faith here.
Like some other Pharisaic interpreters,57 Paul presumably applies “live” to eternal life, the resurrection life of the coming age (2:7; 5:21; 6:22–23; 8:13; 10:5; 14:9), even though in a sense believers have already entered it (6:10–13; 8:2, 6). Thus Paul presumably here cites Habakkuk to affirm that God preserves from his wrath those who trust in him.
Made Right by Trusting Christ (1:18—5:11)
Modern outlines cannot do justice to Paul’s careful thinking in Romans, which often transitions seamlessly from one point in his argument to the next. It is not possible to sever 1:18–23 from 1:16–17, but we have followed the traditional division here. In 1:18—5:11, Paul argues at length that Jew and Gentile alike are made righteous only through depending on Christ.
Inexcusable Idolatry (1:18–23)
Instead of believing truth in the gospel, some corrupt even the truth they have in nature. While God’s saving righteousness is “revealed” in the gospel for those who trust it (1:16–17), God’s wrath is “revealed” against those who suppress the truth by unrighteousness (1:18–23).58 The truth they unrighteously suppress is the truth about God (1:25; cf. 2:8), which they suppress, ultimately, by idolatry (1:19–23).59
This denunciation offers a key transition in Paul’s larger argument that shows that both Gentiles and Jews need the gospel. Jewish people regarded idolatry (1:23) and sexual vice (1:24–25), especially homosexual behavior (1:26–27), as characteristically Gentile sins. But after Paul denounces such sins to his audience’s applause, he quickly turns to more universal sins (1:29–31), finally consigning his own people, knowledgeable of the law, to judgment as well (2:17–29; 3:9, 19–20). (Cf. the same tactic in Amos 1:3—2:8.) Although condemning Gentiles in 1:18–32, Paul employs for this condemnation biblical language regarding Israel, probably evoking such texts in the memories of his more biblically informed hearers and preparing for his wider argument in the next chapter.60
Although God’s wrath (1:18) has a future aspect (e.g., 2:5, 8; 9:22), it is revealed in the present here especially through God “handing over” sinners to the consequences of their own sinfulness (1:24, 26, 28; cf. Acts 7:42).61 As God’s righteousness appears in the truth of the gospel (1:16–17), their unrighteousness (1:18) appears in suppressing the truth of God’s character (1:19–23). Saving faith (1:16–17) is thus not a guess or wishful thinking, but embracing the genuine truth in contrast to lies that seem progressively more plausible to depraved humanity.
Whereas some philosophers believed that true knowledge would lead to right living, Paul believes that knowledge merely increases moral responsibility (“without excuse,” 1:20; cf. 2:1, 15). God revealed enough for Gentiles to be damned, though people who know the Scriptures are more damned than those who have only nature and conscience (2:14–18). God revealed the truth about God within people (1:19), an internal knowledge based on being made in God’s image (Gen 1:26–27). More generally, God revealed his power and divinity, as well as benevolence in providing creation, so those who fail to recognize his power and character, worshiping mere idols or human conceptions, are without excuse (1:20).
Even Gentile intellectuals could have followed Paul’s argument here. Apart from the more skeptical Epicureans, most Greek and Roman intellectuals recognized divine design in nature;62 many reckoned as absurd the alternatives, namely, that the universe resulted from chance or human activity.63 Various philosophers affirmed that the supreme deity was present in and known by his works.64 Many of these writers also affirmed, like Paul, that one could infer much about God’s character from creation. For example, some believed that God’s character transcended merely human religion,65 or that deities were benevolent and cared for people.66 Paul would not have endorsed all their inferences;67 many of these philosophers still accepted their culture’s belief in many deities. But many Stoic thinkers by Paul’s day ultimately believed in one divine designer behind everything (including the other gods).68
Thus, after arguing for the necessity of a cause,69 the late first-century Stoic philosopher Epictetus argues from the structure of objects that they reflect a designer and not mere chance:70 “Assuredly from the very structure of all made objects we are accustomed to prove that the work is certainly the product of some artificer, and has not been constructed at random.”71 Anyone who observes the facts of nature, yet denies the existence of a creator, he opines, is stupid.72 Epictetus believed that human beings, and especially their intellect, most complex of all, particularly revealed the designer.73 Many others (including Cicero and Seneca) concurred: humans,74 and especially their intellect,75 were inexplicable apart from design. Jewish thinkers in the Greek world had adapted such ideas for a purer monotheism centuries before Paul,76 making his missionary job much easier.77 Jewish intellectuals like Paul, however, believed that such reasonings simply confirmed what was obvious in Genesis.
Thus, humanity “knew” God, but because they refused to “glorify” him (1:21),78 they ended up exchanging his “glory” and image for that of mortal, earthly creations (1:23). They were God’s image (Gen 1:26–27), but by corrupting God’s image in worshiping things other than God they gave up and lost his glory (cf. Rom 3:23).79 God punished their failure to act according to the truth by delivering them to their moral insanity (1:21–22).80 Jewish people considered idolatry the climax of human evil.81 Even Greeks, whose deities looked human, disdained the Egyptian animal images also mentioned here.82
Sexual Sin (1:24–27)
Paul has narrated that humanity exchanged the truth about God for idolatry (1:19–23), which he here calls a “lie,” the opposite of truth (1:25). A direct consequence of this behavior was that God handed them over to defile their own bodies sexually (1:24), including in same-sex intercourse, which was “against nature” (1:26–27), i.e., (for a Jew) against the way God created things to be. In the primeval era of the “creation” (Rom 1:20), God revealed his character and made humanity in his image (Gen 1:26–27); yet they distorted God’s image by worshiping other images (Rom 1:23).83 Exchanging God’s truth for lie involved idolatry (1:23, 25), but also a perversion
