The apostle next proceeds to show what it was that made the gospel so necessary to man and so suitable to God. The gospel is God's power to salvation, and so a revelation of His righteousness, ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν.
When man evidently had, or was convicted of having, no righteousness for God, He revealed His own in the gospel, which was consequently open for faith wherever it existed, being by faith, and not by works of law, to which the Jew laid claim. To this truth also the prophet Habakkuk gave his emphatic testimony.
That God should thus deal with man was absolutely needful if man was to find salvation. “For God's wrath is revealed from heaven upon all impiety and unrighteousness of men that hold the truth in unrighteousness.”
The fathers and the children of Israel were not without experience of divine wrath on earth. They had seen it consume the cities of the plain of Sodom. They had known His wondrous chastisements in the field of Zoan till the waters of the Red Sea, rebuked for their sakes, covered their proud enemies, so that not one was left. They had felt its edge when the Lord created a new thing, and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up quickly Korah, Dathan, and Abiram with their company. Man, the race, had already proved it indeed in the flood which took them all away, save those secured in the ark. But these and other kindred acts of judgment of old were providential and earthly.
There was as yet no revelation of God's wrath from heaven. These divine actings were visible in their effects if not arresting men before the eyes of their fellows on earth.
Now, concurrently with the glad tidings, not exactly therein, there is revealed divine wrath from heaven. This is in no way executed yet, but it is being revealed; and man, being sinful, is seen to be utterly, manifestly, unfit for God's presence. God Himself is no longer hidden. He has been manifested in flesh: “the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” His nature thus disclosed is absolutely intolerant of sin, as it must be also of sinners, but for His righteousness revealed in the gospel, which justifies the believer by the faith of Christ. Still the same Christ, whose atonement is the groundwork of the gospel, makes known God as He is, and nowhere more proved to be at war forever with evil than in the cross, where Jesus who knew no sin, yet made sin for us, tasted not death only but the divine abandonment, that our sins might be dealt with according to the unsparing judgment of God. Hence acting with the gospel, there is revealed His wrath from heaven, which goes far beyond any conceivable temporal strokes of His hand on earth; for these (though of course a testimony to, and as far as they went in harmony with, this nature) were but a part of His governmental dealings, not the full expression of His nature as when we come to the expiation of Christ.
Hence this divine wrath revealed from heaven has for its object every kind of godlessness (πᾶσαν ἀσέβειαν) and, especially, men's unrighteousness that hold the truth in unrighteousness. It is no longer a particular nation under a law which judged acts of transgression, though it gave the knowledge of a sinful root underneath, while the rest of the nations were comparatively overlooked. “Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, Ο children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” (Amos 3:1, 21Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, 2You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. (Amos 3:1‑2).) The veil is rent; and God shining out, as it were, discerns and judges all everywhere inconsistent with Himself. At the same time He sends in the gospel a free and full remission of sins to every believer. Thus, while every form of Gentile evil is morally judged as contrary to God's nature, the Jew, if unrighteous, is implied from the outset to be in a yet more awful condition. “Salvation is of the Jews.” They had the promises, and the law, and in part at least the truth. But the language is so comprehensive as to be quite as applicable, if not more so, to the professing Christian now with his enlarged light, grace, and the truth more fully revealed in Christ. Increase of privileges, if abused, is but increase of condemnation. And what more just, the enemies of God themselves being judges and the cause their own? Thus it seems to me that πᾶσαν (“all”) extends to the second part of the description as well as to the first, and embraces every sort of unrighteousness where men hold the truth in unrighteousness, no less than every kind of impiety. Such men might not be strictly impious, they possess the truth; but along with this, being unrighteous, they cause the truth and name of God to be thereby blasphemed.
Some find a difficulty in the last clause and, assuming that κατεχόντων, if here taken in the sense of “holding,” must have it only in the lowest degree, they contend for the meaning of “holding back” or restraint as in 2 Thess. 2:6, 76And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 7For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. (2 Thessalonians 2:6‑7), which they persuade themselves is suitable to our context. My conviction is that κατέχω retains here its usual emphasis of possession or holding fast, where moral things are in question, and that this is necessary to the solemn lesson here conveyed. For the apostle is speaking of God's wrath as against not merely all impiety in general but specifically men's unrighteousness who ever so stubbornly keep the truth in unrighteousness. God is not mocked. His Spirit is the holy Spirit as well as the Spirit of truth. He must have the truth held in righteousness; for otherwise it is not Christ, the Second Man, but only the first man in another shape, and in a shape pre-eminently hateful to Himself. How many feel keenly, dispute hotly, and in other clays have contended in deadly warfare for the truth they held, whose works denied God, being abominable, disobedient, and to every good work reprobate! The Jews were a standing witness of this perilous religion then: Christendom, Popery, Protestantism, the truest dogmatic teaching you please, is not a whit safer now, where the professor does not pursue holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
Nothing can be simpler and more certain than this truth, once it is stated and understood. But the value of it is apparent from the fact that the Fathers so-called, almost, if not quite unanimously, overlooked and denied it. Their system, even that of pious and able men like Augustine, was that the wicked, though lost, would derive some considerable assuagement during their everlasting punishment because of their baptism. Most fatal and offensive error! The very reverse is true. “That servant which knew his lord's will and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew it not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.”
Again, this verse is not, as some suppose, limited as a preface to the proof of Gentile depravity; it is rather the thesis in brief, which is opened out in the rest of chapters 1, 2, 3, down to verse 21, which resumes the treatment of God's righteousness, and begins the details of that which we had in chapter 1:16. I understand, therefore, that verse 18 gives first the general description of human ungodliness in every phase, and then the unrighteousness which was at that time most conspicuous in the Jews who combined with practical injustice a tenacious hold or possession of the truth: the former demonstrated to the end of Rom. 1, the latter (after the transition of chap. 2:1-16) pursued from chapter 2:17 to chapter 3:20. Had this twofold aspect been apprehended in the verse before us, the rendering of the Authorized Version would not have been deserted for “restraining the truth by unrighteousness,” which is a sense framed to meet the condition of the heathen who were supposed here to be alone in the apostle's view. The same misconception wrought mischief in lowering the character both of the revelation of God's wrath from heaven, and of the truth in order to meet paganism. Admit the universal scope of the moral description with a specific reference to those who held the truth in unrighteousness, and the sense which results is as easy as it is all-important, the fitting introduction to the entire episode that follows till the apostle takes up his proper theme in God's righteousness revealed in the gospel.