Christ of yourself, unless you would if you could.  If you are not willing to accept of Christ, it follows that you have no sincere willingness to be willing; because the will always approves of and rests in its own acts. To suppose the contrary, would be to suppose a contradiction; it would be to suppose that a man’s will is contrary to itself, or that he wills contrary to what he himself wills.

Sinners therefore spend their time in foolish arguing and objecting, making much of that which is good for nothing, making those excuses that are not worth offering. It is in vain to keep making objection. You stand justly condemned. The blame lies at your door: Thrust it off from you as often as you will, it will return upon you.

If God should for ever cast you off and destroy you, it would be agreeable to your treatment of others.- It would be no other than what would be exactly answerable to your behaviour towards your fellow-creatures, that have the same human nature, and are naturally in the same circumstances with you, and that you ought to love as yourself. And that appears especially in two things.

Many of you been opposed in spirit to the salvation of others. It is sometimes manifested by an uneasiness at the news of what others have hopefully obtained. It appears when persons envy others for it, and dislike them the more, and disrelish their talk, and avoid their company, and cannot bear to hear their religious discourse, and especially to receive warnings and counsels from them.

Consider also how you have promoted others’ damnation. Many of you, by the bad examples you have set, by corrupting the minds of others, by your sinful conversation, by leading them into or strengthening them in sin, and by the mischief you have done in human society other ways that might be mentioned, have been guilty of those things that have tended to others’ damnation. You have heretofore appeared on the side of sin and Satan, and have strengthened their interest, and have been many ways an accessary to others’ sins, have hardened their hearts, and thereby have done what has tended to the ruin of their souls.  Christ charges the scribes and Pharisees with this, Matthew 23:13. “woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.”

If God should eternally cast you off, it would simply be agreeable to your own behaviour towards yourself

In being so careless of your own salvation. You have refused to take care for your salvation, as God has counselled and commanded you from time to time; and why may not God neglect it, now you seek it of him? Is God obliged to be more careful of your happiness, than you are either of your own happiness or his glory?  How long, and how greatly, have you neglected the welfare of your precious soul, refusing to take pains and deny yourself, or put yourself a little out of your way for your salvation, while God has been calling upon you! Neither your duty to God, nor love to your own soul, were enough to induce you to do little things for your own eternal welfare; and yet do you now expect that God should do great things, putting forth almighty power, and exercising infinite mercy for it?

You have not only neglected your salvation, but you have wilfully taken direct action to undo yourself. You have gone on in ways and practices which have directly tended to your damnation, and have been perverse and obstinate in it. You cannot plead ignorance; you had all the light set before you that you could desire. God told you that you were undoing yourself; and yet you continued. He told you that the path you were going in led to destruction, and counselled you to avoid it; but you would not listen. How justly therefore may God leave you to be undone!

Some would still want to object here:  “God shows mercy to others that have done these things as well as I, even those that have done a great deal worse than myself.”

That does not prove that God is any way bound to show mercy to you, or them either. If God bestows it on others, he does not so because he is bound to bestow it: he might if he had pleased, with glorious justice, have denied it them. If God bestows it on some, that does not prove that he is bound to bestow it on any; and if he is bound to bestow it on none, then he is not bound to bestow it on you. God is in debt to none.

Further, if this objection is valid, then the exercise of God’s mercy is not in his own right, and his grace is not his own to give. That which God may not dispose of as he pleases, is not his own, and if that is so, then he is not capable of making a gift or present of it to any one; it is impossible to give what is a debt.  What is it that you would make of God? Must the great God be tied up, that he must not use his own pleasure in bestowing his own gifts, but if he bestows them on one, must be looked upon obliged to bestow them on another?

If he has a mind to show peculiar favour to some, and not others, he cannot do it; because he has no special gift at his own disposal. If this is the case, why do you pray to God to bestow saving grace upon you? If God does not do fairly to deny it you, because he bestows it on others, then it is not worth your while to pray for it, but you may go and tell him that he has bestowed it on others as bad or worse than you, and so demand it of him as a debt. And at this rate persons never need to thank God for salvation, when it is bestowed; for what occasion is there to thank God for that which was not at his own disposal, and that he could not fairly have denied? The thing at bottom is, men have low thoughts of God, and high thoughts of themselves; and therefore they look upon God as having so little right, and they so much. Matthew 20:15. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” 

God may justly show greater respect to others than to you, for you have shown greater respect to others than to God. You have rather chosen to offend God than men. God only shows a greater respect to others, who are by nature your equals, than to you; but you have shown a greater respect to those that are infinitely inferior to God than to him. You have shown a greater regard to wicked men than to God; you have honoured them more, loved them better, and adhered to them rather than to him. Yea, you have honoured the devil, in many respects, more than God: you have chosen his will and his interest, rather than God’s will and his glory.

Many of you will you not be ashamed, notwithstanding all these things, to still to open your mouth, to object about the decrees and soveriegnty of God, and other things that you cannot fully understand.  Let the decrees of God be what they will, that doesn’t change the case as to your liberty in rejecting Him.  What is that to you, how God has fore-ordered things, as long as your constant experience teaches you, that it does not hinder your doing what you choose to do. This you know, and your daily practice and behaviour amongst men declares that you are fully sensible of it with respect to yourself and others.  Still to object, because there are some things in God’s dispensations above your understanding, is exceedingly unreasonable. Your own conscience charges you with great guilt, and with those things that have been mentioned, let the secret things of God be what they will.

All of this said, I would caution anyone not to seek to improve upon this doctrine of discouragement.  Though it would be righteous of God to forever cast you off, and destroy you, yet it would also be just in God to save you, in and through Christ, who has made complete satisfaction for all sin.  Romans 3:25-26 – “Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.  It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”   The blood of Christ is so precious, that it is fully sufficient to pay the debt you have earned, and perfectly to vindicate the Divine Majesty of God from all the dishonour cast upon it, by these many great sins of yours that have been mentioned. It was as great, and indeed a much greater thing, for Christ to die, than it would have been for you to have burnt in hell to all eternity. Of such dignity and excellency is Christ in the eyes of God, that, seeing he has suffered so much for poor sinners, God is willing to be at peace with them, however vile and unworthy they have been, and on how many accounts soever the punishment would be just. So that you need not be at all discouraged from seeking mercy, for there is enough in Christ.

It would not become the glory of God’s majesty to show mercy to you, so sinful and vile a creature, for any thing that you have done; for such worthless and despicable things as your prayers, and other religious performances. It would be very dishonourable and unworthy of God so to do, and it is in vain to expect it. He will show mercy only on Christ’s account; and that, according to his sovereign pleasure, on whom he pleases, when he pleases, and in what manner he pleases. You cannot bring him under obligation by your works; do what you will, he will not look on himself obliged. But if it be his pleasure, he can honourably show mercy through Christ to any sinner of you all, not one excepted.  Therefore here is encouragement for you still to seek and wait, notwithstanding all your wickedness; agreeable to Samuel’s speech to the children of Israel, when they were terrified with the thunder and rain that God sent, and when guilt stared them in the face, 1 Samuel 12:20. “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart.” 

For those who know God, and are accounted as righteous by Him through the blood of Christ, be encouraged by this reminder; so great a value has God’s grace set on you and your happiness, that you have been redeemed at the price of the blood of his own Son. You chose to be with Satan in his service; but yet God has made you a joint heir with Christ of his glory. You were ungrateful for past mercies; yet God not only continued those mercies, but bestowed unspeakably greater mercies upon you.  You abused the infiniteness of God’s mercy to encourage yourself in sin against him; yet God has manifested the infiniteness of that mercy, in the exercises of it towards you. You have rejected Christ, and viewed Him as nothing; and yet he has revealed Himself to you becoming your Saviour. You have neglected your own salvation; but God has not neglected it. You have destroyed yourself; but yet in God has been your help. God has magnified his gift of grace towards you, and not to others; because he has chosen you, and it hath pleased him to set his love upon you.

What cause is here for praise! What obligations you are under to bless the Lord who hath dealt bountifully with you, and magnify his holy name! What cause for you to praise God in humility, to walk humbly before him. Ezekiel 16:62-63. “I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord GOD.”  You shall never open your mouth in boasting, or self-justification; but lie the lower before God for his mercy to you. You have reason, even more abundantly, to open your mouth in God’s praises, that they may be continually in your mouth, both here and to all eternity, for his rich, unspeakable, and sovereign mercy to you, whereby he, and he alone, has made you to differ from others.

Grace and Peace,

Adam