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God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
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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.
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Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.
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But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.
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(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.
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you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?
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You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?
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Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”
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Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
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To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law.
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For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
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but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.
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Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
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More Than Conquerors
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
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Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.
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God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel:
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After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!
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Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
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The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
