Romans 1:23

God’s wrath is his settled, righteous opposition to sin, and verse 18 says that it is being revealed from heaven now. The verse begins with “For” (gár), the word that gives the reason for what came just before. The gospel is necessary because of what Paul now describes, and this part of his letter runs on to Romans 3:20 and to its conclusion that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

The verse sets two revelations side by side. In verse 17 “the righteousness of God” is revealed (Romans 1:17), and in verse 18 “the wrath of God” is revealed. The verb in both is apokalýptō, to take the cover off, to reveal or make fully known, and it is in the present tense. God is making both known today, his saving righteousness in the gospel and his anger against sin.

The word for wrath is orgḗ, and used of God (theós) it means his steady, holy opposition to sin and rebellion. It belongs to his character, and it is the response of a judge to wickedness, bringing consequences in this life and judgment at the end. A psalm says, “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day” (Psalm 7:11). Jesus says of the one who refuses to believe the Son that “the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). Paul warns, “because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:6).

This wrath is revealed “from heaven” (apó ouranós). The word means both sky and heaven, and here heaven stands for God himself, so the wrath comes with his own authority. We see it now in the consequences of sin that the rest of the chapter traces (Romans 1:24–32), and it will be seen in full at the judgment to come.

Everyone can know that God exists and that he is eternal in power and divine, because God himself has shown it in all he made. Paul says, “that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them” (verse 19). The word gnōstós means known or knowable, and here it is what may be known of God: enough awareness of his existence and power to take away any claim of ignorance. This knowledge leaves a person accountable, and it stops short of saving knowledge. It is “manifest”, phanerós, which means visible, evident, well known. “In them” (en autois) can mean a witness within each person, or what lies open to people as they live in God’s world. It is manifest because God acted: “God hath shewed it unto them.” The verb phaneróō, to make manifest, comes from the same root as phanerós, and God is its subject. Our knowledge of God is something he gave on purpose.

Verse 20 says how he gave it. “The invisible things of him”, his nature and power, are aóratos, unseen by the physical eye, and yet they “are clearly seen”. The verb kathoráō means to see fully and distinctly, so the invisible God is plainly perceived through what is visible. These things are “understood by the things that are made”, and that has been true “from the creation of the world”, so every generation since the beginning has had this witness.

What creation shows is “his eternal power and Godhead”. Power, dýnamis, is might and ability, here God’s power to bring all things into being and keep them there. Godhead, theiótēs, means divinity or divine nature, the attributes that belong to God as God, while its near neighbour theótēs names the divine essence itself. Creation shows that there is a God, that his power is eternal, and that he is divine and set apart from all he made. Paul’s conclusion follows: “so that they are without excuse”. The word anapológētos means indefensible, with every defence taken away.

Scripture says the same in other places. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1), and the psalm goes on, “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard” (Psalm 19:1–4). The first half of Psalm 19 is given to this testimony of creation (Psalm 19:1–6). At Lystra Paul told a crowd that God “left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). At Athens he said that the God who made the world is near every one of us, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:24–28).

They turned from him because they withheld the glory and thanks that were his due, and verse 21 traces what followed. It opens, “when they knew God”. The verb ginṓskō means to know, come to know, perceive or understand, and its most common use is simply having knowledge of something. People ask whether this is saving knowledge. Paul means the awareness of God’s existence and power that creation gives to everyone, which he has just described in verses 19 and 20, and that knowledge should have led to worship and gratitude.

It led instead to two failures. “They glorified him not as God”: the verb doxázō means to honour, praise and magnify, to give someone the worth that belongs to him. They withheld the honour due to God alone as Creator and Lord. “Neither were thankful”: they took his gifts and refused to acknowledge him as the giver of life and of every good thing. This refusal to worship and give thanks is the root from which the idolatry and wrongdoing of the following verses grow (Romans 1:21–23).

Then came two results. They “became vain in their imaginations”. The word dialogismós means inner reasonings and deliberations, even debates within oneself, and “vain” means empty, futile and aimless. Thinking that loses God as its reference point loses its direction and ends in a view of the world built on falsehood. God asked the same of Israel: “What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?” (Jeremiah 2:5). Paul describes the Gentiles walking “in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened” (Ephesians 4:17–19).

And “their foolish heart was darkened”. In Scripture the heart, kardía, is the centre of the person, the seat of mind, will, feeling and moral understanding. The word for “foolish” here is asýnetos, without understanding, and it comes back in the list of verse 31. A heart that turns from the light of God’s truth grows dark, less and less able to see spiritual reality and moral good. This darkening is part of God’s just judgment on their refusal to honour him, and Paul spells that judgment out from verse 24.

People exchanged God’s glory for images and his truth for a lie. In verse 23 they “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image”. The verb allássō means to make different, to change one thing for another. God’s glory, dóxa, is his majesty, honour and manifest worth, all that calls for awe and worship. He is áphthartos, uncorruptible, undecaying and immortal. In exchange people took “an image” (eikṓn) “made like” (homoíōma) to “corruptible” (phthartós) man, the perishable set in the place of the Imperishable.

The list then goes downward, from man to birds, to fourfooted beasts, to creeping things, from the sky to the land to the ground. Once the Creator is abandoned, worship sinks lower and lower. Paul’s readers saw this all around them in the statues of Jupiter, Mars and Venus, the worship of the emperor, deified heroes and animal cults such as those of Egypt, and in philosophers who scorned the popular gods and still left the true God unworshipped. God had forbidden Israel to make a graven image and bow down to it (Exodus 20:4–5). A psalm says of idols and their makers, “They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them” (Psalm 115:4–8), and Isaiah asks, “To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?” (Isaiah 40:18–20). Paul pressed the same point at Athens (Acts 17).

In verse 25 they “changed the truth of God into a lie”. The verb here is metallássō, to exchange. The word itself is neutral, and the wrong lies in what was exchanged. A lie, pseûdos, is a falsehood, and the New Testament uses the word of what is opposed to the truth about God. The lie here is the false account of reality that people put in place of what God had shown them, and it ends in idolatry. Isaiah describes the man who burns half his wood for a fire and bows down to the rest: “a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isaiah 44:19–20).

So they “worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator”. Worshipped (sebázomai) speaks of religious awe and veneration, and served (latreúō) of religious service. The creature, ktísis, comes from ktízō, to create, and means original formation, either the act of creating or the thing created. The Creator is the one who creates (ktízō), and setting the two words side by side shows how absurd it is to worship what he made. “More than” translates pará, which can compare, preferring one to the other, or oppose, setting one against the other. Israel had been warned against bowing to the sun, moon and stars (Deuteronomy 4:19), and Paul told the Athenians, “we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:29).

Then, in the middle of this dark description, Paul stops to bless God: “who is blessed for ever. Amen.” The Creator is eulogētós, worthy of praise, and amēn means truly, so be it. People exchanged his glory, and his glory stands unchanged.

It means that God, as judge, handed people over to the path they had chosen, and Paul says so three times: “God also gave them up to uncleanness” (verse 24), “God gave them up unto vile affections” (verse 26), and “God gave them over to a reprobate mind” (verse 28). Each follows one of the people’s own choices. They exchanged God’s glory for images, and “Wherefore” God gave them up. They exchanged his truth for a lie, and “For this cause” he gave them up again. They “did not like to retain God in their knowledge”, and so he gave them over. “Wherefore” translates dió, which marks a result that follows plainly from what came before.

The verb is paradídōmi, to surrender, yield up, hand over or entrust. Here it is a judge’s act. God takes away his restraining hand and lets their desires run their course, and they experience the full, destructive outworking of their rebellion. The giving up is God’s own act of judgment, and its effects come from within the people themselves. Each time the descent goes further, from impurity, to shameful passions, to a mind unable to judge rightly.

The same pattern is found earlier in Scripture. God says of Israel, “So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels” (Psalm 81:11–12). Wisdom warns those who refuse her that “they shall eat of the fruit of their own way” (Proverbs 1:22–33). Of those who “received not the love of the truth”, Paul writes that “God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:10–12).

They teach that same-sex sexual relations depart from the order God built into creation, and Paul gives them as the example of the second giving up. God gave people up “unto vile affections”. The phrase joins atimía, dishonour or disgrace, with páthos, passion, so it means passions of dishonour, shameful desires. Then the example: “for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature”. The women “did change” (metallássō), the same verb as verse 25. As people exchanged the truth of God for a lie, they exchanged “the natural use” (physikós chrēsis) for what is “against nature” (pará phýsis).

Paul’s standard for nature is God’s created order. In Genesis 1–2 God made humanity male and female and told them, “Be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:27–28), and a man “shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The natural use is sexual union between man and woman as God designed it, and “against nature” refers to same-sex sexual relations. Greek and Roman philosophers debated what nature meant, and some recognised a natural order, but Paul grounds the word in creation as Genesis tells it.

Verse 27 gives the counterpart among men: “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another”. The verb ekkaíō means to be deeply inflamed, a consuming fire of desire. “Men with men working that which is unseemly”: aschēmosýnē is indecency or shame, behaviour that brings dishonour. Same-sex relations were common in the Roman world, often as pederasty or between free men and slaves, and sometimes in cultic prostitution. Paul’s words take in all of it, since he describes men who left women and burned for one another. The Law had already said, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). Jude says that Sodom and Gomorrah, “giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7).

The verse ends, “and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet”. antimisthía means requital, a payment that corresponds to the deed. Their error (plánē) is their straying from God’s truth, which began with idolatry. The recompence is “meet”, fitting and just, and they receive it “in themselves”, because the destructive consequences lie within the sin itself. What looked like pleasure turns out to carry its own penalty.

A reprobate mind is a mind that fails God’s test, and God gives people over to it when they refuse to approve of knowing him. Verse 28 turns on a play on words. “They did not like to retain God in their knowledge”: the verb dokimázō means to test and, by implication, to approve. They put the knowledge of God to the test and refused to approve of keeping it. Knowledge here is epígnōsis, recognition, full discernment and acknowledgement. They chose to push God out of their understanding of the world and out of their moral life. So “God gave them over to a reprobate mind”, and reprobate, adókimos, is the same root with a negative prefix: unapproved, rejected, worthless. They refused to approve God, and God gave them a mind that fails his test, a mind that has lost the ability to tell right from wrong and truth from falsehood by his standard.

That mind leads them “to do those things which are not convenient”. In the KJV “convenient” means fitting, and the Greek (mḗ kathḗkonta) speaks of what is improper, unbecoming or contrary to duty, conduct unfit for people made in God’s image. The phrase is an understatement, since the deeds listed next are destructive and abhorrent.

Verses 29 to 31 list what comes from a reprobate mind. Paul begins, “Being filled with all unrighteousness”. The verb plēróō means to fill completely, and the unrighteousness is adikía, the word of verse 18. He goes on with “full of”, mestós, replete. These are people whose whole character is soaked in wrong, so the sins express what they have become. The list moves from sexual sin and greed through hatred and strife to deceit and malicious speech, and on to pride, rebellion and cruelty, until every part of life is touched.

In verse 29:

• Fornication, porneía, is harlotry and every kind of sexual immorality, including adultery and incest. Figuratively it can stand for idolatry, the unfaithfulness of turning from God.
• Wickedness, ponēría, is depravity and active malice.
• Covetousness, pleonexía, is the insatiable desire for more, which leads to greed and exploitation.
• Maliciousness, kakía, is badness and ill will, the intent to harm.
• Envy, phthónos, is ill will and jealousy at another’s good.
• Murder, phónos, is hatred carried to its end.
• Debate, éris, is quarrelling and wrangling.
• Deceit, dólos, is trickery and guile.
• Malignity, kakoḗtheia, is a bad character, ready to put the worst construction on whatever others do.
• Whisperers, psithyristḗs, are secret slanderers who spread gossip to do harm.

In verse 30:

• Backbiters speak evil of others behind their backs.
• Haters of God translates theostygḗs, which joins the word for God to a word for hateful. It can mean “hated by God” or “hating God”. The KJV reads it as hating, and the context of people who have turned against God supports that reading: open hostility toward God himself, the root beneath the rest of the list.
• Despiteful people are insolent and abusive, ready to humiliate others.
• The proud are haughty and self-exalting, disdaining others and refusing to depend on God.
• Boasters brag about themselves, their achievements and their possessions.
• Inventors of evil things joins epheuretḗs, a contriver or discoverer, with kakós, bad or evil, a word that covers moral evil and what is harmful. These people devise new forms of wickedness with a perverse ingenuity.
• Disobedient to parents: apeithḗs means unpersuadable and stubborn, refusing to obey, and goneús means a parent. Honouring father and mother is the fifth commandment (Exodus 20:12), and Roman society prized the father’s authority, the patria potestas. This sin strikes at the family, the most basic human bond.

In verse 31:

• Without understanding, asýnetos, means senseless and foolish, the word used for the darkened heart of verse 21.
• Covenantbreakers, asýnthetos, are treacherous to agreements, faithless to their promises to God or to people.
• Without natural affection, ástorgos, means hard-hearted toward one’s own kin, lacking the love that binds parents, children and relatives. In Paul’s world infanticide, the abandonment of children and gladiatorial contests were accepted.
• Implacable (áspondos) people refuse to be reconciled and hold on to resentment.
• Unmerciful (aneleḗmōn) people show their neighbours in need neither pity nor kindness, the very opposite of the mercy God pours out.

All five words in verse 31 begin with the Greek negative prefix a-, so they describe people marked by what is missing: understanding, faithfulness, affection, peace and mercy.

Jesus taught that these things come from within (Mark 7:20–23): “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders” (Mark 7:21–23). Paul gives similar lists of the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19–21) and of the sins believers must put off (Colossians 3:5–9). He tells Timothy that in the last days “men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection” (2 Timothy 3:1–5), and Jesus said that “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Matthew 24:12).

Approving of sin in others shows a conscience that knows God’s verdict and has turned it upside down. The passage ends at this lowest point: “Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” The word for knowing, epiginṓskō, means to know fully, to recognise. The judgment is dikaíōma, a righteous ordinance or just decree, here God’s verdict that “such things”, the sins of verses 29 to 31, deserve death, spiritual and eternal. People know this through creation (verses 19 and 20), through conscience, which shows “the work of the law written in their hearts” (Romans 2:14–15), and, in Israel’s case, through the Law. They know, and they go on.

“Have pleasure in them that do them” translates syneudokéō, which joins “with” to “think well of” and means to consent with, approve or take pleasure together. Doing evil while knowing it is wrong is grievous, and applauding it in others makes a person a partner in it and a promoter of it. Scripture speaks of those “Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked” (Proverbs 2:14). God says to the wicked, “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers” (Psalm 50:18). Paul tells Timothy, “neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure” (1 Timothy 5:22).

This verse also opens the next stage of Paul’s argument. In Romans 2 he speaks of God’s impartial judgment on Jew and Gentile alike, by their deeds and by the light they have received. Through Romans 2:1–3:20 he shows that all are under sin, and in Romans 3 he brings his readers to the righteousness of God that comes through faith.

Christ delivers us by bearing the wrath of verse 18 himself on the cross. God set him forth “to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Romans 3:25), so that his righteous anger is turned from us. “Being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Romans 5:9). Isaiah foresaw it: “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and Christ “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8) to rescue people who were worthy of death. He did it for people like those in this passage, “while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8). This is the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel (Romans 3:21–26). Christ is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and he was himself “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Everything people exchanged is found in him. The truth they held down is embodied in Christ, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The glory they traded for images shines in him, “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), in whom “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). The invisible God to whom creation points has been declared by the Son (John 1:18), the Word who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us... full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The Creator people refused to worship is the Son, for “All things were made by him” (John 1:3). All things were created by him and for him (Colossians 1:16), and “by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16–17). In him the Creator entered his creation to redeem those who had been worshipping the creature.

Where people refused to glorify God, Christ said to the Father, “I have glorified thee on the earth” (John 17:4), and he did as the Father commanded (John 14:31). He humbled himself (Philippians 2:5–8), he laid down his life for his friends (John 15:13), he made peace and broke down the wall of hostility (Ephesians 2:14–16), and from the cross he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He is the faithful mediator of a better covenant, sealed with his own blood (Hebrews 8:6, Hebrews 9:15). Where human wisdom became folly, Christ is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), “made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Where hearts were darkened, he is “the light of the world” (John 8:12), and God has “shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Those who knew God only enough to be guilty can now know him with the knowledge that is eternal life (John 17:3).

He also undoes the giving up. His blood “cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7), and God promised, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). By the Spirit believers “mortify the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13) and walk “after the Spirit” (Romans 8:4–5). They reckon themselves dead to sin and alive to God, and they yield their members as instruments of righteousness (Romans 6:11–14). Those who once dishonoured their bodies present them “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” (Romans 12:1), knowing that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17). People who exchanged God’s glory are “changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18), for God’s purpose is that they be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). And the worship people gave to images is given back to God, as true worshippers “worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23–24).

Verse 21 names what humanity withheld from God: glory and thanks. In Christ these become our calling. “Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:20), and “whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Colossians 3:17). Every sunrise, every living thing and every good gift shows his eternal power and Godhead, and each is a reason to give him the honour and thanks the world keeps back.

The passage also teaches us to watch our own hearts. It is possible to know the truth about God and leave it unheeded, to give some created thing the trust that belongs to him, or to smile at what he calls sin. Our calling is to “Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” (Romans 12:9), to delight “in the law of the LORD” (Psalm 1:2), and to bring “into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Christ “died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

Because the wrath of God is real, the gospel is urgent. The people described in these verses are the people Christ came to save, and the God whose power everyone sees in creation has shown his love at the cross. Those who have received that love have good news to tell.