Romans Chapter 1 (part 8)

If this is your first time receiving Covered in His Dust, welcome.

I’d love to hear where you’re reading from.
Just reply and let me know.

Before diving into my notes, I encourage you to read Chapter 1 first.

I include all the Scripture below, but there’s something about sitting with the whole chapter first — giving yourself room to be curious.

What catches you off guard?
What doesn't make sense?
Where is that?
Who's that?
Why?

Those questions will make the notes hit deeper.

"When disciples followed a rabbi, they followed him closely so they would never be out of his sight, never be someplace where they couldn’t hear him speak. They followed him so closely that his sandals often kicked up dust."

May you be covered in His dust.

Good morning Saints! ☀️

This is where Romans turns.

Verse 17 takes you up the mountain.
Verse 18 takes you straight into the valley.

Most people treat this shift like a topic change. It isn’t. It’s the same thought. The same line. The same gospel. Now Paul is showing why we need it.

You can’t feel the power of verse 17 until you feel the weight of verse 18.

That’s why we’re going to come back to verses 16 and 17 over and over again.
They’re the anchor that holds everything together.
If you don’t keep looking at them, this next section feels like bad news.

But it isn’t bad news. It’s the scan that shows the disease so you’ll stop trusting your own strength and cling to the cure.

Romans 1:18 to 3:20 is Paul pulling back the curtain on the human heart.
Not to shame you.
To save you.
To show you why the gospel has to be a gift and not a reward.

If we move slowly through this part, if we let Paul say everything he means to say, we’ll uncover things most people never see.

And once you see them, you won’t read the gospel the same way again.

Ready?

If you had cancer, wouldn’t you want to know?

If you ignored the symptoms… If you waited… If you hoped it would just go away… You might not get another chance.

Romans 1:18 to 3:20 is the deep scan.
The CAT scan.
The MRI.
Run by the Doctor who never misdiagnoses.
Confirmed by every second opinion in Scripture.

Not every translation keeps that little word “For.”
But it matters.

It’s Paul’s way of saying “because.”

Verses 16 and 17 show us the gospel.
But verse 18 tells you why we need it.

The gospel is the cure… because the wrath is real. The righteousness in verse 17 is good news… because the diagnosis in verse 18 is deadly.

That tiny word “For” ties the whole thing together. It’s Paul opening the door and saying:

“You need this. Because here’s the truth about your condition.”

Sin brings wrath.
Wrath is judgment.
And judgment isn’t a metaphor.

That’s why the gospel has to be a gift. Because of verse 18.

If we skip this section, if we jump from “God is love” to “God forgives,” we miss the very thing that makes the gospel good news instead of sentimental noise.

We can’t jump over sin and wrath.
That isn’t the gospel.
That’s a softened version of Christianity that can’t save anyone.

But everything in us wants to skip it.

We were born into sin.
We’d rather be soothed than exposed.
We want a God who whispers, not a God who confronts.

So we reach for the parts of God that feel gentle.

God is good and loving and forgiving.
And all of that’s true.

But that’s not the whole of who He is, and Paul won’t let us pretend it is.

The God of wrath wasn’t only in the Old Testament and Jesus didn’t come to rewrite God’s character.

He came to reveal it.

The love of God and the wrath of God are not enemies.
They’re both part of the cure.

If we don’t let Paul show us the disease, we’ll never understand the medicine.

Paul doesn’t waste words.
He never does.

So when he uses “unrighteousness” twice in verse 18, he wants us to hear it echo. He wants us to connect it straight back to the righteousness in verse 17.

Why do we need God’s righteousness revealed in the gospel? Because our unrighteousness is revealed in us. Paul puts them side by side so we don’t miss the contrast. Verse 17 is the cure. Verse 18 is the diagnosis. You can’t separate them.

The bad news in verse 18 is what makes the good news in verse 17 explode with meaning. If you don’t see yourself as unrighteous, you won’t see God’s love, God’s power, or God’s free gift as good news at all.

It’ll just sound like religion.

If the exam comes back positive… If the doctors sit you down and point to the scans… If they tell you the truth about what’s growing inside you…

You don’t ignore the news and pretend everything’s fine.

You run to the cure.

That’s exactly what Paul’s doing here.

Paul repeats the same word in verses 17 and 18 for a reason.

“Revealed.”

In verse 17, God’s righteousness is revealed.
Present tense.
Right now.
Today.
From faith to faith.

And in verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed.
Same tense.
Same weight.
Same urgency.

Not “will be revealed someday.”
Is being revealed.
Right now.
Today.

Paul isn’t only talking about the final judgment. Romans 2:5 makes it clear that God’s wrath is coming in fullness.

But he wants us to see something most people never see.

It’s
already
here.

It’s already active.
It’s already visible in the world, in our thinking, in our desires, in the consequences we live with.

And you can’t understand one without the other.

So where’s this wrath right now, today?

Paul points to three places hiding in plain sight.

Death.
Suffering.
And the slow collapse of the human soul.

Every one of us was born into death.

Adam fell, and we fell with him.
Death isn’t natural.
It’s a verdict.

And suffering reveals His wrath too.

How?

Because creation itself was put under futility.

Creation didn’t choose futility.
We didn’t vote for it.
It wasn’t Satan’s decision.
It wasn’t Adam’s idea.

God subjected creation to futility.

That’s judgment.

That’s wrath.

Not final wrath.
Not hell.

But the present, daily reminder that the world is broken under God’s hand because of sin.

That’s why life slips through your fingers.
That’s why nothing here is enough.
We grind, we hustle, we try to build something solid…

and
it
still
breaks.

James doesn’t say “if” you suffer. He says “when.”

And suffering doesn’t stay theoretical.
It walks into your village, knocks on your door and sits in your living room.

A young girl from our small village died of cancer a few days ago.
She was twenty.
She loved the Lord.

Was that God’s wrath?
No. She was His daughter.
Her death wasn’t punishment. It was passage.

She suffered.
We suffer.
Suffering touches every house on this earth.

Believers and unbelievers.

We live in a world God placed under futility… but for the Christian, that futility is never punishment. It’s God pulling our eyes upward.

And then Paul turns the light on the darkest corner.

God hands us over.
Not to punishment, but to the very thing we thought would set us free.

Our own desires

“Fine. You want your sin. You can have it.”

He’s not tempting you.
He’s letting you run after the thing you keep choosing.

That’s wrath too.

Not lightning or fire or famine.
But a soul convinced darkness is light.
A mind that calls evil good.
A heart that can’t feel the splinter buried deep inside.

God gives us up to our desires.

That’s judgment that looks like freedom.

And it’s everywhere.

Look at the world.
Look at your own heart.
Look at the sins you’ve justified, protected, renamed, baptized and excused.

That’s wrath.

But even here, Christ steps in.
He enters the futility.
He faces the death we earned.
He takes the wrath we deserve.
He gives the righteousness we don’t have.

Wrath reveals the problem.
The gospel reveals the cure.

Both are meant to break us open so grace can finally get in.

Death for the Christian isn’t removed, but the sting is.

The verdict that once hung over you is gone.
Wrath has no claim on you.
Condemnation can shout, but it can’t reach you.

For the unbeliever, death is the beginning of judgment. For the believer, death is the end of it.

That young girl from our village didn’t meet wrath.
She met Christ.
She closed her eyes in suffering and opened them in glory.
She stepped into the victory she didn’t earn and couldn’t lose.

We still grieve her.
We still feel the wrongness of death.
We feel the ache.
We feel the futility of this world.

But we don’t fear death.
Not anymore.

Hurricanes will hit,
cancer will strike
and earthly death will come.

But it’s not futile.
Scripture makes that clear.

Because we can look over the wrath to the joy waiting on the other side.
We see the storm… and the Savior behind it.

Believers still battle sin.
We fall.
We rise.
We fight again knowing the battle is already won.

So even when the hurricane hits…
even when the house is gone…
even when the diagnosis shatters the room…

none of it is God’s condemning wrath.

It’s the groaning of a world waiting for redemption, and the God who walks with us through it.

What’s the truth being suppressed?

That God exists.
That He’s eternal.
That His power is undeniable.

That His fingerprints are all over the world, and all over us.

They knew Him.
They saw enough to be accountable.

But they wouldn’t honor Him.
Wouldn’t thank Him.
Wouldn’t glorify Him.

That’s the truth we bury.

Because thanking God means admitting dependence.
Honoring God means admitting He’s the center, not us.
Glorifying God means stepping off the throne.

And we don’t like that.

We want to be our own gods.
Do what we want.
When we want.
How we want.

“Don’t tell me how to live my life.
Don’t tell me what to do.
My body, my choice.
My truth. My rules.”

In fact… “I don’t even think You’re real.”

Verse 21 ends with the most chilling line in the whole paragraph:

“their foolish hearts were darkened.”

That’s the progression.

Suppress the truth.
Exchange the truth.
Hate the truth.
Lose the truth.

Not because the evidence isn’t there.
But because the heart doesn’t want it.

Paul describes people with two words in Romans 1:18.
Ungodly and unrighteous.

But when he talks about people who suppress the truth, he only uses unrighteous.

Why?

Because ungodliness is the fruit.
Unrighteousness is the root.

Ungodliness is what shows on the outside.
Unrighteousness is the desire on the inside that pushes God away.

We don’t hide the truth because we’re confused.
We hide it because we want our sin.

We want the throne.
We want control.
We want to worship the creature instead of the Creator.

That’s why Paul uses unrighteousness here.

Because the problem isn’t that people don’t know the truth. The problem is that they don’t want it.

Paul isn’t writing about them.
He’s writing about us.
And next week… he’ll prove it.

If Romans 1:18 shows us anything, it’s this.

You can’t understand the gospel until you understand why you need it.

And if God is exposing the disease, it’s because He intends to heal it.
If He shines light on the darkness, it’s because He’s already prepared the cure.

Don’t rush past this verse.
Let it land.
Let it show you why verse 17 isn’t optional.

Next week the blade touches the deeper tissue.
Paul brings us closer to the tumor every human heart tries to hide.

It’s your tumor too.

I can’t wait to walk through it with you next week.

I love you,

George
Uncovering Scripture

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George Sisneros is a full-time missionary in Guatemala and the founder of Ordinary Missionaries and the El Rosario Christian Academy for Boys.

He’s been married to his wife, Vonda, for 27 years. He’s a father to nine children, five adopted.

In 2024, George and his wife expanded to Cuba, joining forces with nine pastors committed to transforming lives through the gospel.

You can get George’s newest digital book, Uncovering Scripture: The Gospel of Luke HERE.