IN such a place as Rom. 1 you have the gospel of God —the revelation of God's way of saving believers; but in connection with this is revealed this other thing, the wrath of God against all unrighteousness of men. The gospel is power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. For the righteousness of God in it is revealed from faith to faith. For revealed is the wrath of God from heaven upon all impiety and unrighteousness (verse 19), because verse 21, and on to chap. 2:5-8: clearly the revelation of wrath is in antithesis to the bestowal of salvation. The gospel is God's power unto salvation, because in it is the righteousness of God revealed on the principle of faith —whoever believes enjoys it. We are saved in righteousness on God's part, on faith on ours. Righteousness is revealed from heaven in the gospel of God saving every believer, but the righteousness of God without faith is condemnation to endure the wrath of God. It is now revealed from heaven, and existing, and about to be revealed in the future against sin, contemplates a specific class or classes we might say, those who had light and refused it; and very specially is it upon the "children of (the) disobedience " (John 3:19, 21, 36; Rom. 1:18; Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6). In Rom. 9:22 vessels of wrath fitted to destruction (1 Thess. 5:9; see also 1:10), wrath to come (Matt. 3:7; Luke 3:7; 1 Thess. 1:10); the day of wrath (Rom. 5; Eph. 5:6; Col. 2:6). It is always (when looked at in antithesis to salvation) spoken of, you see, as in the future. Rom. 1:18 by no means links wrath with the cross, as if it were revealed and visited on Christ there and then; though, until then, there had not been the revelation with clearness and sharpness of definite outline of the wrath of God from heaven, which shall come on all the sons of disobedience. Salvation is shared by all who are the sons of obedience; destruction comes on all others; and the revelation of God's righteousness in the gospel has set the other in sun-light clearness. “We shall be saved from wrath through him." Rom. 9:22 shows that wrath belongs to the end of the dispensation of grace (see also Rev. 11:18). In 1 Thess. 2:16 we have an instance not only of the revelation of wrath, but of its coming on the Jews in temporal judgment, which is to; the uttermost. Such as should be saved (see Acts 2) were taken out of the doomed nation, and added together—to be in this higher preservation, when wrath was on this people (Luke 21:23). That is a temporal instance and illustration, for had the nation repented when Peter urged them to it, the Savior and salvation would have come, and not wrath to the uttermost; and so (he that believeth not shall be damned) wrath, though revealed now, comes in the future, after the present day of grace is over; then Rev. 6-19 and 2 Thess. 1-2. will come and be fulfilled. Wrath is the active outgo of the inner affection (thumos) of righteous indignation, in inflicting punishment on such as have proved disobedient, and refused light, and truth, and grace.
But what revelation of divine wrath is meant? Romanists and Rationalists of a past day said it was that which is made in the gospel, and that " therein" should be again supplied from verse 17. It is decisive against this view that "from heaven," just because it is parallel to therein, lays down a mode of manifestation quite different from therein. If the latter had been in Paul's mind, he would have repeated it with emphasis as he has done the word revealed.
One critic refers the revelation of wrath to be explained by verses 24, &c., in which is described what God in His sufficiently well-grounded (verses 19-23) wrath did (paredoken autous) gave them up. God's wrath, therefore, is revealed from heaven in this way, (he says) that those who are the objects of it are given up by God to terrible retribution “in unchastity and all vice." But this hardly will do (not to say that these latter would still deserve wrath), for revealed is generally used of a supernatural revelation, and not of a revelation in fact in that to which our attention had not been previously called. Others think it an inward revelation of divine wrath given by means of reason and conscience, in support of which view they appeal to verse 19. But on the contrary, the word from heaven, requires us to understand a revelation cognizable by the senses; and verse 19 contains not the mode of the manifestation of wrath, but its moving cause (dioti). Others hold that the revealing of wrath here meant will be at the future judgment. But though the present tense might be used vividly to express the future, vet it would require (en auto) in it to be mentally supplied. But in verse 17, revealed is purely present, and so in 5:18. How, or by what means, then, is wrath revealed, if not in the gospel, which is a revelation of God's righteousness. If saving men by faith in Jesus Christ by the gospel, wherein is God's righteousness revealed, there is a plain declaration in connection with this, that wrath must have its way on all who refuse to yield the obedience of faith. In the New Testament revelation we have the double revelation of righteousness and wrath, and whereas God saves now in righteousness, the wrath is executed only after men have perversely refused to bow to the righteousness of God. The whole visible procedure of God in His moral government by which He displays and reveals His divine opposition and hatred of sin, may be said to be the revelation of wrath which would take in the impossibility of escape if we bow not to the gospel.
It is either righteousness for our saving, or wrath for the punishment and destruction of the ungodly and unrighteous who hold the truth in unrighteousness. God's dealing with sin in Christ leaves it not any longer doubtful what will become of sinners who refuse the gospel. But all this hardly accounts for the expression, from heaven. This is the connection: "is revealed from heaven," not " wrath... from heaven," nor " wrath of God from heaven," but " wrath is REVEALED FROM HEAVEN." It is the making known now what was not known before; and which otherwise could not be known, for it is "from heaven:" hence entirely supernatural. That all men are sinners the apostle proves (ch. 1:18 to ch. 3:20), consequently the sole means of salvation is faith in the gospel of God (3:21-31). No salvation to Jew or Greek but by faith! He proves this as to the Gentile world (ch. 1:18, &c); then of the Jews (ch. 2., 3) Jews and Greeks are all under sin (ch. 3:9). This being so, all exposed to wrath when it comes! This is a plain revelation, of wrath as the portion of all who are not saved by manifestation of God's righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ. God's nature having been revealed in Christ and His cross, the issues of faith and unbelief are clearly revealed. The revelation of wrath will take place in its manifestation, as ch. 1:5 proves, " in the day of wrath and revelation of (the) righteous-judgment of God." The man who is now justified by faith in the dikaiosunee, or righteousness of God, shall not come under the dikaiokrisia, or righteous judgment of God in the day of wrath: but if the believer alone is saved, it is clear as the light from heaven that all others shall be lost, being the subjects of the righteous judgment of God. The dikaiokrisia, or righteous-judgment of God, the believer can look back and see executed at the cross on Christ, his substitute, and though the day of wrath is clearly revealed as coming with its " righteous-judgment " of God, he is in a state of peace with God, being justified by faith in Christ, giving him salvation in God's righteousness, on the principle of pure faith. " Much more, then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved by Him from the wrath " (i.e., revealed from heaven) (Rom. 5:9). I cannot but think that we forget that the time we live in is not an ordered dispensation at all, but only a period of divine forbearance, ere the execution of threatened and revealed wrath take place What was first revealed from heaven to the Jews on the day of Pentecost but the certainty of the coming of the wrath of God, that so seized their guilty souls that they were on the very verge of despair, when they were pricked in the heart and cried out in anguish, " Men and brethren, what shall we do 2" It was akin to what the men under the opening of the sixth seal will have enstamped on their consciences. " From the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" The alarmed Jews at Pentecost had nothing but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries until Peter preached repentance, forgiveness, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. God's throne is set for judgment; nothing but judgment for man as man the cross has shown, and the coming of the Spirit proved. His presence on earth proves the case against the world as to sin, righteousness, and judgment. But grace now reigns through righteousness unto eternal life.
But judgment is still the world's sentence. The revelation of the wrath of God from heaven comes in with a "for " Rom. 1:18, showing that this was the grand revelation as to man in his sin (God having been manifested in His nature), for Christ was shown Lord and Christ in heaven by Peter: seated with a view to God's dealings with his enemies by Paul (Heb. 10): then this is a period of suspended " judgment " into which the Spirit with the gospel enters as Aaron with his censer between the dead and the living, that the plague might be stayed. The gospel message is only provisional: the wrath is the permanent revelation, and is revealed from heaven; and is only held back by God's " long suffering," while sending forth a proposal of pardon to those on whom the wrath of God abides (John 3:36) and will, otherwise, eventually fall. The great thing, certainly, God is now doing is saving and gathering to his Son in heaven. Neither grace nor wrath were fully revealed from heaven until there was a glorified man at the throne of God. While Christ's attitude to His enemies is that of judgment, " Sit thou on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool; believers by the grace of God see Him in quite a different attitude and character-as the purger of sins their Savior, intercessor, advocate, &c., (see Heb. 1., 5., 7., &c., 1 John 2:2.). The solemn characteristic of the period, is that of the revelation of wrath from heaven a time of respite merely, and long suffering into which God sends His great message of reconciliation founded on the death of Christ (2 Cor. 5). I speak in this as to the world; the purpose and counsels of God for the glory of His Son, are being worked into effectuation by the Holy Ghost come down: and, looking from the side of God in connection with the evolution of "His purpose and grace," a grander revelation is now being unfolded to the divinely-anointed eye-the children of God are gathered, the body of Christ formed, the Bride of the Lamb about to be presented to Himself in all her purity when he comes to receive us to Himself. There is thus by grace a little hidden company in the very world that is in open rebellion against God, and that has cast out and killed His Son, and refused to have Him back. What a scene we live in! A doomed world, over which the sword of judgment is hanging-on which the revealed wrath is about to be openly poured in awful manifestation. We now are in no darkness as to this (1 Thess. 5), for wrath is revealed (2 Thess. 1:2.), and it will be on the persons who hold the truth in unrighteousness as well as on the openly profane and immoral (2 Thess. 2:10-12). That the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety of men and immorality, we have only to open and read the Revelation to be convinced of it. In the Apocalypse of St. John it is fully revealed, and revealed from heaven (Rev. 4:1); for a door was opened in heaven, and a voice said to the prophet, " Come up hither "; and the revelation is said to be that of the Christ after He had ascended to heaven (Rev. 1:1). "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his servants," &c.
This whole interval between the seating and rising up of Christ is a period of forbearance and longsuffering; but "wrath of God is revealed from heaven," and that is the crisis, until which Christ is to sit on the right hand of God, and also the only thing the world has to look for. Christ " our deliverer from the wrath to come " is the one believers look for. But the impious and lawless world will feel His wrath " the wrath of God and of the Lamb."
To give an idea of how I regard this present interval, I think of it as of the gracious moment that will be used between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals to seal the 144,000 of Israel. The four angels of destruction were to hurt nothing until the servants of God were sealed in their foreheads. So " the day of wrath," when that which has been revealed will be inflicted, is kept in abeyance, and the wrath revealed kept from falling on " the children of wrath " by the saving of believers in Christ; but when the last member of Christ's body is gathered out of the doomed world, like Lot out of the wrath-marked city of Sodom, then the time of grace will have ended, and the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men shall have come; and it will go on until the Lord shall be in peaceful possession of His kingdom under the whole heaven. (See Note, p. 224.)