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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Romans 1:18 - 1:18
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Rom 1:18-32. (18) This power and condition revealed in the Gospel meets the need of man; for in the actual state of man we can see that his life lies under GOD’s wrath. Man has by unrighteous action overlaid the truth imparted to him: (20) the knowledge of GOD, communicated through the visible creation as a means of conceiving the invisible character of GOD, His power in life and His divine character, has been rejected; (21) men have failed to respond with appreciation and thanksgiving; losing the sense of their own destiny and submitting their intelligence to the influence of blind reasonings and passions, (22) with a false assumption of cleverness, they have substituted for the image of GOD, in which they were created, the likeness of the mere animal nature. (24) As a consequence, left by GOD to their own devices, under the unclean rule of their own desires, they have taken the false instead of the true view of their due allegiance, substituted in their worship the creature for the Creator, and as a consequence perverted even the natural uses of the body to vile and unnatural indulgence; (28) their will refusing to act upon the knowledge of GOD, GOD has allowed them to surrender themselves to all spiritual and moral ills, personal and social; (32) for they knowingly and willingly faced the verdict of death, and both practise and promote the practice of such things as incur that verdict.
The revelation of the Gospel is the revelation of the righteousness of GOD in the Person of Jesus Christ, and of that righteousness as a power for reproducing itself in man, if man will trust it, or rather Him. This is paralleled by a statement of the consequences of man’s refusing to trust his knowledge of GOD, as seen in the lives and characters of men as they actually are, a revelation of GOD’s wrath; the state of man shows both the need of power for recovery, and the condition in man for its action, namely recovered faith.
As GOD’s righteousness is revealed in life, the Life of Jesus Christ, so GOD’s wrath is revealed in life, the life of men putting themselves into antagonism with GOD, choosing to be under His wrath.
In this section S. Paul summarises his observations of contemporary conditions and generalises from it and from his judgment on history, in order to estimate the actual needs of man and the cause of his condition, as vindicating the character of the Gospel and its universal necessity, if man is to be delivered.