WE have been looking at what the gospel is from God’s side, let us ask, What is the state of those to whom this gospel comes? God first of all tells us what it is about before He speaks of the condition in which those were found to whom He sends it. And what is the state of man?
Here in this first chapter it is the heathen that are spoken of―and what a state they were in! People often ask, What about the heathen? Is God going to be unrighteous? No, God will never be unrighteous. But you say, It seems to me an unrighteous thing that those who have never heard the gospel should be dealt with in the same way that you and I are dealt with. But who says they will? We are told in this first chapter of the Romans the ground on which God will deal with the heathen. It says in the nineteenth verse, “because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shown it unto them; for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.” What are God’s invisible things? If I look on the mountains, they are not invisible things; if I look at the sun and the moon and the stars, they all declare the glory of God, but they are not invisible. Yet it says here, “the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.” That seems an inconsistent thing, that invisible things should be clearly seen! “Being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.” Now here are the invisible things. “Power” is not a thing which you can see, it is an invisible thing. “Godhead” is an invisible thing. They are invisible things, and yet it says that they are clearly seen. And where are they seen, and how? “Being understood by the things which are made.” That is to say, I look up into the heavens and they declare the glory of God. I look on the earth―not on the havoc man by his sin has wrought in it, but―on all the works of God’s hands, on the mountains and on every blade of grass, and they all declare the glory of God and the power of God. That is a wonderful thing, and the more you examine the works of creation, the more you are struck with the beauty of them all and of all that God has made. It may be but the dust on a butterfly’s wing, but the more you increase the magnifying power of the glass through which you look at it, the more marvelous it appears. But now look at what man has made; the finest cambric handkerchief that could possibly be got, when put under a microscope, looks like the coarsest sackcloth. Man’s works will not bear inspection, but God’s works will.
At the end of the twentieth verse he says, “they are without excuse.” The heathen have a witness of His power and Godhead before their eyes at all times. They have that testimony constantly before them, so that they are without excuse. A man is thoroughly without excuse when he looks up into the heavens and sees all that is there, and yet bows down before a stock or a stone which he himself has made. It is the veriest folly. Further it goes on to say in the twenty-first verse, “when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God.” They had a knowledge of God. People talk about our having developed ourselves out of a lower condition of things. They look down on the heathen, and call them inferior to themselves, and below them come the monkeys, and so on; they say that man has developed himself through ages and ages from the lowest depths, till he has reached to the present high point. But God sees things very differently from that. The fact is that man has gone back, for he had the knowledge of God, but he gave God up. “When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God.” It is a wonderful thing when we come to look at the evidences of man’s existence upon the earth in by-gone ages. God has been pleased to preserve to us these records. Take for instance the earliest of man’s works upon the earth―the Pyramids. Could you build anything like that now? Why, it brings us face to face with an intelligence and a power that we should find it difficult to equal to-day with all the appliances of science.
I remember the last time I was in Egypt a large mass of gold ornaments was found, dating back to the period of four thousand years ago. The value of the gold itself reached some thousands of pounds (40,000), and the workmanship was marvelous, such as it would be difficult to imitate in these days with all the recent improvements and developments of men. And what does that tend to show but that man has moved in a retrograde manner. Man had the knowledge of God, but he gave it up. In these two verses we get the ground on which the heathen are dealt with. And what is it? For refusing to believe in a Christ of whom they have never heard? No, but for closing their eyes to a testimony that they have constantly before them, and that, too, after they had had the knowledge of God from tradition. Later on, in the next chapter, we get another thing, and that is, “their conscience also bearing witness” (ch. 2:15). The heathen have a conscience. It may be a very degraded one, but God took care that man should have a conscience. When man was driven out of the warden of Eden, God made him carry a conscience with him. Thus there are three grounds on which God holds man responsible―tradition, creation, conscience.
But further, there are the oracles of God, and he Jew made his boast in them. “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God” (chs. 3:1, 2). But the greater the advantages, the greater the responsibility. The Jew had privileges that the Gentile had not. God had spoken to Moses and to the fathers, and the Jew had the law written by the very finger of God. But what does the law of which you boast so much say? You Jews, you pride yourselves that you have a testimony that the heathen nations have not, but what does that law say? “We know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law” (ch. 3:19). You boast of the law, and say, We have the oracles of God which the nations around us do not possess. But what does that law say? “It is written, there is none righteous, no not one,” &c. &c. And what the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, therefore it says it to the Jews, “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” Your mouth and my mouth, no matter whether in heathen lands, or in Jewish lands, or in professedly Christian lands, with all the increased privileges that we, as Christians, possess―every mouth is stopped. “That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”
God first of all tells us what His gospel is about.
He says, It starts from Me, My heart is the source of it―it is the gospel of God. Then, the subject of that gospel is My own Son, the promised Messiah to this earth, but My Son. And, thirdly, the sphere through which that gospel spreads its blessings is, “every nation under heaven.” And what is the state of the people to whom that gospel comes? Gentiles without excuse, and Jews condemned by the very oracles of which they boasted so much. Every mouth is stopped before God.
Next time we may go on to look at the remedy that God brings to man in that state.
(To be continued.)